” Do you assume nothing but evil, destructive intentions on the part of political opponents?”
I didn’t until I ran as an opponent and then witnessed first hand the underhandedness that so called “Honourable” men did behind the public eye.

Most of mine is reactive, because it is impossible to guess what wacko and evil schemes the other side will come up with.

Just when you think they can’t be any more depraved and cruel, they come up with a new angle.

I don’t assume evil intent but I do assume them to be self serving. Generally if someone assigns evil intent to an issue, it’s because they don’t have a good argument. If you can’t argue the issue then assign evil int to the person. Discredit the person and you’ve discredited their argument. It’s an emotional ploy that unfortunately works all too often.

I could absolutely care less about ‘sticking it’ to any party. But I think each side justifies the same poor behavior if THEIR side does the same.
Maxine Waters and Trump both incited violent riots but one is under investigation while the other continues her schtick for votes. It’s almost comical.

I am not against things just because others are for it.
My politics are founded on §1 of the German constitution.
“Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.”
All else, things that I support, and things that I oppose, follows from that tenet.

@KNOWITALL That’s a false equivalence and you know it.

Maxine Waters called for confrontational demonstrations and protests. Trump and his gang called for jailing and executing elected officals to support a violent overthrow of the government.

All our politics are self-serving, but it doesn’t seem consistent to assume the worst of the opposition but claim your own politics are magnanimous and pure-hearted. I have no doubt the opposition thinks the same. I don’t assume evil at all. I do think all of us tend not to think of the potential negative repercussions of our politics.

Maxine Waters did not insite a riot. Another case of stating false information. The people went home to honor the curfew after she spoke. And her speech was in defense of a man, not related to her, nor did she know him, but that was murdered. trumps speech was to further HIS OWN AGENDA, to make himself bigger. There was no compassion from trump. So your comparison is not even valid in many ways.

To answer the question, my core political beliefs arise from my personal values and life experiences, coupled with education on civic duty and citizenship.

I am willing to make an initial statement of my views on a matter. Where it gets reactive is confronting false statements and ad hominen remarks by those who do not agree.

Of course politics is about self aggrandizement and demonization of the other side. But for those with conservative leanings, it is a hopeless and sadly transparent mistake to rummage through the liberal bag of snakes for some counterpart in malevolence to the seditionist pig. It simply cannot be done. Waters and the Democrats are by no means wart free. They are after all politicians. But the “so are you” defense does not work this time. The threat this time is to the desruction of both sides. And for those in positions of leadership (in either camp), spineless silence or cowardice regarding the realities of 6 January must certainly be the most shameful legacy defining whatever career befalls them. It matters not what they achieve in the future, it is those of them who stood up now that history will revere. The others have my sympathy, my respect is another matter.

@chyna Even the judge said it was a basis for appeal and he wished elected officials would stop talking about the case, calling it disrespectful to the rule of law and the judicial process.
Personally I think she and Trump were both making incendiery comments that lead to riots, thus either both are guilty or neither. And people on all sides agree on that, maybe not here, but that’s Pat for the course.

Obama had a major impact on my political thinking. He had me hook, line and sinker. And then I saw what he did with his supermajority. Instead of working towards implementing his populist campaign promises, he tried to engage in bipartisanship. There are really only 2 possible explanations for this:

1. He’s a fool, and was outmaneuvered by the right.
2. He sold out to his donors and fucked the American people over, pretending that he was being blocked by the right in an act of political theater—one the media was happy to help him with.

By all accounts, Obama is not a fool, that leaves #2.

Follow this up with just how corrupt the DNC and Hillary campaign were in 2016, and how complicit they were in preventing Bernie from winning the nomination (both times) and I realized that the modern Democratic Party is such a fucking cesspool of corruption that they’d rather let a psychopath like Trump win the presidency than let someone like Bernie win and possibly lose their seat at the table (and ultimately their sweet payouts on the backside).

The only thing I’ve seen the modern Democratic Party fight tooth-and-nail for is in preventing a rival 3rd party from squeezing them out of the money trough. Their role and purpose is to prevent populism at all costs. It’s to make sure that voters on the left only ever have the choice between eating half a bowl of shit or a whole bowl of shit.

In the short term, that makes Democrats taking corporate money and allowing super-pacs, bundlers and the rest of the wine-cave bullshit enemy #1. Only until we have strength on the left can we wipe the floor with the psychotic Republican Party. In some ways, that makes me a reactionist, but in others I’m just trying to fight to see the country return to the progressive values of FDR and more egalitarian European countries.

The conclusions of ethics are the premises of politics. There is no “other side”.

I sort of agree with @gorillapaws in a sense. Unlike him I am not a populist—I think populism is dangerous whether it’s on the right or the left. But I do agree with much of the rest of it.

That is worthy of a solid GA. My view of Obama however is a bit less hostile. He simply was not a street fighter. He was indeed a fool for operating on the delusion that regarding his opposition, reason should prevail. You only need look at the GOP’s success in blocking his judicial appointments to appreciate the worth of that supermajority. Virtually everything he did manage to accomplish was achieved only by decree, because that was ALL that was available. I don’t disagree that in today’s environment, any seasoned politician expecting idealism to triumph is indeed a fool. He caught on too late. Gentility and manners were NOT the proper response to his opposition. But nothing destroyed my respect for the man until he neglected to force the 1% responsible for the 08 collapse to shoulder the expense of its avoidance. I don’t believe even he yet understands just how clearly this single failure on his part documents his endorsement and approval of this as a land devoted toward the flourishing of plutocrats alone. And why not? If you can’t beat em——well he is certainly now one of them. And I plan to enjoy mine while the place collapses around us.

@hp and he was badlly outmaneuvered by McConnell.

No bout adoubt it.

I’m done with any party loyalty whatsoever. I have voted Democrat in several local elections because of who they were and what they planned to accomplish. I have voted Republican for the same reason.

@Caravanfan “Unlike him I am not a populist—I think populism is dangerous whether it’s on the right or the left.”

The thing is, people gonna populist. So the question is, do you allow the energy and momentum of the working class to be channeled in unhealthy ways on the extreme right, the extreme left or into healthy policies that do a lot of good.

After Trump has been labeled a populist, I feel I have no clear understanding of what the term means.

@gorillapaws I know people gonna populist. Populism has been around for millenia and isn’t going anywhere. But as an old curmudgeon centrist I am resistant to it.

@janbb Trump is not a populist. He is a narcisist criminal and used populist rhetoric to enrich himself and his family.

@Blackwater_Park I never had much party loyalty, but I have no problem with voting for people of various parties. I do have a “side”, but it doesn’t map neatly onto the current parties and is often at odds with many other people’s idea of what the “sides” are.

@Demosthenes same for me. I certainly don’t color completely inside any party lines. I do have hard stands on certain issues, they just happen to be from opposing sides here.

I don’t feel I’m reactive the way you define it. I don’t assume mal intent in most instances, and I’m not trying to stick it to the other side.

The mal intent is tricky, because I think sometimes they really believe they are trying to do good, they are hoodwinked by the people they listen to. For instances school vouchers falls in that category for me. I think a lot of Republicans think vouchers will help poor kids go to better schools and they believe it will improve schools via competition. I think that’s all bullshit, the actual motive behind it is to draw money away from public schools and put it into religious education, to control the population. Some Republicans outright want that, but I’m talking about those who like I said just think it will help poor people and raise the level of education in general. They are duped in my opinion.

This follows in the same thought process as my answer on the Q about Evangelicals being the equivalent to the Taliban, a lot of Christians seem to not understand where this is all going.

@HP Back to your point on Obama, I’m having an extremely difficult time believing that a guy who came from very modest means to being elected as president of Harvard Law review, to then become a Senator, take on and beat Clinton in the 2008 primary who was the epicenter of the largest political empire at the time and ultimately be elected to the most powerful office in history all to have his political ambitions out maneuvered by McConnell and the Republicans when his party had a filibuster-proof supermajority. Give me a break! That’s like being asked to believe that a blindfolded Donald Trump managed to beat Magnus Carlsen in chess.

Occam’s razor applies here. Obama is incredibly smart and a brilliant political strategist (or at least he was able to surround himself with them). The odds that his failures were the result of incompetence on his/his team’s part vs. the obvious alternative that he took money from lots of evil people and was obligated to do what he was paid to do are just too unlikely to be believed.

Obama could easily have dragged Lieberman through the mud and strung him up by the proverbial balls. He could have had his wife in front of an ethics inquiry about how her lobbying on behalf of the healthcare and Pharma industries while her husband was filibustering the public option. It’s not like Obama was a coward. It’s just that he was being paid by the same people as she was. Heads Big Pharma wins, Tails Big Pharma wins because it’s much cheaper to buy out all politicians than to gamble on one party winning.

And there you have it. MONEY! You have provided @janbb the surest determination of a populist, and that determination has nothing to do with ideology. This is why both Bernie and the pig share the same designation. A populist is a politician who succeeds despite and often in defiance of both his party and the system on which the 2 parties hold a death grip. And the history of our country has been about populists rising from the left. There have been exceptions—men with their own money—Teddy Roosevelt or Ross Peirot. But it is the Democrats who are adroit at derailing revolts, they’ve had the practice, and were ready for Bernie. The Republicans blundered considerably with Trump. Like the rest of us, they assumed (like the fool himself) that there was no way in hell an idiot like Trump could defy the system in place. Trump, who couldn’t explain the difference between a Republican and a box of washers, declared himself a Republican, then took the party over. The Democrats, on the other hand, instantly recognized Bernie for the threat he was and basically ground him into the dirt. They sytematically and shamefuly smothered him with the the simple admonition—it’s Hillary’s turn. Obama got in under the wire, because Obama, despite all his uplifting rhetoric was clearly prepared to play ball. He made the mistake, as all the other idealists in believing meaningful change possible within a system fine tuned to inhibit any such foolishness. Hillary was the perfect example of this before him. Despite all the evil we’ve been told she personifies, she genuinely believed it possible to implement effective universal healthcare in defiance of big pharma and corporate medicine. And of course they kicked the shit out of her, and bludgeoned her so badly that Bill had to muzzle her and hide her from public view. Obama of course was aware of the whipping she took. His solution? He took the jerryrigged and horribly complicated plan devised by big pharma and corporate medicine; the complications necessary to insure both entities enormous profits, the same plan embraced and championed by the corporate loving Republican party—Obama took that plan, concluded it better than nothing and with the backing of big pharma and corporate medicine, shoved it through despite the howls of horror from all those enthusiastically behind it when it was labeled Romney care.

There is no problem being populist if it is for the right reasons, but populists usually appeal to the lowest and worst in our natures and that is a problem.

ARE reactive? Pretty much all of it.

@kritiper Actually, I believe “is” is correct in this context. “of your politics” is a prepositional phrase that does not govern the verb. “How much” governs the verb and functions as singular since I’m asking for a single quantity.

In either case, it is awkwardly worded and “to what extent are your politics reactive?” might have been a better way to ask this.