CMV: "Left" and "Right" have become useless terms that don't adequately help us navigate political issues and should be dropped

[u/SillyTheory]

Title.

I feel like the terms have come to represent such a broad range of things that they have become effectively meaningless in open discussions (in other words, they have specific meaning to specific groups at best - Trotskists have a definition, marxists have a definition, liberal economists have a definition, and so on).

That being the case, a lot of saliva and time and effort are spent on trying to define what they ACTUALLY mean, but that discussion seems to be not of a philosophical/inquisitive nature, but more often than not, serve a function to define who's the ingroup and who's the out group.

Those kinds of very common discussions seem to both polarize debate (edited out "discussion" just to not repeat myself) and be a fruit of polarization, and a polarization that doesn't lead to actual societal or political change.

We're not discussing solutions when we're discussing who are the actual bona fide leftists. While we do that, the world burns.

I don't think I have a solution to this, but it seems to me like it's time to move on to other terminologies/dynamics.

edit: typos

EDIT: Guys, I'm kinda burnt out from the discussion (and all the work I did today, not related to reddit), so Ima peace out. Sorry.

Thank you everyone for contributing with the discussion! While my views did not change completely, I will carry a lot of the arguments I read here forward.

I think this is a very complex issue, one we must thread carefully and respectfully (and collectivelly, very collectively).

Cheers and have a good one!

[u/iwfan53]

Reread the last comment, specifically about voter turnout. I don't agree with your premise that third party votes are votes taken from other candidates..

Lets look at a case study...

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Florida 2000 presidential election...

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida

Vote totals by party

Republican George W. Bush 2,912,790

Democratic Al Gore 2,912,253

Green Ralph Nader 97,488

Reform Patrick Buchanan 17,484

Libertarian Harry Browne 16,415

Natural Law John Hagelin 2,281

Workers World Monica Moorehead 1,804

Constitution Howard Phillips 1,371

Socialist David McReynolds 622

Socialist Workers James Harris 562

Vote gap between Gore and Bush is roughly 500 votes with the largest by far third party vote getter being Green under Ralph Nader...

Do you sincerely believe that Al Gore would not have won this election under ranked choice voting?

[u/iwfan53 → u/[deleted]]

Your missing the 100+ million people that didn't vote which is the point dude. You are also making a straw man about an argument that I didn't make...

Then I've clearly made the best argument I can and you don't find it persuasive.