When will Trump supporters ever admit they're socialists, and MAGA is leftism? (Obama, Somali)

[rebeldor]

a.) They don't believe taxation is theft.
b.) They want a government managed, centrally planned economy, with wealth redistribution.
c.) They excuse Trump's blatant gun grabbing.
d.) They don't believe in absolute private property rights.
e.) They are economic illiterates.
f.) They worship government policy enforcers (cops and the military).

Yet the corporate media calls them “alt-right.”

[Ceece]

huh?

[Phil75230]

Originally Posted by rebeldor

a.) They don't believe taxation is theft.
b.) They want a government managed, centrally planned economy, with wealth redistribution.
c.) They excuse Trump's blatant gun grabbing.
d.) They don't believe in absolute private property rights.
e.) They are economic illiterates.
f.) They worship government policy enforcers (cops and the military).

Yet the corporate media calls them “alt-right.”

a) Including funding for military and police protection? Or public roads, railways, ports, and airports? (maybe you do think slashing through undergrowth with a machete is a more efficient means of ensuring delivering goods and services from A to B, but I see no evidence for it). It's only theft if you don't get something of equal or greater value in return for what you're forced to pay.

b) You think any government regulation is central planning. Central Planning, in the classic usage, means government dictates output targets for particular goods and services, i.e. Government as the direct CEO, CFO, etc. That's a distortion of the term.

c) Banning bump stocks? You do need a 30.06 to hunt deer. You do NOT need an AR-15.

d) Absolute property rights means the right to bury toxic waste and anthrax-infested carcases on one's property. It also means the right to hold loud parties at 2 am Wednesday night in a subdivision. Or have smelly hog pens in the same type of yard. It violates other people's right to enjoy or use their property, and therefore hurts the value of the other person's property.

e) Everything I see ancaps claim assumes people will do the right thing and/or all individuals in the economic system are fully informed about what any contract signed or good bought entails (not exploit, skimp on worker and consumer safety, skimp on pollution controls, etc). That's frankly naive.

There's a reason "Let The Buyer Beware" is no longer in vogue: it creates uncertainty among the consumers (is this really what I paid for? Does the contract really mean what I think it means? Is this food or other product really safe to consume or use?) - which damages the integrity of the capitalist economic system, thereby forcing the consumer to expend much more time and effort searching for an appropriately priced good of appropriate quality, an obvious inefficiency in the very system you claim to promote. Which leads to the next point...

f) Commerce and finance is just like any other human activity, it needs clearly-defined and properly enforced "rules of the game" in order to be effective. Claiming otherwise is like saying sports players should be allowed to wear brass knuckles or carry box cutters on the field or court to use against opposing teams. So we have to have some "third party" setting the rules (within reason, hence popular elections when enough people get sick and tired or being sick and tired) and enforcing those rules called laws, regulations, etc.

In closing: If you hate government that much, then go to the "deep dark jungle", the barren desert, or frigid polar regions- where you'll have a frontier type existence. There you can have a practically stateless existence (at least as far as possible while not on planet Earth). Or maybe start a floating city way out in the ocean 1000 miles from the nearest land mass. Just make sure to avoid any other human being. Wouldn't want anybody else interfering with your freedom, would you?

[Sharks With Lasers]

Originally Posted by rebeldor

a.) They don't believe taxation is theft.
b.) They want a government managed, centrally planned economy, with wealth redistribution.
c.) They excuse Trump's blatant gun grabbing.
d.) They don't believe in absolute private property rights.
e.) They are economic illiterates.
f.) They worship government policy enforcers (cops and the military).

Yet the corporate media calls them “alt-right.”

I believe you need to read this article.

There are four dimensions, each with simplified explanations here:

-Progressive vs. Conservative: Progressives like change, whereas Conservatives do not. This is regardless of the type of change listed.
-Leftist vs. Right Wing: Leftists want to redistribute resources from the top to the bottom, whereas Right Wing wants to redistribute resources from the bottom to the top.
-Libertarian vs. Statist: Libertarians want no government intervention, whereas Statists want as much government intervention as possible to accomplish whatever their other goals may be.
-Liberal vs. Medievalist: Liberals (this is more of the classical definition) believe that each person has the same rights as anybody else, whereas Medievalists believe that the more powerful you are, the more rights that you have.

Trump supporters do not want to transfer resources from the top to the bottom, so the movement is not Leftist. I would say in general that they want to move in the other direction, at least to what is acceptable in American culture.

I'd categorize each group as the following according to this four dimensional compass:
-Trumpism: More Progressive than Conservative, Right Wing, Statist, Medievalist
-Republicanism before Trump: More Conservative than Progressive, Right Wing, More Statist than Libertarian, Liberal
-Today's Left/Social Justice Warriors: Progressive, Lefist, Statist, Medievalist
-Moderate Democrats: More Conservative than Progressive, More Leftist than Right Wing, Statist, Liberal
-An Caps: Libertarian, possibly more Progressive than Conservative, and who cares about the rest

[Pilot1]

Originally Posted by rebeldor

a.) They don't believe taxation is theft. - How do you fund necessary parts of government without any taxes at all unless you abolish ALL government?

b.) They want a government managed, centrally planned economy, with wealth redistribution. - No they don't, but that's what we have, and have to deal with.

c.) They excuse Trump's blatant gun grabbing. - What guns has Trump "GRABBED"???

d.) They don't believe in absolute private property rights. - There are no absolute anything anywhere.

e.) They are economic illiterates. - I will take Trump and Kudlow over Obama, and Hillary.

f.) They worship government policy enforcers (cops and the military). - Agree to an extent.

Yet the corporate media calls them “alt-right.”

See bolded answers above. I realize you are an Anarchist, and that's fine, but how do you propose that those in society deal with each other with NO rules, or structure? War Lords like Somalia?

[Phil75230]

Originally Posted by Sharks With Lasers

-Progressive vs. Conservative: Progressives like change, whereas Conservatives do not. This is regardless of the type of change listed.
-Leftist vs. Right Wing: Leftists want to redistribute resources from the top to the bottom, whereas Right Wing wants to redistribute resources from the bottom to the top.
-Libertarian vs. Statist: Libertarians want no government intervention, whereas Statists want as much government intervention as possible to accomplish whatever their other goals may be.
-Liberal vs. Medievalist: Liberals (this is more of the classical definition) believe that each person has the same rights as anybody else, whereas Medievalists believe that the more powerful you are, the more rights that you have.

Me? First and foremost, I'm very firmly anti-Medievalist. I see "might makes right" hurting even the mighty's (read "most competitive's") own best interests in the long run - namely by threatening their own security and their descendants as well. Medievalism does and/or practically invites the following:

*Forces even the mighty to "sleep with one eye open" as it robs them and their offspring to any inalienable right to life at all, let alone a decent quality of life.

*Inhibits further widening of the gap between our present state and our demise, and perhaps even outright narrowing that gap besides in many cases. Under a dog-eat-dog model of "competition" / so-called improvement"; attention's diverted from actual productive or socially redeeming or culturally enriching tasks and into watching your back, office politics, turf wars, and such. That damages trusts in other people, trust necessary to feel secure expressing new ideas about how to do things (foolish to share new ideas with people who'll steal credit for them or use those ideas against you, after all). Thus, "better mousetraps" or "apps" come on the scene later than would otherwise be the case.

*Inhibits my idea of progress - in addition to the previous point, it also includes reducing badness (injury, suffering, etc).

In that sense, I'm close to liberal where equality of rights goes. It says nothing about the extent or degree that people have - only that they have equal rights. So strictly in the equality of rlghts, I'm pretty close to the corner. The extent or degree of rights -- I put a question mark by that one. On to other matters.

Progressive vs Conservative. I suppose I'm only slightly into the progressive here. Change just for the sake of change is just as foolish as keeping the status quo just for the sake of keeping the status quo. History is littered with examples of new ideas being laughed at or even persecuted, yet time proves those new ideas to be better, after all. OTOH, a lot of new ideas are just wrong, and there needs to be through scrutiny of them before being accepted as public policy, or as truth in general. This dynamic works with science. So put me down as "slightly center-progressive" overall, but firmly but not "in the corner" progressive in a US context.

Left vs Right - I'm certainly not in the left corner, but undoubtedly am still closer to it than the right corner, especially in a modern US context. I believe some inequality is inevitable, and can be a great motivator to accomplish more if you are adequately compensated for the extra effort. Still, there is a law of diminishing returns here. Without extra taxes on the wealthy, it prevents the most disadvantaged from having a realistically humane quality of life AND leads to great power imbalances within a society (especially if money is literally a currency of power).

Libertarian vs Statist - Well, by ancap standards, I am North Korea OK, jokes aside, I frankly don't trust humans enough to let them behave however they want, as individuals and societies can be just as oppressive and dignity-robbing as any government has been. This includes a lot of "hot potato" aspects of US history itself. So I'm not a "corner libertarian" or even close to it.

On the other hand, everybody here knows of examples past and present of atrocious government violations of civil liberties and human dignity, so I won't list them here.

So I see government's primary duty in this regard is (ok, ought to be) protection of human dignity and human life. Freedom is important, but only to the extent that people don't use it to hurt harm or demean the dignity of others. This in addition to the fact that too much government intervention crushes initiative in the economic and scientific spheres (among others). So I suppose I'm at least fairly close to the mid-point here.

So this puts me at : slight-progressive, leftist, middle-intervention, corner-or-close-to-it liberal.