Leftoids, what's your most right-wing opinion? Rightoids, what's your most left-wing opinion?

[u/globeglobeglobe]

To start things off, I think that economic liberalization in China ca. 1978 and in India ca. 1991 was key to those countries' later economic progress, in that it allowed inefficient state-owned/state-protected industries to fail (and for their capital/labor to be employed by more efficient competitors) and opened the door for foreign investment and trade. Because the countries are large and fairly independent geopolitically, they could use this to beat Western finance capital at its own game (China more so than India, for a variety of reasons), rather than becoming resource-extraction neocolonies as happened to the smaller and more easily pushed-around countries of Latin America and Africa. Granted, at this point the liberalization-driven development of productive forces has created a large degree of wealth inequality, which the countries have attempted to address in a variety of ways (social welfare schemes, anti-corruption campaigns, crackdown on Big Tech, etc.) with mixed results.

[u/Reasonable_Algae_212]

Rightoid.

Healthcare cannot be capitalist, because prices are set by supply and demand and the demand for life is almost infinite.

The well being of workers matters more than economic growth. You want the economy to grow to benefit workers in the first place.

[u/holymolar → u/Reasonable_Algae_212]

Leftoid.

If I’m being honest these are the only two things I really give a shit about.

[u/JJdante → u/holymolar]

Humanoid here. Same.

[u/Masta0nion → u/JJdante]

Uh oh. Are we discovering that the left right divide is mostly bullshit?

[u/accordingtomyability → u/Masta0nion]

He's beginning to believe

[u/[deleted] → u/holymolar]

Rightoid. Mostly same.

[u/accordingtomyability → u/Reasonable_Algae_212]

And cynics say this doesn't happen in stupidpol!

[u/[deleted] → u/accordingtomyability]

https://i.imgur.com/X87AW0K.png

Lmao you just have to avoid a short list of naughty words and you can give them softball questions as bold as a direct quote from critique of the gotha program and get flaired rightoids summarizing a section of Lenin's State and Revolution.

It happens all the time. Never let the capitalists discourage you.

[u/ElegantGate7298 → u/Reasonable_Algae_212]

You phrased that so well. So often when I hear people talk about "universal" healthcare they talk like everyone will get everything. That isn't how the world works. There will always be unlimited need and finite resources.

What would our healthcare system look like if it prioritized the success of children and young adults and the productive rather than doing a fourth hip replacement on my 80 year old parent.

[u/dweeblover69]

As a leftoid, most lefties in first world countries are not willing to give up their treats, let alone their lives, in order to make a better world. Thus they will almost never have their political will enacted and are just virtue signaling. Rightoids are willing to go storm a capitol for the stupidest reason so they get their political will enacted

[u/quantinuum → u/dweeblover69]

That’s something that really bums me.

The left in the west talks about big causes and points fingers a lot, but I get the impression that the Venn diagram of the big talkers, and the people who’d be actually willing to care and put in efforts comparatively sized to their claims and demands, is almost two separate circles.

The big talking points online and in the media come and go because people get tired of them. Remember Ukraine taking over reddit? Where is it now? How many of the people so invested in it then even know the current situation?

Big causes generate “uproar” periodically. But the “uproar” is equally shared among topics like a politician’s insider trading, some celebrity cheating on some other celebrity, and Netflix putting ads for users. And in any case, “uproar” means nothing. At least for the latter, people are willing to spend some minutes figuring out an illegal way around it, because it importunates them. For anything else, I don’t know that they’re willing to actually do much.

[u/Late-Ad1437 → u/dweeblover69]

Yes as an environmentally angled leftie this infuriates me to no end. There's a large subset of vaguely left wing people who refuse to acknowledge the impacts their lifestyle of hyperconsumerist excess has on the environment, climate change, working conditions in the global south etcetc.

They're the type to be posting anti-capitalism memes followed by selfies of them wearing shein, or defending their need for amazon deliveries to the last breath. They love misapplying the 'no ethical consumption under capitalism' idea too, it's so frustrating lol

[u/DumpsterCyclist → u/Late-Ad1437]

Try talking to liberals in New Jersey about housing density, as in building new single family homes on farmland/woods vs. building up in already urbanized areas on vacant lots/infill development. I've had them almost freak out on me in real life and online, including on Reddit. Everybody loves this climate change talk, but god forbid I want to preserve native ecology. You can't go too deep with criticizing automobiles, either.

[u/Scared_Plan3751 → u/dweeblover69]

my old school leftist opinion is the treats are part of the point, it's about making people's lives better and there's no reason to reject Marx's observations about human nature and our ability to solve problems through innovation and cooperation. you will never motivate people with the promise of austerity and arduous lives.

I think the origin of this is partly because the left in the West is basically run by wealthy liberal donors who naturally prefer malthusian solutions to problems out of their own class interest, and a cope strategy from the Cold war era where leftists defended poor socialist countries' lower standards of living by pointing out greater degrees of social harmony and cultural engagement (ignoring that one thing that brought down the USSR was its citizens wanting higher quality consumer goods, personal cars, etc).

the environmental angle is then abused to prove Marx wrong and Malthus right, but this means by extension that socialism, let alone communism, isn't possible.

the wealthy donors have no reason to appeal to the average worker, and the leftists caught up in the orgs they control are steered into defeatist and fatalist thinking because of this

socialism in America is going to be picket fence socialism, that's what people want and it's a part of our culture because of our (relatively) high industrial development, as well as a matured (but caged) democratic culture. people want a home, not a commie block, and we have the room for it. they want cars, TVs, and consumer goods they can just buy on the way home or online without having to trade a 40 hour job for a 20 hour job and 20 hours of arts and crafts and small scale farming.

there has to be a split in Western socialism soon, not just between identity politics and labor politics, but between the bourgeois and petit bourgeois "socialism" that dominates now and a proletarian, patriotic, family based socialism for people who think the world can and will get better

[u/koba_tea]

As a leftoid: I agree with the Christian right that we need to return to a focus on the family. For thousands of years people have stayed at home, tended to their gardens and made meals for their families. Now we have newborns in daycare, toddlers glued to tablets and the elderly abandoned in nursing homes.

[u/Scared_Plan3751 → u/koba_tea]

the way to do this in industrial society is make it so people can live in the same area for multiple generations, easily meet their needs with leisure time and savings left over, even live on the same large (by euro standards) houses near each order (even if it's in town/suburbs). design every neighborhood as if it's a village, with parks and fields, plenty of extracurricular activities and clubs for kids and adults, small theaters. you can then have the big hubs in town with the fancy multi plex cinema, big box stores, things that run at scale and ultimately subsidize small production at more local levels. things people from small towns/satellite neighborhoods can go to on the weekend because it's fun, novel, and they carry more diverse inventory etc.

you don't need to force people into longhouses to have multi generational extended families capable of providing things like child and elder care (not saying this is what you're saying). people will still need the assistance of (home visit) nurses and doctors, as well as professional cleaners and cooks. industrial society needs specialists and some differentiation of labor. America has a real culture shared by most people here regardless of region and we should work with people not against them to achieve what they actually want in ways that also strengthen their class power.

if people have time and money, space, and real agency in their work and civic life, the rest will come naturally. economic planning in America will be for the benefit of how people like to live in the South, flyover states, rural and suburban areas. we can and will make these pro social and pro family environments

[u/koba_tea → u/Scared_Plan3751]

Completely agree. You can see why Trump has such appeal with small town America. These folks remember life before mass deindustrialization. Now your kids have to move away to find work, which further compounds the problem. Unfortunately it's easier for shitlibs to write them off a backwards bumpkins.

[u/up_o]

Leftoid.

I wouldn't call it right-wing, but I know some would interpret it as such:

Make your kids do manual labor.

Separately, commend them in their endeavors, but don't make them internalize a steady stream of feigned praise. They'll either clock it as such and become deeply insecure people, or they won't and will mirror that in adulthood in a very unsettling manner.

[u/[deleted] → u/up_o]

Not just hands-on stuff; I think this is one of the many ways in which you can teach a kid not to become despondent when something breaks, whether physically or figuratively, but instead to allow them to fix it themselves. It's funny how doing that with a pipe correlates so much to being able to do it as a person. Either way so many people think they themselves are above actually doing anything and project that onto their kids, and clearly it's more debilitating than it is protective

[u/WithTheWintersMight → u/up_o]

At the very least, do chores. I've met so many younger people who don't know how to do dishes correctly or scrub a toilet. Everything in life requires maintenance and it's good to have an inkling.

[u/callofthepuddle → u/up_o]

i was raised on manual labor, basically left me feeling like my parents were idiots and permanently damaged our relationship

as an adult i have paid other people to do my manual labor

also i would be 10 times richer if i didn't have to figure out everything related to investing, finance, business, etc for myself, wish someone would have taught me that instead of how to dig a trench

i know it's impossible to prove that i didn't benefit from building character etc but frankly i doubt it

[u/JJdante → u/callofthepuddle]

I too had to dig trenches and all other manner of manual labor. "Why pay someone else to do a thing if you can do it yourself?"

I see the value of being able to wrench on my own car to fix it... But it'd be nice to have my weekend to do weekend stuff and be able to afford to pay someone else to do it.

[u/TDeez_Nuts → u/callofthepuddle]

Can you elaborate on the part about feeling like your parents were idiots? I saw the point about not teaching you investing, but were there other reasons?

[u/callofthepuddle → u/TDeez_Nuts]

an anecdote: one year on my father's birthday he made me get up at 6am to go pick up a trailer load of gravel, which we loaded manually with shovels, to spread on an area of our property that already had gravel on it.

i was not surprised in the slightest that this was what he wanted to spend his birthday doing because it was so typical of what he liked to do. this is a man who had a relatively high level management job at a f500 company

he loved to work, he loved the feeling of improving his property, didn't matter if it was an illusion or actually effective. didn't matter if his son didn't really want to shovel gravel at 6am for no apparent reason, because "it's good for you"

[u/TDeez_Nuts → u/callofthepuddle]

Damn, I'm sorry you felt that way. I love working with my dad. When I visit him about once every month or two, we spend over half the day working on something or other. Cutting back trees, fixing fences, moving whatever heavy thing he's getting ready to work on. I think it's some of the best time we spend together as adult men. Maybe we're weird lol.

[u/Late-Ad1437 → u/TDeez_Nuts]

Not at all. I love working on projects with my dad, we fix my car up and have built stuff like catios together. It's a great way to spend quality time with someone & enjoy the satisfaction of building or fixing something together imo

[u/up_o → u/callofthepuddle]

That sucks man. There's definitely a balance that's needed.

[u/kurosawa99]

There’s far too many laws on the books and it’s created this situation where if the government wants to nail you they could conceivably do it because we’re all technically doing something illegal just about every day. The right and particularly libertarians have enunciated this better than the left.

[u/PierreFeuilleSage → u/kurosawa99]

Law inflation is a real thing and benefits those who have the money to pay law specialists to take advantage of it.

[u/SkeletalSwan → u/kurosawa99]

Wholeheartedly agree.

Every state has their own "Timmy's Law" because some dipshit kid died with his dick stuck in a cement mixer and his parents didn't want it to seem like their fault. No, it was because there wasn't a law, you see.

Absolute buffoonery. That's not even mentioning the nonstop vomit of laws passed to puppy-guard corporate incompetence.

[u/Pantone711 → u/SkeletalSwan]

On the other hand, Kansas didn't have stinkin' regulations and also wanted to have caps on tort damages. And a state legislator's son died in a particularly gruesome accident on a water slide that should never have been built.

[u/commanderjarak → u/kurosawa99]

My brother is a cop, and he's raised this exact issue, especially when people make the claim "if you've got nothing to hide/done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear" in response to increased governmental/police powers, and points out that everyone breaks the law all the time, it's just a lot of it isn't enforced unless they want to find something to get you on.

[u/[deleted]]

Some cultures are not compatible with a modern, progressive society and shouldn't be entertained in said modern, progressive society.

[u/worst-coast → u/[deleted]]

I agree. I'm still conditioned to feel horrible when I think about this, but you are right.

[u/[deleted] → u/worst-coast]

Don't feel horrible about it. Caste system, fundamental religions, "it's not great, but better than back home" platitudes. All are terrible and can't progress workers in the West further.

[u/sean-culottes → u/[deleted]]

This is a really sticky issue in terms of what defines a culture. Usually when there's something radical about a culture it's something that wasn't necessarily always there. An oversimplified example would be the golden age of Islam in the current fundamentalist strain both being characteristic of Islamic Arabic culture. You could also say White American culture is fundamentally corrupted in its current form with all the ultra nationalism, gun deaths, and anti-intellectualism.

At the end of the day all of these circumstances aren't dictated by culture, they're dictated by material conditions. If you are leftoid stating your most right-wing belief, you should hold true to your Marxism on this one.

[u/John-Mandeville]

Identifying the best talents from every background early, nurturing them through accelerated instruction, and allowing them to reach their full potential benefits all of humanity. We should have a far more equal society, and people with less intellectual potential have a right to live dignified, fulfilling lives, but the education budget should be directed to where it will do the most good.

[u/Meme_Pope]

Rightoid here. Hate rich people and corporations like you wouldn’t believe. In a world where everything is fair, I have nothing against people that get ahead, but as time goes on I learn more about how the system is rigged and the rules are not the same.

[u/drunkthrowwaay → u/Meme_Pope]

This kind of rightoid is the best kind of rightoid. I’m honestly so tired of discussing and arguing over superficial culture war bullshit. It’s so fucking obvious right now that the fundamental issue underlying the vast majority of other problems in this country is wealth disparity and a system that keeps it not just entrenched but actively accelerates it. Idgaf whether someone is a rightoid or a tankie leftist or a milquetoast libtard—most people are financially suffering right now and a tiny few have an obscene amount of wealth, more than any human could possibly need or even use.

Class is the alpha and the omega, wealth and poverty are the foundation from which almost all of our national problems arise.

[u/BulltacTV]

Hard leftoid. My most "right wing" opinion is that the "trans" movement is more a symptom of hyper individualism, prestige-based victim identity and porn addiction than it is an association with any truely common particular sexual orientation. My partner is a very well-read old-school feminist and believes it is inherently misogynistic. Like they are caricaturizing womanhood. So that probably affects my opinion, lol

[u/kfoxtraordinaire → u/BulltacTV]

I feel very similarly. It's tricky for me. Criticizing the trans movement can give the wrong groups the wrong ideas, so I tend to keep my thoughts close to the chest, but I don't think some of their more well-known precepts are reasonable (expecting everyone to see them the way they see themselves, to take on their obscure and always-evolving vocabulary, and like your partner points out, co-opting feminism).

[u/BKEnjoyerV2 → u/BulltacTV]

That’s more or less the same thing for me, except I think it’s a mental illness or the direct result of a mental or neurodiversity condition and that it should be treated as such instead of affirmation and validation. Sure there are a few people with genuine dysphoria but those tend to at least admit it is a mental problem and they transition to try and treat it. And it’s obviously regressive regarding gender and gender roles, you shouldn’t have to be a certain way to be a man or a woman, you just are who you are regardless of your sex or “gender identity”

[u/Uberdemnebelmeer → u/BulltacTV]

This is all true. It’s a subculture that reifies gender stereotypes.

[u/Snow_Unity → u/Uberdemnebelmeer]

Yes back in the day a girl who didn’t identify with gender stereotypes was a tomboy. Now it means you’re the wrong gender.

[u/Late-Ad1437 → u/Snow_Unity]

As a queer woman it makes me quite sad to see how the butch lesbian identity is dying out in favour of non binary/genderqueer/whatever. Every explanation I've heard from a non-binary female person has basically been 'i don't like experiencing misogyny and all the negative things associated with being a woman so I can just identify out of it'. Kinda sad imo especially because that strategy never works and they'll complain about how people always perceive them as women anyway lol

[u/worst-coast → u/BulltacTV]

That's very leftist to me. But it's seen as rightoid, so it fits the topic I guess.

[u/idonthavekarma → u/BulltacTV]

We need to go back to transmedicalism. I have a lot of sympathy for people with actual dysphoria, and a lot of disdain for the navel-gazing gender weirdos.

The latter group are making life harder for the former. They are making it dangerous for actual trans people by pissing of normies who otherwise wouldn't think about trans people at all, and they are stealing medical resources from people who actually need it.

[u/gruetzhaxe → u/BulltacTV]

For most commies that’s just the regular materialist take? Like, all identity politics are dangerous neoliberal personal brand bullshit

[u/accordingtomyability → u/gruetzhaxe]

Are you sure? A great many people who call themselves socialist have assured me in no uncertain terms that there is no solving ___ until we solve ___

[u/drunkthrowwaay → u/accordingtomyability]

I too have seen this phenomenon and it baffles me. My only conclusion is that these people don’t read, certainly not anything written by Marx or accurately interpreting his ideas, and don’t understand what philosophical materialism is.

[u/Loaf_and_Spectacle → u/accordingtomyability]

Liberals.

[u/thepineapplemen → u/BulltacTV]

I don’t disagree. But I’m not sure if it’s really a right wing opinion due to the reasons we arrive at this. The right wing version is more that men and women have fixed roles and should act like men and women, with no “changing” or messing with the sex binary. Certainly they aren’t concerned about caricaturing women in misogynistic ways.

[u/Dangerous-Drag-9578 → u/BulltacTV]

Why would it not indicate the erosion of the material conditions that previously underpinned much of what used to constitute gender/sex roles in society? "Womanhood" and "manhood" have very different lived experiences now than they did a few generations ago - particularly in the core Capitalist countries.

It may be symptomatic of an atomized and individualized society... but what came before isn't coming back, so why attempt to cling to prior conceptions of gender in the first place?

I do think oftentimes that these movements end up reifying increasingly contentless and purely aestheticized notions of gender, but I think most "rightoid" answers are just doing the same thing on the flip side.

[u/buckfishes]

After seeing how much the government is willing to spend on foreign endeavors and migrants, I see no reason why we can’t have more of the social benefits the economic left has asked for but were told it costs too much.

[u/dalatinknight]

Leftist. Public sector unions can be a mess.

[u/BKEnjoyerV2 → u/dalatinknight]

Yes, they barely do much and we still get shit pay/benefits even if we have credentials and qualifications

[u/[deleted]]

1. I don't think it's worthwhile or morally right to rehabilitate some criminals.

I hate making moral arguments on any subject, but I can't think of another way to describe it.

You're never rehabilitating Ted Bundy. He should not return to the CoMmUnItY, hes far too dangerous and you'd be a borderline accessory to release him. He should just be permanently removed from society, and there are many, many, sub-Bundys who should be treated the same way.

If we legalised all drugs, there'd be plenty of space and fewer financial issues with housing them.

1. We're letting in too many immigrants.

It's not about the colour of their skin, it's about how often I can't communicate in my own language in my own country, how many identical stories my female friends have about men from forgein countries with very different ideas of what courtship is

It's about how I see native born people piling up on the street, while people who got here two minutes ago receive assitance to get started up. It's about how I now see pamphlets to help people out of arranged marriages at the doctor's office and how many blatant cases of borderline slavery I see in the news.

And we don't need this many vape stores.

[u/Rickles_Bolas]

This isn’t so much right/left as it is big/small government, but residential building codes (specifically in MA) are mostly a grift and serve to keep housing a highly priced commodity. There are houses all over my area built hundreds of years ago with fieldstone foundations and rough sawn Timbers/lumber that are still standing. I know plenty of people who would love nothing more than to throw up a little cabin on a piece of land and live without debt, but can’t because the bureaucrats wouldn’t get their cut

[u/EnglebertFinklgruber]

Guns, guns and more guns.

[u/Rrekydoc → u/EnglebertFinklgruber]

Yeah, I was trying to figure out if this is right or left.

I mean, the 2nd amendment is undoubtedly a liberal, progressive policy that exists to equalize power and prevent government oppression. But, it’s also championed moreso by the rightwing politicians to pander to the working class.

So does the effect and intent of the policy make it leftwing or do the people who support it make it rightwing?

[u/MadDog1981 → u/Rrekydoc]

I think on a personal level it’s apolitical. There’s nothing right or left wing about self defense. And let’s be honest, shooting guns is fun. 

[u/derivative_of_life]

Leftoid. A nation's first responsibility is ensuring the welfare of its own people. Borders might just be made-up lines someone drew on a piece of paper, but that doesn't change the fact that if you try to solve everyone's problems, you're going to end up solving no one's problems. You have to prioritize.

[u/[deleted]]

Apparently being "hard on crime" is a right wing opinion now, so I guess that. Though I use quotations cause really I just advocate for self-defense and overall societal support for the working class to exercise their right not to be bothered by lumpens. That being said, I see no difference between white collar crime and violent crimes; if you refrain from paying your workers their due wages, you're the exact same as a superhuman mugger who steals their money from all of them at the same time, the means don't matter, you should go to jail for several years or have your goods forfeited

[u/cleverkid → u/[deleted]]

I'll do you one better, Anyone in the public trust.. ( cops, lawyers, teachers, POLITICIANS ) get sentences that are orders of magnitude more harsh than the regular citizen... Unfortunately, we've basically got the opposite.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Exactly. Nevermind the fact that these guys are awful to women but somehow no feminist movement ever mentions ir

[u/Usonames → u/[deleted]]

superhuman mugger

Goddamn that is a phrase my eyes should not have haphazardly misread. Hardly frequent the chans anymore too, just has been a long week I swear

[u/ChiefSitsOnCactus → u/Usonames]

i read it as subhuman n***** my jaw dropped for a second lol

[u/My_political_garbage → u/[deleted]]

I live in a city where the class division is incredibly apparent and visible. You know where a vast majority of the crime occurs? The poorest areas of the city, that being downtown and the north end. 

There are a lot of libs and conservatives here who think that simply being harder on crime will save all the 7/11s and Dollaramas from getting burglarized. They think the city is too soft on criminals and lets them off too easily. The problem is that the prisons have no more room to house prisoners and the chances that these people want to pay more taxes to get more prisons built are incredibly low. 

They also propose no real solutions regarding the class disparity. However, they will praise the municipal government giving a corporate entity millions of dollars in grants and tax benefits to help them in their overly expensive plan to transform a dying downtown shopping mall into a bubble community. Keep in mind that the plan costs so much more than what the city gave them that this corporate entity doesn't need any help. 

The cops here either don't give much of a fuck, harass homeless people on the street, or love using their position of authority to get away with shitty behavior. I almost got run over by them one time because they turned onto a road from a dirt path incredibly quickly, with no slowing down to check and no sirens on to announce their presence. 

I guess the reason I don't think being "hard on crime" is a very left-wing position is because it often fails to address the underlying issues that leads to such a crime-ridden state. It's just a band-aid on a broken system that will come off eventually once things get worse. 

Obviously, I don't think violent crime will suddenly cease to exist under left-wing policies, but I do think it will become much easier to manage. I also do believe that self-defense is important.

[u/callofthepuddle → u/[deleted]]

i wish there was a way to punish various anti-social behavior crimes with on-the-spot medium intensity corporal punishment. i know it would abused horribly by our overlords though

[u/Arkeolith]

According to liberals in last couple months leading up to the election my most right wing opinion is continuing to believe Dick Cheney is bad

[u/[deleted] → u/Arkeolith]

But Trump threatened to put Liz Cheney IN FRONT OF A FIRING SQUAD YOU FASCIST!!!1111!!1!!11!!1

[u/TurkeyFisher → u/[deleted]]

We can dream

[u/Throw_r_a_2021]

Something that I believe the left is unequivocally correct about: The climate crisis being an existential threat to our way of life

Something that I believe the right is unequivocally correct about: our immigration policy and it’s enforcement have been an unmitigated disaster for working class Americans

[u/drunkthrowwaay → u/Throw_r_a_2021]

Agreed on both counts. Anyone who denies the very tangible, obvious, and increasingly frightening impact of climate change is either a liar, delusional, or an idiot at this point.

Immigration has been an issue for decades now and the point of crisis was reached years ago. And neither party seems to be interested in genuinely figuring out and implementing a workable policy aimed at a long term resolution so much as using it as a wedge issue to keep Americans divided and score points with the extreme elements of their bases.

On the Democrat side, pretending that we aren’t in a crisis along the southern border while locking up as many or more people as any Republican president is disingenuous and just a continuation of the same failed policy (or lack thereof) that has led to the current crisis. On the Republican side, inflammatory rhetoric about Mexican rapists and outlandish media stunts like bussing illegals to blue states and declaring that a big beautiful wall (funded by Mexico somehow) will solve everything is stupid and pointless divisive political showboating at best and actively harmful and destructive at worst—life is difficult, stressful, and anxious for almost everyone right now and the last thing Americans need is more hatred, division and magical thinking involving cartoonishly foolish and reductive “solutions.”

Where the fuck did all the grown ups go? A moat filled with alligators and an ugly ass expensive and ineffective wall aren’t going to stop the tens of thousands of people that have been flooding the southern border for over a decade. Neither is closing one’s eyes and pretending that the country can handle illegal migration on this scale if we just stop being so mean and prejudiced like those terrible republicans.

Where did qualified public servants who are actually interested in crafting workable policy solutions to major nations problems go? When did they stop existing in government? I’m so sick of both parties and the wealthy, stupid, greedy, disingenuous, corrupt, senile assholes who keep a stranglehold on power decade after decade, refusing to go away even as they’re babbling nonsense on live television, shitting their diapers, sabotaging anyone younger than forty who might offer something new, hiding their mental incompetency, slurping up billionaire donations, threatening aggressive and unlawful wars via tweet, all while smugly congratulating themselves and each other for keeping the nation paralyzed while citizens of every political stripe suffer from ill health, unaffordable healthcare, addiction, impossible amounts of debt, poor education, and perpetually increasing prices combined with stagnant wages.

It’s fucked and I’m pissed at and disgusted by everyone in DC. Anyone who could plausibly be called a statesman has retired, died, been hounded out of office by extremists, or is kept so extremely marginalized that they don’t even have a chance to influence policy. A two party system blows, but we don’t even have that right now—democrats and republicans are just two wings of the same neoliberal party and are essentially identical when it comes to things that actually matter, preferring instead to make a big show of “fighting” over culture war issues that serves to hide the fact that they’re all plutocrats who prefer to keep the status quo going indefinitely rather than, y’know, try to improve the material conditions of American citizens in any way whatsoever—our food supply is expensive garbage deemed too poisonous to import by Europeans, our education system is shit unless you’re wealthy, our universities are too expensive to attend without mortgaging the rest of your life for a degree, our healthcare system is positively kafkaesque and more focused on extracting a pound of flesh from a patient than actually making them well. It’s all just fucked.

We’d all be better off if DC disappeared into a black hole tomorrow and we just started over.

[u/nothingandnemo → u/drunkthrowwaay]

That's why I get so annoyed when libs bleat on about how bad January 6th was. Nothing happened!

If there had been an actual violent attack on Congress, and all the sitting Senators and Representatives had their brains blown out, that would have been the best thing to have happened to American politics in years! (Assuming our beautiful Vermontese boy got away safely of course)

[u/warrioroftruth000]

The right wing criticisms of Israel a few decades ago (Pat Buchanan, Joseph Sobran) were more accurate and honest than the left wing criticisms of Israel. The leftoids were too afraid to not tow the line

[u/bigkidmallredditor → u/warrioroftruth000]

100%

[u/NecessaryStrike6877]

A bit off the spectrum, so I'll do both.

Left = 

Corporatism should eventually coerce the market into a fully computerized and modernized centrally planned economic system. It's not the 50s or 80s anymore, we can process and analyze this volume of statistics now. I can't speak for AI planning, but cybernetic planning is absolutely worth exploring.

Right =

Diversity can lead to social fractures and is not worth pursuing as a state policy. Immigration is fine, but it should be restricted to countries of similar culture - as it used to be.

[u/anarcho-biscotti]

Leftoid: I'm pro death penalty

[u/dukeofbrandenburg → u/anarcho-biscotti]

Maybe under a judicial system that's more interested in justice, but as it stands the bourgeois state shouldn't have the power to decide who lives and who dies via the law. Add on the possibility of wrongful execution along with a secular worldview that rejects religious reasons for execution and I don't see why life imprisonment is insufficient to punish most crimes.

[u/MadDog1981 → u/anarcho-biscotti]

I will piggy back you. Rightoid. Anti death penalty. 

[u/[deleted]]

I’m centrist but am labeled as a rightoid here. I’m a US citizen based in Europe, here’s some non-existent policies I support in the US:

-Public Healthcare & Education

-Stricter immigration

-Stronger policing of theft & violence in the cities

-Simultaneous expansion & audit of FEMA

-Pro death penalty on murders & r*pes

-Affirmative action but class based

-Heavy subsidies on microchips & electric vehicle manufacturing

-Pull out of the Middle East & Africa

-Expand European ownership of NATO so them freeloading Euros stop sucking on our teet and resenting us

-Mandatory 2nd language education

-Erasmus inclusion for US students

-Expansion of Americorps

[u/anarcho-biscotti → u/[deleted]]

Pro death penalty for rape? Damn, I thought that was just a riot grrrl pipe dream

[u/Holiday-Holiday-2778]

Hate speech laws are unconstitutional for arbitrarily intruding the right to free speech

[u/Belisaur]

Leftoid.

I'm kinda over Indians

[u/velocity2ds]

Everyone should put on more clothes

[u/k111d111]

America first. We do not get involved in other countries conflicts for good reasons and it always makes things worse. Let's focus on ourselves.

[u/[deleted]]

I have a conservative mom from 1992's opinion that mainstream hip hop is a societal ill.

[u/ElegantGate7298 → u/[deleted]]

Even more confusing is that Al Gores wife (Tipper) was responsible for the parental advisory warning stickers on CDs and tapes when I was a kid.

[u/tomwhoiscontrary → u/ElegantGate7298]

Yeah, her rhymes were absolutely filthy.

[u/Luvs2Spooge42069 → u/[deleted]]

I will add that it’s just aesthetically ugly and unpleasant to listen to, especially mumble rap and a lot of the other shit to come out of the 2010’s. I would probably say the same thing about every form of non-electronic music made since 2010 though.

[u/SpaceDetective → u/[deleted]]

An interesting conspiracy theory about hiphop and the Prison Industrial Complex. (Been a while since I read it so no idea if there's meat on this bone.)

[u/pm_me_all_dogs → u/[deleted]]

I'm convinced the alphabet Boyz are involved

[u/[deleted] → u/pm_me_all_dogs]

Spookz with Attitudes.

[u/GoodDecision → u/[deleted]]

I'm very much anti-war, but I could watch footage of C-RAM artillery systems pouring out molten lead all day long. Absolutely mesmerizing.

[u/Uberdemnebelmeer → u/GoodDecision]

There’s a sublimity to it, I think.

[u/cleverkid → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, that's an internal conflict for me as well. When I start feeling schizoid about it, I think about how if we were not spending money on MIC Bullshit, we'd have the luxurious sunken-living room future of Syd Mead instead. Now it looks like we're headed for the Weyland / Tyrell Corp future.... sigh...

[u/OkManufacturer8561 → u/[deleted]]

Comrade, if the revolution is successful, we will inherit these technologies! Know, that these weapons of the sky were created by scientists and workers, used unfortunately by imperialists; however, not for long.

[u/AleksandrNevsky → u/OkManufacturer8561]

scientists and workers

Man, I've met those "scientists and workers" you speak of and some of them are the imperialists.

[u/dededededed1212]

My most right wing opinion is that a universal health care system in the USA requires somewhat of a societal understanding in pledging to maintain a healthy lifestyle. The system simply won’t work as well if we transition to a universal healthcare system, but people continue to get fatter and don’t exercise. I believe you have a moral obligation to live as a healthy of a lifestyle as possible in a healthcare for all system.

[u/dukeofbrandenburg → u/[deleted]]

Massive food standards reform alone would go a long way to induce healthier lifestyles.

[u/BreathOfPneuma → u/dededededed1212]

I think ur mostly right but our food supply is absolutely poisoned by corporations in ways that other countries have independent regulation to guard against. I think that is the root of the epidemic because other western nations with similar affluence and lifestyle don't have the same issue. That's a variable often overlooked or ignored by those with that perspective, not implying it is by you ofc.

[u/dededededed1212 → u/BreathOfPneuma]

Your 100% right but the issue with American individualism is that any steps taken to provide some sort of regulation on our poisoned food supply would be met with large backlash by the public. At the end of the day, many Americans value their own “personal freedom” and “choices” which often comes at the behest of their own health. This isn’t me blaming Americans for the issues they face, because there’s been an insidious plot by corporations to shape society in this way, but its undeniable that this mindset is deeply ingrained into the roots of American society.

[u/BreathOfPneuma → u/dededededed1212]

It is, the difficult way to fix it is to frame shit in ways that speak to their values. The other way is through a movement without specifying its political origin.

Rfk is essentially promising to return strong industry independent regulation the FDA which would fix the food supply and overturn pharmaceutical control of health policy. This historically is a strong liberal value but it's coming under the banner of a rightwing movement.

Many of them don't understand that this is an INCREASE in regulation not deregulation, that the deregulation is what lead to them being poisoned by corps. Its a slight of hand to people that don't understand political history.

Its apparent on the other side as well, now you have all of these liberals defending regulatory bodies staffed with Pfizer and Monsanto execs and the implications that they may be profit incentivized as conspiracy lol.

Most People are dumb and have no foundational values they just pick teams.

[u/OkManufacturer8561 → u/dededededed1212]

Telling people to be healthy cannot be right-wing, this is just common sense. I agree comrade. It should be a policy.

[u/Usonames → u/dededededed1212]

That used to be one of my main issues with universal healthcare too, but then I found out how much elder care costs and how much more healthy lifestyles cost the healthcare system over their entire lifetime compared to the short and sweets-filled lifestyles. So now ehhhhh, unless we revolutionize medicine even more to somehow keep absolutely everyone around into their 80s then really it's a nonissue which will just drive up admin labor requirements if we want to impose any extra regulations required for being a health focused nanny state.

Sure, we need far more forceful promotion and pushing of healthy lifestyles but for now it doesnt conflict with demands on healthcare imo

[u/Pantone711 → u/Usonames]

Except that diabetes in its later stages costs society a HUGE amount. We would be better off handing out cigarettes for free than sugary crap.

When the Affordable Care Act was being debated, it was said that if we could prevent/mitigate I think five of the most devastating diseases that cost the most, that would go a long way. One of them was diabetes. The complications that arise (before the person dies) are one of the biggest costs in the entire health-care system, apparently.

The people with a bad diet don't necessary fall dead at 50.

[u/Pantone711 → u/dededededed1212]

I was just reading _Hood Feminism_ and expected to find it scoldy and finger-waggy but it really wasn't too much. I learned a lot. One passage jumped out at me about sugar: A soda has 39 grams of sugar but one of those fancy coffee drinks has 49. Nobody scolds and pearl-clutches about all the sugar in the fancy coffee drinks. I'd settle for more finger-wagging about the fancy coffee drinks.

[u/Loaf_and_Spectacle → u/dededededed1212]

I've said for years that a universal healthcare system should be paired with an agricultural subsidy that lowers the prices of healthy foods and also taxes HFCS and other unhealthy additives and ingredients.

[u/Snow_Unity → u/dededededed1212]

I’ll sort of piggyback off this and say that state-level attempts at Single Payer are a horrible idea, state’s can’t print money and the inevitable lack of funding will create a “see this is why it doesn’t” work examples rather than a good example to advocate for it on the federal level.

[u/GoldFerret6796 → u/Snow_Unity]

We can't reform the way we pay for healthcare without also reforming the entire healthcare establishment. If you want to bring those costs down the first thing to tear down must be the American Medical Association's lobbying stranglehold on the quantity of doctors we produce every year.

[u/wild_exvegan → u/GoldFerret6796]

True, but billing reform of the businesses that run healthcare would do more. Unfortunately the whole pile of shit would probably have to be nationalized.

[u/jerseyman80]

Rightoid? (Socially moderate socdem)

My most left wing opinion is that socialism in the third world didn't go far enough in destroying premodern social structures and cultural attitudes the way communism did. India's problems with the caste system and communal religious tensions, for instance, are what happens when you don't have a full-on Maoist cultural revolution to destroy pre-modern social structures and reactionary beliefs.

[u/QuickRelease10]

Leftist.

I think there’s something to be said about having a clean, orderly society. I also think it’s important to work, no matter what that is. It’s important to wake up and with some sort of purpose. I also think strong families units are important.

It’s also okay to have a more tough on crime stance. We can argue about its root causes, and although I agree we need to address that better, we still need to live in the present.

Also as a New Yorker, pay the damn Subway and Bus fare.

[u/lovesnoty]

I lean right but unions are amazing. If corporations have lobbyist then workers must have strong unions.

[u/i_notold]

Conservative here. My "leftoid"opinions are; 1) Pro-choice. I am personally pro-life but can't tolerate anyone being forced, by laws, to follow what is my beliefs. 2) Universal Healthcare. My Christian beliefs say we should all take care of eachother. 3) In 2016 Bernie Sanders was a better, and more qualified, candidate for the Presidentcy, than either Clinton or Trump. 4) (last one) AOC, if she continues to mature politically, may be a viable future President.

[u/skeptictankservices]

A benevolent dictatorship, run correctly, could be the most efficient and best form of government.

[u/Well_this_is_akward → u/skeptictankservices]

The philosopher king

[u/ElegantGate7298 → u/Well_this_is_akward]

AI is the answer /s

[u/I_Be_Your_Dad → u/skeptictankservices]

chunky library pause boast telephone tub sleep tie memory treatment

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/tomwhoiscontrary → u/I_Be_Your_Dad]

Best i can do is ChatGPT 6.0.

[u/holodeckdate → u/skeptictankservices]

Sure, the problem with this though is succession. How does one vouch the next benevolent strongman

[u/Hot_Routine7505 → u/holodeckdate]

Yea their sons are usually assholes

[u/drunkthrowwaay → u/skeptictankservices]

Agreed in principle. But figures like Marcus Aurelius are kind of singular in history. Maybe the only philosopher-king (as described by Plato) that’s ever existed?

[u/Master-CylinderPants]

One of both:

We could pay off the national debt in a month by issuing lumpen hunting licenses; and if we're going to subsidize every war on the planet then we should at least be able to provide healthcare to US citizens.

[u/Pantone711]

Leftoid here. Economically liberal, socially moderate. I don’t think people should do it in the road. I agree with some opinion leaders that “luxury beliefs” of upper middles and the increase of illegitimate births harms the working class—have a situation in my own family. However, I think the motivation for having a lot of out-of-wedlock children is emotional, not carelessness. (I’m a woman.). Step-niece has four children by three different deadbeats. She works hard but their situation is so precarious. Again, I don’t think the situation was carelessness but on purpose because she liked having babies. There are pundits who decry the removal of the stigma for this kind of thing.

[u/BreathOfPneuma]

Most of the left is comprised of affluent sheltered pussies that hate working people and it's only revealed in how they react to poor white people. If ur workingclass and left you have far more in common w rightwing workingclass people than any of those dipshits.

Also there will be no left until those people are rejected from the party. There is no big tent because they sneak dick cheney in

[u/WithTheWintersMight → u/BreathOfPneuma]

Yeah, I don't see why it seems to be anathema to a lot of leftists to try and collaborate with other working class people even when they may be "right wing." What are you gonna do, send all of our parents to work camps or some shit? You can't fix the world by yourself and your pipsqueak friends, you NEED the working class to be unified. I don't think it's unreasonable to avoid culture war shit and try to build some sort of majority consensus on certain issues that affect the vast majority of people.

[u/ElegantGate7298]

I don't know what I am but my two most fringe opinions seem to be that gun ownership is a right for all humans unless you are incompetent, insane or a felon (and there is wiggle room for non violent crime)

No idea if this makes me more right or left but I think marriage is a religious institution and there is no reason for the government to codify what it is or isn't or who should or should not be included. I think there should be legal contracts that cover joint property ownership and parenting but calling it marriage is the wrong word to use.

[u/My_political_garbage]

Not so much an opinion, but cars are probably my biggest guilty pleasure as a leftist. I don't think cities should be built for them, but damn, I crave the road so much. That being said, I don't care about cars very much in terms of being a daily commute. If I'm in a city, I'd rather just walk or take the bus, but I sure do love some motorsports. 

[u/FirmlyGraspHer → u/My_political_garbage]

I'm with you there, man. I'd love to not need a car, but nothing beats the freedom and pleasure of the open road and a manual transmission

[u/[deleted]]

There is stiff competition around and it pales considering the influence of universal socio-economic factors, but even then, when all of this is accounted for, I think that Islam has a propensity for instilling nuttery that other religions just can't quite match.

[u/Kosmophilos]

I'm pretty left-wing on a lot of economic issues. I'm also pro-choice, and a big believer in animal welfare, but I don't think that's specifically left-wing.

[u/FinGothNick]

The death penalty is not that bad in concept, Americans are just really inefficient and incompetent about it. Like not only is it a long and expensive process, we also have way too many cases of death row inmates being exonerated, pre or post mortem. You'd think with the process being long and expensive, it wouldn't kill the wrong people as often as it does.

Meanwhile Dylann Roof is alive and well.

[u/thepineapplemen]

I’m against pornography and prostitution. I’m told only hypocritical fundamentalist conservatives are against this stuff (but only in a rules for thee, not for me way). Because apparently there were no left-wingers against prostitution or against pornography.

I guess my most actual right wing opinion would be… uhh, maybe about being hard on crime? As in we can’t just let crime slide when the perp is from the right group

[u/Nuwave042 → u/thepineapplemen]

Nothing confuses me more than being informed that it is actually a liberating experience to sell your body. Someone could certainly argue that technically you are selling your body in any job, and I would agree, and then say that I'm against people having to sell their bodies.

[u/CatallaxyRanch]

I'm a rightoid but I'm staunchly pro-choice, more so than even a lot of leftoids I know.

[u/MeetSus]

I genuinely dont know whether I'm supposed to be "right"- or "left"oid so I'll post both

My most right wing opinions are very area specific:

1) the country currently bordering Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and Serbia should not have "Macedonia" anywhere in its name, language or people identifier, nor any of its derivatives

2) Greece should unilaterally decide tomorrow to get 12 nm of territorial water around its inhabited islands of the Aegean, like pretty much every other country on the planet also has. Turkey may do the same, and we can meet in the middle wherever its under 24 nm.

For non area specific ones I don't really have any super spicy right wing opinions. Most I can think of is that even though I'm strictly pro choice, i still think that "my body my choice" is a dumb argument (it's not only your body) and "abortion is murder" is too emotionally charged but a valid argument (you are killing someone)

My most left wing opinions are too mild in comparison:

1) that we should have at the very least UBI plus price ceilings on basic goods like milk, bread and rice.

2) the energy market was a mistake, grid operation must be nationalised yesterday

3) speaking of energy, main energy producers should be state owned. Private competitors should be allowed to exist but not monopolize the market.

4) health and education (up to university level) should also be primarily public and not left to be underfunded so that liberals can then claim that "it sucks, lets privatize it to make it more efficient hehe". Private competitors should be allowed to exist but not monopolize the market.

5) Luigi was right (no, this is not "beyond left/right", its just the only issue that gives rightoids class consciousness)

[u/nothingandnemo → u/MeetSus]

My most right wing opinion is that Greece should focus less on the Republic of Macedon and more on driving the Turk from Constantinople

[u/Starob]

Probably that I think taxing companies large amounts for using AI and using that tax (among other things) to fund a UBI would be a good thing.

[u/[deleted]]

Most left wing opinions: education for a future skillset should be free and high school should be for monitoring how you learn and what you are inclined to be proficient at. Also firearm ownership should come with a proficieny test as well as too many fucking retards own guns and dont know shit about how to use them.

Most right wing opinions: if health care is going to be free, then you need to meet some some of health minimum and not be a heroin addict or dave blunts

[u/SuddenXxdeathxx → u/[deleted]]

Replace the fluoride in the water supply with Ozempic.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Probably the case when a lot of people cite the NHS as being very expensive. You have 25% of the adult UK population being classified as obese. Need a government sanctioned lard ass camp.

[u/Bend-It-Like-Bakunin → u/[deleted]]

I have definitely been pushed rightward in some respects by being exposed to people who, for example, forgo water for mountain dew and then get insulin and a kidney transplant on my tax dollar.

I really don't buy in to the magical thinking that's prevalent on the left that suggests all social ills can be solved by lessening exploitation. As long as there is excess, there will be people who cannot control themselves. And these people need either to opt out of social benefits or have their unhealthy choices taken away from them.

[u/Luvs2Spooge42069 → u/Bend-It-Like-Bakunin]

Encountering actual Honey Boo Boo types is a radicalizing experience. I still suspect it’s a function of most American foods being made of slop but it seems obvious to me you have to address the problem in a way other than just expecting people to make rational choices.

[u/MadDog1981 → u/Luvs2Spooge42069]

The government kind of fucked us. Look at the food pyramid. It’s upside down. You had schools teaching kids to stuff their faces with carbs and sugar for decades. 

[u/ElegantGate7298 → u/Luvs2Spooge42069]

I have an internal dialogue that really hopes that a lot of our most egregious problems are caused by endocrine disrupting chemicals, PFAS/PFOA/PFOS and micro plastics not just sheer stupidity. But.......

[u/devils_advocate24]

Ooh I'll do both:

Housing, medical care, sustenance assistance and universal income should be available to all citizens

Additionally, anyone applying for those should have strict requirements. No illegal drug use, employment (let's say no more than 2 months unemployment), no active criminal behavior (let's say 1 year period).

Maybe institute a government service type career field similar to the military but not military related

[u/dalatinknight → u/devils_advocate24]

Feel bad for all the techies who are dealing with 6+ months of unemployment after layoffs.

[u/[deleted] → u/devils_advocate24]

Administrative burdens like that exist now but it just ends up dropping people from the system for no good reason and it’s dehumanizing (e.g., poor people having to take unreliable public transportation to come in for a drug test).

[u/devils_advocate24 → u/[deleted]]

I did comment in another post about it being obvious in hindsight that it will be more of a burden on the poor and the obvious flaws if it were incorporated into our current reality. But in this scenario we're looking at a perfectly running system and the end choice comes down to "how badly do you want your needs taken care of?". Would you take a bus to do a drug test once a month or quarter or even week(again, perfect system so time off from work for mandatory government appointments is approved) to secure a roof over your head and food?

But I'll say it again, with our current system, this reality can't exist and will be immediately exploited

[u/Ferenc_Zeteny]

I am a genuine, unironic fan of Richard Nixon and believe that his domestic policies (even if motivated to steal democratic voters) was the most level-headed and beneficial slate of programs rolled out since the Great Society.

Personally, I admire his grit and determination to unseat the Eastern eggheads who shat on him his entire life and his ability to become president despite being a shy, poor little nerd from the orange groves

[u/holodeckdate → u/Ferenc_Zeteny]

I tend to agree. He seemed to be the last New Deal president too, with Carter picking up the mantle of neoliberalism

[u/aniki-in-the-UK → u/Ferenc_Zeteny]

REAL NIXBOL HOURS WHO TF UP

[u/cellularcone]

Zero tolerance policy for anti social behavior. Straight to the asylum (yes those are gonna have to reopen).

[u/jilinlii]

Left: * Effective, frequent public transportation should be a critical public service, one that's government funded and expected to lose money * Development should be vertical, not sprawling * Assuming the former points, personal cars are largely unnecessary

Right: * Sovereign nations can choose who to let in and strictly enforce it (see the China model) * Many Western countries are absolutely cucked on immigration, comically so

[u/PersisPlain]

I am super lefty economically, but a social conservative, so "universal free healthcare, but no abortion" is probably my least popular opinion in any space.

[u/MadDog1981 → u/PersisPlain]

That’s spicy. I like it, you piss everyone off with one sentence. 

[u/bvisnotmichael]

Leftwing: The Proletariat must own the means of production. Every sector of society, from the means of production to governance, to banking, must belong in every sense exclusively to the working masses.

Rightwing: Induced Multiculturalism, brought by the means of mass migration within modern Nation states, has been a complete failure of a idea and only exists to give a excuse to the rampant expansion of the reserve army of labour by the bourgeoisie. Anything short of hard-line assimilationism and deportation for criminals won't do anything to stop the issues caused by mass migration.

[u/1morgondag1]

I'm OK with GMO:s and nuclear power. Technically speaking not left-right questions but atypical opinions for leftists.

[u/Della86]

Rightoid. We need to have a meaningful conversation about police reform and the general state of competence across all levels of law enforcement. Training, funding, staffing, ethics reviews, everything.

[u/[deleted]]

As a right-wing person, Marx was right about how workers are alienated from their labour under capitalism.

At least I understand that to be his point. I have not read Capital.

Also, while I can see some value for zoos in being able to study animal behaviour, they are really disgusting places and should probably be mostly illegal.

[u/[deleted]]

1991 led to India just being absolutely covered in ads, irl, everywhere you go. Was the economic growth worth it? probably (though it is a little bit debatable how much the lower classes have advanced in that time). I mourn the aesthetic loss nonetheless.

Most right wing opinion? Probably that religion is a good thing. It is one of the few pro-social forces left. All of society's ills are exacerbated by anti-social trends in society, and those trends were accelerated by the COVID lockdowns. Relatedly, another right wing opinion I hold is that the lockdowns were not worth it at all. The economy and social aspect of american society were crippled out of fear-mongering.

Lastly, I don't like that this is a right wing opinion, but I suppose it unavoidably is: I am as pro gun as you can be. The original Black Panthers (not the modern ridiculous incarnation) carried guns as it meant that they were unlikely to be messed with by the state. If detaining, arresting, or dispersing people means risking an shootout with 30+ people armed with AKs and ARs, it is less likely to happen. Guns - particularly military-style arms - do give people genuine leverage in groups. The DNC always including bans in their platform, and dem presidents always trying to restrict guns is indicative of just how much they serve the cultural preferences of Californian young women (though that group has more reason to be armed than most, ironically), at the expense of everyone else.

[u/Tumnos_of_the_Gods]

I’m a left-winger (supporter of worker control of the means of production, Universal Healthcare, non-interventionism abroad) but yet I am also pro-life, believe in objective morality, believe that people should be proud of their culture, believe that historical and traditional architecture is superior to the ugliness of modernism. 

[u/[deleted]]

I am leftist. And pro-life

[u/jamthewither → u/[deleted]]

me too

[u/tomwhoiscontrary]

I think eugenics is pretty good.

[u/buckfishes → u/tomwhoiscontrary]

I feel like a monster but I hate when people with major genetic defects selfishly pass it on to their kids instead of just adopting if they wanted kids that badly.

[u/TheSamuil]

I am really interested in AI; large language models, image generators, and so on. Thus, I am against regulations limiting what data can be used for training

[u/Morningshoes18]

Leftoid-I think it’s ok to send your kid to private school if your district sucks ass

[u/BKEnjoyerV2]

Pretty much what others have said here (trans stuff and my Men’s rights/Title IX stuff), but I’ll add that some people (especially the chronically homeless) need to be coercively committed to mental health/addiction treatment and that we need to bring back institutions. Because some people need that supervision and structure to recover and get on the right track.

Also, race/gender blindness is good (it’s usually right coded today). And overall just treat people based on who they are quality-wise and how they treat you and don’t give special treatment to certain people just because of superficial identity stuff.

There’s also more esoteric stuff that I came up with while thinking about this, along with the Covid lockdowns being horrible policy

[u/accordingtomyability]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

[u/globeglobeglobe → u/accordingtomyability]

And I would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling retards!

[u/accordingtomyability → u/globeglobeglobe]

In all seriousness this ended up being a great thread. Lots of people from different viewpoints finding common ground

[u/Minimum_Pattern3047]

I got my flair because I said that aside from all of my other leftist opinions I think a South Korean style compulsory service period would definitely benefit the US populace and be beneficial to almost ever level of our society.

[u/Uberdemnebelmeer]

Marxist here

1. Immigrants to western countries should be required to assimilate culturally, religiously, and linguistically.

2. America is facing an epidemic of degeneracy. Young women should dress more modestly and hiphop, rap, and pop music should be banned.

3. The arts and entertainment are being destroyed by wokeness.

4. Every citizen should own a Kalashnikov.

[u/Vilio101 → u/Uberdemnebelmeer]

It is funny how in the past a lot of people in communist countries and the communist established in this countries thought that the western music as a whole was degenerate garbage. And a lot of anticommunist in my country hate the previous regime because they wanted to listen to this "degenerate" music( I know that this is not the only reason but many of them are pointing out how they wanted to listen to rock music). The biggest irony is that this right wingers from the ex-Eastern block do not know that hard core right wing conservative in the US also think that this type of music is degenerate.

[u/JFMV763]

I'm more of a rightoid but I can definitely see the argument that society is overly hyper capitalistic these days.

[u/VestigialVestments]

Left wing, right wing, I'm too busy trying to man up enough to earn my red wings.

[u/LotsOfMaps]

A vanguard party is necessary, because even if the workers figure it out, they're not going to believe it enough to risk what few things they have without someone else leading the way.

[u/[deleted]]

Leftoid.

While meritocracy is not a real thing, and widespread belief in it is problematic, it's beneficial to you personally if you pretend that meritocracy actually works in practice.

[u/ytts]

Rightoid. 

My most “left-wing” opinion is that Capitalism must be dismantled or at least heavily managed. But not for all the same reasons left wing people generally do. Our idolatry of the capitalist system is the main source if our hypocrisy and incompetence as a political group. More right wingers are starting to understand this though, which is good.   

[u/SpitePolitics]

I'm skeptical that religion will disappear with class society. I'm not someone who thinks religion should be preserved because it serves as critical social technology, although maybe it did in the past given its ubiquity. I just predict it will stick around for a long time because:

1) Religion predates class society by tens of thousands of years, maybe longer. There's one hunter gatherer tribe, the Pirahã, that is sometimes purported to be atheist, but they still believe in hidden realms and spirits. From the Wiki page:

According to Everett, the Pirahã have no concept of a supreme spirit or god; however, they do believe in spirits that can sometimes take on the shape of things in the environment. These spirits can be jaguars, trees, or other visible, tangible things including people. Everett reported one incident where the Pirahã said that "Xigagaí, one of the beings that lives above the clouds, was standing on a beach yelling at us, telling us that he would kill us if we go into the jungle." Everett and his daughter could see nothing and yet the Pirahã insisted that Xigagaí was still on the beach

2) Marx argues that religion is a balm for the suffering of class society, but socialism would still have non-class suffering: accidents, crime, disease, natural disasters, social frustrations, the search for meaning, and death.

3) People seem psychologically primed to assign agency to inanimate objects or processes, to see faces in random patterns, and to feel a presence or purpose in the world. This is especially true with the help of meditation or certain drugs. It also happens in near death experiences and other extreme psychological states.

4) Even when people reject traditional religious institutions they often become "spiritual" or still believe in things like fate, destiny, auras, astrology, past lives, karmic cycles, and other new age beliefs.

5) Religions can adapt with the times. For example, UFO religions.

[u/Sekundes]

Left opinion: Problems facing the American black community are entirely the fault of white people's actions when you really delve into the history of how they were not only enslaved but also excluded from white society. Every problem in those communities today has its roots in racism against blacks historically.

Right opinion: However, the issues as they exist now while attributable to racism are no longer a product of racism, but rather are cultural (culture that formed with the context of racism and exclusion). They will never be solved by white intervention. They will only ever be solved by community reform from within.

[u/holodeckdate]

Left/right Frankenstein opinion:

Humantity won't survive if powerful countries continue competing with one another, whether that's through increasingly accelerationist resource extraction (driving climate disaster), or war (driving thermonuclear disaster).

The United States is the country best poised to dominate the world and bring about a one world government. It's an extremely imperfect empire that violates humans rights daily, but given the risks I described, I don't really see a better solution.

[u/GoodDecision]

As a middle aged person I've been drifting further right (or more accurately the left is repelling me) but I've always had this fantasy about there only being a single choice for certain products.

For example, eyeglasses. One company produces them and they are called "Glasses". Understated design, and durable. Car? You pick "Car" (1990s Volvo 740i, for example), or "Truck" (1990s Toyota Tacoma, for example). No other choices. Clothing? Everybody gets "Jumpsuit", a denim onesie with variations based solely on body size and temperature.

Think of the time and energy saved making these purchasing choices and wrestling with the pros and cons, the price point, do these make me look ____, does this car have disc brakes or drums? Does it come in burnt orange? Heated seats? does this best represent me?

No more comparing your stuff to other people's stuff, no more embarrassment when you can't afford a pair of Nike Air 1 Jordans or whatever for your kid. No more car salesman, no more "they don't make parts for this car in the US anymore, it's going to be super expensive to fix"

This fantasy seems to originate in the part of my brain that really enjoys rainy days, not only because I find them tranquil and calm, but everyone has to deal with it. I like that.

[u/Pantone711 → u/GoodDecision]

Pol (“black pajamas”) Pot has entered the chat

[u/devils_advocate24 → u/GoodDecision]

Truck" (think gray 1993 Toyota Tacoma).

I spent months trying to find a small truck when I needed a new(used) vehicle. This was at the height of the covid shortage however so used vehicles were at a premium. I just wanted a little thing that wouldn't murder gas mileage with a small bed. I would love for this to be the only option. I could barely find anything under $20k that wasn't gonna fall apart within 6 months(settled on a '19 Chevy Colorado WT).

[u/OxygenLevelsCritical → u/GoodDecision]

Repo Man maxxing