“This is such utter nonsense” So you don’t think that people choose to be wasteful?
That's not what I said. Read again.
And guess what, laws do not pass if people do not already engage in personal habits that the laws encourage.
Of course they do. Behaviour can follow legislation. Furthermore most of the legislation would need to target corporations, not individuals. In which case behaviour definitely follows legislation.
No, they both have consequences. I’m pointing out that the distinction being made that somehow political views have special considerations over all the other personal actions is worthless. (Remember what the actual topic was?)
Because one primarily affects the person making the decision, with smaller secondary effects on other people. And the other primarily affects other people, doing significantly more harm.
People being overweight does not affect you nearly as much as people voting to ban gay marriage or trans healthcare affects LGBT+ people.
It is. Here’s the hard facts,
Oh please.
overweight people are less happy,
Which is none of your business.
they have worse socialisation,
You are deeply unpleasant yourself, take the log out of your own eye.
they are unattractive ( which as much as people want to pretend like attractiveness doesn’t matter, it absolutely does when it comes to casual interaction),
Nobody owes you attractiveness you little freak.
they have shorter, less productive lives,
None of your business, how other people spend their lives.
they increase health care costs.
Old people increase healthcare costs. If unhealthy people die earlier as you say, then they probably save the system money.
All of these effect society as a whole and the individual.
Not even remotely to the degree that political action does. Voting outweighs all of that by many orders of magnitude.
I have no idea what you are talking about, I never downplayed any laws, you’re just fabricating that so you can justify your whining.
It's called an "example" sweetheart.
Progressives aren't ending relationships based on political stances around taxes. They're ending relationships because of bigotry against marginalised groups.
Many of the biggest issues {climate change, healthcare, drug abuse etc} faced are directly caused by poor personal habits, not voting
This is just such utter nonsense. Many places around the world have made massive inroads into solving these problems and every single time, the solution has come from systemic policy decisions.
Healthcare has been addressed by various universal healthcare systems, drug abuse has been addressed through decriminalisation, offering of rehabilitation, and making sure people aren't living under crushingly miserable economic conditions.
And climate change is not caused by individual decisions, but by the fact that our economic system only values profit, and thus incentivises the destruction of the environment to increase profit.
So the question is out of all personal decisions, why are political views being carved out as an exception that is worthy of terminating a relationship?
Because politics affects people's lives. I could not care less if you're a nice person to my face if you are voting for policies that make it impossible for me to live my life.
You talk about personal choices as if someone being overweight is going to measurably affect your life, when it just isn't, no not even through increases in health insurance costs. And then downplay the actual effect of conservatives criminalising my healthcare.
One of those actions clearly has orders of magnitude more impact than the other. Yet strangely, you are concerned about the one with negligible impact, and want to ignore the one with considerable impact.
Sometimes when you are criticised it’s because you are a complete moron, not because your ideas are so brilliant they send people running.
You are below my contempt. Your ideas are simplistic and have been addressed decades ago. You are painfully boring.
Because many of us understand that there isn't a meaningful difference between personal interaction and political action.
The above person treats the gay people he meets with civility when he interacts with them personally. He also votes for political movements who want to dissolve their marriage and want to treat being gay as something to be hidden from public view.
That is not respecting gay people. That is not treating them as equals. It does not matter how nice and polite you are to someone's face if you vote against them being able to live fulfilling lives.
No not any. But conservativism is characterised by belief in inherent hierarchy. That all people are not equal. That some people are more or less worthy than others.
And note I've said "characterised" and "belief". In reality ideologies are complex, and the humans and organisations implementing them are even more complex and subject to corruption. So it's not a simplistic "presence of hierarchy == right-wing". Some ostensibly left-wing governments fall to authoritarianism. After all politicians are vulnerable to greed and corruption. Though notably those governments begin to quickly abandon their left-wing principles as they do so. For example, the Chinese Communist Party has certainly gone all-in on capitalist ideas of private ownership of land and the means of production.
That characterisation is simply a useful lens for understanding political movements. One can easily see that when there is a push to distribute power "down" the hierarchy, people who refer to themselves as conservative will be more likely to oppose it. They oppose social safety nets that benefit those at the bottom, they oppose transgender recognition, they opposed gay marriage, they opposed ending slavery.
Would a technocracy be right wing?
Depends. If you mean replacing the democratically elected government with a government of "experts" (who gets to be an expert being decided by, you guessed it! The experts)? Then yes. As that is basically just a form of aristocracy.
But if you mean democratically elected politicians relying on expert advice to make policy decisions, then no.
Or leftist states with a leadership structure? Like, any leftist state.
Depends. How is that leadership structure maintained? If those positions are elected, and the elections are fair and representative, then no. Because the power ultimately lies with the people, with one person having one vote.
But, do you have a point that you are approaching? Because at this point it seems like you are just asking endless questions. In which case I kinda agree with the other person, you're sealioning.
The opposite side of the political spectrum, which progressivism occupies.
Also what do you consider the main traits of conservatism to be?
Fundamentally, the belief in hierarchy. Which manifests as support of capitalism, private ownership, and traditional social values.
Opposed to progressivism which opposes unjust hierarchies, and favours egalitarianism. Which manifests in desire for more equitable distributions of wealth and power, and critiques traditional social values.
What do you mean "again"? You haven't asked me before. And right-wing is another way of saying the side of the political spectrum that conservativism occupies.
It's not really a cognitive disconnect. Most of us know that some members of a minority group will vote against the interests of their own identity. Perhaps because they have some other trait such as wealth that insulates them from the consequences of their politics, or perhaps because they are ignorant. But Quislings have always existed, we know, it's not a shock.
There's a reason why the feminist saying "the personal is political" is so threatening. Because it denies precisely the reasoning seen above and elsewhere in this thread.
Conservatives often complain about progressives ending relationships and friendships over "politics". Because they want to draw a hard line between the two, where as long as they behave civilly to people's faces, it doesn't matter when they vote to make the same people's lives materially worse. Because "politics" is something... I don't know, abstract?
Police violence, particularly against people of colour. Protests? Too disruptive! Literally just kneeling? Too disrespectful!
Even MLK Jr. mentioned this in his letter from a Birmingham jail:
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.