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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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I'm just looking for an explanation of what constitute "extremes". Because I get mailers from right-wing organizers warning me of transgender book clubs and full defunding of the police happening next election cycle if I don't immediately throw my support behind the local GOP. But the folks on the far-left in my home town of Houston are only "radical" in the sense that they keep handing out food to homeless people via "Food Not Bombs" despite the city sticking volunteers with $2000 ordinance violations for being an illegal food vendor.
Get off Twitter. Touch grass. Go down to your actual in-person city council events and find out what the people on each end of the political spectrum are discussing right now.
Again, coming back to my home town of Houston, the HISD school board has been fully co-opted by the state government. One of the big issues in local politics right now is how to respond. Right-wing municipal leaders are running cover for the governor's decision and promoting judges/legislators in line with the state takeover. They're defending moves to cut in-school food programs, fire rebellious teachers, and spend enormous amounts of money converting libraries into detention facilities for "low-performing" students. The liberals and centrists are dithering and throwing up their hands, insistent that they have no power to do anything in the face of the state's takeover. Meanwhile, the Far Left folks are attempting to organize teachers and parents into an effective political opposition, to stage protests and walk-outs when administrators abuse their authority, and to formulate community education guidelines in line with a properly egalitarian system.
These are my "Far Right" / "Centrist" / "Far Left" options. Not randos with goofy profile pictures on some social media site, pretending to be Chad Right or Woke Left. But a bunch of retirees down at the public library handing out sandwiches versus the cops hassling them and shutting down their operation. Or the teachers trying to get class sizes down under 30 kids per classroom and ending the obnoxious Pearson-sponsored testing regimes versus some state-appointed administrators who have all come directly from the real estate sector and only care about making the school district lucrative to local business interests.
The folks in the middle - the ones with actual authority, anyway - are consistently do-nothings, more focused on self-promotion than any kind of policy goals and unwilling to stick their necks out on anything even remotely controversial for fear of a social backlash.
Centrist here. Far right is pretty easy and you've identified them. Far left can be seen in communities such as FuckCars. Another would be either recommendations for the government to build housing for everyone in city centers, taking over active (or inactive) real estate on the scale of millions. Elimination of all carbon-based fuels. Shuttering of the entire military. Since I'm a centrist I will tell you that those are fine ideals, just as educing regulations to the bare minimum of recommendations and balancing the national budget are excellent goals. None of them are practical because the leftist ones are either unworkable financially or would throw the economy into a black hole and the right ones are unworkable because there are way to many opportunistic motherfuckers out there that would poison their own mother to make an extra dollar or would throw the economy into a black hole.
I'm not in politics because I can't fucking afford to be. I would likely be a shoo-in for the local council. I was approached by the mayor and an existing councilman to do so. In researching it, I'd be looking at 500-700 hours a year of unpaid time. My neighbor is on the School Board. That's about 3/4 of the hours of Town Council, but it's a brutal cage match every meeting. For no reimbursement. Even at the state level, representatives are paid about $17k/yr and offers no benefits. That's less than 1/3 of what I'm paying to send my kid to college. Heck, my health insurance - with a $13k deductible - is $21k per year. And I'm just not corrupt enough to use a position like that to grift money on the side.
Yeah, those aren't centrists. Those are narcissist's who don't otherwise have an extreme political (usually religious) agenda. A lack of political or societal ideals is not the same as a having centrist or moderate set of ideals.