American here. If someone asks, I tend to say “independent”. I think folks usually assume that means “somewhere in the current political center”. What it really means is that I’m more left than the current Democratic Party. I would happily embrace a more left political party, but in the last decade I’ve had no other choice but the Democratic Party (with the exception of some local elections). Regardless, it tends to disarm people a bit. It may lead to a better conversation. I’m entirely convinced our two primary political parties completely fail to accurately represent the nuance in Americans’ political beliefs - and I think that’s true for those on the left and the right.
Anyway, I’m probably a Socialist. Sometimes I wonder if I might be a Communist, but I think I need to read more first. I’m willing to accept that maybe the market has its place, but it should be heavily restricted and completely removed from vast swaths of our society. That might make me a SocDem, but I see that as a milestone, not the end. It’s like a temporary compromise so we can take the time to find better ways to handle the industries the market continues to operate in. I’m convinced that capitalism (especially the unfettered, free market variety) is not efficient and its motives are ethically questionable. Here in the U.S. we have decided it’s ok to allow kids to go hungry because it may interfere with profits. We bail out billionaires because they’re too critical for our economy, but it would seem the more efficient solution would be to nationalize their industries.
On social issues, I’m still generally on the left. But sometimes I think virtue-signaling liberals take it a bit too far. I’m also really tired of this obsession over culture wars. Don’t get me wrong, I think LGBTQ+ rights are currently threatened and we should rightfully focus on preserving them. But at the same time, some liberals react much like emotional conservatives do over really petty shit. Sometimes they become the caricatures conservatives claim all liberals/leftists to be.
If you ask me, the most important part of modern politics is economics and the environment. I realize we can “walk and chew bubblegum” at the same time. But I don’t want to keep feeding this culture war bs. At least that’s how I feel, at the moment.
The last thing I’ll say is, I think our arguments around government budgets often miss the point. I spent time in the U.S. military. I know for some leftist circles this will make my opinions less valid. But I can’t change how a younger me saw the world. So, while in, I saw the ways in which we waste tax payer money. I think we could have a strong military while still reducing the budget. We heavily rely way too much on contractors (as in, privatization). That massive budget rarely made its way to my soldiers’ pockets or to the equipment they used on a daily basis, and that continues to piss me off to this day. The training and the facilities occasionally got better.
But man, we always seemed to get more contractors. We always seemed to get screwed by the fact that the military was limited in how it could negotiate prices for things they needed. I’ll never forget about the artificially inflated cost of printer paper. What a waste. Privatization in our government is helping inflate the costs of governing, and I feel it’s not talked about enough when our “representatives” are pretending to bicker about the military budget.
