Anyone been wrong about a significant political issue and admitted it here?

[PlanetJosh]

So I keep saying I'm a moderate who leans a bit to the left and I keep repeating it thinking people have forgotten it, if they cared to begin with. No that's not a significant issue. Here's the important issue I was wrong about:

I was posting about U.S. single payer healthcare proposals. I think that's pretty damn significant as it makes the hair bristle on conservatives. I support the single payer method which is the government paying for our health care. And I posted that I hope moderates craft the plans for single payer health care because they won't have wacked out ideas of the far left or far right.

Well I got slammed by a pro single payer poster who replied oh boy that I actually think moderates will help to get single payer into law. He said moderates have sat on the issue and done nothing to get single payer advanced just like the conservatives haven't promoted it either.

So I thought about it and realized he was right. Moderates don't really put single payer at the forefront. A pretty glaring oversight. So I replied that yeah the average moderate doesn't promote single payer. Maybe a few left oriented ones do but not enough of them to make a difference for single payer to win in a vote. I could look up the posts to see who it was that corrected me, he probably remembers this.

So sorry conservatives I still believe in single payer but I was wrong about how to go about achieving it. And it doesn't have to be about health care, can be any big issue And just wanted to let you know with a quick recap that I'm a moderate who leans a bit to the left.

 

[Bitek]

No, and N/A

 

[Fenixgoon]

i maybe have once or twice, but if you were to compare my posting style and positions from like 10 years ago, with my posts and positions today...you'd notice they are dramatically different.

biggest one i can think of is guns - i was very much pro guns and against any additional regulation. now, i think they need to be heavily, heabily curtailed, or even the 2nd amendment scrapped altogether.

 

[theeedude]

I was wrong about Russia not invading the Ukraine, and admitted it.
I didn't think Putin was stupid enough to invade a country of 30+ million that's been preparing for war since 2014 with only 150K troops, but I was wrong.

 

[Jaskalas]

Pretty easy to at least "lean left" when Conservative ideas are... bankrupt, will never be presented as logical arguments or backed by data... and they will only ever fall back to slinging !@#$.
Where to start...

• Iraq, WMDs.
• 2008 economic crash and its recovery.
• CO2 and Global Warming.

Those are real subjects we've had here, where the years revealed how wrong I was. A comedy of errors wrought by Conservative upbringing. That slapped like a truck doing 80 into a brick wall.

When I created my account here I was firmly voting R. Within four years, independent. Four more years, leaning left. Then Trump happened. I was already coming to terms with Basic Income, but 2016 was an outright declaration of war. No room for neutrality could exist after that, and besides... endorsing Basic Income (and more) means I would make Bernie Sanders blush. My journey means you could have pretty much named this topic after me.

 

[Jaskalas]

I was wrong about Russia not invading the Ukraine, and admitted it.
I didn't think Putin was stupid enough to invade a country of 30+ million that's been preparing for war since 2014 with only 150K troops, but I was wrong.

It was 44 million last year.
Less than 30 now.

 

[theeedude]

It was 44 million.
Less than 30 now.

Tell me about it. The sad thing is they might never recover. Already lowest birth rate after South Korea and a lot of people leaving to work in Europe, even before the war. Also, Europe has its own demographic problems, and Ukrainians are a good way to patch them.

 

[woolfe9998]

So I keep saying I'm a moderate who leans a bit to the left and I keep repeating it thinking people have forgotten it, if they cared to begin with. No that's not a significant issue. Here's the important issue I was wrong about:

I was posting about U.S. single payer healthcare proposals. I think that's pretty damn significant as it makes the hair bristle on conservatives. I support the single payer method which is the government paying for our health care. And I posted that I hope moderates craft the plans for single payer health care because they won't have wacked out ideas of the far left or far right.

Well I got slammed by a pro single payer poster who replied oh boy that I actually think moderates will help to get single payer into law. He said moderates have sat on the issue and done nothing to get single payer advanced just like the conservatives haven't promoted it either.

So I thought about it and realized he was right. Moderates don't really put single payer at the forefront. A pretty glaring oversight. So I replied that yeah the average moderate doesn't promote single payer. Maybe a few left oriented ones do but not enough of them to make a difference for single payer to win in a vote. I could look up the posts to see who it was that corrected me, he probably remembers this.

So sorry conservatives I still believe in single payer but I was wrong about how to go about achieving it. And it doesn't have to be about health care, can be any big issue And just wanted to let you know with a quick recap that I'm a moderate who leans a bit to the left.

Wait, what exactly are you admitting to having been wrong about? Not the issue of healthcare itself, You haven't changed your position on that. Only the status of other moderates on the issue? LOL

I myself used to lean center-right on social welfare and safety nets. I used to partially buy into conservative arguments that safety nets took away people's incentive to work. Which is a fallacy for a variety of reasons. You can find a few of my early posts on that under my previous handle, which was woolfe9999.

I'm solidly left on that now.

 

[trenchfoot]

I was wrong about a number of things over the years I've been in this forum and have apologized for every one that I can recall due to my view that it's all part of the process of learning the truth and facts of the matter at hand and there's no shame or guilt involved from that effort. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, I own it and learn from it. I'm now better informed and knowledgeable for being corrected and I move on.

Standing my ground on quicksand is not my style nor reason for engaging in discourse about anything and everything under the sun. The pursuit of the truth and the satisfaction of attaining it is important to me and getting a verbal beating in the act of acquiring said truth is simply a worthwhile part of that pursuit.

 

[Amused]

Oh boy.

Yeah, me. I'm still center-right, fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I was once more libertarian than I like to remember. The right-wing went batshit insane and I'm sitting here wondering WTF happened. The entire US political spectrum has been pulled so far right I'm now solidly blue.

 

[dank69]

I was wrong to think that it is possible to use sugar and spice to help a conservative realize flaws in their logic.

 

[feralkid]

I never actually liked Ike all that much.

 

[Pens1566]

I did say that the senate would be 52-48 in favor of Ds after the '22 midterm. Not sure that's a huge "miss".

 

[HomerJS]

Trump winning in 2016. Dead wrong.

I've gotten fairly good at predictions. My best one, 5 days before Trump's inauguration predicted his first lie as President would be crowd size.

 

[JD50]

I used to be pretty far right in my 20s and I'm pretty far left now, you can look up my post history. I grew up in a conservative family and was bombarded by Rush Limbaugh from my Dad and then by Fox News in the late 90s. It took about a decade of being out on my own and away from all that for me to break out of the conservative cult. So yea I was wrong about plenty of things on here and I've admitted it many times.

 

[gothuevos]

I was wrong about the midterms.

 

[pmv]

Yeah, I admit I didn't realise how ideological Putin and his regime was. I just thought he was a purely-financially-motivated gangster, had no idea he had all those mad nationalist ideas.

Hence I didn't, right up till it happened, expect he'd actually go through with invading Ukraine.

 

[Perknose]

Oh boy.

Yeah, me. I'm still center-right, fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I was once more libertarian than I like to remember. The right-wing went batshit insane and I'm sitting here wondering WTF happened. The entire US political spectrum has been pulled so far right I'm now solidly blue.

"Oh boy" is right, my friend. I even pm'ed you because I thought maybe a son or daughter had taken over your account. I vividly remember battling you in . . . OT? . . . over several of your completely retrograde, far right views. Anyway, welcome to reality!

 

[BoomerD]

What a strange concept...

 

[MtnMan]

When Trump did win in 16, a surprise for sure, I said "how much damage can he do in only 4 years"... I underestimated his ability to fuck up an anvil with a rubber hammer big time.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I've been wrong about things but typically its due to the information available at the time and that changing. And I've admitted I used to be much more flippant and edgelordy 13 year old boy spouting awful shit (that even at the time I didn't actually believe/support although I also never had to confront that so its entirely possible I could've ended up being a dipshit that partook in others actually being that way, thankfully I was spared and matured) far later in age than I should and that I'd go back and kick my own ass if I could. And some was simple ignorance, but I've posted about that stuff as have others, and I think that is more in the spirit of the OP.

Which specifically with regards to politics, I didn't say much in general so I didn't typically have the opportunity to be wrong, and the limited times I did it was to tell raging right wing dumbfucks like...rudeguy(?) to stop being complete morons, which was the right thing, because they were. Also I didn't post in this subforum because, and this is still true, I fucking hate politics (not government, but the dumbass idiotic bullshit "politics" that we know it as, which is talking head media people and politicians trying to be celebrities, spouting blather 24/7). The problem is, I was a typical modern American that had duped myself into believing that made me some apolitical arbiter of objectivity, and that "both sides were equally extreme and neither was right" when in fact it just blinded me to how fucking insane right wing politics has been, basically for the entirety of American history (with a few key instances of it being particularly insane).

That's not to say there weren't plenty of legit issues with Democrats, but they've also recognized that stuff and changed. Not always and not nearly as much as they need to. But I also understand there's a majority of "centrist/moderate" in the US, but those are the old willfully ignorant people like I was, but sadly they have such outsized say in things and are prone to buying in to the simple and easy lies of right wingers so even right of center "liberals" have to try and appease them to keep them from enabling the worst of the Republican policies. So there's give and take. I work on the specifics at the personal level, whilst being pragmatic when it comes to Democrats having to play this extra bullshit layer of politics. Which women and minority groups are well experienced at because its the bullshit they've had to put up with their entire lives.

One thing that didn't change and won't change is me being an asshole about politics or social issues (even specific social situations), because that's actually turned out to be much more fruitful in getting people to consider their viewpoints. I tried honey, it didn't work, so I'm just gonna straight up piss in your face. That doesn't mean I'm absolutely right by any means, but I do it to try and knock people out of the stupor they get stuck in. Especially with a lot of the shitty racist/sexist/bigoted crap I still see people on here post in the most asinine ways. And that probably goes triple for groups that are unfairly discriminated against, because if I as an average but still ridiculously privileged straight white dude can take some of the heat for them and also get to spit a bit of the fire I know they wish they could back at these assholes, then I'm there. Call me pejoratives, get mad that I'm "too woke", etc, it'll still leave a lasting impression that will make you think about it later. And I've had multiple people tell me that ultimately is what led them to actually actively think about things and ended up leading them to learn and grow and change.

Also I have nothing but disdain for people that have had ample opportunity to see the error of their ways and choose not to change but want people to treat them "nice". Nah, you don't get to be an asshole, pushing horrible policies, but then expect people to treat you like actual decent people. I have zero qualms about being an asshole about that. That's not to say I don't think people are irredeemable but they have to actually change.

A specific instance where I was wrong just came to mind. I kept trashing a certain poster for their shitty opinions in one of the COVID threads, but I'd gotten them confused with a different user, but I only half apologized because awful opinions by the person I was incorrectly trashing made me realize they weren't the same person, but they were still an asshole with shitty opinions so I was only sorry for getting them confused, not for trashing either one for their shitty opinions.

 

[Amused]

"Oh boy" is right, my friend. I even pm'ed you because I thought maybe a son or daughter had taken over your account. I vividly remember battling you in . . . OT? . . . over several of your completely retrograde, far right views. Anyway, welcome to reality!

Yeah, more libertarian views than far right, but yeah. I've always been socially liberal.

Not proud of my libertarian stage... I've always been rabidly anti-religious-right though.

 

[iRONic]

I was wrong about Russia not invading the Ukraine, and admitted it.
I didn't think Putin was stupid enough to invade a country of 30+ million that's been preparing for war since 2014 with only 150K troops, but I was wrong.

The Ukraine. Checks out…

 

[Sunburn74]

Wrong that bush would be a good president.
Wrong that trump wouldn't win.
Wrong that ted cruz would lose to beto back in 2018
Wrong that the dems would get wiped out this midterms.
Wrong that brexit would actually happen

 

[MrSquished]

I've been wrong. I thought after Obama got elected we had truly passed a hurdle in this country.

Instead the GQP showed that they are even more horrific and terrible people than I ever imagined.

I now recognize my naive self then not recognizing the actual enemies of decency and goodness.

Now I truly recognize the enemies of morality. They are the entire GQP