There's pretty much a black and white attitude in politics these days, with each side branding the other 'Fascists' or 'ideology driven idiots' or whatever other defamatory words are used. It's led me to ask, What would you see as decent opposition? If you're on the right or the left, what would you accept as being not in some way totally intrinsically evil political opposition? It seems no matter what these days if you're on x side you're a Fascist or a neo-Soviet or whatever else with absolutely no room whatsoever to just be part of a political platform that has different views.
I mean, I'm on the right, but I accept as a given that the left supports things I don't, such as higher taxes, globalisation (generally), high migration, gay marriage, unionising and so on. I don't think this makes them intrinsically evil; I do think if these policies are implemented it will not be good for my country, but will it be literally the end of the UK? Probably not. I can listen to some on the left and understand their arguments, their economic ones in particular, and take some on board - as many European Conservatives have done in the past.
So what would you see as legitimate, good opposition? Be reasonable, don't just say 'They agree with me on everything except xyz', because that just defeats the point.
When I was younger, I saw quite a bit of common ground between the right and left. It was easy to think that they had similar goals of making the country better, but just disagreed about the best ways to achieve them.
A few things changed my mind on this:
- Mike Harris's "Common Sense Revolution." After he was elected premier of Ontario in 1995, I watched him and his political allies vilify nurses and teachers, and cut environmental inspectors to the point that
2000 people got sick and 6 people died from one contaminated drinking water incident.
- the same-sex marriage debate came to a head here in the early 2000s. I watched conservatives argue against basic human rights of people they disagreed with.
Those two things gave me the "aha!" moment that, often, my previous assumption was wrong and conservatives aren't just trying to make the country better by other means.
Since then, I've seen it repeated over and over: right-wing tribalism trying to further disadvantage the already-disadvantaged and protect injustice just because it's old.
There are still plenty of fiscal conservatives who I'm fine with and can count as friends... but these are conservatives of the "let's think about long-term sustainability when designing our social supports" variety, not the "let's not spend money on social supports because screw the poor" variety.
I see certain issues - e.g. LGBTQ rights, women's rights, indigenous rights - where certain positions are necessarily unethical or immoral. And I see right-wingers take these unethical and immoral positions all the time.
I've reached a point in my life where I'm more interested in being a good friend to my LGBTQ friends than I am in trying to be chummy with someone who's trying to hurt my friend.
You may not see the positions from across the aisle as intrinsically evil, but that's not how I feel about a lot of right wing positions. Pretty much anything that involves victimizing vulnerable people crosses a line for me.
