Thoughts on "Being left" and a few other things of no consequence.

Apologies in advance for formatting, grammar, or whatever other bullshit. This post is pretty much just stream of conciousness and after reading back over it, it does capture the spirt of what I want to say, but there's a lot of things that need fixing that I just don't have time for.

Aaaaanywho, the main thing I wanted to post about on here (which very well may be my only post, but we'll see) is somthing that has been weighing on my mind for quite some time, but I didn't feel comfortable posting about on Facebook because of how tribal all my friends and family seem to be when it comes to this subject.

I don't particularly like identifying myself with the left or the right, that goes back to and feeds in to that whole tribalism thing I was talking about, but in general I tend to lean more left, and I suppose it's the best metric I have for saying "in a word, these are the sorts of ideas I generally tend to have." I've always identified as a liberal. For a long time in my younger teenage years I thought I was about as left as left could be. Over the last few years, however, I've heard all kinds of people say (not incorrectly, I'm sad to report) things about "Crazy freaking liberals and their insane ideas." Now, not all liberals are this way, clearly, and generally when I hear phraises like this being used it's aimed at what's being called "The Regressive Left." However, It puts me in the strange position of not being used to having my political alignment being called the crazy ones due to the most militant insane bastards on the spectrum.

It's entirely possible that I just haven't noticed that there was a left further to the left than I am; In fact, I'm almost sure that's the case. As a teenager I, like most other teens I'm sure, thought that my positions were all new and unique, and because they were 'new and unique,' they clearly must have been as far to the end of the spectrum as was possible. However, I find myself now in the position of hearing people calling themselves liberal champion things that I frankly find a little bit... Well, crazy.

I find myself in the awkward position of listening to people like Stephen Crowder or Dave from Computing Forever talking about the regressive left as though they are most liberals. I don't think they belive that, nor do I think they're really saying that, maybe that's just the way it sounds to me, but the frightening thing is that I really can't say that if that's what they are saying, that they're wrong; I don't know if they are. As a brief aside, I'm not trying to bash the Dave or Stephen or mischaracterize what they're saying. I actually really enjoy their content. They're just two good examples of people saying things conflating 'leftists' with the regressive left. As I said, I've always identified as liberal, but the kinds of things that the far left (or maybe it's just the left and I'm way more center than I thought) are doing and saying just drive me batty; I can't understand it.

I can't help but wonder if the folks on the right feel this way as well. More center or moderate people on the right being lumped in with those on the far right as though the most extreme and militant members of the party or alignment are the clear speakers for the whole group.

Anyway, I hope I've made presented my point fairly well and that I've articulated myself in a manner that makes my rambling writings at least somewhat pallatable.