>>444 I actually considered making a thread like "outline your political views ITT" but decided against it, figuring it would get too heated. I guess I can just do it here. Plus, I think our perspectives are more similar than you might think.
Note, all copulaic(x is/are y) statements to follow should be read as if they started with "In my opinion,...", I just can't be assed writing it every time.
Anyway, in my teens, I would have at points variously called myself a Communist, or a Trotskyist, or a Fascist, partially out of a teenage desire to be edgy but also because of, at least I thought so at the time, an attraction to ideologies with a strong, centralized authority. However I realized later on that it wasn't the strong authority I was attracted to but rather the revolutionary utopianism of those ideologies, all of which seek to deconstruct the modern capitalist system and build something new and better(from the perspective of the ideology itself) in its place. I've since become disillusioned with all of them after realizing that they still have the fundamental problem of quashing people into cogs in a vast machine of state. I do still find that revolutionary utopianism attractive, though.
Nowadays, I refuse to call myself an anything-ist. Isms mean being fettered by ideological purity and being forced to approach every problem not from the perspective of "what is the best thing to do here" but rather "what would a perfect *ist do here"?
Fundamentally, I believe people ought to be free to do what they like without interference from the government, as long as it doesn't harm others (this would extend to causing indirect harm, such as littering or polluting). Economic growth ought to be secondary to the health and wellbeing not just of citizens but of the environment. If we take it as axiomatic that the primary concerns of the state are the security, health, and overall wellbeing of its citizens, then education and healthcare ought to be subsidized. Since citizens already contribute part of their income to pay for their collective security(ie, they fund the military with their taxes), I don't think funding the other two as well is that big of a stretch. Fully funding them 100% for whoever wants them might not be feasible in as big a country as America but you lot could probably still afford to partially subsidize them as well.
Building on the collective security aspect, I disagree with the statement that "violence is never the answer", but it should be a last resort. Both states and individuals should have the right to defend themselves from aggressors.
There probably are fundamental biological differences between the races and genders, but rather than trying to erase racism and sexism by pretending there aren't, we should embrace them as part of the diversity of the human species.
I do sympathize with migrants and refugees seeking to build a better life in another place, however most people advocating the hardest for open borders and unlimited immigration quotas are capitalist elites seeking to poison the well of public discourse by presenting it as an issue of race to disguise the fact that they're making huge profits off those people. The ones that do work drive down the cost of labor and reduce wages across the board, the ones that don't work and instead receive welfare or something still necessarily use that welfare money to purchase goods and services, which basically turns the welfare which was made with good intentions to keep people from starving and dying in the street like they used to, into an indirect subsidy of their businesses and enterprises.
continuing in next post since this ended up being too long
Sexuality is a spook, and at its core is just another ism that leads to tribalistic thinking. Just fuck who you want to fuck and leave each other alone about it. It's not super important.
Religion is a spook, and mostly a tool for enforcing social cohesion via shame and encouraging ingroup-outgroup thinking. However people should be free to believe what they want, as long as they don't use it as an excuse to harm others.
Discussion and debate, especially of politics, should occur with the goal of discovering the fundamental truth or best course of action of a particular matter, not simply proving yourself right and your "opponent" wrong. Sometimes you may truly be objectively right and your "opponent" objectively wrong, but using that as a foil to develop your own viewpoint and reach a mutual understanding is also part of the course of a proper debate.
>>452 Yeah, that's what I was getting at. I don't have a problem with LGBT people per se(I'm not exactly straight as an arrow myself), but I feel like LGBT issues get disproportionate coverage in the media and public discourse.
I really like your second paragraph, and the statement that no matter what one's actual stance is, LGBT issues are a "safe" issue to bring up because getting people riled up about other people's genitals and their choice of who to rub those genitals on keeps them from getting riled up about how their suffering is being exploited by the capitalist elites to make massive, unthinkable profits that they'll never see even a fraction of a cent of because it's sitting in a bank account in the Cayman Islands or something.
Put it another way: I'm a male, my preferred sexual partner is other males. I won't try to hide that, but neither is it the ALL ENCOMPASSING CORE of my personality and worldview. It's just one of many things that make me "me", but for some people it feels like that's all there is to them. It feels like that for a lot of straight people too, we just don't think of it in those terms. Being overly obsessed with sex in general, where to have it, who to have it with, etc etc is just another symptom of the poison of modernity.