2025-10-29
This site doesn't do party politics, but that doesn't mean that we don't do politics. After all, the fact that many people take no interest politics doesn't prevent the politicians from poking their noses into the people's affairs. Especially now that CBDC-linked Gov Ids are are believed to be feasible, they can poke right the way down to the individual citizen and what he had for Sunday dinner.
"You had an extra slice of toast for breakfast on Satiurday so to keep the world cool your bread ration is now halved for next week and your price per British standard loaf will be increased by one third"
Note that they don't have to get the actual facts right - it's sufficient to make sure that there isn't any effective way to challenge their facts. In fact it's probably better to get them wrong because then the individual will have no choice but to give up the unequal struggle for correctness and just submit to whatever "they" impose. Life is too short ...
But I digress.
Today I'm - addressing the topic / having a pop at - political labels. Specifically, the "Left/right" labels.
Now being "on the left" is a perfectly acceptable description of some very acceptable people, Yanis Varoufakis for one. It doesn't stop one from being well-thought-out and right about many important political topics. I dare say that Yanis may be wrong about certain things but he strikes me as being right more often than he is wrong, even if he is "on the left" more often than he is "on the right" ... this marks him out as an unusual politician.
It's also a sad fact that many on the left are wrong about almost everything. Just as those on the right may also be wrong about almost everything. The political labels can only be properly interpreted in context (and probably not even then) - no context, no information. Politicians are like Humpty Dumpty in that these labels can mean whatever they want them to mean, neither more nor less. The fact that they don't mean anything specific is a bonus because they cannot then be held accountable for their promises.
Labels out of context are also nuance-free, whereas politics should never be nuance-free because our world is not nuance-free, so to govern without nuance is to get governance wrong to a considerable extent.
That's enough from me, but here's the estimable Dr Jon Droz with a guest piece by Ron Hart that illustrates the point by discussing Climate Change, a favourite bone of the political "left".
"Leftist dogma defies reason"
Correct, but that's because it is dogma, which by definition has to be accepted without criticism. Not especially because it's "leftist" (or "rightist").
If people would just concentrate on being right (ie: correct) and avoiding all dogma of whatever source, then the world would be a far better place.
