I was reading some article or another about politics and so forth, and one phrase caught my eye. “The Democratic candidates who oppose Barack Obama, by and large, do so from the right.”
And the entire political spectrum in my brain suddenly went askew. I abruply realized that in my brain, Left is Right and Right is Left.
No, that’s not some weird, to-be-explained metaphor. My entire brain acts dyslexic about left and right regarding envisioning political ideologies.
So look at what my brain says:
LEFT <———————————> RIGHT
No question about that, right? That’s the way it works.
But when I picture the political ideological spectrum, I get:
RIGHT <———————————> LEFT
or
GOP <———————————> DEMS
or
CONSERVATIVES <———————————> LIBERALS
I’m not quite sure why my brain does this. Am I thinking from an on-stage perspective (“Exit! Stage Left!”)? Or is it some sort of personal narrative, reading left-to-right corresponding to my political evolution over the years, or as a “progressive” sort of thing? Hell, maybe it’s because I’m left-handed.
I have no idea. But when I imagine someone being “Left of Center” politically, it translates out …
RIGHT <——————–|——X———–> LEFT
… even though it’s actually “right” of center on the line.
I guess it’s similar to the tricks my mind plays when I remember auto driving in the UK — I know I was driving on the left side of he road, but a casual “playback” of my mental video has me driving on the right, like usual (which goes to show how much of our memory — or mine, at least — is a series of symbols with associations, as the “driving” symbol gets filled out driving on the right, unless I force myself to really, carefully, thoroughly, “bitfully” remember it).
(Of course, my brain is also still stuck on “Republicans are Blue, Democrats are Red,” which the Media recolored for everyone else several election cycles back.)
The brain’s a funny thing.
Huh.
I didn’t know what you were saying until:
GOP DEMS
And then I said “Oh. Huh. I do that too.”
Weird.
I do that too. I am a leftie too.
Hah! Me, too 🙂
Okay, let me say, I find these comments hysterical. And vaguely reassuring.
So aside from cognitive contagion from me … why?
I do too, which made me wonder if the origin of the words had something to do with it, and it appears is does.
In short, first used in France where to supporters of the Monarch sat on his right, the anti- monarchists to his left. But that meant that those in the audience would’ve seen it the other way around, just the way we all do. The right would’ve sat to the left of the left, and the left would’ve sat to the right of the right. I think parts of the UK still sit on opposite sides of the room (I know it’s that way in Canadian Parliament).
What we need is to ask a random group to see how this is.
So it might actually BE the “Stage Left” vs “Audience Left” thing? Wild.
Trying to remember how Congress is set up.
Per Wikipedia, re the Senate: “The Democratic Party always sits to the presiding officer’s right, and the Republican Party always sits to the presiding officer’s left, regardless which party has a majority of seats.[citation needed] In this respect, the Senate differs from the House of Commons of the United Kingdom and other parliamentary bodies in the Commonwealth of Nations and elsewhere.”
Which would mean the US Congress would be Dems on audience (gallery) left, Republicans on audience right.
Leave it to US and our non-monarchy system to do things differently.