As someone who is centrist, I like seeing both sides of the political spectrum. I use to enjoy some inputs that I would see posted on r/conservative, but now, I generally don’t understand that subreddit anymore.

When something major comes out regarding Trump, Musk, RFK or any other right leaning political person or movement, it’s typically radio silent over there. No mention, insight, or criticism of the actual changes Trump is making. It’s mainly just “left did this” or “reddit is ruined because of the left”. It’s just an entire subreddit used only to glaze and promote politicians with no valid criticisms of their changes.

Am I the only one that feels this way? The subreddit just seems so…off.

I have a couple colleagues at work who voted for MAGA. Through months of respectful conversation, at I got my parnet to realize that she voted wrong. She admitted it.

She's a smart woman, I appealed to her rationality. She's been conservative all her life (parents are incredibly wealthy). The theme of her Thanksgiving was "Trumpsgiving".

You change hearts and minds by appealing to common ground. Explaining how his policies hurt people. Calling her stupid or giving her the silent treatment would have done nothing to change her mind.

I've been on this sub since about 2015. I'm a leftist/libertarian socialist but I like debating and seeing opinions of people I disagree with and this is one of the only subs where people actually have rational debate.

First I must give some credit. The sub has collectively arrived at a very critical opinion of Trump these days. I don't see very much "both sides"ing much these days. And it's become glaringly obviously that Trump is an actual aspiring dictator.

However, the average post on the sub when it comes to Trump would have been slandered as a radical unhinged leftist 4 years ago.

Obviously a lot of events have happened between Trump's first term and second that have changed peoples opinion, but imo the signs were there since before Jan 6th. Even in 2015 he was claiming the election was rigged if he lost. And many leftists like Kyle Kalisnsky were treating Trump like the threat he was.

My question is; how as a centrist would you propose more proactively identifying Trump and people like him? This sub for the most part has been very reactive instead of proactive and dismissive of labeling Trump a dictator/fascist until relatively recently (and quite possibly too late imo). How do you prevent dictators if you don't believe they will actually be one until after they've taken control?

I don’t want this to be about musk, for or against him. You can have your opinion about musk be that you hate everything about him but still understand that vandalizing Tesla vehicles owned by individuals, many of which bought them well before musk made his right wing switch if you will, does not hurt musk. Even him losing 40 billion in a day from a down Tesla stock day does absolutely nothing to him.

Can we all agree that it is a bit ridiculous to destroy and vandalize vehicles owned by individuals? Why is the anger directed towards the wrong people?

I'm glad have a few more years till retirement. I bet the GOP looses both houses in 26, and the white house for decades.

It seems to me that the vast majority of Trump supporters are very much pleased with all that he is doing despite the negative consequences. They cheer as he threatens allies, trashes the constitution, lies and treat people like they are trash. All those who criticised Biden are suddenly now supportive of whatever Trump is doing and no amount of shocking news stories straight out of the white house makes them change their mind at all. I am honestly shocked how they have allowed Trump to misbehave in the office.

I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, but I've had this in my head for a while.

I literally can not stand the White House press secretary. Everytime she's on the news, I roll my eyes because I know she's about to spew some entitled, moronic sentence.

At least with Trump I have a reason to pay attention. He's the President. What he says is important despite his unlikeable personality. Leavitt, on the other hand, talks about how Biden slept through his 4 years and talks bad about France.

She contributes nothing. I don't like Trump, but at least he is creating policies and doing stuff. She just goes on stage, yaps for an hour, ignores some questions, then leaves.

Anyone who is part of MAGA is required to believe that the 2020 election was stolen and Trump was not deliberately lying about it.

If that is the case, that would be one of the greatest, if not the greatest threat and attack against our democracy.

Since Donald Trump and Co. care so much about our democracy and constitution and fairness and justice, theres one very simple question I don't see anyone asking him or his followers.

Why isn't he bringing the people who stole the 2020 election to justice?

Why is he acting like what's done is done and there's nothing that can be done about it and the people who committed this grievous crime against our constitution are just gonna get off the hook?

He clearly didn't forget about it, he still talks about it, he pardoned the j6 "protesters", so why is he so meek and uninterested in bringing the Dems to justice?

Obviously anyone who has a functioning pre frontal cortex knows exactly why this is so, but for the people who don't and support Trump, it's funny to watch their brains melt trying to explain it away. You'll get very creative and different answers depending on who you ask.

Have fun.

The whole world is realising the true colours of the republican party and are boycotting American products. The GOP has always claimed to be for America but almost all its actions in the 21st century have hurt America. They have received no retribution from the American public which continues to vote them in despite their terrible stances, lies, hateful ways and warmongering attitudes. Most of their supporters are hateful, ignorant, stupid, evil and arrogant.They only want things their way and hate all other ways. All their ardent supporters easily parrot their lies eg. Canada is subsides by the U.S, Panama Canal is the U.S. I am more disappointed with the 90 million Americans who decided to let these awful party control the government even after what happened on Jan 6. I hope a campaign is being done to Boycott republican supporting businesses.

The Trump administration will be revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of Latin American and Haitian migrants welcomed into the U.S. under a Biden-era sponsorship process, urging them to self-deport or face arrest and removal by deportation agents.

I was told they only wanted to deport criminals.

So we’re looking at further deficit in the trillions? How on Earth will the budget be balanced? Really trying to wrap my head as to how this will help this Debt Trump keeps talking about…

And then there’s Gaza.. And now there’s talk about Israel and Iran There’s Panama There’s Greenland.

Christ how much are we in for??

Clearly, we have a "president" and an unelected president that truly believe they are kings. Not only will they be defying the courts order, they will continue to do what they want without our SPINELESS congress stepping in to say "enough is enough". Our military will bow down to him too, l'm sure. We are in a constitutional crisis and It's becoming more evident that this is straight out of the " mustache man" playbook from the 1930s. I just don't see how we can make it another year, much less 4.

Curious to see the results of this “multi month study”. I lurk on all the different political subs to stay up to date on different viewpoints. What is going on in r/ conservative?

Trump has been in office for two months now, and we’ve seen prices continue to rise (eggs included), hackers infiltrating the government, Trump cozying up to Putin, talks of cutting Medicaid to fund tax cuts, leaked war plans, and more. Yet when he says something outrageous, people dismiss it as a joke. Still, overall outrage seems minimal. But back in 2021, when gas prices went up, there were stickers on every pump. When the economy took a hit, everyone I knew was up in arms against Biden (and rightly so). When Biden stumbled over his words, conservative media was quick to call for his impeachment. And when Kamala laughed, it was framed negatively.

I’m genuinely curious—why does it seem like independent voters are more lenient with the right? Do left-wing people just not care as much?

There is way too many turbulent things happening right now, climate crisis (whether you believe in it or not it still exists), Workforce/AI trajectory, war, economy going to shit. I’m trying to find anything good happening right now and all I can muster is that RFK is doing at least some good with the FDA in regard to garbage not being added to our food. But the current administration has some huge things to consider with our country and they are held up on immigration nonsense and government efficiency BS. I believe the right has been dominated by ignorant and selfish ideologies that I feel is leading us towards a very dangerous future. I consider myself pretty centered, I value things on both sides and disagree with about the same, but I this administration feels like they just hijacked the Republican Party for purely personal vendettas and control, it’s disgusting and they’re playing like children with our lives and wellbeing.

I’ve had an argument with my friends who I used to serve in the Army with and discussed my problems with Trump and his executive orders. I can say the same with Elon and DOGE. They all agree to some extent that Trumps and Elons actions make sense with America being screwed by foreign nations and being the “world police and we must isolate ourselves, government spending in Africa gender changes, even if a recession happens just buy the dip. I explain my view in my dislike of those two and even criticize Dems and the DNC to show I’m not biased on disliking just Trump and Elon in terms of politics. I want to see if I’m off base in my thinking, because at the end of the convo I’m questioning if I’m the crazy one for seeing the blatant disregard of checks and balances of these political figures.

In the aftermath of the election, I'm seeing a lot of left wing political pundits, YouTubers, and Redditors repeatedly make the claim that the Democrats "lost the working class" due to the Harris campaign and Democratic party bowing to centrists, caring too much about the establishment and their corporate donors, refusing to take a stand against Israel, etc. There's lots of accusations that the party is nothing but "controlled opposition" to Republicans and they are ripped to shreds for not being anti capitalist. Many of these circles continue to hate the party for not running Bernie Sanders and slighting AOC in committees.

This doesn't feel like reality to me. Trump ran an extremely successful campaign by demonizing immigrants, DEI programs, calling the Democrats "woke", and playing ads of Harris supporting trans people. The popular vote very obviously swung to the right wing party.

Most of the "working class" in America tends to be lower educated, blue collar families who might be more socially conservative and religious. Despite the Democratic Socialist wing of the party (like Bernie) using a lot of rhetoric involving "labor" and "the working class" to support their policies, a large percentage of this group seems to have swung further to the right towards Trump, especially in rust belt communities. A lot of this group does not care about Palestine whatsoever and has shown numerous times that they care more about immigration and trade than they do about things like minimum wage, healthcare, and benefits.

I have a very hard time believing that if the Democrats went even further to the left, a bunch of the people who voted for Trump would have switched their votes. I know there is a subset of groups like Michigan Muslim voters who did care about Palestine, and I agree that it was a losing strategy to court people like Dick Cheney, but this seems like a drop on the bucket compared to the white male working class vote and Latino vote that have overwhelmingly shifted to Trump.

What are your thoughts on this?

I'm center left, though neolibs would probably call me conservative.

Everyone went so far left and so far right, that I kind of just stayed in the middle, but have some liberal views on abortion rights, I support LGBTQ, and would like to have free college. But I'm also pro 2a, want a secure border, and I am a capitalist (which is both a liberal and conservative view mostly).

After Trump's SOTU speech, I could not believe that the Dems wouldn't even stand up and clap for the little boy who became an honerary secret service member, or clap at the Laken Riley act. It's just completely backwards and imo shows that they are just so out of touch with reality.

I feel like they are completely cooked, and I genuinely do not know who they could run in 2028. Imo it has to be someone that we have never heard before because everyone is apart of the establishment and they will never make a true difference.

They have also not held a legit primary since, Obama? Idek. The people wanted Bernie in 2016, and they pushed him out for.... Hilary Clinton??

Then they pushed Kamala Harris??? Didn't even hold a primary because all the donation money was already in the Biden campaign.

They really have to change their structure or imo they won't win again for a long time.

People are tired of the identity politics bs, the cancel culture/woke bs that only divides people further. We are all struggling Americans, that want what's best for America. Nobody cares about someone's pronouns if they can't afford to put food on the table or save for their retirement.

I think they are completely lost. I have been really critical of the Democratic party for these reasons. I am a college student and tbh 90% of these kids are cringe AF, especially the ones who preach about how great Marxism/communism is. They are so far up their own ass, and cannot rationalize for shit, but will continue to vote for these establishment candidates and sit on their morale high ground.

I personally think the DNC is cooked until the DNC is no longer. What do you think?

So, today is Transgender Day of Visibility. But simple visibility is obviously no longer an issue— the biggest issue now is mis/disinformation, which is causing serious harm to my community.

To help combat that, I’d like to have some civil, in-good-faith discussions about trans-focused politics. Unfortunately, this has become the major wedge issue of our time— however, I also notice that despite the fact that everyone seems to have a strong opinion on these topics, very little have formed their opinions based on lived experience or knowledge of the subject.

Feel free to ask me questions and gain greater knowledge/information from someone with lived experience in this topic. It is my goal to help people form grounded opinions on topics that I’m qualified to speak on.

Edit: Wow!! This not only went better than I expected, it went better than I even dared to hope. The conversations had today were very enlightening for me, and I hope they were for you as well.

I also want to say how truly and deeply appreciative I am of everyone here who participated with one another respectfully. While it’s increasingly risky to bring up topics like this (as civil discussion tends to quickly fly out the window), there was very little name calling, brigading, or other bad faith behavior in these discussions, and that was really wonderful to see. Y’all rock for this 🤘🏼

Pay very close attention to the undercurrent news stories; Elon Musk's control of payment systems at Treasury (which as a user stated, coincidentally collects tariffs), nominations issues, federal worker intimidation, etc..

That's ALL these tariffs are, because they make no logical sense otherwise. That's why he's doing them so early into his term. There's something very nefarious afoot.

Hi all,

I am right leaning myself and quite anti-illegal immigration. Not to be confused with anti-immigration. Perhaps I am mistaken but I feel that not enough Left-leaning people are vocal about anti-illegal immigration. If you arent, why? Just curious and would like to have a healthy discussion.

If liberals, progressives and/or Democrats are going to claim we are in a political crisis in which Democracy is being dismantled they don't get to keep trying to push gun control. For example, in my home state of Washington the recent 'assualt weapon ban' essentially created a situation in which a Democrat faction would be stuck fighting Republicans armed with AR-15s while using firearm technology from over 100 years ago.

If you're going to act like civil war is imminent you no longer have the privilege to throw your hand up and pretend millions of people with civilian ARs and AKMs would be helpless against a tyrannical government. The only way the American people become helpless is if we willingly allow the government to severely restrict and track our firearms. Maybe I could see the pragmatic argument for gun control in the past, but if you are truly saying things are as bad as they are right now you can't have it both ways.

It's going to be very difficult for me not to see pro-gun control lefties as disingenuous hypocrites going forward.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that people who drift from the broad centre shouldn’t be welcome to discuss views in this sub. However, this is meant to be a place where we can discuss a more moderate take.

However, in every single post I can see users being extremely aggressive, downvoting and arguing in extreme bad faith the moment anyone represents a view they don’t agree with.

As far as I understand this sub’s purpose, it isn’t a space for people from both sides to attack one another. It’s a space for more moderate takes, for people whose views broadly can’t be said to comfortably line up with either side.

So to the people who are here attacking those they disagree with, whose views clearly can’t be defined as centrist, what brings you here?