Your Political Beliefs

[John Masaki]

I did one of those just a few months ago, posted it on the PM even. Let me try to dig it up.

Edit: Here you go

Hmm. According to my last test, I'm about four paces to the left and once pace down of you.

Which, honestly, is where I'm most comfortable these days.

I find people on the political extremes to be obnoxious, annoying and find myself all too willing to turn away my ears these days. That said, I really wouldn't turn away someone truly in need.

I do lean quite liberal on social and economic policies, because I do believe they're the best of a bad lot of choices when it comes to political philosophy. So I'm going to put down my thoughts as a bunch of policies.

LBGT:

I'm going to preface this by the fact that y'all know I tend to identify as bi...and redhead-sexual bi at that.

I see no reason why two adults of any gender should not get the legal and social benefits of marriage, because that's something the government should not question. Of course, my cynical side says that the divorce lawyers are still going to be available when they're needed. Oh well.

Abortion:

I'm a man. I don't believe in having a dog in the game. My own personal view is that I would prefer that the child be given up for adoption. But honestly, it doesn't sit right to me to forbid abortion at all.

Still, the same reason I adhere to LBGT rights is where I stand on abortion rights. I don't believe the government should stick its nose in what people desire, other than 'here, have some health insurance. We don't care what you do with it. Just keep up the premiums and copays'.

I guess tldr: government should provide the basics (perhaps through some sort of Universal Social Security scheme), and the people decide the rest. Which is...an interesting philosophy, I guess.

Taxes:

This is where I probably diverge with a fair amount of people I know here.

I like low taxes...for working and middle class people and small businesses. Basically, the more you earn, the more you ought to pay back in proportion to the amount you earn. That means a guy who managed to make the coveted trillion bucks in my tax scheme will probably be asked to pay 90% of that. It sounds like a lot and it is, but he still has like $100 billion to play with, which is still more money than what most people would ever see in their lives.

Same for businesses, though I think I would still make it clear that I would like businesses to make an honest profit. Make a dishonest profit (and screw over workers in the bargain)? Well, that's a-paddlin'. Honest profits, including throwing that money into communities and schools and charities? Well, that's a nice tax break for you.

Basically, I'd like the system to have a mandate to ensure that we don't have Global Megacorp screw over the little people. But then that's like a sane line of thinking and it'll threaten rich people money so it'd never get adopted, sadly.

SJW/Alt-right fight fests:

Like, get a room, you two! I find that these days, I see that the real enemy isn't really each other, but the rich and powerful that keep them egged on so they don't realize that there's actually much in common, enough to outvote the rich bastards and get America on a sound footing for the future.

For the time being, though, I find them...annoying. When I'm annoyed, you don't want me annoyed. Annoyed means I start writing crappy SJW x Alt-Right slash fics and you and I both know that it'll all end in tears.

Well, not really. But yeah. They don't bother me with their creeds and I don't bother them. If nothing else, sane people should just get together and push them all out.

Environment:

I'll be honest here. We're killing ourselves and a million other species. And the cute little bees that never did anything wrong! And if Greenland goes green, then Florida will have to move to Georgia and we're going to have Georgia Man problems. So, I do believe we're at the point that if we don't start doing something now, then future generations are going to suffer. Oh, I think our species can pull through, as well as a select few that we managed to save, but by and large, we're going to be in for bad times for a good while.

Besides, I think all that plastic and trash everywhere isn't healthy, whatever else you can think about the global warming aspect. Time to clean up the trash and maybe call Musk to send it all into the sun.

That said, I'd rather see a pro-nuclear policy go forward, if as a stopgap before we get the truly efficient renewables online. That'll be a big help.

But I suppose the only real way to change things is with a major paradigm shift. Hell if I know how to achieve that, though.

I've got a few more, but I think that by now, you know that they're all left-leaning philosophies, so I'll leave it at that.

 

[DBSN_Returns]

I believe in Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. The weak should be dominated by the strong and all the modern powers that oppose me must be destroyed. Death to England, and death to James Bond!

 

[Yokkiziikzekker]

Political beliefs suck and humanity is a plague, we need AI overlords!

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

Political beliefs suck and humanity is a plague, we need AI overlords!

No. No, and No.

Political beliefs are a core way in how we organize ourselves. We are not a plague, that is just misanthropy, and no we do not, they would just be an even worse form of unaccountable elite.

 

[Lightershoulders]

Guns: In favor of gun rights, however I firmly believe that we can tone down production while still maintaining the same level of availability by legal means. It is very hard to buy a gun legally in Mexico, unless you are a part of the military or a security force which buys our surplus. Yes, the knowingly corrupt Mexican military and "security forces". We could put a serious dent in those fucking cartels by denying them guns and ammo. Eventually they will start to slow down.

Of the rest of the guns used by the cartels, the majority of are illegally smuggled into Mexico from the US by them buying through a legal person, or making them themselves (not seen very often from what I have heard, the schematics are out there, and several basic firearms can be made in plenty of mechanics shops.) Not much we can do about either of those.

Religion: Free to choose, but your rights end where mine begin. Do not try to force your religion on me, I would never do that. I don't talk about religion unless asked. It also tends to make people more interested when they see you aren't trying to shove something down their throats.

This also means freedom from religion as well, no matter how insufferable some Atheists are. Atheism is a religion worshiping the ideal of there is nothing after us and falsely championing the ideals of science while ignoring the fact that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Pro-choice: I do, as a god fearing man, believe that fetuses are alive. However, it should be the parents choice if the would be child comes into this world. l don't think the mother should only get a say, but I do believe that if the father is a known person that he should get a say as well. Obviously rapists and incestuous pregnancies should disqualify the individual commiting the crime completely, and those pregnancies should be aborted unless the mother (as the victim most of the time) decides otherwise.

Trump: I don't like him, but I don't like most politicians, even Obama. Didn't like him as a reality show host, and didn't like how fake he is. Presents himself as a tough guy, but he dodged the draft with bone spurs he magically no longer has. He insulted John McCain, a man I admired and voted for. Grab 'em by the pussy was not something I could approve of from a religious stand point, along with the number of divorces he had. I wish the Republicans went with someone else.

Basically, I don't like Trump, not because of his policies (I don't mind, andeven agree with, several things he signed) but because he is a coward, the very same a Hollywood elitist that he tries to frame as the enemy, and divorced/cheated on his wife's.

Marriage: A legally binding contract where you agree to terms and conditions. That is why I am ok with gay marriage. However, if married before god, you are simply expanding those terms and conditions. If you marry under religious terms, you should not be allowed to marry if you are actively breaking those terms. So no gay marriage in a church that forbids it.

Religious marriage is sacred, and it being dismissed casually is a crying shame, as is breaking the vows you made before god. Legal vows, whatever.

 

[prinCZess]

Since taxes have come up and I didn't address those (and they're somewhat of a major topic).
People under a certain level shouldn't pay them at all (well--income taxes). That level should probably be higher than it is currently. In an ideal world where I could wave a wand and get something (with no respect to fiscal feasibility), doing something like 'Your first $60,000 dollars, adjusted for inflation and perhaps state cost of living is federally tax-free', with a graduated system from there (or even a flat percentage with the 60k as an initial write-off) sounds appealing to me. And, in dreamland, we axe a metric ton of the write-offs and corporate exceptions, loopholes, or incentives which distort things and result in ludicrous stuff like GE not paying taxes.

In fact, in that realm, I'm somewhat partial to the idea of an outright incorporation tax leveled on businesses, especially those past a certain size, for the privilage of access to American markets and protections. But...This is getting deeper into fiscal/tax policy than I am anywhere NEAR qualified to even dartboard spitball on.

In principle, I want the US to place the onus of taxation on the richer without crafting such a code that those with enough money to afford tax lawyers and all kinds of investment vehicles and long-term commitments and such for write-offs lets them skate off into the realm of no taxes and thus shifts the burden onto the still-wealthy but not overly-so schlubs who sit at that margin where lawyers and tax-writeoff investments aren't practical.

For the time being, though, I find them...annoying. When I'm annoyed, you don't want me annoyed. Annoyed means I start writing crappy SJW x Alt-Right slash fics and you and I both know that it'll all end in tears.

...
Oh DO go onnnnn! The concept of reading through an illicit, shunned-by-society affair between, like, a Proud Boy and an Antifa has me shaking with something that is hopefully anticipation!
There's so much rich soil to plough there! The fear of ostracization from their communities if they're discovered. The political arguments that escalate to hate-lovin'! One of them standing at a rally staring down the other only to scream 'I wish I knew how to quit you!' and rushing into the other's arms, kissing as their compatriots and the police stare on in confusion...

*cough*
I mean...uh...Creative Writing is always good to read, no matter the topic. *shifty-eyes*

I believe in Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. The weak should be dominated by the strong and all the modern powers that oppose me must be destroyed. Death to England, and death to James Bond!

But do you believe in a thing called love?

 

[Comrade Clod]

Socialist. But more Bernie type socialism than anything else.

 

[Marianne Williamson]

Since taxes have come up and I didn't address those (and they're somewhat of a major topic).
People under a certain level shouldn't pay them at all (well--income taxes). That level should probably be higher than it is currently. In an ideal world where I could wave a wand and get something (with no respect to fiscal feasibility), doing something like 'Your first $60,000 dollars, adjusted for inflation and perhaps state cost of living is federally tax-free', with a graduated system from there (or even a flat percentage with the 60k as an initial write-off) sounds appealing to me. And, in dreamland, we axe a metric ton of the write-offs and corporate exceptions, loopholes, or incentives which distort things and result in ludicrous stuff like GE not paying taxes.

In fact, in that realm, I'm somewhat partial to the idea of an outright incorporation tax leveled on businesses, especially those past a certain size, for the privilage of access to American markets and protections. But...This is getting deeper into fiscal/tax policy than I am anywhere NEAR qualified to even dartboard spitball on.

In principle, I want the US to place the onus of taxation on the richer without crafting such a code that those with enough money to afford tax lawyers and all kinds of investment vehicles and long-term commitments and such for write-offs lets them skate off into the realm of no taxes and thus shifts the burden onto the still-wealthy but not overly-so schlubs who sit at that margin where lawyers and tax-writeoff investments aren't practical.


...
Oh DO go onnnnn! The concept of reading through an illicit, shunned-by-society affair between, like, a Proud Boy and an Antifa has me shaking with something that is hopefully anticipation!
There's so much rich soil to plough there! The fear of ostracization from their communities if they're discovered. The political arguments that escalate to hate-lovin'! One of them standing at a rally staring down the other only to scream 'I wish I knew how to quit you!' and rushing into the other's arms, kissing as their compatriots and the police stare on in confusion...

*cough*
I mean...uh...Creative Writing is always good to read, no matter the topic. *shifty-eyes*


But do you believe in a thing called love?

I do!

 

[HistoryMinor]

Hardcore socialist in principle, but open to orbz and fetishizing country living. ELN>FARC

 

[Navarro]

My latest political compass results:

A bit further economically right than I used to be, but socially about the same.

 

[Doomsought]

I see no reason why two adults of any gender should not get the legal and social benefits of marriage, because that's something the government should not question. Of course, my cynical side says that the divorce lawyers are still going to be available when they're needed. Oh well.

The problem is that marriage is not about you. The institution was invented thousands of years ago to deal with the financial burden of raising children. The idea that marriage exists for the sake of love is a very recent and harmful idea. Marriage should be considered a thing of duty, because love requires upkeep.

 

[Comrade Clod]

The problem is that marriage is not about you. The institution was invented thousands of years ago to deal with the financial burden of raising children. The idea that marriage exists for the sake of love is a very recent and harmful idea. Marriage should be considered a thing of duty, because love requires upkeep.

But the modern ideal of marriage is somewhat about love. Consequently it is distinctly not my buisness if someone of the same gender wants to enjoy equal spousal rights. It ain't harming me, so let it be.

 

[John Masaki]

The problem is that marriage is not about you. The institution was invented thousands of years ago to deal with the financial burden of raising children. The idea that marriage exists for the sake of love is a very recent and harmful idea. Marriage should be considered a thing of duty, because love requires upkeep.

That's a rather cold marriage philosophy and I recoil in horror from such a matter.

It's true that marriage should be for life, and it's important to basically interview potential suitors for compatibility. But if duty is all that matters, it's not going to be a happy marriage. And I value happiness more than I value duty.

 

[HistoryMinor]

The problem is that marriage is not about you. The institution was invented thousands of years ago to deal with the financial burden of raising children. The idea that marriage exists for the sake of love is a very recent and harmful idea. Marriage should be considered a thing of duty, because love requires upkeep.

It was created to cement kinship bonds and to flaunt status while acting as a sacramental rite of passage.

 

[Navarro]

Honestly, I would prefer that government get out of the business of recognising marriage entirely. But insofar and so long as marriage is a secular institution, I see no reason to deny it to gay couples.

 

[Doomsought]

It's true that marriage should be for life, and it's important to basically interview potential suitors for compatibility. But if duty is all that matters, it's not going to be a happy marriage. And I value happiness more than I value duty.

Marriage does not exist for love, love exists for marriage. Love is not something that springs eternal, it requires maintenance and the desire to keep it. If simply left to be, it will fade and die, thus the current crisis.

Making marraige about duty does not only protect the marraige, it protects the love, because it becomes a duty to maintian the love as part of the marriage.

 

[Iconoclast]

I am an anarchist.

I am repulsed by the very idea of the State. The notion that there is some group of men who have decided my future for me, on pain of corporal punishment or death, is utterly unconscionable. The State is an abusive, destructive institution, the laws of which are backed solely by the threat of violence. All civilization is naught but concealed and deferred barbarity. We tacitly agree to let soldiers and police kill, maim, and capture others on our behalf, while we don't even lift a finger. For as long as the State exists, freedom cannot.

I think the price system and exchange are meaningless nonsense. Goods have value inherent in their usefulness to people. The exchange value of goods is merely a fiction, a form of make-believe. The growth of money-capital represents a claim or demand on future goods, encouraging ceaseless, destructive economic growth that despoils and pollutes the environment and jeopardizes mankind's future. Hundreds of thousands of tons of garbage enter the oceans each year and millions of hectares of arable land turn to desert, and nobody bats an eyelash. The Earth, the shared commons of man, our only home and our only hope, is being ruined right before our eyes.

Personal property is fine. Private property, well, it depends on how it's being used. Throwing everything into a shared commons sounds nice on paper until you have two men fighting over one shovel. Monopoly control of certain resources in an organized way can sometimes prove advantageous in a condition of scarcity, but in an automated and post-scarcity economy, it wouldn't make any sense. Our productive industries pump out tons and tons of material that ends up in the garbage, either unsold, or broken before its time. This process of planned obsolescence destroys wealth that could otherwise be used to end scarcity as we know it. All modern, industrialized capitalist systems rely on a condition of artificial scarcity, what Thorstein Veblen termed the "conscientious withdrawal of efficiency". In other words, we have the capacity to produce far, far more than we can actually use, very, very cheaply, but the interest of profit forces us to behave inefficiently.

Rent-seeking produces nothing. When someone sits on a chunk of property and speculates on its future increase of value, it doesn't actually add anything to society when it is sold at the higher price. This applies to everything from stocks, bonds and derivatives to real estate. Say you have a plot of land that has appreciated in value 300%, even if you didn't actually do anything to it in the intervening time, even if it's still the same empty, grassy lot that it was when you bought it. Where does the surplus value come from? Where is the added value to civilization? Just because something becomes more scarce or more valuable in monetary terms, that doesn't mean its actual utility has increased.

We should be seeking to create green, self-sustaining, post-scarcity arcologies that produce no waste and reuse everything, with a focus on local community needs instead of the alienating lie that is globalization. Off-grid tech and even low-technology solutions might be preferable, as long as they can maintain a high living standard for a large number of people with the least environmental impact, but high-tech solutions can also be used so long as they are not excessively wasteful or polluting.

I am not a fan of Stalin. I think Mao was a disgusting creep. Tankies are gross. The PRC are disgusting parasites that steal technology, pay their workers slave wages, censor the internet, and herd innocent people into concentration camps. I have no fellow-feeling with any country today that claims to be socialist or capitalist. Both are despicable to me, for their success has always been predicated upon embargoes, thievery, oppression and exploitation of the worker, warfare, usury, and economic sabotage. All governments are piratical in nature. Authoritarianism is a plague.

America's founding myth is a lie. The United States was founded, essentially, on the genocide of Indians. The reason why Tocqueville could waltz around the US and praise us for our amazing, vital democracy free of the taint of European socialism was because the secret sauce was all the free land we took from the damn Indians. Smallpox and the rest of our nasty diseases killed them very nearly to the last, and what remained were roving bands of marauders; the leftovers of a dead civilization. When Lewis & Clark trekked westward, they found ruins and grave sites from one end of the country to the other, from hundreds of thousands of natives who'd died of disease. Smallpox built America. All that free property, ripe for the taking. That's how you can have a "vital" democracy with none of that horrible socialism. Cheap land. Now that all the good land is crowded with people, surprise surprise, more and more Americans are begging for socialism, just like 1800s Europe.

And wealthy neoliberal types are pushing for more entitlements, not less. All these businessmen, talking about the possibility of implementing universal basic income. You know why? It's because they know that if they don't do something right away about underemployment, huge educational debt burdens, rising living costs, and people being cut off from the so-called American Dream, if they don't give the people their bread and circuses, then they're going to have a literal Marxist uprising on their hands. They want a patch. They want to mollify and stupefy the masses.

Meanwhile, the monopolist stranglehold on government, through regulatory capture and the corporate lobby, remains as powerful as ever. The Military-Industrial Complex, subsidized by government (welfare for corporations, and nothing for the poor), keeps cranking out tanks and bombs and aircraft which we use to terrorize people across the globe and enforce our will on them. The Prison-Industrial Complex jails, imprisons, and steals from (they call it "asset forfeiture") hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug offenders, forcing people into patterns of recidivism and ruining their lives. There are half a million homeless people in the US, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Our railway networks are rusting away and our roads and bridges are crumbling. We have no high-speed rail to speak of. We spend trillions and trillions of dollars on pointless military adventurism that accomplishes nothing save for raising another generation of Arabs to resent and fear us after we turned their homes and livelihoods to rubble.

The internet is increasingly censored and corporatized, and userbases centralized in a smaller and smaller number of giant social media organizations. What used to be a vital and dynamic form of communication that hosted all manner of intellectual diatribes is becoming the new pay-per-view cable TV, with spoon-fed streaming content and paid subscription services replacing the open web of free discourse and shared ideas. Governments are afraid of the power of internet activism, whistleblowers, and leakers to reveal corruption and wrongdoing. From the age of Usenet, to the superficial dopamine hits of Facebook likes and Twitter retweets, the internet has fallen far. Likes and retweets. Likes, retweets, and reblogs. It's a masturbatory and contemptible exercise. It's a distraction. An irrelevancy. People like being distracted all the time because reality is overwhelming, absurd, and unpalatable, so they seek infinite diversions from reality.

Central banking and fractional reserve lending are legalized fraud. Inflation is a tax that unfairly eats into the value of your money and transfers the value of your labor into the hands of the lender class. The only reason why Post-WWII America was so prosperous was because the Bretton-Woods system robbed Europe for years, because the wealthy had exhausted their fortunes throwing their weight behind the various parties of WWII, and because there was so much labor to be done in modernizing America. We're already back to Gilded Age capitalism here in America, with rich assholes turning the screws on us constantly. A bunch of wealthy crooks spent millions of dollars backing the Nazis as a hedge against the rise of Communism, not knowing what they'd do.

The CIA was formed out of the OSS essentially as an organization for clawing back Nazi gold and acquiring as many Nazi scientists as possible. When JFK was murdered, he was planning on dismantling the CIA as we know it for their incompetence, and what has the CIA done in every country we've invaded? They've raped and tortured people. The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. The "rectal feeding" in Gitmo. The things they've done are ghoulish, and yet, we act like the CIA is a legitimate arm of government and not a bunch of murdering, raping parasites.

The War on Drugs was concocted to suppress minorities and deny them the franchise, and not only has it enriched the CIA, one of the world's biggest cocaine importers, it has also enriched cartels that have armed themselves with military-grade hardware and the training and know-how of Mexican military deserters, leading to a civil war erupting in Mexico that is still characterized as a mere "drug war", even though it's killed over a hundred thousand people so far.

Mass surveillance is everywhere. You'd think people would've realized that shit after the Snowden Leaks, but nope, apparently, nobody gives a damn about warrantless wiretapping and how the government has an endoscope up all our asses.

People have reported on how the rich have socked their money away in tax shelters, and you know what? Some of those people have been killed. Murdered by the rich, for exposing their secrets.

The wealthy are literally enslaving people. Migrant workers' passports are being confiscated. Millions of people are trafficked each year. There are an estimated thirty million people across the globe who are actual slaves. Governments turn a blind eye and let wealthy and powerful pimps and panderers do all the coke they want and enslave all the people they want.

And people are raised to look up to the rich and their belongings as symbols of virtue, as something to aspire to, when they're fucking enslaving people, corrupting our governments with their stupid money, and murdering people for speaking out against them. How many Jeff Epsteins are there out there? How many more wealthy rapists and slavers are lurking in high society, dictating our culture and expecting us to kneel and bow before them and their wealth?

I refuse to kneel. No man, god, or idol can make me kneel.

 

[Belinda]

I'm a Third Positionist from what I've been told. Basically our nation is the fundamental basis of our society, anything else leads to tribalistic in-fighting. So the nation are our people and our people are European.

I don't think you need to be white to be a member of our nation and culture, but because of the ways liberals have lied to and propagandized to minorities about the cancer that is multiculturalism it means most won't choose to integrate and so we should pay the ones who choose not to integrate into our culture to move somewhere else.

Nor should we be buying into the dumb internationalist capitalism vs internationalist socialism divide. Capital should not divide our people and should be abolished to dissuade the ability of internationalist capitalists to subvert and take control of our nation behind the scenes.

As for gays and trans, I'm in favor of equality for the ones who choose to respect our society. There's a difference between being LGBT and a degenerate, for example: I'm a lesbian, but I'm going to look for someone to mother children for from within our nation to keep it strong. No silly moral nihilistic fetish "pride" festivals, none of this sexual promiscuity.

 

[HistoryMinor]

I'm a Third Positionist from what I've been told. Basically our nation is the fundamental basis of our society, anything else leads to tribalistic in-fighting. So the nation are our people and our people are European.

I don't think you need to be white to be a member of our nation and culture, but because of the ways liberals have lied to and propagandized to minorities about the cancer that is multiculturalism it means most won't choose to integrate and so we should pay the ones who choose not to integrate into our culture to move somewhere else.

Nor should we be buying into the dumb internationalist capitalism vs internationalist socialism divide. Capital should not divide our people and should be abolished to dissuade the ability of internationalist capitalists to subvert and take control of our nation behind the scenes.

As for gays and trans, I'm in favor of equality for the ones who choose to respect our society. There's a difference between being LGBT and a degenerate, for example: I'm a lesbian, but I'm going to look for someone to mother children for from within our nation to keep it strong. No silly moral nihilistic fetish "pride" festivals, none of this sexual promiscuity.

Just say fascist.

 

[Deleted member 1]

I'm a Third Positionist from what I've been told. Basically our nation is the fundamental basis of our society, anything else leads to tribalistic in-fighting. So the nation are our people and our people are European.

That's a rather absurd statement if you're American; our society was partially indigenous and partially African from the very first days, and we can't escape the legacy of that.

As for gays and trans, I'm in favor of equality for the ones who choose to respect our society. There's a difference between being LGBT and a degenerate, for example: I'm a lesbian, but I'm going to look for someone to mother children for from within our nation to keep it strong. No silly moral nihilistic fetish "pride" festivals, none of this sexual promiscuity.

Let me assure you that I'm more conservative than you are and I'm happily married to another woman. This is all very odd and I don't think you're serious at-all, surely now?