Conservative?(Right) Liberal?(Left)
Communist/Authoritarian?(Alt-Left) Fascist/Authoritarian?(Alt-Right)
Centrist(Middle) Both suck(Middle) No comment(Middle)
What is your most Controversial View
And if you could fix one thing about this Country what would it be?
personally, i think we should bring back Arena combat and force our presidential and senatorial candidates to fight in Hunger game's like combat to the death until one survives. it will be funny because they are all Old.
As for my Political leaning, every Test I take say's im Liberal. but I find I hate everyone so maybe I am a Centrist?
It's like some day's im. cant we all just get along? other day's im like, burn everything down and build a regime.
Anyway, what side are you?
For many of my views, I'd likely be categorized on the left side of the spectrum, although I often think that "left" and "right" are insufficient terms to describe one's beliefs.
I was born and raised in the 1960s, so early in my formative years, I was exposed to political ideas that started to take hold as I grew. My mother was a liberal Democrat from the west coast, and my father was a conservative Republican from the midwest.
After my parents got divorced, I found that visiting my extended family was like going to alternate worlds - at least when comparing the politics and cultures of my mother's versus my father's side of the family. The difference was like night and day. My father's side of the family didn't really discuss politics that much, and when they did, most of them already agreed with each other and there was very little argument or rancor. On my mother's side of the family, they were all liberal Democrats (including my grandparents), they all mostly agreed with each other, yet they would have some of the loudest and severest arguments over politics. Some of it was generational, as my grandparents were old guard Democrats of the FDR era, while my mother and her generation were of the "newer" variety.
I always paid close attention to the news and current events, and also developed a keen interest in history. My father was quite a history buff and had a lot of books I perused. Having grown up during the cynical 1970s, I was also getting full doses of both sides of the spectrum, both the conservative and the liberal. So, I developed sympathies for both sides, while also recognizing where they might be wrong.
I think my views were probably influenced by the events of the time, such as Watergate, the ending of the Vietnam War, the Arab oil embargo, the Cold War and the overriding fear that someone might "push the button" and blow us all to Kingdom Come.
I think I started to understand a bit better about where "radical" and "extremist" thinking comes from as I got older and into my college years. I'd come across more and more people with a bureaucratic mentality who come up with nonsensical "rules" which they dubbed "policy," yet it just seemed like endless piles of BS. I didn't really see it as "left" or "right" - but more of a personality type which seemed robotic and inhuman to me. I also found I would get frustrated with people who saw a lot of the same things wrong with the system, but equally pessimistic about anything being done to change it. Everything was "don't worry, be happy," which eventually became the theme song of Bush's '88 presidential campaign. (I later read that the writer of that song didn't like that it was used by a Republican, since he was a Democrat, but it was such a stupid song anyway.)
Back in the 60s, they would write songs like "tax the rich, feed the poor, 'til there are no rich no more," but by the 80s, it was "don't worry, be happy." I think my heart was still with the left, but I was beginning to realize that the entire country was shifting in a rightward direction. I could not reconcile my leftist views with what was happening in America at the time, as well as what was happening in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (which I visited around that same time). After that, I concluded that the left was either dead or comatose - at least in terms of being able to mount any strong, revolutionary-type movement.
At this point, I'm more an observer than anything else. I think our military policies and perceived role in the world will keep America largely in a more right-wing direction. The idea of national loyalty, patriotism, and similar ideals will keep most of the population away from any real leftist ideals - except for those which don't interfere in the ways and means of the Defense establishment and the intelligence community. That's why the left has tended to embrace identity politics - because it's "safe," already has proven success, and doesn't rock the boat with Wall Street or the Military-Industrial complex.
