If it’s one thing I hate in online political discourse more than anything, it’s political charts. The ones that show left and right on an x-axis and authoritarian and libertarian on the y-axis. There are other more complicated ones, and it seems like the more complicated they are the more arbitrary and therefore meaningless they become. Grouping things into clear left and right is simplistic, but it can be a useful shorthand as long as everyone knows what you’re referring to (e.g., in America we can safely call being for gun control left wing even though it’s not an issue in any Western country and Republicans were for it 40 years ago when Black Panthers started walking around with assault weapons.) These charts and associated tests also weigh every issue equally. One showed UKIP as center-right, because while wanting to rid the UK of anyone whose family came to Britain after the Battle of Hastings moves them to the right, they’re also against corporatism, which pushes them back to the left. And so a bunch crypto-fascists become moderates on the chart.

But the authoritarian-libertarian divide drives me especially nuts because it’s completely subjective. Everyone with any political beliefs struggles with the paradoxical, maybe even hypocritical twin desires to shape the world in their own image while being free of the will of others. How can we pick which label fits on which side of that tug-of-war? Maybe you’re an authoritarian for believing public schools shouldn’t be allowed to make kids recite the Lord’s Prayer, maybe you’re a libertarian for giving the kids the freedom of religion. Most libertarians I’ve seen have no problem, say, insisting everyone conform to their idea of gender. They also tell us that being chained to a job you hate because you’re afraid of losing their health insurance makes you more free, because something something free market.

Our whole modern concept of libertarianism was cooked up by robber barons to convince people that corporate freedom and personal freedom were the same thing, and as capital goes unrestrained then you will too, somehow, theoretically. If you watched the Libertarian Party Convention last year, and I highly recommend that you do so you don’t make the mistake of ever taking these people seriously, you’d notice they have particular disdain for the Civil Rights Act. They think of it as an imposition of the state on businesses, and I guess technically it is. If the Libertarians god forbid ever get a president, I’m sure black people will enjoy the freedom of driving around for three hours looking for a restaurant that will take them. In the libertarian view, the freedom to oppress is the greatest freedom of all.

Some of the more complicated charts go far as to specify social and economic issues. I have yet to find any clear definition of what the hell this means. As far as I can tell a social issue is any issue that tends not to affect straight white men. Abortion is considered the ur-social issue, but having a baby drastically changes your economic situation, so it’s definitely a matter of economics. Drug laws are social I guess, but going to prison for ten years certainly harms your lifetime earning potential. Immigration is a perfect intersection of everything, it has obvious economic implications while drawing on all our ideas of race, nationalism, language, and citizenship itself.

I didn’t mean to let this go on for so long but these goddamn charts never seem to die and I think it’s important people give serious thought to what they believe, why they believe it, and how making these little D&D alignment charts devalues all of our messy humanity while empowering pious hypocrites.