So... do you consider your political views extremist or radicalized? What do you consider extremist/radicalized?

[Addie]

It's a really interesting question, and ultimately I'm not sure. I joke that I'm the token neoliberal centrist here, but that's actually not true. This, for instance:

Depends on who you talk to. Leftists exhaust me with their need to exaggerate to make their point when they're already right. Compared to a lot of them, I am probably "not left enough" but compared to others I'm probably an extremist and people further left of me "aren't worth paying attention to". You really have to clarify about these things, as I've said before.

1.) Universal Basic Income
2.) Healthcare as a Human Right
3.) Housing As a human Right
4.) Defund the Police To Fund Social Systems (I'm not quite to abolish the police, you'd have to make a convincing argument for what we do with violent criminals)
5.) Decriminalizing All Drug Use

And I guess since I'm an American, making gun usage illegal outside of hunting rifles, and only in areas where hunting is prohibited. A focus on renewable energy and reducing focus on oil as quickly as possible.

Those are some basic tenets without getting too far caught up in the weeds.

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... is pretty much where I am. To much of the country, I suppose that's extreme; but I'm certainly not radicalized. I believe most institutions need to be reformed, although some need to be dismantled entirely and replaced by alternatives that tackle the same problems.

In many cases, I often agree with self-styled leftists on identifying problems and even on desired end states, but we often disagree on how to get there. I am generally predisposed against populism in all forms. That said, the more I pay attention to politics and recognize its inefficiencies, lack of agility, and systemic issues turbocharged by demography, I'm become more sympathetic to people writing off most institutions as irrevocably broken.

 

[Yesterday]

I’m not an extremists and and am mostly a single issue environmental voter. Well thats just the primary thing I look for the secondary one is don’t be an asshole which covers a lot of bases

 

[The Albatross]

I wonder what politics are like on her planet. Maybe they don't exist, wouldn't that be nice?

Spoiler

Did you really see her wrestle

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Yeah, been a beyond Wrestling fan for many years now and basically watched her come up from no where. Beyond is a promotion in the north east out of providence/worcester and has seen so much great talent go to wwe and aew. Keith lee, Riddle, Statlander, LAX, dijak ("tbar" now in wwe), Anthony greene, MJF, jordynne grace, octopus, virtuosa, Janella, david starr, and so many others all on the same card wrestling at bars. Those cards 3-4 years ago were amazing. Statlander was one of the fastest rising. She basically like cut in on the indies then seems like 2 years later she's signed to a major promotion.

 

[Surfinn]

Yeah, been a beyond Wrestling fan for many years now and basically watched her come up from no where. Beyond is a promotion in the north east out of providence/worcester and has seen so much great talent go to wwe and aew. Keith lee, Riddle, Statlander, LAX, dijak ("tbar" now in wwe), Anthony greene, MJF, jordynne grace, octopus, virtuosa, Janella, david starr, and so many others all on the same card wrestling at bars. Those cards 3-4 years ago were amazing. Statlander was one of the fastest rising. She basically like cut in on the indies then seems like 2 years later she's signed to a major promotion.

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I am legit jealous.. watched all those matches on IWT. Beyond is my favorite promo and I definitely binged most of their matches, and scoured the net for all the Stat matches I could find. Was so bummed when she hurt her knee. When she comes back it will be a happy day

I want to see her in person one day.

It's a shame David Starr ended up being such an incredible shithead, liked him a lot and he did some nice work for wrestling in terms of raising awareness for unionizing etc.

 

[Chairman Yang]

Could you elaborate? Rather, how does getting into economics address things like the growing unsustainability of the capitalist experiment or the looming climate crisis?

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Not sure what you mean by "growing unsustainability" but there are entire fields of economics devoted to labour, inequality, environmental impacts, or really any modern issue that deals with needing to allocate scarce resources. If you're not considering that fundamental question--which is the core point of economics--you're ignoring huge chunks of the world and any actions taken will inexplicably fail.

 

[Chairman Yang]

lol

yeah reading shit generated by right-wing think tank psychos designed to reinforce capitalist realism sounds like a good time

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Yes, that's right, understanding concepts like supply and demand or inflation is all a vast right-wing conspiracy.

 

[Lotto]

My honest and current truth, not said with spite or malice, is that I think the ideal arrangement of society exists in the left, but I benefit from the current system enough to remain relatively inactive politically and generally not feel at risk of political oppression or deprived of economic benefits.

I’m functionally a moderate at the end of the day right now. My mind has gone relatively left from my upbringing, and my ideals keep getting pulled further left as I learn and experience more, but I’m just not politically active enough to actually enact positive change, other than symbolic gestures like modest donations and casting my vote as best I can toward more progressive ideas. And as a US citizen, that latter often just ends up being briefly ceremonious and ineffective due to the current political party structure.

I’m not radical and radicals rightfully think I’m worthless.

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i'd go with something along the lines of this. i can recognize and see systemic failures across the board and i wouldn't say i'm completely apathetic but the amount of energy i put towards being progressive needs work. my modus operandi just isn't wired to be as radical as i think i am. when it comes right down to it, humanism guides most of my political thoughts, even if it doesn't manifest clearly through my actions.

 

[Ryuelli]

Depends on who you talk to. Leftists exhaust me with their need to exaggerate to make their point when they're already right. Compared to a lot of them, I am probably "not left enough" but compared to others I'm probably an extremist and people further left of me "aren't worth paying attention to". You really have to clarify about these things, as I've said before.

1.) Universal Basic Income
2.) Healthcare as a Human Right
3.) Housing As a human Right
4.) Defund the Police To Fund Social Systems (I'm not quite to abolish the police, you'd have to make a convincing argument for what we do with violent criminals)
5.) Decriminalizing All Drug Use

And I guess since I'm an American, making gun usage illegal outside of hunting rifles, and only in areas where hunting is prohibited. A focus on renewable energy and reducing focus on oil as quickly as possible.

Those are some basic tenets without getting too far caught up in the weeds.

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Add free higher education and this is 100% where I'm at.

 

[samoyed]

For anyone feeling like they're being dragged towards extremist leftist views, and they're not sure how to feel about it, I recommend getting into economics as a good way to deradicalize.

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This is extremely ironic because it was my foray into economics that made me realize all this shit is broken and needed to be built anew. Watching GME go to 400, NFTs sold for thousands of dollars, and housing prices booming in a pandemic/recession just shows me none of this thing we call "economics" is real. A least, nothing in neoclassical economics seems real.

Fortunately, I found some "real" in Marxist ideas of value.

 

[iksenpets]

I think outside of America I’d fit fairly comfortably under a general social democrat umbrella, which makes me a wild-eyed radical in American politics, but also a sort of squishy lib in the context of communities of left-of-America politics where you’re often dealing with genuine socialists.

 

[SageShinigami]

Add free higher education and this is 100% where I'm at.

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Toss this on there too, yeah. I knew I forgot something.

This is extremely ironic because it was my foray into economics that made me realize all this shit is broken and needed to be built anew. Watching GME go to 400, NFTs sold for thousands of dollars, and housing prices booming in a pandemic/recession just shows me none of this thing we call "economics" is real. A least, nothing in neoclassical economics seems real.

Fortunately, I found some "real" in Marxist ideas of value.

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Yeah I don't know how you look at "economics" and think "I'm de-radicalized now".

 

[PanickyFool]

Raging moderate absolutely convinced that a larger safety social net is required but US government civil servants are inept at providing them because they cannot be fired/held accountable.

 

[Ramsay]

Not at all.

The way I see it, the line between a moderate and a radical is whether one is willing to use violence or to subvert democracy to achieve some sort of change.

The crippling flaw in every radical movement once in power is twofold: it is incredibly easy for such a movement to be hijacked by a sociopath that cares nothing other than seizing power (*cough* Stalin *cough*), and more concerningly, the resistance triggered by seizing power and enacting change through violent, authoritarian means would render mass terror from the state inevitable to silence opponents, as was the case with Lenin and the USSR.

 

[Addie]

Raging moderate absolutely convinced that a larger safety social net is required but US government civil servants are inept at providing them because they cannot be fired/held accountable.

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I can personally confirm the second part.

 

[The Albatross]

I am legit jealous.. watched all those matches on IWT. Beyond is my favorite promo and I definitely binged most of their matches, and scoured the net for all the Stat matches I could find. Was so bummed when she hurt her knee. When she comes back it will be a happy day

I want to see her in person one day.

It's a shame David Starr ended up being such an incredible shithead, liked him a lot and he did some nice work for wrestling in terms of raising awareness for unionizing etc.

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Tbh y'know.... Hanging around david starr / max.... Eh..... I think like it wasn't really that surprising. He's an amazing amazing wrestler and would be in a major promotion, despite his activism and an industry that is hostile to it, except he has serious attitude problems, and I dunno, I know enough people who slept with him prior to this that I had an opinion of him that I wasn't that surprised when that stuff came out last year. The thing is like... The thing that motivates his activism and makes him so cocksure about it, is the thing that made him blind to where he was wrong. Like it comes from the same place. I dunno, kinda hard to explain.

 

[Zarshack]

I don't think it's extremist to wish that the nut bags could just go to an island where they can live without bothering anyone else again. Alternatively shoot them into space with a large Canon. It would show them that the earth isn't flat at the same time as ridding ourselves of their ineptitude.

 

[GYODX]

Not in the slightest.

 

[GYODX]

Raging moderate absolutely convinced that a larger safety social net is required but US government civil servants are inept at providing them because they cannot be fired/held accountable.

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Sums up my own views pretty well.

 

[SindbadtheSailor]

Solid thread; great way to get people to put themselves on a list

 

[Surfinn]

Tbh y'know.... Hanging around david starr / max.... Eh..... I think like it wasn't really that surprising. He's an amazing amazing wrestler and would be in a major promotion, despite his activism and an industry that is hostile to it, except he has serious attitude problems, and I dunno, I know enough people who slept with him prior to this that I had an opinion of him that I wasn't that surprised when that stuff came out last year. The thing is like... The thing that motivates his activism and makes him so cocksure about it, is the thing that made him blind to where he was wrong. Like it comes from the same place. I dunno, kinda hard to explain.

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That is interesting. Yeah judging from what I've read about women who have slept with him/dated him, it sounds like it was a disgusting pattern of abuse.

You'd like to think characters being played are.. entertainment and not reality but it seemed like his persona was also a part of his real life character.

Have you seen the tourny where she wrestles Starr and Dickenson? Just incredible stuff, she holds her own with the guys very well.

She also picked up David Cage on her shoulders and walked around with him in a match

 

[RDreamer]

I’m not sure how to answer this. I think if you gave me a magic wand and I could conjure some perfect system and a bunch of laws to go along with it I’d be considered fairly damned extreme by a helluva lot of America.

But I’m a realist and a strategist and I understand we don’t live in a fantasy, so I’m going around defending red state democrats and why the party as a whole has to moderate 5 points to the right because of the senate and applauding smaller steps with vigor.

So online leftists can exhaust me and unplugged normies can annoy me as well. To leftists I’m some neoliberal right wing shill and to normies I’m a radical.

 

[samoyed]

Solid thread; great way to get people to put themselves on a list

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That's my secret Cap, I'm already on a list.

 

[ibyea]

Radical, probably, I don't know about extremist, but you can decide that yourself. I do think capitalism has to be replaced in order to prevent the exploitation and poverty of the global south, and it's not so much that I believe socialism is the right system as it is that it is the only ideology providing a rigorous framework towards a more democratic alternative, and towards a new stage of civilization just as monarchy and feudalism moved to republicanism and capitalism. I do think they are right in terms of the inherent contradiction of capitalism, but I am cynical in other aspects. Not sure a society necessarily will resolve said contradiction. People can always choose to go down in flames rather than reform and resolve said contradiction, as demonstrated multiple times in history. And if such change does occur, it will be after a WWI/WWII style catastrophe, and it could go either way. And a socialist society does not guarantee the end of imperialism. But we have to try, because I believe the world human beings make for themselves is an insane world that people tell themselves it's not because they have always lived like that.

 

[psionotic]

I consider myself a social democrat, which probably makes me a filthy moderate on Era (/s) but a dangerous radical to most of my family and community (I live in one of the more agricultural, purplish enclaves in Cali).

The Trump era definitely pushed me more leftwards, I used to be a pretty standard Democrat, now I’m much more socialist-ic. Tax the rich.

 

[pants]

I’m pretty moderate-to-liberal about most things, but probably qualify as “radical” when it comes to social issues or the environment.

My only staunchly conservative viewpoints pertain to high level economic policy and foreign interventionism, both of which I consider necessary evils for the world we live in.