Memes

Don't forget the material basis for these shifts! While The Discourse of "practical" truangulating centrists tends to show this rightward path, it is because (1) they were already fundamentally reactionary, they tend to just use this logic as an excuse for why they tolerate far-right positions, and (2) the right is supported by the ruling class to address some of the "problems" it creates, like a marginalized underclass that wants enough income to feed their children, housing, and safety from violence.

The shift right is not driven simply by debate or ideology, but by the arenas where degradation in material conditions due to capitalism meet the ruling class' need to deflect blame to the marginalized (who they can reap larger profits from) to placate the less marginalized. Racism, nationalism, and extermination campaigns are created and maintained for the interests of capital, with the common people being pushed and prodded to fall in line with repeating the (usually ad hoc) new or recycled scapegoats and underclassrs. Wouldn't want you to point blame in the right direction!

I hate the term "normalization" because it doesn't mean anything to most people. The closest approximation of it's meaning to most people is "stuff (usually negative) is happening".

Please point me to the time in American history where it was normal to:

1. pay taxes for everyone's health care
2. follow international law
3. not do extrajudicial killings/imprisonment
4. not be personally or institutionally racist

Spoiler you cannot. These times literally do not exist in any meaningful way, they only exist as ephemeral pockets of modernity that you personally have experienced. Many of the arguments that you can make in favor of these points of time, suffer greatly from the just world fallacy. When you look a little too hard at those pockets of time, you'll find that your feeling was just a feeling and it wasn't even true.

This meme may be good at convincing libs their world view is fucked, but it's not an accurate depiction.

Yep, this is a huge fucking problem.

Top bad the often proposed suggestion of "let's just skip right to the end" isn't actually a solution.

The sad thing is that it works both ways. If a left party in government is improving things but had to do a compromise and therefore couldn't go all the way the far left is also complaining about that.

Compromise with far right positions should never happen, but compromise in itself is not something bad, and imho it's one of the main problems in today's democracy that too many people see it that way.

As with almost all things: it's good to have principles to stand by, but the world is rarely as black and white as it seems to be.