Jeremy Stangroom

We've had this conversation before. It's an entirely reasonable view that "left lunacy" makes losing democratic institutions more likely. For example, well there are endless examples, but 18 years of Thatcherite rule, Michael Foot & longest suicide note in history...

Or the polarization engendered by nationalist conflicts. Perfectly reasonable to suppose that though both sides are not equally bad, you're not going to get rid of the worse side before the less bad side reforms. That was absolutely certainly the case in the UK in the 1980s.

That looks like a terrible analogy. I don’t like Thatcher, but I’m not aware of her dismantling British institutions. Maybe I don’t know enough about UK, but I probably would have heard of something like that. And Labor in 1970s was way more left than anything of note in the US.

I grew up in a communist dictatorship (though a soft one) and have witnessed my home country’s young democracy fail. Those are far more pertinent experiences than the normal left-right polarization of UK in decades following WW2.

Okay, but how's the relevant? My argument is that "bothsideism" is necessary in situations where the better side is likely unelectable, which delivers victory to the worse side (as was the case in the 1980s in the UK). You've given no response to that as a principled position.

It’s relevant because the problem now is US sliding into that type of society. It is not in the same category as a mere ideological conflict within a stable democratic framework. If you think in terms of the latter, you are misdiagnosing.

It's not relevant because the severity of the diagnosis makes no difference, the solution remains the same. Thatcherism could have been a lot worse. The Left were still unelectable. Turns out large chunks of the population don't mind terrible elected leaders if they're populists.

Again, it’s not severity, it’s a categorical difference. Bad policy is not like undermining the constitutional order. Also, as @paulkrugman said the other day, with Trump it’s not different solutions to problems, it’s making up problems that don’t exist.