| tsogud said:
All this time I thought you were a socialist not a social democrat... :''''( but yeah I think you're right that it's a generational thing. The squad specifically AOC have become important icons among my generation and my personal idols. AOC and Bernie have inspired me to get into the political sector. Like Hylianswordsman, I too can't wait until AOC is presidential age she'd have my 10000% support! |
Well hey, I'm glad you're inspired to get into politics!
To be clear, I am a democratic socialist, by which I mean specifically that personally my preference would be for a broad reorganization of the economy such that the means of production would become public property, workers would manage their workplaces day-to-day, and the economy would be democratically planned out routinely by the population as a whole in a participatory fashion. I believe this would require a general devolution of political power to more local levels. There are a number of communities around the world that currently live in this sort of communalist fashion and they're my source of inspiration in this area. Nobody in the U.S. Congress or running for president advocates this type of broad restructuring or even close. All the progressive elected officials at the national level are reformists, whatever they claim about themselves.
That said, I'm a pragmatist and as such am inclined to support those reforms which move society in the general direction of the type of change that I believe in. In the area of economic policy in particular, AOC advocates many ideas that I strongly agree with and support, and I would commend her for leading the House Democrats to formally, at least on paper, embrace the Green New Deal. In a general sense, I consider the economic policy ideas of the progressive Democrats their strong suit. That's the main reason I view them more favorably than other political factions that exist in the U.S. at this time. That includes AOC.
However, there are other policy areas where I don't agree as much with the progressive movement, and in which it could be said I agree less with AOC than with the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Foreign policy is definitely one of those areas. I'm in favor of a moderate approach. When it comes to policy toward Israel, for example, I'm for cutting off military aid for painfully obvious reasons, but I don't go so far necessarily as to support imposing broad sanctions on what frankly is really the only halfway functioning liberal democracy in the Middle East because "Benjamins". When it comes to stuff like this, I think you can see how my own views are more similar to those of Warren and Sanders than to those of AOC and "the squad".
I think it's also worth pointing out that, though I do consider myself to be a democratic socialist, a feminist, an environmentalist, pro-immigrant, an opponent of mass incarceration, this sort of thing, I don't actually consider myself to be a progressive these days. That's because I've found that progressives don't view me as one of them. The specific term "progressive" appears to have a very specific connotation in the current parlance. For example, I'm not allowed on the Revolutionary Left forums because I have voiced openness to deep green politics, not just bright green; deep green apparently being considered reactionary. From this I gather that the term "progressive" in the contemporary parlance specifically includes not just the general goal of improved equity in economics, politics, and cultural life, but also insistence upon technological advancement. I find I'm not allowed in other progressive spaces either for this and other reasons ranging from my opinions about women's right to private spaces and freedom of speech to my negative view of religion. Over the decade, I've found that voicing any kind of support for radical feminist groups like Femen and well frankly any of current South Korean feminism has been a particularly sure-fire way to get removed from progressive spaces quickly.
I've thought about embracing the term "moderate" because a lot of politically marginal people do so, but it just doesn't sound accurate to me. I need a label that sums up my overall worldview on all the issues and I can't think of one that's accurate.
For further clarity on my level of support for the people we're talking about here, I would say that I agree with...
...Elizabeth Warren about 80% of the time...
...Bernie Sanders about 75% of the time...
...AOC about 70% of the time...
...Joe Biden about 55% of the time...
...Donald Trump and Mike Pence about 10% of the time each, for different reasons.
Something like that.
