Help me understand please

@sarabee1995 I think it's left/right what changes society from society, but conservative / liberal mostly retain their meaning (except when used improperly; like calling "liberal" or worse "socialist" anything left of Republicans, or viceversa "conservative" anyone right of Sanders, etc).

At least that's the impression from arguing about politics with pretty much the whole world 😜

@sarabee1995 and some of what he is doing now, i believe, is do to his serious mental problems and long term racism.

@Elessar What do you think of @ElwoodBlues' comment below about American liberals being close to European conservatives?

@sarabee1995 Liberals here call themselves right-wing (or at most center, though usually they call themselves right-wing) so it's fairly accurate. Over there they can't, because the two party system force them to coexist along with non right-wingers in the same party, and if the alike of Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, or even more so Manchin, Fetterman, etc started calling themselves "right-wing" you'd see the turnout sink even lower. But we do have Trump like conservatives as well, so it's not perfectly accurate saying that European conservatives match your establishment Dems: European conservatives match more or less your entire spectrum, minus the Sanders/AOC branch of the Dems that however is hostage of a primarily neoliberal party

It's also why "liberal" is pretty much used as synonym for "progressive" (which is the actual opposite term to "conservative") in the US, whereas here they're two very distinct thing. It's crazy that two such different ideologies are forced to stay in a single party. Hardly someone who votes liberal here would vote for progressives and hardly progressives would vote for liberals (I did in the last EU elections because I didn't like the progressives' stance about Ukraine, but indeed that's exceptionally rare)

@Elessar Are your "Trump-like conservatives" called conservatives or are they recognized as populists?

I ask because I am certainly right-of-center and likely (according to @SatanBurger's spectrum below) somewhere between a mainstream conservative and a libertarian conservative (although I don't actually like either label); and despite being right-of-center, I have never been anywhere close to supporting President Trump's end of the spectrum.

@sarabee1995 We generally don't use the term "conservative" much, but "rightwing", at least in Italy; Trump alikes are called "far right-wing", and just "right-wing" only if the old era conservatives aren't part of the discussion.

They're generally kept distinct so long as they don't blend: for instance, we don't stress much the distinction between Tajani's regular right-wing and Meloni's far right, since they govern together and are seen pretty much as one big party. On the other hand, the average German will probably keep the CDU/CSU and the AfD separated enough that I don't think they'd call them both with the same term.

I wish we had someone like AOC or Sanders here and I'd be pretty much in their camp. Or even, for many aspects I've liked President Biden (his economics, most of how he handled Russia minus for being a bit too conservative, I'd have sent maybe more stuff earlier). I think your European equivalent would be the EPP, maybe slightly ECR, from our exchange. I think you'd have a positive opinion about the current German chancellor, for instance?

@Elessar Okay, I actually went and googled CDU political positions. I'm not so in line with them as you might think. But, I'm in bed at the moment and not awake enough to write it all out. Perhaps tomorrow. 😴