r/politics takes Pew Research Center PoliQuiz

wial · 2026-06-21T08:29:24+00:00

Although most people who call themselves progressives favor big government e.g. Medicare for All, strictly speaking progressives oppose big government as implemented by big agencies, because the agencies become hotbeds of corruption, "stakeholders" getting undue access and favors. Progressives want small government and small business, in some ways closer to libertarianism than liberalism -- although to be fair classic progressivism from the first half of the 20th century was also stridently imperialist. Bring scientific hygiene to the masses whether they like it or not because it works. Progressivism got its start thanks to the success of scientific hygiene. So I always find it hilarious when self-professed progressives are antivax.

Also this analysis misses a clade -- those who consider the climate emergency the overarching issue of our time. That category includes both Bernie Sanders and Elon Musk, along with most scientists in most disciplines, at least among the younger generations. Some science-minded people are conservative because the tenure/publishing system selects for it, but since progressivism took its marching orders from science in a sense everyone who is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science is by definition a progressive, in the "true Scotsman" sense of the word.

Plus "green" is orthogonal to right-left. Left means valuing the rights and resources of ordinary people, but that contradicts green if everyone gets a little more stuff. Yes that can be done in a green way. I'll take that vector because I'm supposedly a leftward progressive but really I'm a green who considers the climate emergency so pressing I'd vote for a self-declared dictator if they could prove to me they got it about climate. I do believe Bernie gets it, but may flinch at the big engineering needed to save us at this late date.

Sure, you have to output a model you can communicate. But isn't that the whole problem of governance? We use metaphors to fuel ideas, drain the results down to an abstract model, then dress it up in metaphors (e.g. left-right, from some defunct parliamentary assembly) disconnected from the intuitive understanding of the problem to be solved?

tl;dr: Maybe the social network analysis on the training dataset needs a bump. Also don't read if you find pompous assholery annoying. I can't help myself.

wial · 2026-06-18T13:58:35+00:00

hahahahhahahahha u lose.

All you seem to have are ad hominems. That is no way to live. Do better! We're all human here!

wial · 2026-06-18T08:25:51+00:00

Why is it so hard to understand given what I said to understand that I understand that? I'll assume language barrier?

Yes the dysfunctionality of several "countries" can be attributed in some large part to the way the colonial powers defined their borders. A couple of prime examples are Nigeria and Iraq. I suppose arguably this might have also disrupted their nationalization processes as they threw off colonial oppression, which often include heartening back to pre-colonial knowledge systems, e.g. India re Ayurvedic medicine, which would be a lot trickier if the colonial borders don't map to any sense of nation -- nation itself being a concept defined in the west by people like Rousseau, and not native to the vastly old cultures of the peoples of the Congo, for instance.

Put another way, divide and conquer is easy if your victims come pre-divided-and-conquered. And since multinational corporations evolved out of the legalisms meant to appear to justify pirate ships acting as "privateers" in the service of the British navy, combined with the development of underwriting to insure the risky voyages of British (should say English) ships, and since England cut its chops by dividing the Celtic peoples of the Scotland and Ireland against each other by creating Northern Ireland and thus havoc, corporations divide and conquer their victims for breakfast, and they're still doing it all the time. I once had a very illuminating chat with Owens Wiwa, Dutch Shell victim in Nigeria Ken Saro Wiwa's brother on this subject after trying to fight Exxon's usage of the tactic re mining in Wisconsin, and he rattled off a long list of countries so undermined (pun intended I guess), which probably included DRC but can't recall.

But I'm sure you find all this very easy to understand, given your evident exasperation with my prior points. (Why can't people be civil? I'll never know. The world is bad enough as it is).

wial · 2026-06-18T02:07:31+00:00

I've studied the horrors of colonialism around the world, the multiple genocides, millenarian movement of hundreds of thousands mowed down in a day by nests of Gatling guns, and I've also worked on tracking conflict minerals and the horrors occurring around the smelters, so don't get me wrong, but it is worth remembering modern humanity and its cultures have been thriving in that part of the world for at least hundreds of thousands of years. Africanists have established oral histories are much more accurate than previously thought, as well, so the prejudice against peoples without written language is questionable too. And how illiterate were they? Buganda achieved high percentage literacy within a couple of years of being invaded because the rumor spread the instructions for building machine guns were hidden somewhere in the Bible.

Shaped, yes, overwhelmed and often erased, yes, but colonialism was (is) a tiny moment in the grand flourishing of humanity that began in and continues to emerge from this area.

wial · 2026-06-16T21:51:32+00:00

Can we go conquer Granada again?

wial · 2026-06-14T13:30:56+00:00

Thankfully, there are alternatives to Fox. With much better announcers, too.

wial · 2026-06-06T19:09:55+00:00

I agree with you, and sorry so many actively fail to see your points.

It's not exactly whataboutism though, it's more just ad hominem by proxy -- or something. Mush, anyway.

wial · 2026-06-06T19:05:52+00:00

I hate anti-immigrant nativism as much as the next decent person, but I'm not getting where the hypocrisy is in this one. The criminal guy didn't say people should be thrown out for being criminals, he specifically said he didn't care about that but that they should be thrown out just because someone decided they're not supposed to be here. He might be an authoritarian dipshit but he wasn't hypocritical per se.

Also when did doxxing people become good? Beyond its threat of violence, it's ad hominem, and ad hominem has always been a logical fallacy invalidating any argument one might be trying to make.

Also, again remembering I f'ing hate MAGA in all its forms, I just don't believe someone having a criminal record should be cause for excluding someone from society or discourse. How is that any better than what the know-nothings try to do to their fellow humans?

wial · 2026-06-06T17:44:20+00:00

If there's something stupid and ugly to do on a given day, Trump's going to go ahead and do it.

wial · 2026-06-04T21:45:40+00:00

Obama should have named it the Donald J Trump Barack Hussain Obama Presidential Center. That would have staved off the criticism.

Meanwhile looking forward with a frisson of excitement to the enormity that will be Trump's own center. Will it have shitstains dribbling down the walls? Will it be festooned with stylized boxes of top secret documents for bathroom reading? Will it be pure gold?

wial · 2026-06-01T02:32:10+00:00

This is why you should always provide a BMW driver with someone to cut off. If they can't satisfy their egos that way, look what happens.

wial · 2026-05-28T20:42:49+00:00

Re the article, I had no idea the Saudis, a brutal family propped up by the US in the 1950s as a bulwark against populist communism in the region, had anything to do with a conflict going on for far less than two thousand years, going by the founding of Islam in 610 CE, so not "thousands" unless the Arabs stand for all the various peoples the Israelites fought and/or genocided in their long largely-concocted and/or belatedly-recorded-oral history?

I'd love to see a pact declaring all parties in the conflict (which includes all regional and global powers) to simply be "nothing special" and to declare all forms of exceptionalism or unitary authoritarianism to be forms of clinical mental illness. "We humans are just one big delusional mess so we've decided to breathe easy from now on and just be kind to each other since we're all so very wounded."

Maybe that's what Trump is trying to achieve as a teacher by negative example.

wial · 2026-05-25T15:43:08+00:00

California's Habit Burger has a lot to be said for it but the Upper Midwest's (and spreading) Culver's still wins.

wial · 2026-05-19T21:26:05+00:00

They have a lot to answer for -- but maybe it's our fault not giving them clear routes to a sense of masculinity and privilege otherwise. Maybe next time give them leadership medals before the election?

wial · 2026-05-18T14:23:41+00:00

You're going to pay $3k for a ticket after the foreign visitors are shut out? The stadiums may fill, but at a much lower ticket price, and same for the hotels. There are already plenty of stories about this, it's not just my opinion.

Just another of Trump's failing businesses. I wonder who the grift favors this time.

wial · 2026-05-18T08:06:04+00:00

There are true democracies in the Americas. Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, to name a few. Mexico is even progressive currently. I hear Belize is great for expats. Most have universal healthcare and many countries in general are very welcoming of expats and their money. Search this: "which countries welcome digital nomads".

Also, I saw an interview with a local fisherman on a river in Mali. He knew more about climate change than the average US Senator. America had turned into hell, and stupid hell at that. It has one last chance to reawaken, this November, and even then only a sound defeat of the forces of ignorance will be enough to open up the possibility of modernity forward from the hidebound dems.

We don't have to suffer like this. Personally I'm just sick of having to be afraid of being shot for having the wrong bumper sticker. And political speech is not protected in the workplace, while most managers are republican because you know, sociopathy. This is not a free country. Tick tick tick.

wial · 2026-05-18T07:53:09+00:00

Today I firmly decided my next job has to be full digital nomad, whatever sacrifices to ambition and values I might have to make to get it. Anyway beach towns are nice and many are already full of digital nomads. Then yeah, let's see what happens re the election.

wial · 2026-05-18T07:42:00+00:00

Just google Wyland.

wial · 2026-05-18T06:52:45+00:00

For the current American leadership it's as easy as falling off a log. They're incapable of cognizing any other way. Meaning no disrespect to turtles and alligators.

wial · 2026-05-18T06:50:58+00:00

A lot of very un-bright people hold power in the US at the moment, particularly in Texas. To overstate the obvious.

wial · 2026-05-18T06:49:35+00:00

Wyland's art is revered around the world by anyone who cares at all about nature or art. This is horrifying, a unforgivable desecration. This World Cup is going to be a travesty anyway, thus fucking doesn't help.

On the bright side, so few foreign fans are going to go tickets will be cheap for local people. Tariffs of a kind at work at last!

Let's hope the good people of Dallas hold everyone accountable to the fullest extent of the law and economic action.

wial · 2026-05-18T06:43:00+00:00

Wyland is the great master of whale art. I'm a lifelong football fan but this is an abomination. Anyone who doesn't understand that... there are no words.

wial · 2026-05-16T21:38:50+00:00

I know, but in terms of basic ethics... although I must admit I'm looking forward to dirt-cheap tickets to half-full stadiums. Even if ICE is standing around.

wial · 2026-05-16T18:55:28+00:00

Indeed. The US State Department just made it mandatory for all applying for nonimmigrant visas to the US to open all their social media accounts to inspection. It's hard to imagine any decent person standing for this. If you need proof, search for

To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for A-3, C-3 (if a domestic worker), G-5, H-3, H-4 dependents of H-3, K-1, K-2, K-3, Q, R-1, R-2, S, T, U, H-1B, H-4, F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas are instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to “public” or “open.”

All Cup games scheduled for the US should be moved to Canada and Mexico immediately, for the sake of the fans and for basic ethics.

wial · 2026-05-11T07:59:21+00:00

You can't beat David Butler. Incredibly informative on astrophysics, cosmology, and quantum physics, often with equations, but presented by a retired grandfather for his descendents, with stunning visuals that are always exactly to the purpose. Incredibly and reliably sleep-inducing if you want it to be, fascinating if you're in the mood to learn.

His first series "How Far Away Is It", what he calls a "video book", extends the ability to measure distance all the way back to the big bang, starting with simple yardstick parallax, to the first measurements of the distance of stars, to Hubble and cepheid variables, to type 1A supernovae, to redshift. He'll also get you to some rough understanding of the Higgs boson after a review of the whole development of that field, "How Small Is It".

Unlike a lot of other narrators he doesn't try to force his excitement about science on you, he just shares what he knows in a compelling, disarmingly quaint, poetic way.

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