Shifting Views and Values

I used to consider myself a Communist.

 

As much as I hate labels and stereotypes, I find it difficult to have a discussion about politics without using any labels whatsoever.

 

Remember the old Chinese curse; may you live in interesting times. We are surely there.

 

I read that in a fortune cookie.

 

I stumbled across this thread while looking for a place to put my Memorial Day rant. I think it fit best in History:
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?p=5549592#post5549592

But my first paragraph sorta fit here:

"I hear that as we age our brains shrink and we get more combative and contrary and that men get it worse than women. So, call me a grumpy old man but I do get annoyed sometimes at the way things are. ..."

I agree with most of the posts made here and that is our attitudes are mutable with experience. And I have experienced more years on this planet than most here.

Aside from the misconceptions I previously had about the world, my current conceptions probably fit into liberal, maybe even progressive - but there are those nagging little moments that I sound like my dad (staunch Reptilian and Reagan supporter - they were contemporaries) or even my grandfather, a product of the 19th Century.

I think it has more to do with reflecting on the whole picture; seeing the continuum instead of polarizing to one side or the other. I mean, I have gone thru so many trips in six decades.

However, I think there is a core belief. I have always been a misfit in American society. As a high school teen I dumped the Christian religion as I was taught and became an Atheist. (An astute Social Studies teach told me I was an Anti-Theist Agnostic and I now agree).

I knew that the segregation of the races in which I was raised was wrong and yet I will not buy that as an excuse of for being a low-class person or thug mentality.

I knew that the draft was wrong and amounted to a slave army and yet I will not fault the soldiers who did their duty. Nor will I fault the guys who ran off to Canada and Europe to escape a dishonorable war in Vietnam. I joined the Air Force and avoided being drafted into the Army.

When I got out I became a police officer. Wanna read my rant about hating the pigs?

After that I actually tuned in, turned on and dropped out.

I suppose that would be labeled Liberal but since then I don't fit the Liberal label completely. I have managed to piss off liberals almost as much as the conservatives by taking my own path which sometimes strayed from the party line.

I believe in equality of the genders, yet I also know that men and women are different and don't think a woman who fights to get into a traditional male-only occupation should scream sexual harassment because the guys act like guys. My dad would have agreed, only he woulda said it was no place for a woman.

I bristle when we talk of the "men and women" who died in Vietnam. There were 58,212 men (mostly conscripted slaves) who died in that war and 8 women. I think we should just say it was the men who carried that war. Or we should forever refer to the "men and women" with breast cancer.

Oh, and I do not kill animals to the point of being a vegetarian who does not wear leather and yet I consider PETA an out of control, grandstanding and near terrorist organization and have taken issue with several stances of the ASPCA. My rabbit shooting dad would have agreed with that.

So, I guess I am still discovering where I am on issues and concerned that my shrinking brain is turning me into my dad.

 

What a grumpy old guy

It wasn't just American soldiers who died there.

 

I use those labels for other people, but only because they choose to take sides. Sure there is a right and a left that's administered to the general public. However, if you follow the money to the top, you see it's just a handful of people who control all sides and are working towards the same goals. I believe that if people realized this, there would no longer be any reason for people to adhere to the left vs. right mentality. It's simply a dialectical con game that serves only to control people. Most of the politicians you see on TV arguing with each other are actually very good friends behind closed doors and out of the public eye.

 

That's an example of what has been refered to as the "one party system", which simply means that politicians are more alike than they are different. The worst thing about politics is that it is full of politicians.

I seriouly doubt that any professional journalists or commentators or full-time politicians are participating in this forum, so I aimed the OP at ordinary people who only get one vote at the ballot box, just like everybody else. Not the ones who control the big money.

I don't think that we can fill up the rest of Skip's server space with this thread, so feel free to be as open-ended with your answers as you want. Some feel that two or three or more sliding scales are needed to describe their positions in different areas. A growing comprehension of that complexity seems to be another byproduct of growing older.

Since it does not perfectly track with political views, I split off changes in moral and sexual views into a separate question in the L&S Forum:

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=363212&f=13

I'm well aware that any way you choose to describe a person's views has to be an oversimplification, since there have to be at least a million things on which a person can have an opinion. Nobody has time to go through all that.

 

A quote often attribtued to Churchill, although falsely so.

 

not really since i was 15.

not really. but i find myself able to empathize more with opposing viewpoints and see where people are coming from.

tons more tolerant of other peoples' views and values...but less tolerant of people themselves.

my parents are conservative. me and my sister are liberal.

cool thread. i was just thinking about how much less tolerant i am of people the other day.

 

Oh you.