Arianna On Al Jazeera: Moving Beyond Left And Right

On an episode of 'Talk to Al Jazeera,' Arianna talks about the erosion of the American dream, the Occupy movement, the 'Arab Awakening' and who she's planning to vote for in the 2012 election.

Arianna expressed dismay about political discourse in America being divided into left and right. "When we continue to see it as a left-right game, we are having a much harder time laying out the choices for the American people," she says. "Caring for the middle class, caring for jobs, wanting to prioritize that, is that a left wing position? Shouldn't everybody want that?"

"We are using these terms in a way which has made national conversation much, much harder to have, and which really marginalizes issues," she says.

Returning capitalism to its moral foundations is key to addressing the economic crisis, she argues. "It's become harder and harder to actually play by the rules and do well and expect your children to do better," she says. "I'm in favor of the capitalism system but not the way it's been perverted."

Comments

[SisterAnn]

5 hours ago ( 2:33 PM)

Maybe we should move to rich and poor.

[Kenz300]

06:30 PM on 02/18/2012

Republicans have vowed to take down the President.

Republicans have vowed not to end loopholes and tax breaks for their supporters.

Republicans automatically take the opposite side of anything the President proposes even when they are things that the Republicans proposed in the past.

The Republicans have taken politics to the extreme and are hurting the country and its people to try to get political advantage. That is un American. The Republicans all need to be voted out of office.

[Commonwealth]

04:40 PM on 02/18/2012

I'm reminded of a quote from Steve Jobs, talking to some of the "important people" at Fox News. Paraphrasing the quote, it went roughly: You are mired in the outdated paradigm of liberal and conservative. Today's most important issues cannot be understood in light of that paradigmatic polarity. The real issues of the day need to be examined in terms of creativity and destructiveness."

How true this is: The decisions politicians make today will have far more significance for the survival of civil society (dare I say "civilization"?) and the planet than whether the liberal or conservative wings of society prevail on election day.

[David Hundley]

02:35 PM on 02/03/2012

I travel all around the world and never get up. Boy, is my butt sore.

[SisterAnn]

03:16 PM on 01/31/2012

What our leaders need to do is educate our children on practical things like how to start a business, where to get the money, etc. They need to be taught saving, budgeting and taxes too.

There should be intense teaching about the government and how it works. Good luck with all that:-)

[David Hundley]

02:32 PM on 02/03/2012

Teacher's teach young children to tell the truth. They want students to question everything and make up their own minds. This is right on about the budgeting, A Fool And His Money Are Soon Parted.

[David Hundley]

02:43 PM on 02/03/2012

Rick Perry wants to teach from the bible. As long as he gets money from the churchs.

[angry pancho]

11:23 PM on 01/29/2012

Seems quite left / right to me. Take jobs, owners view unemployment favorably because it helps keep wages down and that shows up as extra profits. You might think owners might appreciate that without workers with money, their products aren't likely to sell, but this is the same bunch that decided to use long lasting packaging. The left however sees jobs as grabbing an oar on the ship of state for the benefit of all, not just a few.

[William Graham]

02:59 PM on 01/30/2012

I think she is showing that it is system requiring both (or all) sides. Therefore, dissecting extremes is illogical, rather like contending a circle has corners.

[David Hundley]

02:45 PM on 02/03/2012

Yea, but you can only cover up the truth and the and facts for so long.
Everything comes to the surface eventually, and when it does, people act so surprised.

[GCurry]

09:07 PM on 01/28/2012

Politics should not be the way that government decides on competing visions. To oversimplify, we have an ideological battle for the future of America; we must decide between:
1. ME-ism: Every man for himself and may the Devil take the hindmost
2. WE-ism: We're all in this boat together; brother's keeper.
One faction thinks of us as a swarm of individuals, scrabbling for wealth or maybe sufficiency. Another faction thinks of us as some kind of community, governing for the "general welfare".

WEists prevailed during the founding years. MEists during the opening of the West. WEists during the Civil War. MEists before WW1. WE during WW1. ME before the crash of 1929. WE during the FDR years, through Kennedy, until Nixon. Since then, we've had a long string of ME years, so long that many young people can't remember any other way.

The politics of Washington aren't a good way to decide who we want to be in the 21st century. We need to call this question explicitly. Do we believe in the nation as a community of citizens, or is the nation just individuals, fighting (each other) for wealth and/or scraps, with well-defined "rules of engagement" and police to enforce them?

[TINKER6]

07:59 PM on 01/28/2012

I hear China has been good, for non compliance. Lorena

[dcbarton]

07:26 PM on 01/28/2012

"Caring for the middle class, caring for jobs, wanting to prioritize that, is that a left wing position? Shouldn't everybody want that?"
Everybody does want that. The problem is that the two sides have different ideas on how to achieve it. And that is the nature of politics. The Right wants to do it by empowering individuals, the Left wants to do it by empowering the government.

[meryta]

07:53 PM on 01/28/2012

If you support corporations, you do not empower individuals. Individuals can work together cooperatively or collaboratively. It would seem AH is trying to help you & others get beyond some fixed attitudes.

[maryoffenton]

08:36 PM on 01/28/2012

Corporations create jobs not poor people. As far as fixed attitudes that would be just about everybody on the HP both left and right. It will never change.

[dcbarton]

10:45 AM on 01/29/2012

And when you support redistribution you are supporting Leninism. I'm sure you remember how that turned out. Everybody got hurt by that great idea.

[3rdCitizen]

08:14 PM on 01/28/2012

More precisely, the Right wants to empower the individuals who already have wealth, believing that this will somehow "trickle down" to those who are struggling. Eventually. Maybe. (If not, well, that's the Darwinian nature of Capitalism.) The Left wants to directly assist those who are struggling. Now. Definitely. (Because it's a social responsibility, and fostering dependency in some is a lesser evil than failing to provide help to those who really need it & who would make responsible use of it.)
Of course, neither approach has anything like a perfect track record, but a true partisan will rarely admit that.

[dcbarton]

10:50 AM on 01/29/2012

Here is where you are wrong. My grandfather brought a family through the Depression. He used to say, "Nothing puts people to work like iminent starvation." What he meant(because you will scream that I am saying let people starve)was that nobody would just sit back on starve to death, they would find a job and improve their own life. You aren't helping anyone with government programs that claim they are helping people. Those come with strings that make it almost impossible to get off of that program once you are on it. You can better help people by getting out of their way and letting them help themselves. That is what the Right is trying to do.

[Chockolate]

06:23 PM on 01/28/2012

Getting the money out of politics would be a very good start. Separate the government and private money the same way church and state are separated.

[gurukalehuru]

06:18 PM on 01/28/2012

Politics shouldn't be a left/right game, popcorn shouldn't get stuck between your teeth and poop shouldn't stink.

But that's the way things are.

[TravisMay11]

09:09 PM on 01/28/2012

That's the way things are, but does that mean it has to be that way (talking about the left/right thing, not the other two)? Why do we accept it?

[gurukalehuru]

04:04 AM on 01/29/2012

Because the alternative, apparently is right/further right

[cdhj12000]

05:20 PM on 01/28/2012

Not bad. Some of what she says is even proven by some of the stories on this e-news site. Still, it's pretty easy to talk the talk until it gets down to the nitty gritty. I'm curious to see which western media outlet will be the first to have the courage to be completely objective as far as country and kin when it comes to journalism. Tough and risky job, but honest, unbiased journalism.

[Rynox]

05:16 PM on 01/28/2012

My problem with politics has less to do with tenor and more to do with the inability to compromise. Compromise is not a bad thing. People disagree with you. People disagree with me. We make concessions and make it work. We don't have to like it, we just have to do it so our country can conduct daily business.

[SisterAnn]

08:23 PM on 01/28/2012

The 1% want to compromise on things that will help them, but will badly hurt the 99%.

[TravisMay11]

09:10 PM on 01/28/2012

And the left says they don't want to do that, but it kind of happens anyway. That's why we need to get rid of the whole thing. They're both in the same...pocket.

[SisterAnn]

09:39 PM on 01/28/2012

Apparently the other comment has been deleted. This is about compromise. The middle class create jobs but usually a few jobs per business. The job creaters don't create many jobs here, but they do overseas. The right wants to destroy programs that we have paid for many years like Social Security. Programs that worked beautifully until they were sabatoged.

[Si1ver1ock]

05:07 PM on 01/28/2012

"I'm in favor of the capitalism system but not the way it's been perverted."

Capital is a special form of money. It is money that is invested to create a return of some sort. The best current example of catipalism is Intel. Investors put in money and we all get better computers. But if all you want is money, you can game the system. Money stops chasing beter products and starts chasing money.

The financial economy is money chasing money.

For more financial perversion look here-->http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/10/15/the-financial-economy-and-real-economy/

[maryoffenton]

08:39 PM on 01/28/2012

SO true!