A Quick Tour of Political COLORS

Is this whole COLOR thing just totally arbitrary?

No.

The choice of the COLOR assignments is somewhat ad hoc, but the relationships between the COLOR groups follow a very specific and coherent logic.

I started with the RED-BLUE right-left split that's been used pretty much nationwide since about November 2000. That assigns BLUE to the political leaders on the left and RED to the leaders on the right.

PURPLE is naturally assigned to politicians or states or people who jump back and forth between sides. Bipartisanship is PURPLE because it's the compromise position between RED and BLUE. In western civilization, PURPLE has been associated with political elites since the Roman era.

So that's how the bottom three COLORs were set.

I used COLOR math to define the top three colors. In the RGB system not-BLUE is YELLOW, not-RED is AQUA and not-PURPLE is GREEN. So the people most opposed to BLUE leadership are YELLOWs. Think Gadsen Flag and gold-bugs and market capitalists. Those most opposed to RED leadership are AQUAs. Note the connection to the Age of Aquarius and think voluntary cooperatives. Those most opposed to political authority itself are GREEN. Think grassroots independence movements that can swing either left or right.

All those distinctions leave simple left and right without COLORs. I defined them the same way PURPLE was assigned. Generic right is halfway between RED and YELLOW at socially conservative ORANGE. Generic left is halfway between BLUE and AQUA at culturally progressive DENIM.

In the middle of all these conflicting hues, consisting of each but dominated by none lies a space for GRAY people. All the shades of GRAY from almost WHITE to practically BLACK lumped together in the center.

So ends this brief overview of the political COLORs of the Asplund Chart. Try not to be politically COLOR-blind.