(listed in order of personal priority)
Global Warming: is real, is anthropogenic, requires a primary school level of science to understand, is at the top of this list for a reason. It may be too late to reverse all of the effects but we should still take strong and immediate action to mitigate the damage. Unless climate is your research specialty, your opinion on whether or not global warming exists is about as meaningful as your opinion on whether or not gravity exists.
Environmental Engineering: has a longer history than most people are aware of and mostly consists of massive, unintended consequences. We are already engineering the environment by pumping C12 into the atmosphere, we may as well employ carbon negative solutions to mitigate the impact, but beyond that, I'm skeptical of most large scale engineering solutions and give preference towards simply stopping whatever actives are harming the environment in the first place.
Elections: are one of the top issues for me, a meta issue if you will, I will always support the party that wants to register more people to vote, that doesn't purge voter rolls, doesn't pass unnecessary voter ID laws, doesn't draw mathematically unfair and unreasonable voting districts, doesn't shut down mail-in voting drop boxes during a pandemic, doesn't try to throw out ballots, and, it should probably go without saying, doesn't try to physically storm the capitol to prevent the certification of elections. Elections are sacred. They don't always go my way (try never, living in Texas) but people must have faith in the process. Currently in the US, we have a situation where one side of the political spectrum wants to strengthen elections and the other side would be OK with installing a dictator for life - the choice, for me, is obvious.
Bureaucracy: is great and should be strengthened. Bureaucracy is what makes a democracy work and makes the government more resistant to bribery. When people talk about "cutting red tape", what they really mean is making it easier for corporate interests to line the pockets of fewer key people, fewer whistle blowers, fewer specialists who know the risks associated with corrupt deals. This is why corporate interests like propping up dictators in the Third World - easier to get corrupt deals through. A robust bureaucracy is a healthy part of society.
Healthcare: should be single-payer, Americans are unknowingly already paying for poor people's medical expenses in the form of insanely high insurance premiums and hospital bills, when people who can't pay and don't have insurance show up at the hospital that cost gets put onto the people who do pay their insurance and hospital bills, but since insurance companies make money by fighting claims and the government isn't paying for any of it, there is no regulation of medical costs so treatment, testing, pharmaceuticals and etc. all go through the roof. The Affordable Care act was nothing but a hand out to the insurance industry and now the situation is so bad that 10% of Americans can't afford health insurance especially when the insurance predictably refuses cover a damn thing. The rest of the Americans are one economic downturn away from losing their job and hence their health insurance. A single-payer system is much more efficient and better for the economy as a whole because people don't go bankrupt at their first medical emergency. People in single payer systems spend less, on the whole, on healthcare than people in the US - it's just that the US is a lottery, you can get away with paying nothing at all but if you get sick or injured you're screwed. Increase taxes slightly for single-payer so that people don't get gouged by insurance companies and hospitals, you end up saving money overall.
Public Education: Yes. Neither the government nor the private sector should make a profit on student debt. Admissions should be more selective and we should reevaluate the paradigm that everyone in society needs a 4-year degree. A necessary part of this is dramatically improving public secondary education and public (not scam private) vocational schools. Primary and secondary educator salaries should be closer to $100k with degrees required. Schools should be able to afford this, as well as all necessary books and supplies, as well as being able to stay open 5 days a week (which incredibly they can't in some (R)ed states) because they should get enough tax funding. I'm almost of the opinion that private religious schools should be illegal because, having gone to them myself, the quality of the education is about the same and a lot of time is spent on religious indoctrination and the main purpose of such schools is to segregate students based on race.
Public Welfare: the constitution of the US guarantees all citizens the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Key to these is public healthcare, public education, and public housing. All of these things are not only affordable, but significantly cheaper than our current crime-ridden police state which is the natural result of having a large percentage of the population destitute in the streets. I would prefer to share the public space with all of my fellow citizens, rather than be locked away in some gated community or private ranch riding out the apocalypse (although I've come to realize this is actually many Americans' dream scenario).
Religion in Schools: should only be taught in a historical and current events context, but should not be presented as doctrine. We need fewer private religious schools so that people invest in common public education.
Justice System: courts shouldn't accept pleas just to reduce case load, there shouldn't be 5-year backlogs in major cities, there should be money from the state to expand the court system as necessary, public defenders should get paid better and have a more centralized office like the state prosecutor's office, police officers should have a 3- or 4-year vocational degree in law enforcement instead of a couple months' training, white collar financial crimes should be punished just as severely as violent crimes as their effects are usually more widespread
Death Penalty: strongly against, given the number of provably innocent people Texas and other states execute every year, this one should be a no-brainer
Financial Regulation: there should not be double jeopardy across multiple government agencies, at the same time, the court should not accept settlements for high profile financial crimes - there should be jail time when average people's lives are ruined, we need more not fewer federal regulators, market transparency needs to be top priority otherwise we're just running a glorified casino
Wars in the Middle East: strongly against, energy execs making a profit selling oil to East Asia has a negligible impact on the US economy and isn't worth the lives lost, the public debt incurred, or the irrevocable damage to governments in the Middle East (which used to be mostly stable democracies and are now unstable autocracies)
State Surveillance: Only targeted against organized crime. We currently have lazily installed police surveillance cameras all over the US that people on reddit can apparently hack into. The government may be somewhat competent with this technology, but local law enforcement sure isn't and that creates a potential national security risk in its own right. For the most part, local law enforcement should not get hand-me-downs from the military - we need community police, not military police.
Abortion: should be completely legal in all cases, it's not like people have abortions for fun or for money (one of the more heinous lies the right has come up with), up to 20% of conceptions result in natural miscarriages so it makes no sense to base your argument on the "potential personhood" of the fetus or its status with the divinity or some such, the idea that abortion has anything to do with eugenics is tin-foil-hat insanity and not worth serious discussion
Marijuana: should be just as legal as alcoholic beverages which contribute to way more traffic fatalities
Firearms: should be heavily and strictly regulated. Automatic, semi-automatic, and any weapons that can be easily modified to be made automatic or semi-automatic should be banned. Ammunition should be heavily taxed and military style ammunition should be banned. High capacity magazines should be banned. Gun safes should be regulated and enforced. There should be a registry of all legal gun owners so that people can't buy legally and then sell black market. Owners should have to show proof of possession before purchasing more weapons and there should be a household limit. Selling guns for cash without a registry record should be a federal crime. If these regulations infringe on the constitution of the US, then the constitution should be amended. Hobbyists have no rights and yet most of this debate revolves around hobbyists and their deadly toys. Guns are rarely used for self defense and gun owners are more likely to be the victims of gun violence than non-owners. Guns are a placebo for a lot of people that make them feel safer while actually making their household and society as a whole considerably less safe. Guns are not used to safeguard the people against tyranny - ffs, the gun nuts just tried to overthrow the US government to install a dictator. The closest we ever get to seeing guns used against "the government" is Jared Loughner. The fact that we have a Third World gun homicide rate while Japan has practically 0 is evidence enough that something needs to be done.
Gay Marriage: should be completely legal, as far as the government is concerned, marriage should simply be a legal contract between two consenting adults, I'm not sure tax incentives should even be involved
Gay Adoption: should be completely legal, adoption agencies already conduct background research on couples regardless of their sexual orientation
Feminism: Yes.
Women in Combat: Yes.
Transgender Military Service: Yes.
Immigration: I'm not opposed to stricter qualification rules for immigrating to the US or Sweden. I think Japan and Switzerland have it about right.
Refugees: It would be explicitly unconstitutional, not to mention unethical and practically impossible, for the US to prioritize refugees on the basis of religion.
Islam: Is a religion and hence I'm opposed to it on principle. I look forward to the day that religion is only discussed in a historical/fantasy context.
Israel/Palestine: Is not the business of the US or Europe and as such, we should not be sending them military aid as if they were our proxy state.
Hate Crime Laws: people seem to be ignoring the fact that there are still standards of due process for convicting someone of a hate crime. It's not like hate itself is the crime. There are reasons why enhanced penalties were needed for crimes that are motivated by dangerous anti-social ideologies. The historical context is still important today.
Euthanasia: Should be completely legal.
EU: Is a good thing. Should probably become a military alliance. Sweden should probably join the currency union. The social democracies in Europe and the Commonwealth aren't perfect, but they still have a lot to teach the US about responsible government that's beholden to its citizens instead of corporate interests.
Patriotism: I think we should be proud of our country for what it does right for its citizens and for the rest of the world. We shouldn't be proud of our country because of how many F35s we have, i.e. how good we are at bombing people. Politicians shouldn't get any respect by literally hugging the flag. Using our flag as a garment doesn't make you a patriot. Making things that benefit society, helping your neighbor, voting, wearing a mask in a pandemic - these things make you a patriot.
Political Correctness: You should have the right to say whatever you want in a public forum. Private companies' servers and chat rooms are not public forums, so if you're going to break their rules, they reserve the right to moderate your speech. The irony of right-wingers decrying "P.C. culture" and then only congregating in the most heavily-moderated, dissent-suppressing chat rooms on the web should not be lost on anyone. Yes, there exist annoying people on the internet who call for "canceling" celebrities and etc. I don't consider this to be one of the most pressing issues of our time except in the context of it being weaponized by the right to convince politically-uninformed people that the left is somehow anti-free speech.
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