America - The Official Thread

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Eunos_Cosmo
...half right is better than all wrong.
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A really succinct way of putting it. I like it.

UKMikey
Unsurprised to find out I'm a raging pinko on the US political scale. I wonder how many foreigners have taken the quiz and whether it skews the figures leftwards.

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I got Outsider Left which is further right than I typically get but I can put that down to the context of the questions.

There seems to be a lot of "Yes but... " and "It depends which one... " to the questions.
 
dylansan
Not particularly a surprising result, but I was already skeptical of this particular division into distinct categories, and the questions did not help with that.

It's not just a lack of nuance. I don't think the average duration of prison sentences is a major issue—the issue is that some things are criminalized that shouldn't be, or not prosecuted but should be, and some people are given harsher or lighter sentences based on their class/race/etc. I don't think that question was very insightful, nor the military strength one. I'm more concerned about the use of our military to support bad actors, and the wasteful spending and carelessness with money.

I'm also not as concerned with people saying offensive things as I am with targeted hate toward people or groups.

Maybe these questions are good predictors of where people sit on the political spectrum, but I kinda don't think these results really tell anyone anything important, especially the categories which seem to be chosen specifically to divide people into nearly identically sized groups.

Also, the position of outsider left near the middle seems bizarre given that most of my answers would probably be considered extreme leftist views by anyone else.

I do notice that "Independent" tends to be used synonymously with "Undecided" or even "Moderate" even when a lot of people on the left are Independents because they feel both major parties are too far to the right—not because they feel torn between two parties to their left and right. If this questionnaire is using "outsider" to mean "Independent", it would explain the issue.

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I feel like more fundamental questions could get more honest results. Such as -

What do you prioritize more, individual liberty or shared values? (0-10, 0 being absolutely prioritizing individual liberty, 10 being absolutely prioritizing shared values)

Is immigration a core principle of the United States? (0 strongly disagree, 10 strongly agree)

Should US foreign policy prioritize advancing US interests or prioritizing global interests?

That kinda thing
 
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Political quiz.JPG


Pretty much what I expected. But I agree with others that the questions are bad, some are gotchas, and overall this is designed around the concept of a left-right spectrum which is nonsense. Whatever happened to that Nolan chart quiz we shared years ago?

This thing from The Political Compass. I always hated how they've rotated a Nolan chart 90 degrees but whatever.

Nolan chart 1.JPG


This one says I'm a left libertarian, aka more social freedom but less economic freedom. I used to be much more centric on the economic side of things 10+ years ago but now I am firmly of the belief that corporate greed is out of control and they cannot be trusted, their hands are too deep into our government, and our social networks are not adequate. I think it's kind of funny that most of my friends who used public assistance for their educations became pretty successful, while those who didn't did not.

This chart shows me as a left moderate, so less social freedom than the above chart applies. I think that's more to do with its goofy questioning than anything.

Nolan chart 2.JPG


One thing I've noticed in all of these is that if there is a question about language, it's always a strong opinion from me. I live in and grew up in the Midwest, a place where we don't have to deal with foreign language very often if ever ( so rarely that I'm using the phrase "deal with"), but I often work in places like south Florida where I commonly deal with people who don't speak English at all. It's quite the chore and I don't enjoy it. In fact, I just got back from a trip to Ecuador yesterday, and everybody I dealt with at the airport in Ecuador spoke better English than many people I deal with in the Miami area, particularly Uber drivers and delivery people, etc. Sure, those are jobs accessible to immigrants fresh off the boat, but apparently they're immigrating from places that don't speak English at all, so I can only assume they're not coming from Ecuador. Anyways, that's one specific pet peeve of mine that always gets a strong response in these quizzes so hopefully that doesn't cause a skew.
 
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Keef
I just got back from a trip to Ecuador yesterday, and everybody I dealt with at the airport in Ecuador spoke better English than many people I deal with in the Miami area
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How good is your Spanish?
 
As a non US resident i still took the quiz.
But some of the questions need more nuance i think.
Like the one about prison time.

I scored Established Liberal btw.
 
I was waiting for "which would you rather shoot, a puppy or a kitten?" That might be one for the Faith and Flaggers though... especially if it's tearing up their sofa.
 
Liquid
How good is your Spanish?
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I'm legally required to speak English for work so not good :lol:. I tried in college but just couldn't figure out why they were making me take a language for an aviation degree. Besides that, basically zero spanish exposure for my entire life in Ohio. I attempted German in high school because at the time that was actually more applicable in Ohio. I realize I'm just a typical undereducated American and am being selfish but learning a language at this point isn't in the cards so thank god Uber's chat automatically translates.
 
Eunos_Cosmo
I think this is why we see people like @Danoff @Joey D @Duke and myself aligning more with the Democratic party...half right is better than all wrong.
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It's odd. I still don't support many of the Democrat's policies because I'm not fond of the way we run social programs today. However, I have drifted further to the left than I used to be for sure. I was pretty much a pure libertarian for the longest time, now I find myself more of a centrist who believes that people should be able to do whatever the hell they want as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others, but I'm not totally against some social programs as long as they are run properly.

But as you said, Republicans now are fiscally liberal and socially conservative. That's the absolute worst thing you can be. Socially it makes zero sense to me to be anything other than liberal as long as no one's rights are being trampled on. Fiscally, there's always room for discussion but I can't support social conservatism in any capacity. It kind of goes back to the libertarian quip that gay married couples should be able to defend their pot farm with AR-15s while their adopted kids read banned books. Like none of that affects the way I live and while I may or may not agree with something they do, it's not my place to make what they do illegal. Like drag queens. I don't understand drag at all, and it's not my thing, but under no circumstances do I think it should be outlawed because, at the end of the day, they're not violating any rights.

So really the only reason I find myself voting for more Democrats now than I used to is because Republicans are so bat🤬 crazy. I still do have lines in the sand though. Like if Kamala had picked Josh Shapiro as a running mate, I would not have voted for her since I'm not fond of supporting a genocidal state. I get that Israel support will always be more prevalent in the US, but from what we knew about Shapiro, I was worried. I also was struggling to vote for Biden too because I didn't think he had the mental capacity to run the country. But now that the Democrats put out two normal, competent candidates, I can vote for them with no problem. I won't agree with some of their positions, but there's nothing set in stone that turns me completely off from them.

I just hope we can start to return to some what normalcy in 2028. I'm not holding my breath because I'm sure the Republicans will continue to embrace assholes, but get rid of Trumpism and the party might correct itself a bit.
 
HenrySwanson
What is the future for the Republican party then?

Similar questions are being asked here about the Conservatives.
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Like anything, it's adapt or die out, especially as the Boomer generation gets smaller. While there still are plenty of younger conservatives, they still view the world much different than those 65+.

Republicans need to shift to more of a moderate-right position that focuses less on culture wars and more on fiscal responsibility. Get back to balancing the budget, spending less money, lowering taxes, and being the party of smaller government. They also need to trot out candidates that aren't idiots. Running people like MTG and putting her front and center isn't a good way to look like a functioning political party.
 
Trumpers are not going to go quietly when Trump eventually stops seeking election, but time will tell if there's anyone who can fill his shoes. So far, it doesn't seem like anyone has come close to replicating his popularity among the far right. It's going to be messy.
 
Oh I'm fully aware a Trump loss is far from guaranteed. It is true that no matter what happens, Trump himself won't last forever, and the struggle to replace him is going to be chaotic no matter who wins in 2024.
 
dylansan
Oh I'm fully aware a Trump loss is far from guaranteed. It is true that no matter what happens, Trump himself won't last forever, and the struggle to replace him is going to be chaotic no matter who wins in 2024.
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He wants to run it as a dictatorship. He doesn't want obvious rivals in the party. He won't mentor anyone as a potential replacement, unless its one of his kids. Which would essentially make the US a hereditary monarchy. :lol:
 
Joey D
Republicans need to shift to more of a moderate-right position that focuses less on culture wars and more on fiscal responsibility. Get back to balancing the budget, spending less money, lowering taxes, and being the party of smaller government. They also need to trot out candidates that aren't idiots. Running people like MTG and putting her front and center isn't a good way to look like a functioning political party.
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Unfortunately there is no impetus for this shift:
GranTurNismo
Trump seems to have said the quiet part loud yesterday at a rally in Greensboro, NC. On woke-ness, he says,

"This critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, and political content on our children. It's amazing how strongly people feel about that. I talk about cutting taxes and no one cares. But I talk about transgender and everyone goes crazy! Who would have thought, 5 years ago no one knew what the hell it was!"

This is eerily similar to the infamous quote from George Wallace, the longstanding segregationist Alabama governor and known as one of the most shamelessly racist politicians of the 20th century: "You know, I tried to talk about the good roads and good schools and all these things that have been a part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about Negroes, and everyone stomped the floor".

Both Trump and Wallace were perceived as party outsiders who co-opted a more populist rhetoric, uniting the working man against a so-called common enemy. This is the inevitable result of a political movement that caters to the lowest-common-denominator reactionary sentiment. The very fulfillment of Andrew Breitbart's famed quote that "politics is downstream from culture". "Real politics", as in talking about economic issues, or really anything related to an explicit policy, is often complicated, nuanced, and not always immediately understandable to the voter, especially an electorate more likely to be lowly educated like 1960s Alabamans and today's Trump loyalists. But what really gets to people is what does not require any intellectual response, rather an intuitive one, appealing against perceived "degeneracy": Black folks in Jim Crow Alabama and "wokeness" today (so still Black folks, by proxy). And the entire Republican modus operandi, with Trump at the forefront, have cultivated a movement in large part based on exploiting this weakness. I have very little else to say that this is just blatant fascism, and that the American right could only go downward from here.
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The GOP base isn't interested enough in economic policy for that kind of messaging to take the forefront of the party platform. If anything, fiscal responsibility (despite never happening in practice) and supply-side economics, is taken for granted by the GOP voter base, as the party's economic policy, outside of some Trump-era protectionism, as well as populism that mostly amounts to mere rhetoric, has been a hallmark of the GOP since Reagan. Especially as the GOP voter base is trending less and less educated as opposed to the Democrats, the culture war and moral panics will continue to be more appealing than economic messaging, which is more wordy and boring. Trump already does talk about fiscal responsibility. It's just that, in his own words, no one cares.
 
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This Collective / Left vs Individual / Right graph is actually kind of ironic. I mean, that's how it has been mytholicized throughout the 20th century, indeed.

But given the Right's strong pushes towards enforced conformity - in both the McCarthy '50s and the McConnell '00s-'10s - can it truly be said that the Right stands for individualism?

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For the record, I got the same result @Joey D did on the Pew quiz.- Ambivalent Right.
 
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dylansan
Trumpers are not going to go quietly when Trump eventually stops seeking election, but time will tell if there's anyone who can fill his shoes. So far, it doesn't seem like anyone has come close to replicating his popularity among the far right. It's going to be messy.
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It's really about matching Trump's energy. Many Republicans match him on policy, though it really seems like no one- not even the most popular figures like DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Vance, etc, are anywhere close to Trump in matching his ability to capture a room, let alone cultivate a personality cult centered around them.
 
Joey D
It's odd. I still don't support many of the Democrat's policies because I'm not fond of the way we run social programs today. However, I have drifted further to the left than I used to be for sure. I was pretty much a pure libertarian for the longest time, now I find myself more of a centrist who believes that people should be able to do whatever the hell they want as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others, but I'm not totally against some social programs as long as they are run properly.

But as you said, Republicans now are fiscally liberal and socially conservative. That's the absolute worst thing you can be. Socially it makes zero sense to me to be anything other than liberal as long as no one's rights are being trampled on. Fiscally, there's always room for discussion but I can't support social conservatism in any capacity. It kind of goes back to the libertarian quip that gay married couples should be able to defend their pot farm with AR-15s while their adopted kids read banned books. Like none of that affects the way I live and while I may or may not agree with something they do, it's not my place to make what they do illegal. Like drag queens. I don't understand drag at all, and it's not my thing, but under no circumstances do I think it should be outlawed because, at the end of the day, they're not violating any rights.

So really the only reason I find myself voting for more Democrats now than I used to is because Republicans are so bat🤬 crazy. I still do have lines in the sand though. Like if Kamala had picked Josh Shapiro as a running mate, I would not have voted for her since I'm not fond of supporting a genocidal state. I get that Israel support will always be more prevalent in the US, but from what we knew about Shapiro, I was worried. I also was struggling to vote for Biden too because I didn't think he had the mental capacity to run the country. But now that the Democrats put out two normal, competent candidates, I can vote for them with no problem. I won't agree with some of their positions, but there's nothing set in stone that turns me completely off from them.

I just hope we can start to return to some what normalcy in 2028. I'm not holding my breath because I'm sure the Republicans will continue to embrace assholes, but get rid of Trumpism and the party might correct itself a bit.
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I've drifted the left somewhat on the money side of things because I've become disillusioned with the results of profit-driven markets. Yeah, ok, the results are more 'natural' than what you get in countries which rely more on central planning, but are they better? I'd argue that they are frequently more wasteful, and only considered for the span of a human lifespan at most, but more often a career or even a position at a private entity - with pure capitalism, everything becomes incredibly short-sighted. Taken to extreme, I think you get a place like Houston, Texas (sorry Houstonites on here) or the newer parts of Dallas-Fort Worth where the entire city is "planned" around what's 5ft in front of you resulting in hugely wasteful uses of land and a landscape of relentless low density sprawl - and without any kind of infrastructural planning this also results in massive wastes of resources (fuel, most notably). I'd argue that most places in the USA are more like this than not (Even liberal-ass San Francisco!) and it feels like a disservice to the rather beautiful place we inhabit. Countries with less land cannot afford to be as wasteful and therefore actually plan development that is beneficial over the long term for the people in those countries, both for quality of life, and eventually financial aspects too. I don't think pure capitalism can work over a certain population density and its frustrating to see the results that private entities arrive at so often. One thing is for damn sure in my opinion, there is not nearly enough monopoly prevention here - everything is very passive rather than active.
 
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Just took that polquiz test. I love that they haven't updated the presidential candidates from 3 elections ago.

My results were no surprise, though I thought there was some nuance missing from the available answers.

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GBO Possum
If the oligarchs have their way, we are SO screwed, in SO many ways.

Example...
www.americanprogress.org

Project 2025 Proposes Eliminating Aid for Families and Businesses Rebuilding After Storms

As climate change makes extreme weather events more common and more costly for Americans, the far right’s new authoritarian playbook would leave communities with fewer resources to rebuild after disasters like Hurricane Debby strike.
www.americanprogress.org www.americanprogress.org
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Good thing Miami is definitely not anywhere near paths for hurricanes. Oh wait, this is only for poor people. Trump and his ilk will get aid for their mansions getting damaged.
 

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