Nuanced Positions on Issues

I, for one, certainly choose how seriously to take an article on the Web based on the opinions of an author on various issues.  Possibly some of us perform a similar test based on the opinion of an author on a single issue.  Fine.  But let's talk about this.  Many of my own attitudes are conditional.

Abortion.   I'm putting this one first, despite the risk of losing most of my readers right here.
I really don't like abortion at all.  I think it is an expensive and inefficient and accident-prone method of contraception.  But I support Planned Parenthood simply because of all the other services they provide.  Not being a woman, the men having been largely marginalized within the Abortion, For or Against Forum, I'm going to leave this right here, and I know all supporters of a woman's Right To Choose do not all feel the same way on this issue, even if they agree on almost every other political issue.
Electricity Producing Plants.  Recently, a post on Fb by the ever popular George Takei contained a meme, and a video that purported to set us straight about various attitudes that are common with tree-huggers.  One is that electric vehicles are cleaner than gas-fueled vehicles.  No, said the video; where does the electricity come from?  Polluting coal-fired plants.  Well, if there is to be a future for us at all, I can't see where our power would come from, except from central power stations, and we hope that someday, they will all come from renewable and non-polluting sources, e.g. wind turbines, and even nuclear plants, for the lack of other alternatives.  Does it make sense to disparage electric vehicles at this point?  I don't think so.  High-efficiency hybrid vehicles are an excellent temporary solution (which we could have implemented in the 90's, except for the hostility from the gas companies and the auto industry).
Gerrymandering.  The record seems to show that this practice was supported by the Democrats in the early 20th century, so that the scattered North Carolina black community could have at least one black representative (either in the State House, or in Congress, I don't remember which).  From where we sit, in 2018, it seems pathetic that only a black could be trusted to represent black minority interests, but back then, it was probably the only way, judging from the political history of the Carolinas even today.  So if I was asked back then whether Gerrymandering was a good thing, I would probably have thoughtlessly said yes.  Well, this is a lesson to everyone.  Things that seem wonderful at one time are sometimes proved to be terrible in hindsight.  Today, I would support a destricting method (redistricting sounds too complicated) based on population distribution, local governments, and mathematics, and possibly geography.
Biodiversity.  Some progressives regard biodiversity as necessary to guard axiomatically.  From the point of view that the ecological contribution of many species is poorly understood (yes; scientists don't know absolutely everything, which is why it is so frustrating when science haters reject all science categorically, even on well-understood issues), species extinction is bad.  But I do not think that we need to become paranoid about extinction.  I agree we do not have a basis for distinguishing between major species and minor species based on the influence on the ecology, but we cannot put every species on life-support; we must make choices.  People judge the importance of particularly threatened species based on their estimated environmental impact, but good judgment has to be used.
Socialism.  Socialism and Freedom / Liberty are sort of dog-whistle terms today, used in sort of "weaponized" ways, than as a description of the politics of an issue.  Many of us have no idea of what others are thinking; if everyone thought clearly, we would really need them to carefully state whether or not they like socialistic principles, or whether they're opposed to them.  The problem is that many who say that they hate socialism will be horrified if all socialistic programs were to be dropped; and many who support socialism would be aghast at some suggestions that a socialist might put forward.  There is a spectrum of positions on how government should be structured, and how communal services should be organized.  Many services are categorized as private, and others as public.  Public transport is clearly public, and personal transport is clearly private.  People expect that taxes would pay for public transport, but the very rich dislike the idea of sharing public transport with ordinary people, and the idea of bankrolling it.  On the other hand, until they get the idea of putting helipads in their homes, they're going to need to use the same roads as the rest of us, so sure, let's fund the roads--just the roads I use, one of them would say.  If you went around your local community, you would see that certain roads are maintained beautifully, but others are not.  If all the roads are maintained, you have socialism; otherwise I don't know what we have; probably corruption.
Trucking.  Another of the memes that George Takei--rather thoughtlessly--put on fB (I usually agree with most of his positions; this is sort of an exception), is that Big Agriculture might have some saving graces.  Big commercial farms are more efficient, says the video; small farms may use more fertilizer and agro-chemicals, and this is bad for the environment.  Who are they kidding?  Certainly small farms could fall into the trap of deploying insane amounts of agro-chemicals, but corporate farms are yet to moderate their use of polluting materials.  Over-farming on large tracts of lands depletes the soil, and depleted it for decades.  They do have the potential of changing their techniques so that they restore the land, but I don't think they do it.  On the human level, they are highly mechanized, and have been the source of huge unemployment.  Mechanization is inevitable, but it did not need to be inevitable so long ago.  Finally, Big Agriculture produce has to be trucked thousands of miles to their supermarket chains.  At the moment, trucking is a highly polluting business (correct me if I'm wrong), and taken in sum, small farms seem by far a better way to go.  This is not to say that small farms will continue to use the low-impact methods for which we favor them.  Even little farms use inhumane procedures in chicken and livestock farming, and veal, for instance, comes from facilities in which the cattle are treated very cruelly.  (My wife knows all about this, but is powerless to influence it, since Pennsylvanians love their meat.  From the point of view of livestock, this is a terrible state.)
Box Stores.  This is the term they use around here for chain stores such as Walmart and Lowes, and similar multi-outlet corporations.  At first, they were able to sell things at low prices because they could negotiate favorable terms because they bought in bulk.  Today, they get their goods from China, and similar countries where wages are low.  (Of course, tariffs change the dynamics of this dramatically, and it will be interesting to see how it ends up, if we can survive a season of buying substandard goods at high prices until the administration chooses to make a deal with China.  Eventually, the Chinese Government must begin to take the interests of Chinese Labor seriously; at the moment they do not.  When that moment comes, we will need to pay prices that the goods are really worth.  Modern economic theory says that Worth is in the eye of the Buyer.  It will be interesting to see what an Iphone, for instance, will be "really" worth, if trade unions are tolerated in China.
Trade Unions. Do you really know what trade unions are?  They are organizations that sprang up in the early years of the last century to protect workers: the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, the Lady Garment Workers, and so on.  Until these unions were established, workers were paid peanuts.  Gradually, as legislation was passed that enabled these unions to legally negotiate with management for higher wages and better conditions, workers in unions became more affluent, and workers had a certain amount of pride.  Now, of course, management (some of whom belonged to what we call, today, the 1%, but back then they were about 5% of the population!) hated unions, because so much had to be paid to the workers, which could have gone to the shareholders instead!  Gradually, over the seventies and the eighties, a lot of furious propaganda vilified Labor, blaming it for the 'Low' living standards of everyone.  Unions lost a lot of their power, and today the garment industry in the US is practically dead, and Far East factories make most of our clothes, even Trump ties; car makers build their plants abroad, etc, etc, and unions are unable to provide their members with a good wage.  Teachers Unions still exist in the state of New York, for instance, and New York teachers have a love-hate relationship with their union, which has been saddled with the responsibility for maintaining academic standards.  All in all, unions have done a lot of good, but being under the control of labor legislation, depending on the laws governing them, and the burdens placed on them, they can no longer be depended upon to carry out their responsibilities, and labor management tends to become increasingly cynical.  A political candidate who declares hostility towards Labor is a bad bet, because he or she automatically takes the side of management in labor disputes by definition.  Labor unions are no longer able to negotiate incredibly high pay rates for workers; management (and conservatives) simply capitalize on past hostility towards labor, and I, for one, do not approve of this attitude.  A political candidate who supports Labor is a better bet.  Big Labor is a weak instrument for progress, but it is the only instrument we have.

Arch