I’m hoping this doesn’t start a fight, I’m just curious what the political orientation is of this community. I grew up in a liberal (in the American sense) family, and I identify now as a socialist, though a lot of the liberalism I grew up in has stuck with me, like interest in LGBTQ and women’s rights, environmentalism, etc. Wondering where people here land?
My liberal friends call me a libertarian, and my conservative friends call me a libtard. So what does that make me? A centrist? I don’t believe fully in any one ideology. There are good things about multiple different belief systems, and bad things about them too. I think we’re doing ourselves a massive disservice by aligning so neatly into tribalistic views of the world.
Agreed with that
Most Americans (your terminology is American so I’m assuming) have incoherent political beliefs handed down to them by popular discourse. Nearly all of them can be summarized as liberalism, i.e. a supporter of the capitalist order, and “debate” is whittled down to which of its various forms you “support”. You are given basically zero agency to actually support those things unless you’re a major business influence, but your frustrations at a lack of material improvement in your and others’ lives has been effectively redirected into a pantomime of political movements, and this helps the boss pick your pocket.
Basically… this is how I would contextualize conservatives (liberals) and liberals (liberals) calling you “the other”. You probably just aren’t subscribing to their own team sport-like political divide, one that changes easily and often depending on what their masters tell them to think. That doesn’t necessarily make your understanding better or worse, I just want to point out that their opinions probably mean nothing and that you are probably a fairly typical person in your region.
With that said, I highly recommend reading about the foundations of socialism and the horrible things the US has done and continues to do to other countries to enforce its economic order. We are not taught these things in school - we are instead taught nationalism and arguably fascist things so that there are ready-made excuses for the terrorism our country inflicts on others and us. There are, unfortunately, many, many examples, but one place to start is the coup and genocidal campaign in Guatemala premised in bailing out the exploitative landlords (basically feudal lords) there in the form of fruit companies. Their truth and reconciliation document is one of pure horror. The School of the Americas never died, it just expanded and became more diffuse. This is the ideology of mainstream America.