Overweening Generalist

Saturday, October 13, 2012

This Political Season: Just For Kicks

Which Candidate For You?
Not long ago I found this article at NPR: "Web Quiz Tells You Which Presidential Candidate Best Fits Your Worldview," which linked to I Side With. Take the test and see who your real candidate is.

You may be surprised.

No Need To Settle For Euclid
Because it's both easy and fascinating, I will now once again link to Robert Anton Wilson's erudite article on thinking about politics in a Non-Euclidean way. Read it and share it with your friends! Discuss it in a way that would've made Thomas Jefferson proud.

                                       Mikhail Bakunin, 19th c. anarchist who disagreed
                                       with Karl Marx for very prescient reasons.
                                
Mitt Agrees With You!
By the way: if you self-describe as a liberal, a moderate, or a conservative, Mitt Romney agrees with you! Don't believe me? Check this out! (They could have made this little bit easier to navigate by allowing us to un-click boxes in order to jump around a tad more.)

Religio
Finally, Richard Dawkins has warmed my heart a bit by extensionalizing (a term from General Semantics that has stuck with me) the Atheist/Agnostic/Theist POVs. He has three positions for Theists, and four for Agnostics/Atheists

My position doesn't appear there, as I see it. I think all the gods and goddesses "are" "real," but they're metaphors that emanate from deep within our biological-Being. When people ask me if I'm an atheist, I say no, I'm more like some sort of agnostic. If they ask for clarification, I'm delighted to get weird with them. But really: my agnosticism fits into the "model" model: I'll say I'm atheist in certain situations, agnostic in certain situations, and that I'm Buddhistic in others. Other times I'll say I'm a Discordian or a Javafarian. If you ever want to screw with a willfully ignorant Christian, tell them you're a "Jeffersonian  Christian." If they ask what's that? Then you get to tell them about what T-Jeff did to the Bible, which could lead to an interesting situation. Hey, I'm here to help, friends!

addenda: When I did the I Side With test, my candidate was Jill Stein, with Gary Johnson and Obama coming in 2nd in everything else. (Not that you asked.)





2 comments:

Cleveland Okie (Tom Jackson) said...

These "find out who you really support" quizzes tend to lack nuance, but Johnson and Stein were my top scores. I'm voting for Gary Johnson. Are you voting for Stein?

Have you heard this one? A liberal, a moderate and a conservative walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, "Hello Mitt."

michael said...

I've heard/read arguments both for and against my voting for Nader in 2000 being partly responsible for Dumya/Cheney and their abominations.

It makes me tentative enough that I'll probably hold my nose and vote Obama, simply because I find Rmoney and Ryan soooo ghastly...and absurdly close.

In a somewhat sane society, Mitt wd be polling around 1-3% and anyone with a brain should be attacking Obama for his Wall St. values, his Kill List and drone strikes, his easy caving to health insurance companies, on and on and on.

In an even saner society, we should be arguing over whether Gary Johnson (a conservative I respect) and Jill Stein (a true progressive) should get our vote.

Alas...

The Mitt joke almost writes itself, eh?