The problem should be what we all need to do. From a societal perspective, and from a legislative perspective.
Yeah, that's what I like to focus on.
Upthread, I said that the actual answer was fuzzy. It's a political struggle, which means that allies need to be curated and empowered*. The disinterested need to be swayed to help or get out of the way**. The opponents just literally need to be dominated using whatever metric that matters, ideally with an eye on the long-game***.
In the end, this requires personal sacrifice, the proceeds of which are reinvested in supporting the group. Ideally, the personal sacrifice is most efficient when taken from resources you'd normally give to a political opponent. It cannot be done with just boycotting, the savings from the boycott need to be reinvested.
What people who're perceived as being
in the Center need to be doing is (firstly) literally using their wealth proactively to support the causes that they appreciate. We live in this world where we always think that there are people richer than we are that ought be to doing something more, but we commonly forget how overwhelmingly wealthy we are compared to the people we're trying to help. And this is
not helped by this culture of 'self-care' that people have, because of its confirmation bias. And (secondly) they need to be using their contacts within the Left and Right to learn the various theories proposed by each, and then learning how to repackage them in order to cross the aisle. This is especially bad today, where everything is strawmanned.
But I create a long post upthread about the structural difficulties those left-of-Center have.
*allies can be black-holes of resources, too, so depending on what you determine to be your cohort of 'natural allies', the resources still need to be husbanded.
** this is where seeking feedback amongst people
outside the cohort and then testing that feedback is necessary. And, like it or not, the memetics that are effective are more necessary that the memetics one's more vociferous allies
want
*** this means that you need to know which institutional power structure any specific person implicitly adds to, and then win
on that field.
So what does it mean when you use it yourself
For 'left', I include as 'necessary' a communalist view of the ownership of property, where the more communalist the view is, the more 'left' someone is. Whereas 'liberal' tends to be an appreciation for the well-being of people, with a broader scope of what's considered the 'in-group' the more liberal someone is. But I also let people self-identify, wherever possible, since obviously the goal is to learn their motivations rather than try to control a language.
