What is Your Political Orientation?

[Florestan]

Not only are you required to have an ID (adding insult to injury you have to pay for it every 10 years or so when it has to be renewed!) but you are also required on pain of a fine to register at your place of residence after a move (and this new place of residence will be entered in your ID). I am not sure about the techicalities but it is some kind of misdemeanour if you move and don't register within a few weeks or so afterwards!

The first bolded part is true in Romania as well. The second one is not. One is not required to register after a move, either in the same city or from one city to another. One may choose to do so, though, because absent that registering one cannot do in the new location all the things one could do in the older one, for instance voting in the local elections. It is certainly a misdemeanor, though, not to renew one's ID after it has expired. A routine traffic police control more often than not results in one's being fined if their ID is expired.

[Jo498]

I am not convinced of this.  I see a pretty stark difference between real life and online behavior and corporate media representations of life.  It has always been thus. 

Obviously "everyone" was a bit of hyperbole. But it has never been before the case that it can become a shibboleth to accept that some men are women and that official government representatives claim publicly that there were more than the two known sexes in (human) biology. This is for me close to "How many fingers, Winston?" from 1984, room 101. The ruling coalition (Green, Social democrats, Liberals (on paper more like business friendly soft libertarians, not liberals in the US sense)) wants to make a "self determination" law that one can decide once per year! (I really hope some pranksters will switch every year just for fun) that one is a man or a woman (or maybe some made up fantasy gender, not sure) and people who disrespect the "pronouns" or "deadname" face hefty fines. The Greens have a representative who poses as "transwoman" but he is a fully functional male (sired two children!) in a dress and wig who got his seat via a women's quota internal to the party). If this is not raving madness, I don't know. (One has to go back to Caligula's horse in the senate and Nero's favorite eunuch Sporus to find similar decadence.) (To clarify, I am not against people with severe mental disorders wrt gender or intersex persons getting therapy or medical help but this should be handled discreetly and I am strongly against the right to force others to play along with publicly displayed mental illness or sexual fetishes.)

I also don't think that it has ever been the case that the ideas that a country should have control over borders and immigration or that a standard/typical family was father, mother and children was framed as "far right". I am 50 years old and would have described myself as "center left" in most issues until about 10 years ago or so (I was a bit more conservative wrt "family values"). For some years I was quite leftist in some economical issues (basically "old fashioned 70s/80s social democracy style), because I was fairly mad at the political elites enabling banksters around the 2008 crisis. I became skeptical about Euro/EU with the problems with Greece etc. that followed but still sympathizing with both "left" and "right" critiques of the EU (I now think it is a despicable and unredeemable cesspool of grifters and all of the EUrocrats should be sent to Siberia, or even better to Mars.) I was quite neutral/disinterested about the (European) "migrant crisis" until around 2017 when I realized the utter madness it was. This alone (+ the common sense social conservatism wrt gender, family etc. and an affirmative stance towards Western culture and history) has shifted me to what is deemed "far right" nowadays which is crazy because the content of most of my positions would have been centrist or even center left as late as the mid-1990s. Although admittedly I have become more traditional/conservative because I now see that the seemingly moderate policies of the 1970s-90s led to the current madness and that Europe has been "running on fumes" in many respects for more than a century.

[SimonNZ]

In Romania you cannot get/renew a passport or a driver license if you do not have a valid ID card. 

Unless you're contending that the countries I listed above have famously weaker election security than yours then I don't see what your beef is here.

[Brian]

I see a pretty stark difference between real life and online behavior and corporate media representations of life.  It has always been thus.  I will say that in some settings, people have become less patient and more abrasive in public, elderly people (especially boomers) more than anyone else.  This started in the early phases of the pandemic.  This may be a local thing.

I basically agree with this viewpoint. Being "extremely online," as they say, skews one's impression of what is important to most people. So does watching a lot of local television. It would be like forming your impression of humanity based solely on how they drive on the highway.

[Brian]

I struggle to answer this question because my views fall scattershot across the political spectrum. And my views aren't even complete, in the sense that there are things where I am undecided.

In the United States, probably I would be described by other people as "far left" for certain views (such as that the Founding Fathers' intentions should not be accorded the kind of reverence and fealty they receive now). In Europe, I would probably be described as a centrist or center-left.

[Florestan]

Unless you're contending that the countries I listed above have famously weaker election security than yours then I don't see what your beef is here.

I have no beef. It's just that, as Jo (a German) said, we struggle to understand the whole thing about mandatory registration for voting while not being asked to show your ID at the booth. Both things are very strange to us Yurpeans, especially the ID part. In Romania one can do very few things pertaining to politics, administration, finance and even social life* without a valid ID and voting is not one of them. That is all. Nowhere in my posts did I express any concern for the election security in the USA.

*no valid ID, no marriage, either civil or religious, go figure. 

[Florestan]

Obviously "everyone" was a bit of hyperbole. But it has never been before the case that it can become a shibboleth to accept that some men are women and that official government representatives claim publicly that there were more than the two known sexes in (human) biology. This is for me close to "How many fingers, Winston?" from 1984, room 101. The ruling coalition (Green, Social democrats, Liberals (on paper more like business friendly soft libertarians, not liberals in the US sense)) wants to make a "self determination" law that one can decide once per year! (I really hope some pranksters will switch every year just for fun) that one is a man or a woman (or maybe some made up fantasy gender, not sure) and people who disrespect the "pronouns" or "deadname" face hefty fines. The Greens have a representative who poses as "transwoman" but he is a fully functional male (sired two children!) in a dress and wig who got his seat via a women's quota internal to the party). If this is not raving madness, I don't know. (One has to go back to Caligula's horse in the senate and Nero's favorite eunuch Sporus to find similar decadence.) (To clarify, I am not against people with severe mental disorders wrt gender or intersex persons getting therapy or medical help but this should be handled discreetly and I am strongly against the right to force others to play along with publicly displayed mental illness or sexual fetishes.)

I also don't think that it has ever been the case that the ideas that a country should have control over borders and immigration or that a standard/typical family was father, mother and children was framed as "far right". I am 50 years old and would have described myself as "center left" in most issues until about 10 years ago or so (I was a bit more conservative wrt "family values"). For some years I was quite leftist in some economical issues (basically "old fashioned 70s/80s social democracy style), because I was fairly mad at the political elites enabling banksters around the 2008 crisis. I became skeptical about Euro/EU with the problems with Greece etc. that followed but still sympathizing with both "left" and "right" critiques of the EU (I now think it is a despicable and unredeemable cesspool of grifters and all of the EUrocrats should be sent to Siberia, or even better to Mars.) I was quite neutral/disinterested about the (European) "migrant crisis" until around 2017 when I realized the utter madness it was. This alone (+ the common sense social conservatism wrt gender, family etc. and an affirmative stance towards Western culture and history) has shifted me to what is deemed "far right" nowadays which is crazy because the content of most of my positions would have been centrist or even center left as late as the mid-1990s. Although admittedly I have become more traditional/conservative because I now see that the seemingly moderate policies of the 1970s-90s led to the current madness and that Europe has been "running on fumes" in many respects for more than a century.

Excellent post, thank you.

[Daverz]

Why is a federal ID seen as problematic but not a state ID/driver's license?

Because it's the Mark of the Beast!

http://www.jesusisprecious.org/nwo/real_id_and_mark_of_beast.htm#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20Mark%20of%20the%20Beast%20prophecy%20makes%20one,will%20be%20in%20the%20hand%20or%20the%20forehead.

Not only are you required to have an ID (adding insult to injury you have to pay for it every 10 years or so when it has to be renewed!) but you are also required on pain of a fine to register at your place of residence after a move (and this new place of residence will be entered in your ID). I am not sure about the techicalities but it is some kind of misdemeanour if you move and don't register within a few weeks or so afterwards!

Forgive me for saying so, but that sounds very, um.... German.  In the US, I think the only requirement is for registration in case of a military draft:

"All male U.S. citizens and immigrant non-citizens who are between the ages of 18 and 25 are required by law to have registered within 30 days of their 18th birthdays, and must notify the Selective Service within ten days of any changes to any of the information they provided on their registration cards, such as a change of address."

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

Back when I was that age, I moved around a lot, but never updated my address.  I don't think Uncle Sam would have had any trouble tracking me down, though.

[71 dB]

I identify myself as "left" (closer to center-left than far left).

I advocate green social democracy and I am liberal/secular on social issues.

[drogulus]

     
     

     You are a citizen or you are a subject. The first means the state must prove it has the right to remove you. The second means you have to prove you have the right to be where you are. In the real world these are not mutually exclusive, it's some of both. I care about the balance.

     I want the state to show it's not discriminating on the basis of language, color or national origin. I realize that's deeply unfair to states, because those are the most important reasons for exclusion in the minds of pro-exclusionists. Remember when Trump posited Norway as the ideal?

     I'm probably too American to get why Turks will never be Germans. I thought the Logical Positivists abolished metaphysics.

[Daverz]

My only comment on the original poll is that I don't find these categories useful, particularly in the US context.   The "far left" here is non-existent except perhaps for some extremely online trolls, and the "left" has no political representation to speak of (Bernie did call himself a socialist, but he'd probably be centrist or center-left in Europe).  I'd call myself a "social democrat".  However, I'd be quite happy -- or at least much less anxious -- if we could just stop the country backsliding into antidemocratic quasi-fascism in the next several years.   

Obviously "everyone" was a bit of hyperbole. But it has never been before the case that it can become a shibboleth to accept that some men are women and

I would recommend giving this Professor Dave video a watch:

I don't agree with everything Dave says -- he seems a bit too reductive at points -- and Dave always comes off a bit abrasive and cocksure, but I think his heart is in the right place.

[Todd]

But it has never been before the case that it can become a shibboleth to accept that some men are women and that official government representatives claim publicly that there were more than the two known sexes in (human) biology.

Even here I differentiate between real life and online/corporate media.  In person, only a small proportion of young people, mostly college students, actually believe this.  I can't remember ever meeting someone over the age of thirty who believes it.  Possible accommodation regarding pronouns doesn't mean much.  Some trendy employers do embrace the nomenclature of so-called progressivism, and some are a bit more stringent in enforcing perceived potential violations of harassment guidelines, and so on, but it is exactly akin to greenwashing.  When the political winds change, as they do from time to time, the emphasis on this topic will wane.

I also don't think that it has ever been the case that the ideas that a country should have control over borders and immigration or that a standard/typical family was father, mother and children was framed as "far right".

I am only familiar with US immigration history and policy, and here the US has a history of wild swings in policy, ranging from explicit exclusion of some races or groups - eg, the Chinese Exclusion Act - to far more open policies.  There are both economic and political motivations behind these swings, and there is little reason to believe that will change.  I fully expect additional crackdowns on Latin American immigration in the future, and much more stringent policies regarding other countries, including China.  Again.  More globally, and longer term, human migration will become a more pressing issue as the obvious and harmful effects of climate change (eg, drought leading to famine) cause even more massive displacements of people, and ultimately result in an increasing level of outward migration rather than internal migration, which constitutes the majority of forced migration now.  As one of my public econ professors succinctly put it decades ago, rich countries have money and other resources, so poor people flee to rich countries over time.  Strict immigration laws won't stop that, nor will any enforcement short of military deployments along borders, and even that won't stop it entirely.

Now, cynical people might divine some utility in policy shifts regarding tertiary policy issues.  Divide and conquer, that sort of thing.   

[Sergeant Rock]

Center-Left

Sarge

[Todd]

...while not being asked to show your ID at the booth.

Voting booths are so 20th Century where I live.  It's been vote by mail all century.  I can't even imagine standing in line to vote anymore.  If vote by mail were eliminated, I wouldn't vote.

[drogulus]

    The gender/sex distinctions used to be handled without much in the way of codification. Men lived as women, women lived as men and manifestos were few and far between. These days everything is manifestoed to the point where the authors have more trouble with each other than they do with the unchurched.

    My reaction to the pronoun wars is based on the notion that they will burn out before they ever get to me. I'm old, so the conflicts designed to partition college students off into warring camps seem distant.

    Families have always been a bit ad hoc. It's in the stories that are told, and even more in the ones you aren't supposed to tell.

    Faced with a choice between understanding a trans woman as assuming an identity because it feels better, or as a remarkably obtuse understanding of biology, I'll go with Door #1. The only reason to go with Door #2 is to construct a phoney baloney Issue, for which the sides must share the blame.

   

[Karl Henning]

The "far left" here is non-existent except perhaps for some extremely online trolls

The Pew Research Center classifies only 6 percent of Americans and 12 percent of Democrats as "progressive left."

[Florestan]

Voting booths are so 20th Century where I live.  It's been vote by mail all century. 

Yes, I know. In this respect Romania is far behind. There have been talks about introducing voting by mail since I can't remember when but nothing happened. I guess our politicians simply don't want it to happen.

[Brian]

Voting booths are so 20th Century where I live.  It's been vote by mail all century.  I can't even imagine standing in line to vote anymore.  If vote by mail were eliminated, I wouldn't vote.

I think it's Estonia where everyone votes online.

[Todd]

I think it's Estonia where everyone votes online.

If it could be made secure, I'd embrace online voting immediately. 

[drogulus]

     McCarthy doesn't have the votes to be Speaker. It's even worse than predicted. Rep. Biggs has 10 votes and several others have a vote.

     Jeffries "won" 212-203 at the conclusion of the first round. Assorted nuts got 19 votes.