At a fundamental level, what are the flaws in my ideological thinking? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Any other minor ideologies.
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#14899272
For those who have known me well enough over the last few year, what do you think are the issues with my lines of thinking on politics in a fundamental sense?

What do you think I'm missing, or not taking seriously enough. Basically why do you think I disagree with you?

I'm honestly curious where you think our lines of thought diverge in a fundamental way.
Last edited by Cartertonian on 24 Mar 2018 10:09, edited 1 time in total. Reason: Grammar Naziism
#14899282
That's a fair request, and I don't know how helpful I can be since part of my general thoughts on myself is that I'm not generally sure what grand unifying ideology I could be said to have. I'm not a socialist because I'm not a revolutionary and I'm not particularly convinced it would work at all like socialists say it would.. I'm not a fascist because I think authoritarian power is doomed to fall into human nature and serve to enrich the people in power without regard to everyone else. So I end up being a capitalist because it works well enough if in a democratic system enough people fight hard enough to rub off it's worst edges with welfare, fixes for negative and positive externalities, and other stuff like that.

I don't, in my mind, have any sort of idea of a system that would work at all like what people who spend lots of time imagining political systems would like. There is no perfect system, I don't think there is even anything like a good system. Just okay ones and terrible ones.
#14899283
mikema63 wrote:That's a fair request, and I don't know how helpful I can be since part of my general thoughts on myself is that I'm not generally sure what grand unifying ideology I could be said to have. I'm not a socialist because I'm not a revolutionary and I'm not particularly convinced it would work at all like socialists say it would.. I'm not a fascist because I think authoritarian power is doomed to fall into human nature and serve to enrich the people in power without regard to everyone else. So I end up being a capitalist because it works well enough if in a democratic system enough people fight hard enough to rub off it's worst edges with welfare, fixes for negative and positive externalities, and other stuff like that.

I don't, in my mind, have any sort of idea of a system that would work at all like what people who spend lots of time imagining political systems would like. There is no perfect system, I don't think there is even anything like a good system. Just okay ones and terrible ones.


How do you go about deciding whether or not something is a problem that needs fixing? What is it that makes a system, in your view, "ok"?
#14899294
mikema63 wrote:...I'm not a socialist because I'm not a revolutionary and I'm not particularly convinced it would work at all like socialists say it would...


Socialism (in a formal sense) has never resolved its central dichotomy, which is whether it will be a true democracy of the workers or a dictatorship of the proletariat. The conflict was historically resolved in favor of dictatorship (Kronstadt Rebellion). The justification for DoT is utilitarian (only a vanguard can protect socialism) and is time-limited - the dictatorship's mandate was not eternal.

The end-game of socialism was supposed to be (according to accepted plan) that True Socialism of worker control of the means of production would emerge and the state would wither away.

This was, IMO, a wrong turn for socialism (though perhaps a necessary wrong turn). Socialism as an ideal is still valid, if we focus on the idea of worker control of the means of production as an initial goal, not an eventual one.
#14899324
mikema63 wrote: So I end up being a capitalist because it works well enough if in a democratic system enough people fight hard enough to rub off it's worst edges with welfare, fixes for negative and positive externalities, and other stuff like that.

I don't, in my mind, have any sort of idea of a system that would work at all like what people who spend lots of time imagining political systems would like. There is no perfect system, I don't think there is even anything like a good system. Just okay ones and terrible ones.


Two major flaws here 1) it doesn't work well enough for most of us even with the worst edges rubbed off and 2) it's not at all clear that it is the best we can do so it might very well be one of the more terrible systems within the set of realistic possibilities
#14899338
Mike originally wrote:AT A FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL, WHAT IS THE THE FLAWS IN MY IDEOLOGICAL THINKING?


At a fundamental level, I'd say, 'proof-reading', was the major flaw in your posting activity... ;)
#14899349
Most people don't want to control the means of production. Hell most people don't even want to control their own address book. The issue is not how the mass of people can increase their control over their lives but how we can give it up. They've taken away our guns, they've started on knives, they'll be coming for our cars soon enough.

The problem is people are having evil thoughts, like "I'm not sure if Islam is a religion of peace." Currently people can not just think an evil thought like that, but can even write it down, without suffering any consequences. However if a responsible Liberal corporation owned your car, then such bad thoughts could be punished by giving you a driving ban. Of course ideally even the doors and windows would be controlled by a responsible Liberal corporation like Facebook or Google.

Notice of course the big row over face-book is not that Zuckerberg shouldn't control our data, but that he let bad people non Liberals have access to it. It was only right that Hillary and Obama should have access to our data, so they could craft their messages of truth. The problem was when they gave data to bad (Nazi) people.
#14899381
mikema63 wrote:I'm honestly curious where you think our lines of thought diverge in a fundamental way.

I think you are still young enough to see politics and ideology primarily through your own point of view and personal experience, which is commonplace for society as a whole. I also think being gay makes gay people see themselves as fundamentally different from society as a whole, and that means you too. One of the weirder debates for me was the Omar Mateen shooting in Florida, where you purported to be more fearful of Christians than Islamists. Since Islamists openly say they want to kill gays and they actually do it, whereas Christians are sort of annoyingly vocal but usually not particularly violent, it struck me that you have a sort of blind spot there where some sort of primal anger takes over. That sort of "anger at rejection" sort of thing will usually color ideological outlook. As a typical American, I think you are also more inclined to see a two-party political system when it is largely an illusion.

mikema63 wrote:I'm not a socialist because I'm not a revolutionary and I'm not particularly convinced it would work at all like socialists say it would.. I'm not a fascist because I think authoritarian power is doomed to fall into human nature and serve to enrich the people in power without regard to everyone else. So I end up being a capitalist because it works well enough if in a democratic system enough people fight hard enough to rub off it's worst edges with welfare, fixes for negative and positive externalities, and other stuff like that.

Well, we end up debating quite a bit; yet, with that sort of ideological description, we are not that far apart. However, I'm substantially more libertarian than egalitarian, so I'm not inclined to believe that welfare is anything more than a short term answer or buffer for capable and responsible people, and a fairly dismal way of life for incapable and irresponsible people. I'm also openly hostile to political correctness.

quetzlcoatl wrote:Socialism (in a formal sense) has never resolved its central dichotomy, which is whether it will be a true democracy of the workers or a dictatorship of the proletariat. ... Socialism as an ideal is still valid, if we focus on the idea of worker control of the means of production as an initial goal, not an eventual one.

Another central dichotomy is that workers are also consumers. Consumers are notoriously more fickle. Everyone needs food, but some like it spicy and some like it sweet. Consumers don't want to live strictly according to their needs, so they demand of workers that they be catered to--the very same people who whilst in control of production are supposed to take a different view. From each according to his ability to each according to his needs is sounds nice, but ultimately requires some sort of dictatorship to work as an econmic system.

Rich wrote:Most people don't want to control the means of production. Hell most people don't even want to control their own address book. The issue is not how the mass of people can increase their control over their lives but how we can give it up. They've taken away our guns, they've started on knives, they'll be coming for our cars soon enough.

The problem is people are having evil thoughts, like "I'm not sure if Islam is a religion of peace." Currently people can not just think an evil thought like that, but can even write it down, without suffering any consequences. However if a responsible Liberal corporation owned your car, then such bad thoughts could be punished by giving you a driving ban. Of course ideally even the doors and windows would be controlled by a responsible Liberal corporation like Facebook or Google.

Notice of course the big row over face-book is not that Zuckerberg shouldn't control our data, but that he let bad people non Liberals have access to it. It was only right that Hillary and Obama should have access to our data, so they could craft their messages of truth. The problem was when they gave data to bad (Nazi) people.

That's a lot of information, but I think it can be reduced to nationalism versus globalism. The globalists think they can spread their ideology everywhere, which I think is a kind of a stupid idea. The Clintons, Muellers, etc. of the world believe in one government, one currency, one religion, and truly think that is an enlightened position. I think it is a position for people who can't count to two or more.

B0ycey wrote:At best the ideology you should support needs to be in your interest and something you believe in.

Yes, but that would lead to too constrained an ideology, because it doesn't consider the common needs of others. Remember mikema63 is gay. Homosexuals will naturally have "needs" and things they "believe in" where society at large will more likely express apathy or antipathy rather than sympathy. An ideology has to be able to survive contact with the larger society to have any relevance.
#14899383
@blackjack21

There is however a clear difference between Muslims and Islamists. Furthermore @mikema63 backed this claim up with statistics showing the amount of violent acts committed by far-right extremists to that of Islamists in America and there is a clear indication that far-right extremists commit more crimes yearly than Islamists ever did. Muslim terrorist acts only get more media coverage.

Also Omar Mateen himself is gay. His inner, repressed homosexuality combined with his belief in a religion which considers being gay a sin resulted in the shooting.
#14899385
B0ycey wrote:Is there a perfect ideology? At best the ideology you should support needs to be in your interest and something you believe in. Everything else is debatable. And if there is any flaws in your ideology it is because you support something you don't believe in. So only you could answer that question.


I agree with this. The flaw is in believing you must have the ‘correct’ ideology. Whatever you want is fine, just don’t force it on me.
#14899479
I really don't know and the premise is rather pretentious, but that will somewhat lead into my main response. You strike me as an adherent to mainstream American 'Liberal Democrat' ideology, replete with all the smugness and self-righteousness which goes with that. The chief flaw is that this is a bourgeous ideology, which seeks to explain away the flaws of capitalism by way of righteous thoughts (though what is considered righteous by adherents revolves around Liberal-Democratic groupthink).

You probably think Democracy Now! is at the apex of what a 'good news program' is. Democracy Now! is not a bad program and I use to listen to it, but it isn't really all that its cracked up to be.

If anything in there offended you, that's fine and well, because you asked the question and one should never ask a question if they can not accept an honest opinion in return.

Granted, as I said, the premise was pretentious--that is expecting people to be able to answer the question precisely in the first place. And while I may have been reborn on the forum rather recently, I did read numerous of your posts on my previous stints.
#14899511
Oxymandias wrote:There is however a clear difference between Muslims and Islamists.

Yes, and I chose my terms specifically to make that distinction.

Oxymandias wrote:Furthermore @mikema63 backed this claim up with statistics showing the amount of violent acts committed by far-right extremists to that of Islamists in America and there is a clear indication that far-right extremists commit more crimes yearly than Islamists ever did.

That is not a population weighted number, and there are very few Muslims in the US compared to Christians.

Oxymandias wrote:Muslim terrorist acts only get more media coverage.

There aren't that many crimes of Christians that would be characterized as terrorism. The only things that come to my mind are blowing up abortion clinics. Perhaps there are more. However, as the late Fred Van Amberg used to say, "if it bleeds, it leads." That is the truth with American television news.

I think Crantag nailed the ideology point considerably better than I did, but I probably honed in on the background psychology a bit more specifically.
Crantag wrote:The chief flaw is that this is a bourgeous ideology, which seeks to explain away the flaws of capitalism by way of righteous thoughts (though what is considered righteous by adherents revolves around Liberal-Democratic groupthink).

That is America's political left in a nutshell, and it's precisely the elitist smugness that caused Hillary Clinton to crash and burn in 2016, and to make the exact same mistake in her follow up comments a few weeks ago. While I defend capitalism, I'm more of a nationalist and I see fundamental problems with egalitarianism, which is why communism and socialism simply don't appeal to me. It's not just disagreement, but I consider them a waste of time.

Oxymandias wrote:Also Omar Mateen himself is gay. His inner, repressed homosexuality combined with his belief in a religion which considers being gay a sin resulted in the shooting.

That's unsubstantiated speculation. He is also very dead, so we really don't know. What made Mohammed Atta tick? What about Osama bin Laden? Did they all just want to participate in a circle jerk? There's that weird "gay Thursday" in Afghanistan, which is a trip considering you'd get killed on pretty much any other day of the week. Yet, homosexual repression doesn't really explain why Islamists want to kill Americans in large numbers in my view.

Crantag wrote:You strike me as an adherent to mainstream American 'Liberal Democrat' ideology, replete with all the smugness and self-righteousness which goes with that. The chief flaw is that this is a bourgeous ideology, which seeks to explain away the flaws of capitalism by way of righteous thoughts (though what is considered righteous by adherents revolves around Liberal-Democratic groupthink).

Well, that's where I see the fear of Christians--usually people who are more "salt of the Earth" types that aren't deeply involved in biochemistry, etc.--coming into his world view. That's the smug and self-righteousness that is so common among America's left. It's also something I find really counterintuitive for people purporting to be egalitarians.
#14899523
Reichstraten wrote:Why do you need a clear-cut political ideology to start off with? :roll:
So you know what your standpoint is in a given situation?
Free yourself from the bonds of ideology!

This.

If you pin your colours to an ideological mast, there will then be an expectation of adherence to that ideology, both from within yourself and from other adherents. Adherence breeds dogmatism... and the twentieth Century taught us of the dangers of ideological dogmatism.
#14899538
Albert wrote:For me it boils down to two forces in this world; ones who believe in truth and the ones who do not. So I have to ask you, is there truth?

That's the textbook definition of a closed-minded ideologue. A 'Black & White thinking', 'I'm right - you're wrong', polarised, adversarial mentality that blights political discourse.
#14899560
@blackjack21

However the crime rate is abysmal compared to it's actual population size. As a population grows, crime for that respective population grows by 3.1 percent. Muslims in the US have low population numbers but even lower crime rates. This is an abnormality especially given that many US Muslims are more knowledgeable about Islam than their European counterparts.

Do you consider a Christian shooting up a black church an act of terrorism? Do you consider a Muslim punching a random person in the face an act of terrorism? Your answer to both these questions will determine just whether you know the actual definition of terrorism. I have no idea what you mean by the last sentence. What does American television have to do with this?

I am talking about Omar Mateen specifically, not all Islamists and given the information we have of his personal life, His being gay is very feasible. A male friend of his from 2006, when the two were in police academy together, said that Mateen went to gay clubs with him and that Mateen once expressed an interest in dating him. Club-goers also recalled Mateen dancing with another man. One classmate, who asked not to be identified by name, said Mateen asked him if he was gay.

Furthermore Omar Mateen was reported to have been a regular at the aforementioned night-club where the tragedy happened. Sometimes Mateen drank in a corner by himself, other times he was loud and obnoxious. A witness, who recognized Mateen outside the club an hour before the shootings, told investigators that Mateen had been messaging him for about a year using a gay dating app called "Jack'd". He gave his phone to the FBI for analysis, along with his login details for the application. Another witness said that Mateen had tried to pick up men at the nightclub.

Furthermore, his father was an Islamist himself, had very negative thoughts on gays and lesbians, and was described as a strict, abusive father. This may not be about Islam but about his father representing authority and ergo Islam and his own homosexuality.

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