Whats some of the "opposing political sides" views you hold?

[GuessTheAltAccount]

I support "authoritarian" countries like China, since I'm more of a results-person, and they went from a backwater 3rd world country to a US-competitor within a generation, so they're doing something right. This is opposed by me being a massive privacy nut- the closest law I've found to my level of comfort is Dubai, where your permission is needed every time your picture is taken and each time your picture is shown to someone who hasn't seen it.

Typical for an authoritarian leftist actually. Supposedly believing in freedom but then shilling for the next dictatorship that happens to oppose the U.S..

On everything from Islam to workplace safety regulations, China is as far from "leftist" as it gets. :/

[The Reformed American Republic]

Typical for an authoritarian leftist actually. Supposedly believing in freedom but then shilling for the next dictatorship that happens to oppose the U.S..

On everything from Islam to workplace safety regulations, China is as far from "leftist" as it gets. :/

Which proves my point actually. China does not practice communism, but rather a form of state managed capitalism. Yet, some leftists defend it as a beacon and role model.

[Wizlandia]

I support "authoritarian" countries like China, since I'm more of a results-person, and they went from a backwater 3rd world country to a US-competitor within a generation, so they're doing something right. This is opposed by me being a massive privacy nut- the closest law I've found to my level of comfort is Dubai, where your permission is needed every time your picture is taken and each time your picture is shown to someone who hasn't seen it.

I mean its much easier to have high levels growth when you start out as an economic basket case (catch-up effect), and when combined with 1.5 billion population they will become US geopolitical competitor. The Chinese government is still incredibly incompetent:

1. The country only "pulled half of its population from poverty" because it finally abandoned its hukou system in favour of market based reforms. Who installed the hukou system, why the CCP.
2. Most of the economic literature on China puts actual GDP growth far lower than CCP reported numbers. Regardless, China's growth out of third-world poverty has been slower than many comparables such as South Korea and Taiwan.
3. The CCP's failure to shut down wet-markets led to Covid-19.
4. The CCP's penchant for punishing local officials led to the Hubei provincial government covering up the Covid threat until it was too late.
5. The CCP wastes hundreds of billions of tax-money on useless "infrastructure projects" that don't meet even the most cursory cost-benefit analysis. The various ghost towns and the Belt and Road Initiative being two obvious examples.
6. Pollution in China has become a major public health issue under the CCP, and contrary to beliefs of many such insane levels of pollution isn't necessary for economic growth (just look to any other former third-world nation).
7. The CCP has been captured by Xi Jinping and has no plan for succession, something party elites vowed would never happen after Mao.

The legacy of the CCP is a legacy of extraordinary failure and incompetence.

You can add high levels of corruption to that list as well.

A better example of competent authoritarianism IMO is the PAP of Singapore, who've managed to turn a relatively poor city-state with few natural resources and many national security vulnerabilities into one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

[Atheris]

On everything from Islam to workplace safety regulations, China is as far from "leftist" as it gets. :/

Which proves my point actually. China does not practice communism, but rather a form of state managed capitalism. Yet, some leftists defend it as a beacon and role model.

The People's Liberation Army occupying mainland China doesn't practice state managed capitalism. It practices fascist corporatism.

[Punished UMN]

Ideologies are systems of knowledge - bodies of theory and observation that have been built up to explain the world as we see it and as we want to be. Same with systems of ethics. Consciously browsing the buffet and plucking out various bits is a great way to get confused because you're removing ideas from their context and justification and stick them together.

That "context" usually consists of arbitrary alliances that change over time. The Republican Party used to be known as the party of standing up for black people; that changed in the 60s. Then they were known as the party against adulterous Presidents. That changed with Trump.

At least if you pick your ideas based upon what makes sense to you, that's a more independent form of thinking. We can't all be right, but we can't all be wrong. Only way to find out is to have mainstream ideologies compete with alternatives to them out in the open.

Again, this is mistaking ideology for what policy-positions you have. Your ideology is your fundamental worldview of politics, not just a collection of policies. Picking ideological views and cobbling them together is almost sure to result in at least some part of your philosophy being incoherent or doublethink.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

On everything from Islam to workplace safety regulations, China is as far from "leftist" as it gets. :/

Which proves my point actually. China does not practice communism, but rather a form of state managed capitalism. Yet, some leftists defend it as a beacon and role model.

Tankies to be exact. They're not super common anymore thank God but they still exist and think murdering people who disagree with you makes you a hero and not a sick and depraved monster.

[Kaizo Beikoku]

I support "authoritarian" countries like China, since I'm more of a results-person, and they went from a backwater 3rd world country to a US-competitor within a generation, so they're doing something right. This is opposed by me being a massive privacy nut- the closest law I've found to my level of comfort is Dubai, where your permission is needed every time your picture is taken and each time your picture is shown to someone who hasn't seen it.

Typical for an authoritarian leftist actually. Supposedly believing in freedom but then shilling for the next dictatorship that happens to oppose the U.S..

The counter is that if the closest country to providing my sense of comfort in regards to privacy is under Sharia law, I'm gonna drop the privacy expectation from real world countries worth supporting. Aside from privacy law and some slowness on LGBT issues, I don't have any beef with China, and plenty of other states I support, (Cuba, Vietnam, Namibia, Bolivia, etc) are more "with the times" on the issues. My ideology is some blend of Chen Yun, Cesar Chavez, and my own personal thoughts on privacy/individual rights.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Unlike alot of people in the American leftwing, I'm not a super huge fan of Islam. I don't think Islam is devoid of anything good, but there's ideas and beliefs in the religion that go heavily against my values. I'm not against Muslims since I live in a state with a large Muslim population and spend alot of time down in the Muslim capital of America, but I don't agree with Islam on everything and would be pleased to see people leave Islam and join me in the irreligious circle. But I can show tolerance toward people for believing Islam if they have similar politics to mine or at least are a decent human being, and at day's end i think everyone has a right to believe what they want without facing violence or persecution for it, so while I'm not super pro Islam, I am very much in favor of Muslims having the first amendment right to practice their religion without fear of aggression or discrimination.

[Wizlandia]

Typical for an authoritarian leftist actually. Supposedly believing in freedom but then shilling for the next dictatorship that happens to oppose the U.S..

The counter is that if the closest country to providing my sense of comfort in regards to privacy is under Sharia law, I'm gonna drop the privacy expectation from real world countries worth supporting. Aside from privacy law and some slowness on LGBT issues, I don't have any beef with China, and plenty of other states I support, (Cuba, Vietnam, Namibia, Bolivia, etc) are more "with the times" on the issues. My ideology is some blend of Chen Yun, Cesar Chavez, and my own personal thoughts on privacy/individual rights.

You have no beef with indefinitely imprisoning millions of innocent people in internment camps?

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Which proves my point actually. China does not practice communism, but rather a form of state managed capitalism. Yet, some leftists defend it as a beacon and role model.

The People's Liberation Army occupying mainland China doesn't practice state managed capitalism. It practices fascist corporatism.

Tfw China is on the opposite side of the political compass from where they claim to be.

[Kaizo Beikoku]

The counter is that if the closest country to providing my sense of comfort in regards to privacy is under Sharia law, I'm gonna drop the privacy expectation from real world countries worth supporting. Aside from privacy law and some slowness on LGBT issues, I don't have any beef with China, and plenty of other states I support, (Cuba, Vietnam, Namibia, Bolivia, etc) are more "with the times" on the issues. My ideology is some blend of Chen Yun, Cesar Chavez, and my own personal thoughts on privacy/individual rights.

You have no beef with indefinitely imprisoning millions of innocent people in internment camps?

I don't think that's going on. Take Rwanda or Myanmar- every time genocides happen, the general rule of thumb is for everyone affected, there's 5-10 refugees, which makes sense- when someone is imprisoned/killed systematically, their neighbors are gonna try to book it. For millions of people, we'd see millions of refugees. The whole scenario feels like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein%27s_alleged_shredder, if I believed it, of course I'd be against China here, the same way that if Hussein really had a shredder, of course the Iraq War makes a bit of sense, but I think there's enough fishy going on here and that the US has too much to gain by introducing chaos around Xinjiang (which was planned to be a railway hub connecting Europe, Africa, and China through BRI) that I should take them at their word.

[Wizlandia]

The People's Liberation Army occupying mainland China doesn't practice state managed capitalism. It practices fascist corporatism.

Tfw China is on the opposite side of the political compass from where they claim to be.

Tbh political compass doesn't really make much sense. I always interpreted economic right to be laissez-faire market economy, and economic left to be command economy, but it seems like ppl on NSG/the political left are interpreting it more as egalitarianism vs anti-egalitarianism.

[USS Monitor]

I'm left of center, but I sometimes wish people would take more personal responsibility for their economic circumstances.

If you don't want to run yourself ragged chasing every dollar, that's OK -- but it is a choice.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

You have no beef with indefinitely imprisoning millions of innocent people in internment camps?

I don't think that's going on. Take Rwanda or Myanmar- every time genocides happen, the general rule of thumb is for everyone affected, there's 5-10 refugees, which makes sense- when someone is imprisoned/killed systematically, their neighbors are gonna try to book it. For millions of people, we'd see millions of refugees. The whole scenario feels like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein%27s_alleged_shredder, if I believed it, of course I'd be against China here, the same way that if Hussein really had a shredder, of course the Iraq War makes a bit of sense, but I think there's enough fishy going on here and that the US has too much to gain by introducing chaos around Xinjiang (which was planned to be a railway hub connecting Europe, Africa, and China through BRI) that I should take them at their word.

Rwanda and Myanmar don't have the means to prevent escape like China does. I think you're underestimating the 1984 style nightmare the PRC is.

[Wizlandia]

You have no beef with indefinitely imprisoning millions of innocent people in internment camps?

I don't think that's going on. Take Rwanda or Myanmar- every time genocides happen, the general rule of thumb is for everyone affected, there's 5-10 refugees, which makes sense- when someone is imprisoned/killed systematically, their neighbors are gonna try to book it. For millions of people, we'd see millions of refugees. The whole scenario feels like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein%27s_alleged_shredder, if I believed it, of course I'd be against China here, the same way that if Hussein really had a shredder, of course the Iraq War makes a bit of sense, but I think there's enough fishy going on here and that the US has too much to gain by introducing chaos around Xinjiang (which was planned to be a railway hub connecting Europe, Africa, and China through BRI) that I should take them at their word.

There's literally satellite images of the camps, drone footage Uighur prisoners with heads shaved, blindfolded and tied up, dozens of witness testimonies, and leaked documents from within the CCP. And that's just the tip of the iceberg evidence-wise.

[Kaizo Beikoku]

I have friends in the PRC and family who used to live there. It's a country, like any other. To make Xinjiang locked down you'd be managing the equivalent of the state of Florida, population wise. Adding onto it, I don't really see a motive for doing any genocide anything. They'd passed laws protecting Islam against popular opinion, they excluded them from the first run of the one-child policy, and they have Uighur script on their currency. Countries that do bad things first start with scare stories, then do bad things to scapegoats to give people the illusion that they've solved a systemic problem. There's no point to a secret genocide. If they wanted Muslims, they'd crackdown on Muslims in Beijing since that's a cultural center of China, or they'd start small with the Hui. If they wanted land, then why leave all the mosques up and why bother with camps?

[The Reformed American Republic]

I don't think that's going on. Take Rwanda or Myanmar- every time genocides happen, the general rule of thumb is for everyone affected, there's 5-10 refugees, which makes sense- when someone is imprisoned/killed systematically, their neighbors are gonna try to book it. For millions of people, we'd see millions of refugees. The whole scenario feels like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein%27s_alleged_shredder, if I believed it, of course I'd be against China here, the same way that if Hussein really had a shredder, of course the Iraq War makes a bit of sense, but I think there's enough fishy going on here and that the US has too much to gain by introducing chaos around Xinjiang (which was planned to be a railway hub connecting Europe, Africa, and China through BRI) that I should take them at their word.

There's literally satellite images of the camps, drone footage Uighur prisoners with heads shaved, blindfolded and tied up, dozens of witness testimonies, and leaked documents from within the CCP. And that's just the tip of the iceberg evidence-wise.

They don't care Wiz. They will only care about human rights violations when the U.S. does them.

[Kaizo Beikoku]

I don't think that's going on. Take Rwanda or Myanmar- every time genocides happen, the general rule of thumb is for everyone affected, there's 5-10 refugees, which makes sense- when someone is imprisoned/killed systematically, their neighbors are gonna try to book it. For millions of people, we'd see millions of refugees. The whole scenario feels like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein%27s_alleged_shredder, if I believed it, of course I'd be against China here, the same way that if Hussein really had a shredder, of course the Iraq War makes a bit of sense, but I think there's enough fishy going on here and that the US has too much to gain by introducing chaos around Xinjiang (which was planned to be a railway hub connecting Europe, Africa, and China through BRI) that I should take them at their word.

There's literally satellite images of the camps, drone footage Uighur prisoners with heads shaved, blindfolded and tied up, dozens of witness testimonies, and leaked documents from within the CCP. And that's just the tip of the iceberg evidence-wise.

Regarding witness testimony, I thought we learned from Nayirah. I've seen the satellite images, and I've also seen the non-grayscale blurry versions. They're normal buildings- I've seen at least 30 claiming to be the real thing, and I've seen the actual building for all those. If you have evidence, I'd love to see it- I don't want to live in a bubble that I believe false things that are convenient to me, but that street goes both ways, and vague imagery and fear mongering does not evidence make. Also the drone video your referencing, you might have seen a different one, but the one I saw ended up being a prison transfer unrelated to Uighurs.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

That "context" usually consists of arbitrary alliances that change over time. The Republican Party used to be known as the party of standing up for black people; that changed in the 60s. Then they were known as the party against adulterous Presidents. That changed with Trump.

At least if you pick your ideas based upon what makes sense to you, that's a more independent form of thinking. We can't all be right, but we can't all be wrong. Only way to find out is to have mainstream ideologies compete with alternatives to them out in the open.

Again, this is mistaking ideology for what policy-positions you have. Your ideology is your fundamental worldview of politics, not just a collection of policies. Picking ideological views and cobbling them together is almost sure to result in at least some part of your philosophy being incoherent or doublethink.

And the mainstream ideologies aren't?

Libertarianism preaches free markets, yet disavows culpability for letting the rich get rich enough to buy politicians on behalf of non-libertarian policies like the war on drugs?

Conservatism preaches free markets and tries to reconcile that with the free market creating economic pressure on companies to boycott states that capitulate to Trumpian narratives about the 2020 election?

Liberalism preaches using education to help the poor climb the social ladder, yet is okay with making guys whose girlfriends didn't tell them they'd keep the baby if the condom broke have to drop out of school and become "dead-broke dads"?

None of the mainstream ideologies make sense. It takes those of us who are freethinkers first, centre-left second, to see through it.

[Wizlandia]

I have friends in the PRC and family who used to live there. It's a country, like any other. To make Xinjiang locked down you'd be managing the equivalent of the state of Florida, population wise.

There's a reason why China has by far the largest internal security force (People's Armed Police) and apparatus in the world.

Adding onto it, I don't really see a motive for doing any genocide anything.

The motivation is a toxic mix of sino-nationalism, authoritarianism, and desire to clamp down on the East Turkestan independence movement.

They'd passed laws protecting Islam against popular opinion

Not sure what specific law you're addressing, but laws differ both based on sects and provinces.

they excluded them from the first run of the one-child policy

The government of Mao is different from the government of Xi. The Uighur mass concentration camps is relatively recent phenomenon of the last decade.

There's no point to a secret genocide. If they wanted Muslims, they'd crackdown on Muslims in Beijing since that's a cultural center of China, or they'd start small with the Hui. If they wanted land, then why leave all the mosques up and why bother with camps?

The fact is that there are tons of evidence supporting the existence of concentration camps and cultural genocide.

[Kaizo Beikoku]

I'll begin that ETIM is literally a Taliban branch, the US bombed them no less than 5 years ago. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2018/02/10/bombing-of-chinese-separatists-in-afghanistan-is-a-sign-of-how-trumps-war-there-has-changed/

The article about pro-Islamic changes is here https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1067405.shtml. Yes, a Chinese source, but there's plenty of other ones from Europe/US, but this is the only one I saw that included pushback from atheists in China without just screen clipping social media posts.

If sino-nationalism was what they were trying to push, why deny? If you want to do a genocide and have your public be proud of you for "vanquishing the foe", you want to be public.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

I'll begin that ETIM is literally a Taliban branch, the US bombed them no less than 5 years ago. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2018/02/10/bombing-of-chinese-separatists-in-afghanistan-is-a-sign-of-how-trumps-war-there-has-changed/

The article about pro-Islamic changes is here https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1067405.shtml. Yes, a Chinese source, but there's plenty of other ones from Europe/US, but this is the only one I saw that included pushback from atheists in China without just screen clipping social media posts.

If sino-nationalism was what they were trying to push, why deny? If you want to do a genocide and have your public be proud of you for "vanquishing the foe", you want to be public.

...you ever worked at an International School in China? Chinese citizens pay big bucks to have their sons and daughters mentored by teachers of all faiths and nationalities. If sino-nationalism were so rabid that overt genocide were a selling point, then a school's cosmopolitanism wouldn't be.

EDIT: That the source is from China shouldn't be a sidenote, by the way. The government control of messaging is too severe to be trusted. Find a source outside China.

[Wizlandia]

Again, this is mistaking ideology for what policy-positions you have. Your ideology is your fundamental worldview of politics, not just a collection of policies. Picking ideological views and cobbling them together is almost sure to result in at least some part of your philosophy being incoherent or doublethink.

And the mainstream ideologies aren't?

Libertarianism preaches free markets, yet disavows culpability for letting the rich get rich enough to buy politicians on behalf of non-libertarian policies like the war on drugs?

The war on drugs occurred because of increasing crime rates during the 80s and 90s and public anti-crime attitudes. It has nothing to do with rich people buying politicians lol. And I don't think Libertarians are ok with actual criminal behaviour (e.g. "buying politicians").

Conservatism preaches free markets and tries to reconcile that with the free market creating economic pressure on companies to boycott states that capitulate to Trumpian narratives about the 2020 election?

There's many variants of conservatism. There's many conservatives that oppose these economic pressure on woke companies (just read anyone from The Dispatch). At the same time, there are cultural conservatives that were never really on board with limited government, and support using government power to disincentivise wokeness. It's not really a single ideology.

Liberalism preaches using education to help the poor climb the social ladder, yet is okay with making guys whose girlfriends didn't tell them they'd keep the baby if the condom broke have to drop out of school and become "dead-broke dads"?

I'm confused. I'm not aware this is a position among the American centre-left.

None of the mainstream ideologies make sense. It takes those of us who are freethinkers first, centre-left second, to see through it.

I mean I think you're mixing up ideologies with parties. Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are coalitions of many different ideologies, many conflicting, and voters prioritise different policies lead to perhaps odd (at least from an outside perspective) policy combinations. This is what happens when you have a two-party system. But I don't think that's equivalent to saying "mainstream ideologies" don't make sense.

[Punished UMN]

Again, this is mistaking ideology for what policy-positions you have. Your ideology is your fundamental worldview of politics, not just a collection of policies. Picking ideological views and cobbling them together is almost sure to result in at least some part of your philosophy being incoherent or doublethink.

And the mainstream ideologies aren't?

Libertarianism preaches free markets, yet disavows culpability for letting the rich get rich enough to buy politicians on behalf of non-libertarian policies like the war on drugs?

Conservatism preaches free markets and tries to reconcile that with the free market creating economic pressure on companies to boycott states that capitulate to Trumpian narratives about the 2020 election?

Liberalism preaches using education to help the poor climb the social ladder, yet is okay with making guys whose girlfriends didn't tell them they'd keep the baby if the condom broke have to drop out of school and become "dead-broke dads"?

None of the mainstream ideologies make sense. It takes those of us who are freethinkers first, centre-left second, to see through it.

Because those are policy positions and not ideological positions. Your ideology has more to do with what you believe is true about the world.

[The Reformed American Republic]

And the mainstream ideologies aren't?

Libertarianism preaches free markets, yet disavows culpability for letting the rich get rich enough to buy politicians on behalf of non-libertarian policies like the war on drugs?

Conservatism preaches free markets and tries to reconcile that with the free market creating economic pressure on companies to boycott states that capitulate to Trumpian narratives about the 2020 election?

Liberalism preaches using education to help the poor climb the social ladder, yet is okay with making guys whose girlfriends didn't tell them they'd keep the baby if the condom broke have to drop out of school and become "dead-broke dads"?

None of the mainstream ideologies make sense. It takes those of us who are freethinkers first, centre-left second, to see through it.

Because those are policy positions and not ideological positions. Your ideology has more to do with what you believe is true about the world.

How would you describe my ideology? Just curious what your thoughts are.