The Leftist Priority List

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Hi all.

I consider myself a leftist for the most part. That being said, I think that every political movement should have a clear priority list. There are many important political issues out there, but some are more important than others.

In my opinion, these should be the top priorities of the left.

1. Environmental Protection: Nowadays, nature is being altered at an alarming rate by artificial substances. Never in human history has the problem of environmental destruction been so bad. Nature is important for several reasons. First of all, global climate change will lead to crop failure. This has been conformed by the scientific community. Also, nature has psychological healing properties. Depression and anxiety are becoming huge problems in the modern world, and I think that observing animals in their natural habitat is a good way to cope with depression. This comes from my personal experience, and I'm probably not the only one.

2. Nuclear Disarmament: Since the creation of the atomic bomb, the world has had several very close calls. The Doomsday Clock is now two minutes to midnight, meaning that the risk of a nuclear disaster is very serious. The Doomsday Clock was made by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which is a highly respected academic journal and not a dubious pop-science magazine. Therefore, we have no reason to doubt them.

3. Phage Therapy: Phage therapy is a wonderful medical procedure which could end bacterial infections all over the world. A lot of people feel anxious around phage therapy because it literally involves injecting viruses into living human bodies, but I think that these fears come from ignorance. Bacteriophages are not capable of injecting their genetic material into human cells. There have been billions of bacteriophages on this planet for billions of years and none of them have ever evolved the ability to infect an animal cell. Bacteriophages only target bacteria, and they can evolve with the bacteria that they parasitize, meaning that bacteria cannot easily evolve an immunity to bacteriophages. When you use antibiotics, they stop working once the bacteria evolve, and you eventually have to create new antibiotics. Phage therapy does not have this weakness.

There are plenty of other priorities ... but let's skip down the list for a while. In fact, let's take the priority elevator to the very bottom.

...

...

...

DING!

In my opinion, political correctness should be the lowest of all left-wing priorities.

I know what some of the leftists here are thinking "Political correctness is important! Some people have thin skin and they don't like it when people say mean things!"

Here's the thing: Political correctness may have put Trump into power. Most Americans hate political correctness with a burning passion. That's why so many Americans voted for Trump, despite Trump's obvious incompetence.

If the left tries to shoot for environmental protection and political correctness at the same time, it will inevitably fail. Sometimes, you have to be realistic, look at what the voters want, and consider what is politically possible.

Sometimes, you have to place realpolitik above ideological purity. If you want to achieve that which is politically possible, you have to discard what is politically impossible.

Am I a "brogressive"? Damn right I am! The world needs more people like me!

#yousayimbrogressivelikeitsabadthing
#neckbeardleftistsunite

mine would be
1) cooperative-based industries
2) review of public debts and tax (a simplified, progressive and income based system; end tax on non-luxury goods)
3) social housing (exploring other models than individual ownership. uruguay had some good examples)
4) massive public investment in infra-estrucutre. specially diverse, non-fuel based transport.
5) land reform, focused on family based organic farm

Wow. Well done!

I like how all of your ideas are concrete policy-based ideas that can be clearly defined.

Far too many leftists nowadays will say "We need to challenge people's social attitudes towards race and sex, so that the working class can free itself from the mental disease of toxic whiteness."

Most people in the working class hate that sort of rhetoric, as it has no clear end goal and no clear-cut meaning.

I'm sick of hearing post-modern radfems say "Our war against prejudice will never be over! White people must always look inside themselves and root out their internal racial prejudices, so that brave people of color can love themselves."

News Flash: The masses want a clear end goal ... aside from simply making white people hate themselves.

Overall, I strongly despise any political movement which is grounded in pride and self-esteem. When a person feels useless and insecure, this isn't society's fault. People who feel diminished should seek out an individual identity, not a group identity. In other words, people should stop telling society to prop up their fragile egos.

Issues few care about.

Well ... we need to somehow get people to care about these issues, because these are issues of life and death. Careless environmental destruction can lead to crop failure. Nuclear disarmament is necessary to prevent a planetary suicide. The development of phage therapy is crucial because we are on the verge of a global pandemic due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

"Media representation" is only an issue because a few big babies on the extreme left make a lot of noise about it. It should be either mocked or disregarded.

True. I find people on the right have actually been making more of a fuss about that lately though with people getting offended when a piece of media does represent women and minorities as if everything should just star nothing but white guys. Both camps are way out to lunch.

In any case, environmentalism and nuclear disarmament are issues everyone who is informed cares about. I'm guessing that means few are informed and that makes me sad. Worse yet, uninformed people are allowed to vote. I guess that's why the current president has any supporters by this point. I wasn't aware of that Phage Therapy thing though. That's actually a pretty neat idea. However, I think my third choice would be social funding.

Some segments of the alt-right are just like SJWs. They are two sides of the same coin. As a result, they often get offended by the same things, but for different reasons.

For example, a lot of people on the extreme right insist that strong female characters in the media are always a sign of "feminist sexual perversion". Meanwhile the SJWs will hate any strong female character who is too sexy.

In other words, if you enjoy sexy female characters who can kick ass (such as the female characters in Overwatch) then you will be hated by both camps.

Also, people on the far-left and the far-right both hated Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino. The far-right hated it because it was about a former slave killing racist whites. The far-left hated it because the film allegedly "cheapens slavery by turning it into a spaghetti western".

... and then there's the fact that any video game or movie with sexy women in it is going to be hated by fundies and radfems at the same time.

As a general rule, anything that is offensive to both the extreme right and the extreme left is going to be fun and awesome.

(1) Fixing the economy

(2) Fixing the environment

(3) Maintaining and safeguarding civil rights

#1 and #3 are intrinsically linked.

Could you please explain 1 and 3 in greater detail? Those could mean a lot of different things.

(1) The United States economy is currently broken. There's a widening gap and divide between the upper and lower class. There are many people struggling to find work, put food on the table, and adequately be able to provide for their families. This divide needs to be resolved to ensure that people's quality of life notably improves. Nothing can be accomplished without quality of life being increased since it's the key to what fuels and motivates people.

(3) Racial rights, women's rights, lgbtq rights, etc. If you take away the tenant of a party that looks towards safeguarding the rights of minorities - you're going to have minorities looking to an independent rather than Democratic party. One of the key reasons the Democratic party is strong is it currently holds all of the country's minorities together as its base since it stands for these rights, whereas Republicans stand for the rights of being white, straight, christian, neurotypical, etc. Both sides play identity politics. Changing this aspect of the party will intrinsically lead to a lot of its base looking elsewhere to ensure that their own personal wants and needs are met. At a time when the Democratic party is struggling to hold onto its base, alienating it further will just ensure Republicans maintain control since Republicans continue feeding their base what they want.

Progress is only made when people are happy and motivated.

For a party to win, it needs to ensure the wants/needs of its base are met.

An upset economy puts people on offense/defense which pits them against each other, which in turn increases open discrimination and hostility between differing societal groups. Hostility between members means little to no progress can be made.

OP, the left would get absolutely crushed in any election with those as top priorities. People want good food on the table, good clothes on their backs, good jobs, good schools for their children, good hospitals, low crime, and some money in their pockets for nice things, etc. Make sure these things are in place, then perhaps you can turn the population's attention to things like what you said and away from "first World problems", microaggressions, PC culture, etc.

Here's my five-point leftist platform for the United States:

1. Averting the collapse of the biosphere
2. End to military adventurism and the surveillance state
3. Universal health care
4. Solving the homelessness crisis
5. Ending the war on drugs and redressing mass incarceration

And as a libertarian leftist, I don't think these problems should be addressed thru restrictive bureaucracy and centralization, but rather by cutting authoritarian programs such as ICE, the NSA, closing Gitmo, and relocating some of the nation's bloated military funds towards health, education and rehabilitation programs. Imagine what we could do if we slashed some of the right's big-government programs! Incentives such as tax credits can be used to encourage more sustainable power sources as well as cooperative businesses and the recycling of minerals and e-waste. I'm also sympathetic to a Georgist tax policy and a universal basic income.

I like my women beautiful and with some backbone. I also love Django. That might be my favourite Quentin Tarantino film. Screw both the Alt-Left and Alt-Right.

Free health care for all (in America).

Free higher education.

Industries would be forbidden by law to leave Americans jobless by moving overseas.

Americans would be paid a wage allowing a comfortable middle class life, with benefits.

I like your take on Political Correctness and Identity Politics. In this survey I was identified as Left Wing Authoritarian (a very unfashionable designation, I suspect), which is probably not a million miles from the truth.

Anyway, I would like the main emphasis to be on securing public control of essential services, like transport, health, utilities, telecommunications, banking and the like. Also a revalidation of the concept of a 'mixed economy',a reinstatement of the primacy of the 'public service' ethic as opposed to the notion of 'shareholder value', and generally less emphasis on materialism, 'aspiration' (= greed and snobbery) and consumerism.

Taxation should be based on income, and gross disparities of income shouldn't exist. No CEO should be receiving more than 10 times the average salary of an employee in a particular company.

Education should be demanding, with an emphasis on discipline and results. People who can benefit from it should receive an academically-focused education, with a more practical or vocational bias for the less able. There should be parity of esteem for all however, and more academically qualified people should not be paid appreciably more than those with more practical skills in the employment market.

Social Liberalism, PC and Identity Politics should get short shrift under such a system. If the Western world is to get its act together and hold its own against the likes of China and Russia in tomorrow's world, it needs to jettison such nonsense. But it won't.....)

What exactly is "social liberalism"? This term has been defined in many different ways. For example, liberals and libertarians tend to define "social liberalism" differently.

Anyways, I agree that SJW-ism is like a political pitcher plant. The average sucker thinks "Maybe women will like me more if I constantly rant about how sexist our society is." or "I'll tell people to check their neurotypical privilege! That'll show them!"

In practice, SJW-ism will send you into a downward spiral of emotional instability … and it's not easy to get off.