this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
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I'm not sure if updating our tools is moving goal posts- what goal are we aiming for? I understand the frustration with seeing the measuring stick change to make the reasonable seem unreasonable, but I would say that the same measuring stick is now misrepresenting where people fall.
If we are talking political spectrums, there already are plenty of tools used: the linear left right, the horseshoe, the fishhook, the quadrant visualisation, etc. I'd say the data is now leaving the paper. We need new tools to make sense of it.
Much to your point though, I think it's valuable to ask "what are we measuring, who's doing the measuring, and who benefits from the answer?"
We will never have the satisfying answers to our questions, but hopefully we can find better questions to ask.
To my mind, there is nothing wrong with majority of people falling to some range. We can still make sense of it, looking at the levels of distinction that will ever be present.
Otherwise, we risk losing any common anchor, which is very important when we talk any point of statistics or want to trace dynamics and trends of political thought.
Taking some of the extreme examples, in USSR you would be "right-wing" for wishing to open your small business, and in modern US, you would be "left-wing" for wishing to make healthcare more affordable to the poor or have minorities heard. In fact, USSR was just full of people on the left, and US is full of people on the right, driven by propaganda, political technology, media, communications, genuine core beliefs etc.
Updating tools could be about bringing more clarity to some new formations and events, but it shouldn't be about constantly redefining the base values.