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My political affiliation is firmly with US progressivism. I support equal civil rights and protections for all people, including but not limited to immigrants, people of color, women, trans people, nonbinary people, disabled and differently-abled people, anyone economically underprivileged, elders, minors (insofar as such rights don't put their lives in present nor future danger due to their underdeveloped sense of judgement, obviously [for which purpose I do NOT consider medical gender transition, nor vaccination, nor change of beliefs, nor consuming media that doesn't revolve around white nuclear families who go to church every day, to pose any meaningful present or future danger to one's life]), people of all religions (though this should not include any right to religious violence, such as the hate crimes regularly committed by some but not all evangelical Christians against many other demographics in this list), and, well, not the rightfully incarcerated, but I do think they should have certain rights they don't right now, such as unconditional rights to life, rehabilitation efforts, humane treatment, and unionization against prison slavery.

I believe, as a matter of pursuing these equal rights and protections, the US could stand to be more socialist and much less capitalist than it is right now. I would say I'm nearly a communist. I'm so nearly a communist that I'm inclined to believe we may be at a point where a revolution might be the only viable way to fairly redistribute the wealth. That being said, I can't call myself actually a communist, for three reasons:

1. I'm a physical coward. If there is to be a revolution, I want no part in it, except maybe to support it.

2. I'm not hateful. I don't crave the blood of the enemy. If there is a revolution, I don't want to maximize bourgeois death. I want the conflict resolved as bloodlessly as possible, on both sides.

3. I'm too bourgeois to be a communist. Regardless of where I stand on the issue ideologically, the real hardline extremists would reject me because I apparently don't suffer enough to have the right to not want anyone else to suffer either, or some stupid thing like that.

War

I once hosted here more nuanced perspectives on more specific wars. I've had a change of heart. I've come to the probably controversial philosophical conclusion that war is not a nuanced issue and does not need to be discussed case-by-case.

My beliefs on the matter are really very simple. I believe it's a categorical moral good for people to be free to live in a place, and a categorical evil to remove them from that place against their will. It doesn't matter what the history of that place was like, nor the history of conflict between the parties involved, nor "who was there first." The land—all land—belongs equally to everyone, and everyone has an equal right to occupy it, and no right at all to prevent or terminate its concurrent occupation by anyone else. As for governance of a land, no government should ever be allowed to exist without the consent of the governed, and that's the only rule necessary to decide whether a government is legitimate or not.

As for what this generic belief entails for specific modern conflicts:

The Ukrainian people must be allowed to remain in Ukraine. If the Russian people want to occupy Ukraine, then they must also be allowed to live in Ukraine, but they have no authority to ordain that the Ukranian people may not continue to live there as well, nor that the Ukranian people must follow Russian ordinances more generally. The ordinances which people who live in Ukraine must obey should be decided by people who live in Ukraine, equally by all people who live in Ukraine, and only by people who live in Ukraine, regardless of whether they are Ukrainian, Russian, etc. People who do not live in Ukraine, such as people who live in Russia, have no claim to decide any aspect of the government of Ukraine, except in that if they wish to begin living in Ukraine, then under the jurisdiction of Ukraine they must be allowed rights, including voting rights, which are equal to, and neither less nor greater than, those of all people already living in Ukraine. Even if the people who live in Ukraine cannot agree on how to run Ukraine, they have no right to kill or exile each other, and their civic responsibility is to resolve the disagreement nonviolently. The reason for the disagreement has no bearing on that responsibility.

The Palestinian people must be allowed to remain in Palestine, and that means all of Palestine, including Jerusalem, even though Jerusalem is also a part of Israel. If the Israeli people want to reoccupy Jerusalem and reaffirm its status as a part of Israel, then they must also be allowed to live in Jerusalem, but they have no authority to ordain that the Palestinian people may not continue to live there as well, nor that the Palestinian people must follow Israeli ordinances more generally. The ordinances which people who live in Jerusalem must obey should be decided by people who live in Jerusalem, equally by all people who live in Jerusalem, and only by people who live in Jerusalem, regardless of whether they are Palestinian, Israeli, etc. People who do not live in Jerusalem, such as people who live in the rest of Israel or Palestine, have no claim to decide any aspect of the government of Jerusalem, except in that if they wish to begin living in Jerusalem, then under the jurisdiction of Jerusalem they must be allowed rights, including voting rights, which are equal to, and neither less nor greater than, those of all people already living in Jerusalem. Even if the people who live in Jerusalem cannot agree on how to run Jerusalem, they have no right to kill or exile each other, and their civic responsibility is to resolve the disagreement nonviolently. The reason for the disagreement has no bearing on that responsibility.

In essence: Everyone gets to live everywhere. Everyone gets to decide how the place they live is run, even if they just got there, but this excludes deciding who gets to live there, because everyone gets to live there and no one gets to say otherwise. We use our words. We don't shoot. We don't bomb. We don't behead. We use our words, and when words don't work, we use them anyway.

People need to stop killing each other and get along. There's room enough for all of them. If they hate each other, they need to suck it up and get along anyway. If they have a long, bloody history, in which one party subjugated the other, or the other subjugated the one, or both alternately, then too fucking bad, they need to suck it up and get along anyway. And they don't get to boss each other around either. Sorry not sorry, but it's really that simple—and by it, haha, well, let's justr say, fucking everything.

You might call my demands unrealistic. They absolutely are. But that doesn't make them wrong. The moral truth is sometimes—often, even—an unrealistic ideal. That just means we'll never get to our destination. It doesn't mean we don't make the journey anyway. No one can ever be perfect, but you still have to try as hard as you can to do the right thing as often as you can manage.

Do you think that's "easy for me to say?" Do you think my perspective comes from a place of privilege: the privilege of not living in a war-torn nation?

Well, good. Again, that doesn't make me wrong. People who have the privilege to speak freely, without stakes or personal investment, should take full advantage of that privilege by speaking the unbiased truth. That's my civic duty.

I understand I may come off as insensitive. It's not that I don't recognize the horrors of war; of course I don't in practice, for the reasons I just stated, but I do in theory, and I sympathize. It's not that I would discount the extreme volatility of the emotions at play—the emotions you feel toward another when you've watched your loved ones die at their hand—how easily that hatred can be twisted into bigotry—how insurmountably tempting it is to assign blame to all those of that other's "kind." I may not know these feelings from experience, but I do know them through empathy.

Nonetheless, no matter how strong your feelings are, life is more important. Life is always more important. Life is more important than anything. Life is more important than land. Life is more important than oil. Life is more important than religious heritage. Life is more important than liberty, and I don't give a shit what Patrick Henry would have to say about that; if he's to roll in his grave, let him roll it off a cliff for all I care. And yes, life is even more important than "What about the lives of the people they killed? Weren't they important?" (They were. But avenging them is not.)

If everyone keeps saying to themselves, "breaking the cycle of violence is too hard for me, my trauma has corrupted me too badly, the next person can do it instead," then the cycle of violence goes on forever. We have to be the ones to stop it. Even though it's hard. Even though it feels wrong. Even though it feels impossible. We have to do it anyway.

(My stipulation that "life is more important than anything" does not contradict my pro-choice leaning, because by "life," I mean sentient life. A fetus has the beginnings of a brain and the potential for a bright future, so its life is very important as well—but not as important as a sentient being's bodily autonomy.)

When I say "we" have to do it anyway, I of course mean Israel and its enemies—primarily Israel, since it holds the power here. But suppose—as is in fact the case—that those involved are unwilling to end the cycle. Then, "we" have to do it in a different sense: the UN has to do it. If the actual combatants won't stop the war, then someone here needs to be the sleeping giant to be awakened, the all-powerful neutral third party, the ambient threat too powerful and intimidating to be defied. In general, I don't like big brother states, but there needs to be one if two or more other states are going to act like children. In general, I don't like it when the UN—and let's be honest, I'm talking about them largely as a proxy for the US, the most egregious offender—takes foreign matters into their own hands and deprives less powerful states of independence and autonomy by planting puppet democracies, etc. But even I, who so dislike that, am forced to concede it is what's called for. The UN needs to step in and force peaceful coexistence at nukepoint, and they need to do it in a way that's fair to both Israel and Palestine. (This of course means the US needs to pull its head out of Israel's ass first.)

Anthropogenic climate change

I acknowledge the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and while I think it's noble for all of us to do all we can in our personal lives to try to slow it down, there are certain people I blame above anyone else, who really, really need to change how they do things, or else nothing the rest of us do will mean a thing:

• the rich with competitive joint ownership of the auto industry, far moreso than the working folk who drive cars;
• the rich with competitive joint ownership of the oil industry, far moreso than the working folk who use gasoline;
• the rich with competitive joint ownership of the meat industry, far moreso than the working folk who eat meat;
• the rich with competitive joint ownership of the electronics industry, far moreso than the working folk who use computers and cell phones;
• the rich who fly around in their private jets;
• the "working" folk (and this is the only part I'll blame the common folk for) who scalp GPUs and put them to excessive use peddling cryptocurrency and NFTs and deluding themselves they're inventing Skynet by teaching a virtual slug brain how to just-barely-not-merely-trace human artists' anime girls.

I don't know how to label what I believe about what role the government should play. My initial impulse was to call it "democratic authoritarianism," but upon research, that's apparently something else entirely: it's what authoritarian regimes are called when they pretend to be democratic. Furthermore, authoritarianism is apparently defined in part by rejection of democracy. I know damn well what libertarianism is, at least here in the US, so at this point, I'm beginning to think the authoritarian/libertarian dichotomy is libertarian propaganda.

Anyway, I'm a "democratic antilibertarian," I guess. Mostly, anyway. I have some libertarian ideas, but certainly none of them concern the so-called "free" market, nor the freedom to hurl abuse at others, nor incite violence, nor damage nor exploit one's own children as if they were property, nor withhold pay from laborers.

Basically, I believe if, and only if, a government is truly and completely democratic, then thereby is assured its legitimacy to rule with absolute power. This does not mean an elected official should hold the power of a dictator—not unless they would use it exactly in accordance with the will of the majority, without any personally motivated overreach, ever, no matter what. That is, I believe the will of the majority—the will itself, not anyone in particular elected thereby—should be considered the true head of state, and its word should be law. Direct democracy, in other words (as opposed to representative).

In this belief I of course reject the idea that there can ever be a "tyranny of the majority." I am confident so long as the people have complete information and are not deceived, the majority is always right. The dissenting minority needs to sit down, shut up, and take the L.

In case, however, the people are deceived, there are some respects in which I suppose I'd call myself libertarian. There are some freedoms I hold should be inalienable, even by popular vote, and I warn you they do not entirely align with those promised by the US Constitution:

• the freedom to live—including socialist gratis distribution of requisite commons insofar as economically possible without depriving others of the same—unless there's proof beyond reasonable doubt you've knowingly committed unprovoked murder;
• the freedom to roam free (except into other-owned enclosures not larger than necessary to fulfill their function in reasonable comfort) unless there's proof beyond reasonable doubt you have, knowingly and for any reason but to save a life, endangered someone's life, and/or inflicted upon them severe psychological trauma;
• the freedom to vote, else the rule of the so-called majority would clearly be illegitimate.

I very much wish guns had never been invented, and would not recognize (as inalienable, anyway) the right to own them in my ideal state as described. It wouldn't be necessary. The people are the rightful bearers of absolute power, so if indeed they possess it, then any possible revolution against them is inherently illegitimate.

That being said, the US is far from that ideal state. I don't even consider it perfectly democratic—only pretty democratic—let alone do I delude myself it guarantees the inalienable rights I describe. I think conservatives greatly overstate and overexercise their right to bear arms, but in this country, I do concede such a right is necessary. In fact, if Trump is re-"elected," I believe its necessity is about to become much more apparent, and it worries me that my fellow progressives seem so reluctant to act on that.

Listen. He's said he's going to bring down democracy. He's said he's going to incarcerate us and execute us for not supporting him. I'm inclined to believe him. We need to be prepared to fucking kill him. Literally we need to be ready to blow his brains out. Why is no one else with me on this? Do you not value your lives, or are you all just stupid? Go out and get a gun. Do it. If we're unwilling to kill him when he comes to kill us, we are going to die. Your moral objections to violence and terrorism are irrelevant here. Or, what, don't tell me you don't even believe in self defense. I hope that's not the case, because that would be pretty pathetic. Don't get me wrong, we don't need to actually kill him right now—probably—I hope. My point is we need to be prepared for the eventuality. I mean, I don't think he's redeemable, but it's not for me to say. It's not for me to say, until he shows up at my doorstep. Then it's fucking go time.

You reading this, FBI? CIA? You best not come after me, because you know damn well I'm not out of line here. Nowhere herein have I incited proactive violence. So I'm suggesting people proactively buy guns. So what? Notice how I'm also going out of my way to make it clear we don't strike first. I'm inciting self defense. Self defense is legal.

Religiously, I'm what you might call "spiritual but not religious." I believe in God, but not a specific one. I just believe in the feeling in my heart. I don't believe in learning about that feeling from a book. The feeling itself is all I need. I'm kind of like a Quaker, except I take it a step farther. Quakers believe in the light within, and a direct relationship with Christ, right? I'm like that, except I trust my light within so completely that I don't even need to know its name. For all I know, it's the light of Vishnu, or Odin, or grandma, or Bob the Builder. Or maybe there is no God and it's just my conscience. Or maybe it's just my conscience, but there is also a God, and maybe that God's teachings oppose my conscience; if that's the case, then I so trust my conscience that I would assert God to be evil. Regardless, I don't consider such details relevant to my pursuit of what my light tells me.

I oppose, categorically, religious violence, religious indoctrination, and obstruction of social or scientific progress on religious grounds (except in cases where such scientific progress is to be used for violence or hate crimes). Aside from these aspects, I take no issue with any aspect of any religion. I'm not cultured enough to be aware of any organized religion that has never fought a holy war, doesn't indoctrinate people, and never behaves in a reactionary manner against nonviolent progress, but any religion like that is one I have no complaints about.

I have a complicated but mostly positive relationship with open source. I believe in source availability, the user's right to modify and redistribute, and users having full control over their own hardware, but I also believe in intellectual property and worker compensation. The best compromise I've found thus far is the mission of the Organization for Ethical Source.

In any case, I oppose a lot of what big tech gets up to these days. I utterly reject surveillance capitalism and big data, to the point that I refuse to knowingly run software with telemetry, and I exclusively use open-source software on all devices to try to ensure this. I have nothing to hide, but, as I said before, I support civil rights for all people. Privacy is a human right. I won't stand for its erasure, and to that end, I make a point of exercising mine despite having nothing to hide. Hiding is not the point, you see: the point is refusing to show. A subtle but important distinction: the purpose is not to protect myself, but to refuse to capitulate, and to defy. I feel similarly about advertising, though in that case, the human right I won't stand to see erased is the right to be unmolested by public nuisance.