I'll start by referring to rockandroll's excellent background on the history and definitions of left versus right, liberal versus conservative. A disclaimer is that I am looking mostly if not solely on American politics because that is what I'm more familiar with. I'd only add that apart from the history, the definitions have become so corrupted and so broad by 2012 that the terms are all but generic and are from a bygone era. The definitions have become irrelevant as a result of trying to label ideas and people behind those ideas in order to make it easier for the voting public to understand, in effect "watering down" a lot of what is really going on in order to sell one side's philosophy over another for mass consumption. Just my opinion.
You make really good points here. I might add a slightly different perspective that's not quite disagreeing with what you're saying but merely extending it somewhat. I would agree that terms like "liberal," "conservative," "left," right," and even "capitalism," and "socialism," are now frequently used in ways much differently than the ways they were initially used. I would suggest though that while saying something like, "Obama is on the left and Mitt Romney is on the right" may have the appearance of making "it easier for the voting public to understand what is going on," I tend to think that the real effect is that it make matters much more confusing and also that it disguises the way that ideology functions in the United States (and to be perfectly clear, ideology is
always functioning in some particular way in
every country - this is not just in the United States). So, for example, Obama could only be conceived as being on the left once the the actual left has been completely marginalized from the legitimate political sphere and from social consciousness in general. At that point you can say, yes, Obama is part of a political group that is as far to the left as you're allowed to go and still be taken seriously as a political figure and still have an opportunity to hold a significant place in public office.
I think, then, that what is at stake with this, what you rightly call "watering down" is the ongoing elimination of voices and, hence, debate from the mainstream political discourse. The same thing happens, incidentally, when the pro-corporate laissez-faire capitalism of Ron Paul is called libertarianism, ignoring the long and vibrant history of actual libertarianism and its relationship with anarcho/communist style philosophies. And so on. I would say that I'm all for making things simple because, in fact, things really are simple - it doesn't really take a genius to understand the basics of economics and politics. I think that things end up becoming more confusing when one loses sight of not only what the terms mean but the history of those terms, and how and why we got to the terms we use today.
This is mostly due to the influence of the advertising industry in modern American politics, again in my opinion. Labels are given and attached for a specific reason, just as a catchy commercial jingle produced by the same people in that same industry can stick with you for decades after hearing it. There are specific reasons why political candidates have men from the advertising world leading their campaigns, and why they have teams if not well-funded machines of image consultants deciding not only what to say, but also where to be seen, what to wear, and what kind of smile or handshake works best in a given geographical area of the country. They literally have focus groups and pollsters measuring nearly every move of a campaign...and the results often determine the next decision to be made within that campaign. Is this leadership? Is this what people are voting for? On this issue, neither side is innocent. The sad part is that this group-think advertising which sells brand names has reduced people running for office to brand names, and subjects them to a "brand recognition" or "branding" process which is usually applied to a can of soda or a pair of jeans.
On this point, I absolutely agree. In fact, I think Obama's campaign team won some prestigious award from the advertising industry. And it's ultimately not surprising - Obama had the backing of the corporate world, much more so than McCain and that's typically how you win elections now in the US. Here's my view on this: In terms of civil liberties, the United States is probably the freest country in the world. The system is set up, really, entirely in favor of the population. This was recognized from the more elite and privilieged sectors as being extremely problematic from the very beginning. Framers of American policy and founding fathers like John Jay declared that "The people who own the country ought to govern it." And one could read the history of the United States developing from there as a process of ensuring that that happened, and the process of maintaining that kind of control.
As it stands now 1% of the US own 38% of the wealth. Therefore, the decisions over what happens over investments, production, distribution, and so on, are in the hands of a small and concentrated network of major corporations, conglomerates, and investment firms. This network of concentrated power likewise owns virtually all of the mainstream media and they historically help get people elected into office. Now this becomes particularly interesting once one takes into account precisely what I said above - the large degree of power held by the population at large. The power of the 1% is ultimately just that. And because of the nature of the structure of the country, the ruling class can't do what they did in Stalinist Russia and just beat people into submission. There people could freely have their own opinion because it didn't matter because once it was voiced it was subdued violently. In the United States, it's different. There, the population has to think and agree of their own free will that the ruling class is right - and what's good for the ruling class is good for everything and everyone. In Russia you would say it (because you'd have to) and not mean it. In the US, you have to mean it.
And so what happens is that you just don't discuss the issues. Luckily the mainstream media is owned by the ruling class and therefore they will automatically project a particular point of view that won't carry with it any serious form of systemic critique. This works not because of some monolithic conspiratorial cabal making evil decisions in a back room and filtering it out to reporters. Rather the media is made up of people who simply believe what they are saying is perfectly true - just as when Person X goes on the internet and calls Obama a communist leftie, they are not being told to do it by anyone. They really believe it because in their idelogically-driven world view Obama really
is as far to the left as you can go, and communism really
is the use of state power. And at the same time, I have to believe that the people who run for public office really believe what they say too - they believe that speech making is about glamour and they believe that their substance-less rhetoric really
is substance. Again, that's simply how ideology works and it usually works by repetition. When somebody watches the news on TV or reads an article, they don't say, "I want to be a journalist so I can say the things that no one else is saying." Rather, they say, "I want to be a journalist like this person."
And so, yes, consequently, elections typically are farcical - they are much more about entertainment than they are about issues or substance because the minute you actually talk about issues or things of substance is the minute the people begin to realize their potential in affecting the decisions of the country.
I'm sure I'm leaving a lot of gaps here, but hopefully they can get filled up as the discussion continues...
