How have your political views changed over time?

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I started conservative, like my father.

And then I met people whose life stories were dramatically different from mine, and realized that the conservative solutions were harming those people.

So, I moved left.

I will note that I still consider myself pro-life, but I didn't have to get very far into adulthood to realize that making abortion illegal was not a real solution for saving lives. I've heard too many personal stories from other women to ever believe the law can address the issue in anything resembling a fair or compassionate way. I can't support a political solution that forces women into the kinds of situations some of my friends have found themselves in. Nor can I support a political solution that only is pro-life for the unborn, but not anyone else.

I realize that both political parties have their hypocrisies, but the ones of the Republican party hit me, personally, hard and fast very early in my adulthood, and haven't stopped.

There are times liberal ideas are likely to work best, and times conservative ones are. I really hate the zero sum game our nation has been trying to play the last decade or so.

I'm the opposite. I'm a hard-right conservative, but I'm pro-choice. I think humans are a trash species, like rats and wasps. Abort them all, for all I care! We do more harm than good just by existing, and not just the "glo-bull[feces] warming!". The only good thing we did was to get dogs to evolve, and that was 25,000 years ago. So the fewer humans are born, the better off we are.

Our greatest accomplishment was cursing a portion of wolves to be deformed, stupid and needy? Talk about damning humanity with faint praise.

There comes a point where a "hard-right" ideology ceases to be "conservative."

For example, I don't find Hitler's "final solution" to have been a manifestation of conservatism.

Absolutely. Reactionaries aren't really conservatives, they're radical utopians with a different view of utopia.
It's always based on desiring to return to some golden age that never really existed as they claim it did, but false nostalgia seems to be an effective way of making people think emotionally.

Reactionaries aren't "radicals". They have a totally opposite goal. Radials want to create a grand mythical future; that was Russia and China, with their building of classless, collectivist communism to fight worker oppression. Reactionaries want to return to a grand mythical past; that was Nazi Germany, after Hitler's predecessor wrecked their economy. Some people want to add MAGA to the "reactionary" category, but I think that's a stretch. The dividing line between simple left/right and radical/reactionary is violence, like the Antifa's looting and the Proud Boys' January-6.

There's something called the Horseshoe Theory. It means the political spectrum isn't linear, but horseshoe-shaped. Now, picture an elongated horseshoe (or the letter U). According to the theory, once you go far enough left or right, the opposing political sides become more similar to each other than to the moderates/centrists.

Reactionaries merely REACT.....they don't consider how they can improve upon what they REACT to.

Radical means wanting to implement drastic change very quickly, it says nothing of the nature of the change. What you're saying about 'grand mythical past' vs. 'grand mythical future' is completely aligned with what I've said.

Reactionaries are seeking to recreate a world that never actually existed as they imagine it and they're willing to harm the rest of us and hold us hostage in order to do so.

As long as violent reactionaries are actively operating there's a need for ANTIFA.

Also, the problem with Horseshoe theory is that it's an oversimplification intended to brainwash high school kids. It's just another piece of Whig theory that doesn't actually stand up to scrutiny.

There is certainly no shortage of deeply evil people on the left who, given the choice, would like to crush democracy and appoint a dictator who agreed with them. But in every developed democracy, those people are irrelevant. They don’t commit the same murderous acts as the far right, and they largely operate within the democratic system (or if they don’t, then they limit themselves to “direct action” that is largely toothless - one notable exception in recent years being the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle).

I think the “past-future” distinction is of limited use. Hitler didn’t campaign on changing 1920, did he? He wanted to change the 1930s and 1940s (and beyond). Likewise, MAGA isn’t literally about changing the past, it is about changing the future. Many “progressives” argue that they want to bring back [the New Deal Era/the post-war consensus/the communist era/the pre-industrial era] (delete as appropriate). Yes, a Stalinist and a Trumpist want different things, but it isn’t as simple as “one likes the future and one likes the past”.

Homework time:

https://www.amazon.com/Days-Rage-Underg ... 0143107976

Give it a read some time, you'll be shocked by the parallels to today, along with how turbulent the era really was.

And as long as violent radicals are looting stores and setting police stations on fire, there's a need for QAnon.

QAnon believes in delusions.

There haven’t been violent protests recently.

But QAnon are all about sussing out the pedophiles lurking in the basements of every basement-less pizza place, not confronting ANTIFA.

The conspiracy peddlers aren't about to get themselves in too many face-to-face physical confrontations, their style seems to be spreading shared delusions online and avoiding real life.

History teaches us that what happened before WILL happen again. Not tomorrow, and not next week, but it WILL happen. And it'll be the Q guys protecting your cherished family-owned small business with their legal rifles from the violent arsonists. All while Cacala Harris's future counterpart pays their bail to help them terrorize our streets again.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 26 Aug 2022, 11:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Because everyone who protested was a violent arsonist.
Jeez, I'm sure even everyone who was arrested was connected to actual violence and not just grabbed because they were vulnerable at the moment.

No. But it's unfortunate that 95% of them give the rest an unfair reputation.