Your politics 20 years ago and today (2 Viewers)

[Andy Dufresne]

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

 

[song]

40 years ago:  an open, compassionate, benevolent hearted  dictatorship

20 years ago:  same

now:  same

i should explain that i think our "democracy" is a sham and that that would be made very clear if we tried to go too far outside the rails, so essentially we already have a dictatorship

and one that is not at all the kind i would prefer

i would be good with a democracy with the characteristics i listed, but have you looked at the culture and electorate?

i do think that we have the government and culture that we have created.  we are responsible.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  we will not even take steps in the right direction without spiritual (r)evolution, and though that is possible right Now,  i'm not putting any money on it.

i'm rarely bummed about any of this, just trying to be clear eyed and honest.

i know that we will be, and need to be governed, but bearing in mind that government is based in the end on the use, or threat of violence, i do not consent to be governed 

 

[song]

I remember telling my friends who were interested in talking politics how can someone so unexceptional and frankly dim as W be the president.

And here we are. 

you have to admit that trump IS exceptional

 

[song]

we only have two choices and both of them are extremes. 

I know the answer.  Because that's what the people who really run this country want us to have.

We are too dumb for anything else.

we only have two choices and they're basically the same, for the reason you said

 

[song]

Pretty much progressive liberal bordering on socialist & open to anarchy at this point.

uh huh. see above

 

[song]

Glad to see "other/none" ranking 2nd for today's views. Both parties couldn't care less about us. People seem to be waking up to that, thanks to the internet and social media.

yeah, we'll see, step in the right direction i guess.  so glad you said couldn't care less (pet peeve). see my post above. thanks

 

[tommyGunZ]

This describes me pretty closely as well - although I'm pretty far left on social issues (and just right of center on fiscal issues). 

Help me understand what "right of center on fiscal issues" entails.  I would label myself as one who believes in fiscal responsibility, but that I think that makes me left of center.

 

[Stealthycat]

I'm far more conservative now than i was

 

[Zow]

Help me understand what "right of center on fiscal issues" entails.  I would label myself as one who believes in fiscal responsibility, but that I think that makes me left of center.

I suppose center is presently a fluid term. 

Generally speaking, I nod in agreement a lot when I read Robert Nozick. 

 

[roadkill1292]

Ok, Boomer. 

So basically Brooklyn Dodgers fan circa 1954

#justyouwaituntilnextyearquadrennial

Yeah, whatever

Gen-X

Look, you guys are right. We boomers largely have failed. We're under educated and low informed as a group and over half of us voted for Donald Trump. We watch too much Fox and it doesn't appear that we're learning very much from the past four years, judging from the polls.

But Gen X is in a prime position to lead this country forward. You've got two trailing generations who want substantive change, who aren't cynical about what can be done, only what has been done. Those two gens, who will dominate elections for the next five decades (Gen X numbers are too small for this), are primed for intelligent older leadership and that ship has sailed for their grandparents. Time to stop your own sorrowful voting patterns, -- too many of you formed your core political values during the Reagan presidency -- give up your wistful libertarian fantasies and use the forthcoming power of your juniors to change this country for the better.

Sorry, I needed to get this off my chest. I like you know-it-alls but you gotta snap out of it. It's prime time for you.

 

[huthut]

Between obvious online scams and 24 hour news networks, it seems boomers are just a little more credulous and will believe things that younger people don't tend to fall for as a group. I wonder if it is more due to the news and the perception that the world was more honest when they were growing up. At the time most people got their news from the same few sources, so if they all watched Walter Cronkite they would all have similar facts and information. Now someone can watch a right wing network and someone can watch a left wing network and essentially have no overlap in the news that they consume, a completely different sent of (perceived) facts and information. Did they then need to pass all information from Walter Cronkite through a mental filter to determine what was true and what wasn't? Maybe that level of cynicism on not believing everything you hear is just a learned skill that younger people have grown up with and internalized differently due to the internet and various other heavily biased sources that are now present. 

 

[ren hoek]

My mom was Catholic and my dad was a marine, so I basically leaned right growing up.  I used to not think so much about this stuff.  I trusted George W Bush.  I didn’t know any better. 

When people on here mentioned Ron Paul and I saw the clip of him telling Giuliani ‘they attack us because we’re over there,’ it changed my life.  It really did.  It was like opening my eyes for the first time.  Eventually he dropped out so I voted for Ralph Nader and left the rest empty.  To be honest I didn't know any of the local candidates and probably wouldn’t like them even if I did.  

A few years later Wikileaks published then-Private Bradley Manning’s leaks on the Iraq War.  This was another formative experience for me.  If you’ve never sat down and watched the collateral murder video, you should.  Wikileaks was a window to a better world.  We could have saved ourselves if we’d punished the Bush administration for their criminal war.  Now they get booked on MSNBC and Fox News, & hired by the Trump admin while Assange dies in prison. 

Some time later I realized that govts use violence to extort money from people to fund programs I find abhorrent, and they do it without our consent.  The real nature of state power is to metastasize and entrench itself.  It doesn’t matter how “small” the govt is.  There is no perfect system where we don’t have to deal with the innate violence of the human race.  The question is if decentralized systems are better for pushing back against the concentration of power.  I think they are.  But governing people only with their explicit consent, to the extent they want to be governed at all, is a foundationally moral position. Remember, the personality type most drawn to power tends to be a sociopath.  

Now I’d consider myself a market anarchist, or a voluntaryist.  I’ve been here for years.  Tim likes to say I’m a left anarchist, I’m pretty ok with that too.  It’s always subject to change.  I don’t know what the correct arrangement for private property is- maybe there is something to the mutualist idea of only having a claim to land you actually use.  

Unfortunately, there is no option to vote for the system to abolish itself.  Now that the USA experiment has failed, perhaps we can get real about other approaches to civic structures.  

 

[Trey]

Well considering I was 12 years old, I don’t think my politics were very fleshed out. However, I haven’t really moved from my center-left position over the years of voting. I’ve evolved on some individual positions but still don’t tread too far left.