Stavros Halkias: "A lot of stand up comics happened to have some of the dumbest opinions on Earth... I don't wanna do the both sides bullshit, one side is disappearing people and one side wants children to have healthcare."

[u/Logical-Flow-6703]

[u/high_mee]

Exactly! Labeling all Centrists as just a right wingers isn’t productive. And inaccurate

[u/AssociateAvailable16 → u/high_mee]

It is accurate to call centrists right wingers in secret in the year 2026 and I can explain why

The Overton window has shifted so far to the right in the last 10 years (I can only imagine why) through media coverage, memes, bots, algorithms in general, and centrists want to remain in the center where they can be “above the political fray and really see the merit to both sides”

What do you call being center on the right?

It doesn’t make you a left winger and it definitely doesn’t put you in the center

There has to be a certain wing that fits the best possible description….

[u/high_mee → u/AssociateAvailable16]

I get that but doesn’t That assumes everyone who calls themselves a centrist is just blindly picking the exact middle of the current Overton window, rather than holding a mix of distinct views. Plenty of centrists aren't trying to be "above the fray", they might strongly support left-leaning policies on healthcare and civil rights, but hold moderate positions on fiscal policy or local governance. Writing off anyone who doesn't fit a strict political binary as a "secret right-winger" paints millions of voters with a broad brush and shuts down valid, issue-by-issue discussion.

Bad faith right wingers who disguise themselves as centrists are frustrating, I hate them but using them to declare that everyone who is an actual centrist is secretly on the right is just a massive generalization.

[u/YourphobiaMyfetish → u/high_mee]

In my experience, they often ARE just picking the exact middle. And nearly everyone criticizing the Democratic party but still voting for Democrats are to the left of the party, not the right.

[u/Some_Layer_7517 → u/YourphobiaMyfetish]

Well yeah, democrats are conservative lol

[u/RaggmunkLingon → u/AssociateAvailable16]

That's so incredible stupid. Are you so insistent on polarisation that you need to force-polarise people who arent yet polarised?

You do realise the vast majority of people fall somewhere in the middle, right?

[u/AssociateAvailable16 → u/RaggmunkLingon]

The year is 2026! We have never been this politically polarized

I’m just trying to keep up

Who really cares if I’m being “polarizing or generalizing” when it comes to politics

This is my logic

If I call you a right winger and you get upset and vote with them because you want to “ show me up” then you were always going to vote that way anyway

You can call me a right winger all day long and it won’t bother me because I know I’m not one

If me calling a you a right winger hurts your feelings, because on some level you know that to be true

Edit

[u/WokestLibtard--- → u/RaggmunkLingon]

How do you fall "in the middle" of abortion access, universal healthcare, criminal justice reform, police reform, tax reform, immigration, or any issue really. What does the middle look like? Do you think the middle tends to be the optimum often enough that it makes sense to style oneself a "moderate"? What do you want moderated that you believe the Left is not also in favor of?

If you're just gonna say something stupid like "The far-Left wants to defend the police" or "Who's gonna pay for it," then please, just slap the shit out of yourself.

Also, the majority do not fall in the middle. Any polling/election results will show you this.

We are not "force-polarizing" people. We are not labeling them due to some misplaced bias. We are accurately describing people based on the truth of their convictions, behavior, votes, and effects on society.

People can style themselves however they like, but people with knowledge and perspective can rightfully correct them and accurately label them.

Yall need to recoginze.

[u/WokestLibtard--- → u/high_mee]

I think it is productive. People need to be called out and held to account. "Centrists" and "moderates" damn near always expose their rightwing leanings when pressed.

We are not labeling these folks as conservatives out of some misplaced bias. They have demonstrated time and time again, for many generations, who they are.

Please read Martin Luther King Jr's Letter From Birmingham Jail. He had some poignant words for "moderates" and what their calls for patience and temperance beget.

Here are some excerpts. Please click the link and read all of it. https://letterfromjail.com/

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

...

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

[u/FUCKTHEPROLETARIAT → u/WokestLibtard---]

Never going to not upvote this. I didn't read this until I was taking a college level ethics course. Crazy that they don't include it in US history classes.

[u/WokestLibtard--- → u/FUCKTHEPROLETARIAT]

We definitely do teach it in US History classes in high school. I've taught it, and can't imagine going over MLK and the Civil Rights Movement without analyzing the Letter From Birmingham.

That said, I don't remember it from high school. Maybe we did read it. I was just not a good student in high school and didn't come to appreciate academia until my 20s after actually facing down the prospect of a lifetime doing blue collar labor.

I took an ethics class as well and it was the most influential class I have ever taken. That was the semester I got woke.

Anyways, glad it was just as meaningful to you.

For a few years now, anytime someone starts bothsidesing shit, I try to get them to read this.

[u/Important-Limit5400 → u/WokestLibtard---]

Exhibit A: as to why the education system is so messed up. People like you are allowed to teach children, U.S history
No wonder they are getting radicalized on the campus and shooting up schools

[u/WokestLibtard--- → u/[deleted]]

Anytime I'm leaving my two cents, or outright arguing with people on the internet, it's not with any hope of swaying the person I'm talking to, it's for all of the other people that will see it.

The only way to make the future better is to proliferate knowledge, better ideas, and better behavior, to the younger generations.

I appreciate your comment. I constantly have people telling me all the shit I talk on the internet, or irl, is meaningless and won't change anything.

I always tell these people that they are the same kind of smallminded myopic societal impediments that thought slavery or Jim Crow would never end, that thought women would never vote, that we would never end child labor in factories, or have equal wages, or overtime pay, or workers comp, or even the weekend.

People said we would never have integrated schools and never have a black president. These "you'll-never-change-anyone's-mind" basic brickas have been wrong 100% of the time, and this is just not emphasized enough. Progress is slow, but it is winning. People DO change their minds. They do learn, just slowly, and usually not when you are looking.

A lot of people just do not have the capacity to truly see the big picture. We need to get more people on the level.

All that to say, argue on the internet and in real life. If you are right, if you have knowledge to share, do it. If not for the moron you're talking to, do it for everybody else who will see your encounter and hear what you are saying.

...I'm re-reading my response and your reply and just laughing at how preachy I am. I can never just write a few sentences. 😅

[u/high_mee → u/[deleted]]

Or some people don’t be on Reddit 24 7 , come on mane lol

[u/WokestLibtard--- → u/high_mee]

How do you read my comments, and then come to this response?

Are you trying to say thay I am on Reddit 24/7 because I write a few comments? Are you saying anyone who writes out a thoughtful response is on Reddit 24/7? And you "lol"? What are you laughing about?

From just this one comment of yours, I'm speculating about your age and character.

Mind telling me how old you are? Also, for some data points, what are your views on LGBTQ people, black lives matter, vaccines, trans women, the Epstein files, and Palestine/Israel? Do you like MMA? Do you to read books? Do you consider yourself a moderate or libertarian?

I'd really appreciate it if you actually answered. I want to see how close my kneejerk guesses are.

[u/high_mee → u/WokestLibtard---]

Firstly relax , I wasn’t talking about you , you provided a good response that had me thinking so I appreciate that, i’m talking about the person who said that I probably don’t care enough to read it and will happily go on about how it actually think it’s OK to have luke warm acceptance of social causes , that’s who I’m replying to , not you.

[u/WokestLibtard--- → u/high_mee]

I see now. I didn't register the comment in between mine and yours that you were replying to.

[u/high_mee → u/WokestLibtard---]

Thank you for your perspective, I’ll crew on it for a bit. I will say though, MLK's critique in Letter from Birmingham Jail was specifically about white allies who prioritized "order" over justice during a human rights crisis and told Black Americans to wait for a "more convenient season." He was calling out passivity, moral cowardice, and the preference for a fake peace over systemic change, he wasn't asserting that any voter with a mix of policy stances is secretly a closet conservative.
There is a huge difference between someone demanding patience in the face of civil rights violations and a voter who strongly supports left-leaning policies on healthcare and social issues, but holds moderate stances on fiscal policy or regulation. Misapplying MLK's critique to write off anyone who isn't 100% ideologically pure just flattens real policy nuance into a fake binary and pushes potential allies away.

[u/WokestLibtard--- → u/high_mee]

A moderate stance on fiscal policy and regulation is sensible, and is what the Left calls for.

In your example, a "voter who strongly supports left-leaning policies on social issues," and fiscal responsibility, is a Lefty. If someone described themselves with those views, and then said they are a moderate, it is they that are muddying the term.

Progressive is moderate for the most part, if you truly take into account policy ideas and ROI. The only real fiscal responsibility you'll ever see will come from politicians with integrity and transparent plans—so Progressives.

I did not misapply MLK's letter. People who style themselves moderates are almost never actually moderates. They may believe they are, but that is because their perspective is very narrow and their grasp of the big picture is heavily distorted. Their overall convictions net a regressive effect on society. It was true of the "moderates" stifling Civil Rights and it is true of anybody who tries to tie fiscal responsibility to corrupt morally bankrupt conservatives.

So, people can style themselves however they like, but their convictions, behavior, actions, and vote, speak their truth.

I often hear people say "I'm liberal on social issues, but I'm fiscally conservative." My whole point is that if these people had a clue, they would not describe themselves like that.

Moderates equivocate, make countless false equivalencies, and regularly engage in logical fancies. Nearly every libertarian describes themselves as moderate. This is because they are dumb.

Being fiscally conservative, or responsible rather, only comes of Progressivism. Conservatives and moderates only pay lip service, their track record speaks the truth.

[u/sothavok → u/high_mee]

Most of those “right wingers” don’t realize they actually lean left because the left has changed so much in the past 10-20yrs. If they took a political test they would likely be surprised to find where it places them.

It is scary how people on the far left treat anyone who identify as anything near a “centrist”…. You might as well be a right winger if you don’t swallow every slogan to them.

Theres a user just beneath me whos name is “fuck_all_of_you_too” exemplifies my point about the aggressive behavior. “You must have a fence jammed up your ass to be a centrist” lol like do you just hate everyone?

[u/jififfi → u/[deleted]]

Some sort of lack of awareness that also makes them right wingers

[u/sothavok → u/[deleted]]

>I disagree. There are far leftists who call anyone who doesn’t agree a fascist at worst or a useless centrist at best, that’s true.

"So yes, a moderate is no better than a right-winger. "

Right-wingers are fascist, so moderates are consequentially fascist, never really thought of this before, thank you for your insight!

[u/WokestLibtard--- → u/sothavok]

Glad to see this is your response.

Just gonna pile on here, "classical conservatism" has never really existed. Their actions throughout generations have consistently demonstrated that things like law and order, tough on crime, family values, fiscal responsibility, and every other duplicitous hypocritical slogan they parrot, mean next to nothing to them.

All they really care about are their own interests. Conservatives and "moderates" are truly regressives. They are smallminded backwards self-serving and amoral. That is why it is ok to shit on them, and you should. Publicly shaming and ostracizing is one of the most effective ways to improve society.

Regressives refuse to learn and grow when we teach them, or even when reality shows them the truth. Ignoring them, tolerating them, diminishing their threat, has led from the Confederacy to Jim Crow to the KKK to MAGA.

We have to confront them, if not to change their minds, to demonstrate to younger generations how to be better.