Who's your favourite personality on the "other side", politically?

I don't follow a lot of political discussion or commentary, so I can't really specifically identify a full favorite, but I did recently read an "across the aisle" book that I can share here.

I would describe myself as pretty far left. Ben Sasse is a Republican Senator who is pretty far right. I didn't really know a whole lot about him other than some of his policy positions and that he got press for being one of a handful of Republican voices to openly criticize/oppose Trump. While I'm certainly a fan of Trump critics, particularly if they're on the right, that's about where our alignment ends. For example: he doesn't support marriage equality, and I'm a man with a husband.

Nevertheless, on account of its premise and good reviews, I read his book Them: Why We Hate Each Other - and How to Heal, and I was surprised to find myself mentally agreeing with it more than I was criticizing it. Part of its accessibility is certainly simple politicking, but beyond that I think the book is a nice reminder that people are more than just their policy positions.

Sasse is thoughtful and principled. There was a thread a couple of weeks ago about good right-wing values, and I feel like he is in alignment with many of those. Even though I don't necessarily agree with his principles, I can appreciate that he has them and, more importantly, his book helped me understand why he has them in the first place.

I think there's something to be said for a sort of "personal open source" politics discourse. It's not enough for us to just talk policy and beliefs--we have to show the human story behind where those beliefs come from. This is how so many people in my life changed their minds about gay people. They got to know me and hear my story and they then had to confront, often for the first time, the idea that their beliefs might have been out of alignment with their compassion.

This is not an issue exclusive to one-side, either. Sasse's book helped me understand that much of his conservative beliefs come from his own experiences growing up. He has had a good life through and through, and he genuinely wants others to experience that same thing. Many of his political beliefs stem from his idea that if everyone could experience what he did, we'd have a better country.

I fully agree with that, but we fundamentally disagree on how to get there. Nevertheless, I can still appreciate that at least I know where he's coming from.

Again, I can't say he's my "favorite" person on the right or anything, since I only read the book and haven't really followed him past that. I can say, in the spirit of the question, that I think the book was a good example of a right-wing book that can still be read and appreciated by leftists.

This is an excellent topic, and just a great question. It made me realize something about myself.

I am so pissed off at the right for abandoning many of their supposed core principals that I can't use the word "favorite" to describe anyone that still supports the GOP. I have truly lost all respect for them and that makes me really sad.

Honestly I just don't have any anymore. I used to follow a fair number of conservative and libertarian leaning bloggers and news outlets, but since around 2012 the best of them have just stopped being political. The rest have descended into full-on paranoia to where I can't respect their opinions anymore. A statistician I used to follow, W.M. Briggs, is now posting a bunch of trans panic nonsense and trying to carry water for Charles Murray.

I used to think he was at least level headed and intellectually honest, but he drank some serious kool aid. Others where I went to at least find some contrarian but well formulated thoughts, like Reason magazine, are just so painfully tiresome, only able to deliver stale, warmed over takes that we've heard 1,000x before now. It's like the brainpower and ability to make reasonable arguments that aren't ridiculous on their face is just gone. They're just all bullshit artists now or content to churn out the most intellectually lazy and poorly articulated points possible. I think everyone with actual capacity for independent thought stopped joining up with movement conservatism. It's a spent force.

I think over the past few years the "mask" has come off respectable conservatism and it's just devolved into White identity politics. They don't even feel any impulse to try to rationalize the baseline fears and anxieties that drove their conservative beliefs before because they're so deep into filter bubbles where this is normal that they view even bland mainstream Democrats as being outside the pale of acceptable discourse. It's just impossible to have a discussion or conversation with these folks that is at all congruent with objective reality. The ones who I still have respect for have mostly flipped over to be centrist Democrats or registered Republicans who have voted steadily for Democrats the past few elections. So while we disagree on a lot, we're not on "opposite sides" anymore.

I never thought I'd see the day where Marxist-Leninists seem more historically literate and intellectually honest than your run-of-the-mill Republican, but here we are.

I'd have to say Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), the 34Th President of Brazil.

He identifies himself as part of the third-way, but his presidency was that of a progressive neoliberal. He is also a respected sociologist and brilliantly represented our country abroad. During our military dictatorship, FHC was an important voice, defending freedom and democracy.

Some of his policies had terrible consequences, others prepared Brazil to become a more modern and dynamic economy.

During his administration our health system was in a state of despair: this is something a neoliberal approach will never handle right.

He dilapidated some of our greatest high-education public facilities, responsible for most of our research, but at the same time debureaucratized the process of opening private universities. He created lines of credit for students, but with absurd interest rates. Following administrations made those rules more reasonable and accessible, but FHC has the merit of creating those policies.

He also had social policies similar to Zero Hunger that would take millions of Brazilians out of poverty during Lula's administration, but with a much smaller scope.

Even though FHC did not hit social issues with the straightforwardness of other administrations, it is very clear he was concerned with the welfare of the people. He just thought the economy would heal the country by itself. While I do believe the economy is of the utmost importance, I also think that sometimes, when the wound is too deep, major direct intervention is required.

As a true believer in small government, FHC ended the public monopoly on communications, one of his best decisions. Before that, landlines were so expensive that most people (like my family) couldn't afford. Instead, we had to RENT A LINE from intermediaries, in addition to what we paid to the phone company. We also paid pulses for the duration of the call. ANY CALL. It's my understanding that, back in the nineties, local calls in the US you had a flat fee. If FHC kept this monopoly, this would take much longer to change. Today we have multiple companies competing in a relatively healthy environment. And I believe that makes a lot of sense for technology.

I don't think the same approach is good for other essential things like oil, water, social justice, healthcare, and education. And that's where he made monumental mistakes. But I don't think FHC did any of that out of shady interests. He truly believed he was doing the right thing, and I respect him for that.

Edit: forgot the most important! As economy minister, FHC ended the hyperinflation and gave buying power back to the middle class! Before him, the same item could have at night a different price from the morning. It was CRAZY. We never knew how much our money was worth.

i dunno, probably metokur? but that's because metokur's videos aren't inherently political, they're about funny shit and eccentric people and drama sometimes that involves politics and other times it doesn't. beyond him i guess the answer would be sargon because everybody loves watching his dumb ass collapse like a house on fire regardless of where they stand politically. but like, really, most big right wing youtubers are so glaringly stupid or bigoted even in their ostensibly "non-political" videos (or their glaringly stupid and bigoted opinions hang over those videos) that i can't say i like any of them even as memes to watch explode every now and then. they're just shitheads boosted by youtube algorithms, and i go out of my way to avoid the lot of them.

I used to be able to confidently say that while I disagreed with David Brooks a lot, I respected where he was coming from. But his desire to see a moral language reassert its dominance over the national political dialogue isn't one that I can more than shrug disagreement about these days.

But if he doesn't count as being on the "other side", then I don't really have an answer. I don't like both-sides-ism for a different reason than I often read other people articulating. I don't like both-sides-ism because I reject the idea that there are only two sides to any issue. The world is complicated, and just because the US has a two party system entrenched by a double First Past The Post system for the presidency doesn't mean that only two sides exist even within that framework. I also don't see politics as inherently about conflict, but inherently about conflict resolution. How do we find common ground to work together on the things we do agree on? And how can we summon grace to allow our erstwhile ideological rivals to get some praise for working together with us on those issues?

On this point, I think David Brooks and I agree almost too much to be on opposing sides ideologically (even though we very much disagree about what values ought to be most important to us as a society).

Davids brooks and frum, rich Lowry. Cass sunnstein.
Thomas Barnett. What they have in common is thoughtfulness. They take the time to dive deep and have exceptional insight and communication. They make poor assumptions and have separate subjective values, but they all want to speak truthfully and they all want to see the world and it’s people prosper.

Nigel Farage. There are several reasons why I like him:

1. Farage seems like a very approachable guy. Probably because he resembles the regular you'd meet in your local pub rather than the out of touch Eton educated toffs that you see in the Conservative Party. This is also unlike other alternative right wing figureheads like Tommy Robinson who is pretty much a Fascist with his own posse of brownshirts ready to beat up and hound anybody who stands in his way, and Sargon of Akkad, a YouTuber who has said some pretty nasty shit to female politicians and who has questionable views in many areas including Britain's age of consent.

2. Farage has been campaigning for decades to get Britain out of the European Economic Community/European Union so he's had many years to figure out what kind of relationship Britain should have with the rest of Europe. His attitude is that we should establish a free trade deal (not single market access) with the EU, which none of the Tories are following. Unlike the many Tories who suddenly jumped on the Brexit bandwagon in 2016 because they wanted to leap at a shot of becoming leader without any clue as to how to deliver Brexit (such as Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and the other Brexiteers within the party), Farage seems like a genuine Euroskeptic.

3. Farage didn't exactly represent the racist bigotry of UKIP, which the party embraced further following his resignation as leader. If anything he turned his back on UKIP because they were starting to embrace more problematic figures within the UK's far right like Tommy Robinson and Carl Benjamin.

I voted Remain in 2016 and I very much like our country being in the EU, but with Brexit looking increasingly likely due to the sheer incompetence of the other parties, I've actually been tempted to vote for the Brexit Party in the next general election, because I would rather trust Nigel with our departure from the EU than whoever will end up leading our country on 23rd July (it's either going to be Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, and both of them are assholes.)

In my eyes, Labour have no chance of winning a General Election unless they get rid of Corbyn because he's a pro-Brexit leader holding back a pro-EU party, the Liberal Democrats are a wasted vote especially after they backstabbed their own supporters by trebling tuition fees nine years ago, Change UK is another wasted vote and it looks like that party was dead on arrival the moment they broke away from the mainstream factions, and the Greens won't get my support unless they scale back some of their more unpopular policies like opposing nuclear power. I also can't vote for the SNP or Plaid Cymru because I'm not based in Scotland or Wales. That leaves me with no Remain parties.