2-Dimensional Politics

Driving home from work I passed this sign.

"CLOSED DUE TO OBAMANOMICS."

Obama seems to have it out for these poor bakeries, if we take their word for it.  I've been to this bakery twice and was dissapointed both times, but maybe Obama is sabatoging their ovens and recipes?

I've been asked a lot about where I lie on the political spectrum lately.  People call me a "lefty", but I try to explain that summarizing the political spectrum into a single line is a terribly difficult thing to do.

I think that at worst there needs to be two dimension, with up and down representing government authority, and left to right representing fiscal policy.  

*Image from Political Compass

The term's "left" and "right" seem to have been rooted deeply in our two party system.  They try to establish that there are two base sets of beliefs, and that either someone is in line with your ideals or not.  It's hard to label people if they're spread out across a two dimensional map.  As such, I try to spread the idea whenever these conversations come up: "I'm a lower left".  Where do you stand?

http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis

I did my fair share of complaining when Bush was in office, I guess it's my turn to patiently listen to the realistic problems Obama will introduce/has introduced.  And to do so without a "us" and "them" mentality, but realizing we're all different and hopefully through everyone's conflicting ideals we manage to come up with an optimal solution.  I hope that one day we have a political system that can more realistically represent people's positions and be less focused on opposing a single group of "opposite" minded people.