Screw the "new economy"

So, I've actually been intending to discuss this for a while, but it hasn't been in the forefront of my mind lately and a recent Jimmy Dore clip on it has what has brought it back in my mind. The video is worth watching, and honestly, I'm just going to expand on it and give my thoughts here.

The "new economy" is a fairly dystopian term to describe what has been done to the economy over the last few decades in terms of employment and ownership, and attempts to rebrand these changes as good and that we need to adapt to. It's normally trendy silicon valley and wall street type folks writing in pro business publications that discuss it in a positive way. Basically, it talks about the death of full time jobs and the lack of being able to own anything as this new term called the "new economy", also referred to as the "gig economy" (because people need to take on tons of gigs and part time work to get by) and the "sharing economy" (because people need to "share" things instead of being able to afford to own them outright).

The worst thing about this term is that due to right wing libertarian ideology, pro hyper capitalist types try to make it out to be this GREAT thing. Like it's a brave new world out there, and we just gotta adapt to it. That people are okay with part time work because they CHOOSE to work it, and people are okay with ride sharing via lyft and uber because they CHOOSE it. Because, you know, in libertarian ideology, everything is voluntary unless it's taxes or regulation. Even if there's a metaphorical gun to your head the whole time you make these "choices."

And then there's the fact that people need to work multiple jobs to survive or work while freaking giving birth like discussed in the Jimmy Dore video. This is a sick, sick society that we have people do this in the richest country in the world. But instead, this 1984 double speak tries to make it a good thing. Bush went on about the woman working three jobs being "uniquely American" and people were praising this poor woman driving people for Lyft while going into labor as if she was doing a good thing. No, this isn't a good thing, this is horrible, and we need to break this cult of work in order to recognize it.

The worst part about all of this crap is if you dare criticize the fact that people have to do this, the people who actually praise this crap will call you lazy and entitled, hence why I have issues with being called lazy and entitled. No, I don't want to have to work 3 jobs. No, I don't want to have to work while having medical stuff going on in my body. Yes, I do want a living wage for working ONE job for 40 hours a week, or dare I say it, LESS (in line with Keynes' long term dream of a 15 hour work week that pays well for everyone), with adequate vacation time and benefits. Or heck, let's make work voluntary like I keep saying it should be. TRULY voluntary.

This "new economy" is freaking horrible, and the double speak to justify it is abusive to the populace. They are trying to make us work harder for less, against our best interests, while all the wealth goes to the top and the ownership of goods and services is increasingly concentrated there too. They want us to work harder for less money, and this isn't a new freaking idea. This was the logic behind the gilded age. This isn't some brave new world, it's a regression to the distant past. People who work three jobs or work while giving birth aren't martyrs, they're victims. Working and living under these conditions isn't voluntary, it's forced on us because we have no other freaking options.

This is why people like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were coming out of the woodwork this year. Despite this rhetoric, I think a significant population knows we're regressing, although not everyone understands why. The right talks about "making America great again" and returning to some long gone era and blaming brown people for our problems, and the left talks about returning to what actually made us great, unions, regulations, safety nets, a living wage, etc. The legacy of FDR. Deep down, we know something is screwed up, we know something is wrong, and we are right in wanting to do something about it. And I hope we do, do something about it. Screw this "new economy", it's really just a term for what the far left calls "late stage capitalism." Our economy is in dire need of serious overhaul like we have not seen since the 1930s. We need a return to unions, updated regulations, more safety nets, more mandated worker benefits, economic democracy, etc. We can do way better than what we are doing. We shouldn't buy into any of this "new economy" nonsense and recognize it for what it is: an erosion of the legacy of FDR that made our country great in the first place, to use a Trump term. And yeah, that's all I have to say for now. End rant.

Why I detest right wing economic purism

Debating right wingers on economics is such a chore sometimes. Maybe it's because I've done it so many times, and even was a right winger myself, but I'm just burned out on their arguments. The worst part in debating the right is that their views are full of so many misconceptions it's ridiculous. They push this kind of market purism in which everything the market does is right and if you disagree, you must be a gosh darned commie.

I've already debunked the right's misconceptions of socialism, so I won't go into them again, but as we know, there is a HUGE continuum between free market purism, and the opposite, this giant, leviathan like inefficient communist command economy that dictates every aspect of one's life. Even hardcore lefties like myself reject this kind of system. I mean, even though I rail against markets all day, I still support the concept, even in my most extreme ideas, like market socialism (note how the word "market" is in the term).Quite frankly, almost all lefties, aside from the tankies, advocate for some form of free market economy. Whether you're a neoliberal Clintonian centrist, or a Berniecrat, or even a light socialist, very few advocate for "full communism." The world is nuanced, reality is nuanced, and an attack on your free market economic ideas is not a repudiation of the entire concept. And the same could be applied to the state.

Markets are a relatively efficient means of distributing goods and services. Compared to a command economy, it is far more receptive to supply and demand, and creates much more innovation. They aren't PERFECT, but nothing in life is. And most left wing ideas are means of fixing the imperfections, not doing away with the concept. I support regulations. I support safety nets. I support unions. I support workplace democracy. All of these things are compatible with markets.

Most arguments against government should actually be approached in the same way. In the eyes of a far right winger, if you criticize the wisdom of the free market, you're a supporter of "big government", and government is bad. And they'll often bring up examples like FEMA mismanaging Katrina, or IP laws choking competition, etc. Look, government, like markets are a tool. And just as I'm not a purist in terms of markets, I'm not a purist in terms of government either. Just because government can do some bad things doesn't mean I'm against the concept. And I will admit, government can often do a lot of bad things. But, if governments are used properly, they can do great things.

We need to get beyond purism in general on the subjects. Markets and governments aren't infallible deities to do battle with one another. They're TOOLS. They're to be utilized for the goal of maximizing human happiness, well being, and freedom. Markets and government both do good things, and markets and government both do bad things. It depends how they're used. And the ideological extremes on both sides are scary. I don't support full communism. I don't support free market capitalism. Any sensible approach would try to find some mix or balance of both.

Knowing this, when I debate those on the right, who will start ranting and raving about communism the second I criticize their precious markets, it can get frustrating. Yes, markets do some level of good. You don't need to keep reminding me of this again and again. I'm well aware of the fact. Yes, in some areas, things need to be deregulated, not regulated. Yes, not every government action is a good thing. I'm not a purist for crying out loud. I just feel like debating those who hold these kinds of sheer misconceptions and straw men can sometimes be a waste of time.

Thoughts on the electoral college vote

So...the electoral college vote happened yesterday. There was a lot of talk about faithless electors and trying to convince electors to abandon Trump and embrace Hillary in order to elect her president in something reminiscent of a coup. Thankfully, this little stunt not only happened, it backfired. Five electors abandoned Clinton and voted for people like Bernie Sanders and Colin Powell, whereas Trump only lost 2.

I don't really approve of the idea of faithless electors, don't get me wrong. To me, they sound like "superdelegates", an attempt by the oligarchy to make the "right" decisions even if it goes against what the people want. And while Clinton won the popular vote, I don't approve of these electors voting for candidates other than who they're supposed to support according to the rules.

I just find it funny that for all of this talk of faithless electors abandoning Trump, more decide to abandon Clinton. I think it really gives us an idea of how much portions of the democratic base dislikes Clinton. I mean, if Clinton won 272-266 like I expected, 5 faithless electors would've been enough to cost her the presidency. This is both a scary and an amusing thought to me, given how I hate the fact that faithless electors can exist, but that more of them actually existed on the left than the right.

There will be plenty of time to bash Trump later

So, Clinton people tend to get annoyed by Bernie supporters ripping Clinton more than Trump. As if we're somehow agents of Donald Trump, either willingly or unwillingly by doing this.

Look again, the reason I didn't bash Trump during the election much was because we all know Trump is an idiot. That's all that needs to be said. The mainstream media focuses enough on Trump's idiocy, and I only feel the need to step in when he does something really dumb. I mean, republicans are bad, Trump is dumb, and bears crap in the woods. Not something I feel the need to blog about.

But before we can take these guys on, we need to get our own house in order on the left. Clinton ran a horrible campaign, she alienated the left to appeal to a bunch of moderate republicans who didn't vote for Clinton anyway, and the party was so hostile to us. I don't know how we can begin to even deal with the crappiness that is Trump if the democrats are unwilling to deal with their own problems. We need a strong democratic party, one that is aware of its weaknesses and tries to fix them, one that tries to do the right wing, and one that stands for something, before we can take on the right. Until then, they will continue to stand for nothing, and they will continue to lose, and they'll continue to fail to be an adequate alternative to the republicans. Why vote for fake republicans when you got the real thing? That's how I see it. The democrats need to be addressed before we can even hope of beating the republicans. So criticizing Clinton constantly is warranted.

Considering Trump is going to be president, he isn't even president yet, there's also plenty of time to hammer on Trump. He hasn't really done anything yet except nominate a bunch of rich out of touch people to cabinet positions and talk crap about China on twitter. Speaking of which the fact that he's provoking China like he is is kind of scary. Not the country you wanna piss off. So I will throw that one in here.

But yeah, look, we got 4 whole years to rip Trump to shreds. Berniecrats are understandably pissed at the democrats right now, and it's important we air our grievances now and understand what went wrong this election so we CAN beat the republicans next time. And by beat the republicans I don't *JUST* mean win elections. We need to score a moral victory over them or they'll just keep coming back and the dems will just ger crappier. So the way I see it, rip on Clinton and the dems now, focus on Trump later when he actually does stuff.

Clearing up misconceptions about socialism

So....let's face it. We have an ignorance problem with socialism and far left wing ideologies in the United States. I grew up ignorant, and even though I've become more informed on the subject over time, I still experience many many people still using the same old BS talking points I used to spew in my conservative days. That being said, I'd like to spend a few minutes to dig into socialism as a concept. I've done it before briefly, but I feel like I should have a more informational article on the subject. Anyway, without further ado, let's get to it.

What is socialism?

Definitions can vary, but I would define it for the purposes of this article as the workers or the community owning the means of production, rather than private individuals.

Is all socialism the same?

NO. This is a common misconception I get when dealing with right wingers all the time. There are MANY, MANY forms of socialism. Many people like to act like Soviet style communism is the only form, and that all variations inevitably lead to the same result, but this is fundamentally untrue.

What the USSR and other communist countries did was have these revolutionary, centralized, authoritarian economies combined with totalitarianism. This led to the horrors and inefficiencies we saw under USSR, Cuba, North Korea, etc. But not all forms of socialism are like that.

Instead of revolutionary forms of socialism that involve overthrowing the existing system, you can have reformist approaches that tend to work within the framework of countries that already exist, and are often much more supporting of democratic, incremental approaches in the direction of socialism.

Instead of centralized systems, you can have decentralized ones, even market oriented ones. You can have industry controlled by a local government rather than a national one, or even by the workers themselves. Decentralized forms generally avoid the problems found in centralized forms.

Instead of authoritarian systems, you can have democratic or libertarian ones. Heck, these are arguably more in the spirit of socialism than the authoritarian ones, because socialism is supposed to be liberating and about ideals like freedom and democracy. It doesn't have to be linked with tyranny and oppression.

Is Bernie Sanders a socialist?

He calls himself a democratic socialist, but he seems to have plans to govern much like a social democrat. Social democracy and democratic socialism are very similar, as evidenced by the wikipedia article posted above, and sometimes the real difference comes down to one's ideology. Are they simply trying to fix capitalism? Or are they trying to turn the country into something more socialistic? Ideologically there can be different emphases between the two ideology, but in terms of governance, they are likely very similar or identical. Maybe in his heart his long term goals are to bring about socialism, but if he were president, he likely wouldn't be able to accomplish such a thing and would be left with advocating for social democratic solutions, leaving these ideas to possibly be taken up in the future. The same thing applies to European "socialist" parties and "socialist" Scandinavian countries. They're much more social democratic than anything.

Going by the distinctions I discussed above, Sanders is a reformist, not a revolutionary. And he's far more democratic/libertarian than authoritarian. His form of socialism would not lead to communism as we fear it. So right wingers, you can put your torches and pitchforks down.

Are democrats socialists?

Most democrats are not socialist at all. The party line does not advocate for socialism at all. They're moderate capitalists. Most at this point, considering the dominance of the Clinton wing of the party are not even social democrats. They're basically republican lites. They're supporters of capitalism and the private ownership of the means of production, and at best advocate for a very light version of welfare capitalism.

So once again, right wingers, you can put your torches and pitchforks down. No, Obama is not a socialist, no, Clinton is not a socialist. Not even close. Capitalists should actually be very happy with the democratic party, since they promote a much more responsible form of capitalism than the republicans do.

Are you (am I) a socialist?

Eh, I'm on the fence. I definitely have a strong democratic view of the economy, but as far as socialism goes, I'm leery of it. I think much more research would need to be done into the concept before we even think of implementing it. I'm open minded to, and at the very least ideologically supportive of what's known as "market socialism", which would basically combine a market system with democratic business enterprises known as worker coops, but I have no idea how this could be realistically implemented in practice and once again believe more research needs to be done.

Honestly, I'm both a capitalist and a socialist and kind of waffle in the middle ground between the two. I support "capitalism", but by that, I don't necessarily mean private ownership of the means or production. What I'm really talking about there is that I support MARKETS as opposed to centralized or command economies for MOST industries (some are better off socialized, like healthcare and roads). And if we can achieve some form of decentralized democratic socialism combined with a market based system and a healthy dose of welfare capitalism to offset the issues inherent in markets, I'm okay with that.

But ultimately, the ownership of the means of production is not my main concern. Peoples' well being is. While market socialism is ideologically attractive to me, as I've written about before, I don't see it as an end all or a primary goal. It would solve some problems, but I don't think it will magically solve every social ill like socialists think it would, and I do think right now we are better off focusing on safety nets, unions, regulations, and an adversarial relationship between labor and capital. Maybe in the long term (democratic socialism's reformist approach) some sort of transition to socialism would be viable and preferable, but it's not my big concern right now, and believe we should cross that bridge when we get to it, and when there is actual demand from the people for it (right now I don't think there is any). As such, my views are similar to the Sanders approach. I support social democratic solutions, possibly with a long term goal of socialism, but even then, I really don't care if we ever really get there. If social democracy works and there's no need to make a transition, whatever. I could be happy either way. It really depends how things work out.

This is why I consider myself more of a social democrat with socialist leanings. My overall policies are much more strongly on the social democratic side, and while I have some ideological sympathies for the idea of a decentralized, libertarian, reformist form of market socialism, I really don't see it as a major goal until the people actually want it, and until we actually have a clear way to transition without running into problems. You can support ideas on paper all day but if you have no plans to get from A to B, what good are they? And this is my core problem with socialism. On paper it sounds great, but looking into getting there, it's like, how would we even do this? Social democratic solutions are just more easy to accomplish and would likely have just as large of a positive impact on peoples' lives.

Was Hitler a socialist?

 Some people claim Hitler was a socialist because Nazis were "national socialists", but Hitler was pretty hostile toward socialists overall.

Oh I get it, you just think your magical version of socialism that has never been tried will somehow turn out differently than anyone else's!

First of all, many forms of socialism actually are theoretical and haven't been tried, and as I just said, most forms of socialism have tangible differences between the specific subset that is infamous in the world. So this isn't really a no true scotsman fallacy or whatever.

Conclusion: Put your torches and pitchforks down

Anyway who is concerned about the United States turning into an authoritarian communist nation can rest assured that this will not happen. Anyone who fears the left in the United States as destroying the country economically and taking away our freedoms needs to cool their crap. Anyone who thinks that all socialism is the same and any socialist, or, heck, anyone to the left of the country is going to lead to the problems seen in Venezuela and Russia and Cuba and North Korea needs to educate themselves.

Not all socialism is bad, and most groups in the US with relatively left wing leanings are not socialist or at best are on the borderline. The problems that happened overseas come from a very specific group of socialist ideas that are authoritarian, revolutionary, and centralized, whereas most "socialists" in the US are reformists at best, much more libertarian and democratic, and push for decentralized socialism.  Even outwardly socialist groups tend to prefer libertarian, decentralized, democratic socialism and not the crap done by other countries. Comparing all socialists to Russia is like comparing all capitalists to Nazi Germany, it just isn't true. And finally, many so called "socialists" and "socialist" ideas aren't actually socialist at all. Redistribution of wealth is NOT socialist, for example, but an example of social democracy or welfare capitalism.

That being said, right wingers, put your torches and pitchforks down, you're embarrassing yourselves. Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh and try to evolve your understanding of things beyond Cold War propaganda, which is a bunch of massive strawmen intended to ideologically indoctrinate you. Yes, some forms of socialism is bad, just like some forms of capitalism (like fascism and hardcore libertarianism) are bad. But not all ideas should be written off by thinking of their furthest ideological extremes. Capitalism has merits, socialism has merits. It's up to us to find the right mix of the two, with the right emphases on the right things in the right places.

Debunking the argument that I have no right to talk because I didn't vote for Clinton

So...a common argument I run into from the Hillbots recently is that because I refused to vote for Clinton I have no right to comment on the democrats or their platform because I proved myself to be an unreliable voter. This is a load of BS. Plain and simple. As I've stated before, politicians must earn my vote, not demand it when they clearly aren't appealing to me. Me giving feedback on why I didn't vote for them is supposed to help them figure out what they did wrong so I DO vote for them.

This concept that I must vote for them before even giving feedback on them is asinine. Elections are won by combining the party's base with independent voters who are less reliable. Parties need to win by appealing to their base and winning over enough independents to build a coalition that can win elections.

Imagine if a party is a business, and imagine if voters are customers. We customers of the 2012 election who decided we are not satisfied with what we got basically decided not to renew our subscription to the democratic party, because we were not satisfied with what we got. Now, imagine if we refused to renew our subscription and they said that because we weren't loyal customers, we have no right to complain about the service? Well, this is just an easy way to ensure that customers pissed off by the business at hand never win those people back ever again. Any business that acted in this way could go out of business and no one would shed a tear. Academics geared toward business would be like, no crap, of course you went out of business, you not only alienated your customers but you ignored their feedback when they tried to give it to you.

I didn't refuse to support the democrats this time out of some sort of laziness where I'm like...eh, I don't feel like going to the polls today. I'm going to stay home. I refused out of a conscious effort to say "hey, this treatment is unacceptable, I'm taking my vote and walking, if they want me back, this is how they get me back."

That being said, democrats, ignore the feedback you get from the Bernie camp at your own peril. Many of us WILL support you if you do a better job appealing to us. I only voted green because I felt the democrats not only failed to do so, but acted antagonistically toward us. And I will continue to refuse to support them for as long as I need to for them to start listening to me. You can't just expect me to show up and vote for a party that already showed complete disregard for my ideas and interests. In the business world, this is called voting with our dollars. In the political world, it's just voting. But it's the same concept nevertheless. Appeal to people, and you get what you want. Ignore them and tell them to take a hike and they walk. I'll vote democrat when they actually appeal to me.

Mother Jones' latest argument claiming Sanders couldn't win is just pathetic

So...Mother Jones went full Hillbot in their latest argument for why Sanders couldn't win. Mainly because it's not much of an argument at all, it's a chart. And it's a bad chart. Essentially, they used some data to rank how liberal democratic nominees have been from most to least, and argue that those on the far right, which are the most liberal, can't win. And who is the most liberal on this list? Bernie Sanders. So basically, it's just another way of saying "he's too liberal!" And it's a bad argument on so many levels.

First of all, what is a liberal? According to this, who the heck knows! It ain't my definition of liberal. I mean they have LBJ as the most conservative democrat, and while he did have southern conservative leanings at times, he did many SUPER liberal things that many democrats wouldn't dream of doing. This guy brought us civil rights and the war on poverty. The modern conservative movement actually arose in direct opposition to his legacy. He's conservative? Really? And why is Obama so conservative? I mean, I admit he is a bit of a conservative lite in some ways (most dems are these days), but he's more conservative than freaking Bill Clinton? Really? And Hillary is more liberal than either of them? And why is Gore considered so liberal? The list goes on and on. FDR and Truman are conveniently missing from this list altogether, possibly because they would crap all over this theory too.

Comparing Clinton and Sanders, yes, I would say Sanders is more liberal on economics, but what about social issues? The idea I got from the primaries is that on some issues Sanders wasn't liberal enough, and these issues might be important to discuss since it seems like social issues are a factor in how conservative these guys are ranked. While Sanders was very hardcore on economics, I don't think he was so much on social issues, although he was still arguably quite liberal. On gun control for instance, Clinton constantly tried to outdo him and be more against guns than Sanders was, even to the point of wanting to sue firearm manufacturers for gun deaths, which would quite frankly probably put gun companies out of business. And what about identity politics? Wasn't it the Clinton camp themselves that argued that Sanders was too "white", and thus, too conservative, to make it in the democratic party? And this is probably a really big issue. Identity politics Clinton used was actually offputting and probably drove people to Trump and his more bigoted anti political correctness positions. I don't think the public is opposed to being for the rights of whatever underprivileged group exists, but the Clinton camp was so sanctimonious and holier than thou it probably was offputting while Sanders was not. Even though Sanders was for more or less the same things, he carried himself much better and would have been better with the general public. This isn't to say that Sanders is more conservative than Clinton, overall he was more liberal, but honestly, there were a few issues where Sanders would've arguably went over much better with more conservative voters outside of economics. Even if the positions were similar, messaging is important. And the dems doubled down on the most obnoxious, offputting way to market their ideas.

And finally, and this is the big one, it ignores the atmosphere of this election. Party realignments happen. Electorates do change their voting behaviors. It's not the 70s and 80s any more. I don't think the theory regarding being too left holds any more. It did even as recently as 2008 and maybe even 2012, but I think America is ready for a party realignment. I discussed this before. The people are fed up. I don't think they know what they want yet, but they do recognize that politics as usual is failing them. Even a few short years ago, I was against many of the ideas I now talk about on this blog. I grew up conservative, fearing redistribution of wealth, fearing the left, being pro capitalistic, the whole 9 yards. What changed? The system failed us. That's what. The recession happened. And times of economic change tend to be correlated with great economic crises. It took the depression to give us FDR, it took stagflation to give us Reagan. And it took the great recession to get me on board with the ideas I now advocate for. And I believe many people feel similarly to me, even if they aren't aware of the ideas I'm aware of. We're all facing the same problems, and people want answers. They wouldn't vote for Clinton because she offered none. They voted for Trump because he at least offered them hope, even if it was a false one. But you know what? Trump is gonna fail. Because his ideas are what caused the problems to begin with.

You see, our problems are a result of our cumulative political choices over the course of the past, say, 40 years now. It's a bipartisan problem. Both the republicans and the democrats have failed to address them. The whole paradigm in which these conservative right wing ideas flourish in both parties IS the problem. The lukewarm democrats and the hard right republicans. Government by organized money as FDR would've put it. That is the problem. Capitalism is the problem. And it's time we start picking up the mantle put down by the likes of Johnson, Nixon, and McGovern all those years ago and start fixing our issues again.We run a candidate who can fix these problems, and they'll be revered in American history, much like the right reveres Reagan and the left FDR.

And this is why I think America is at the point why we shouldn't shy away from left wing ideas. America is ready, even if we don't know it yet. Why? Because solutions to our problems can only come from the left. Not the right. The right is the problem. The sooner we realize this, the better.

And going back to the concept of party realignments, let's go back 40 years. I'm sure if someone ran this argument in 1976 to discourage people from electing Reagan in 1980, that it would hold too. Instead of screaming about McGovern, we'd be screaming about Hoover. The republican political establishment would talk about how Eisenhower and McGovern saved the right from itself and made it relevant in the age of the New Deal. Reagan would be too far right, and conventional knowledge would say running too far to the right would be political suicide. And in 1976, this would make sense. But what happened in 1980? Reagan happened, the country ran to the right, and hasn't looked back since until very recently.

America is ready for a left wing president. It's the only kind of president that can solve our problems. The center can't fix them, the right can't fix them. Look around you, by the standards of our current political paradigm, Obama is the best we can do. He got unemployment down, he saved the economy, everything is stable and growing again. But people aren't happy. Why? Because the problem that ails people is systemic to capitalism itself. Capitalism is the problem. And only the left criticizes capitalism in such a way it can adequately define problems and solve them. The right can't do that. They'll just double down on what's causing the problems to begin with, because they tend to adopt the values of capitalism uncritically, and many refuse to even admit it does have problems. Any problem that exists is the left's fault to them. It's all those darned regulations and welfare queens that's causing the problems. They demand more purism, thinking it will solve the problems when it will only make them worse. It will increase inequality, make labor even more precarious, and reducing the living standards and well beings of workers until we reach third world sweatshop levels. So choose wisely America. Do you want a right winger who makes your life worse? Do you want a centrist who does things halfy halfy? Or do you want a progressive who actually can bring about the changes we need? Solutions are out there. We just need to embrace them for a change. And this involves shedding our fear of embracing the left.

The downside to cracking down on "fake news"

So...as we know, "fake news" has been a hot topic lately. The left is upset that fake news on the right has cost them the election, and now some social media sites like facebook are discussing cracking down on it. However, there's a problem with this. What constitutes "fake news"? It makes sense that in theory, fake news is news not substantiated by facts but makes up conspiracy theories, and that these sites should be censored from social media to stop them from spreading. But at the same time, such crackdown on "fake news" often seems ideological in nature. Caitlyn Johnstone, a Bernie supporter who writes a lot of pro Bernie and anti establishment stuff, has run into multiple brushes with the censor on social media, having sites she contributes on be deemed "fake news."

And this is in essence why cracking down on fake news does more harm than good. When you deem some news as "fake", often, the establishment and its affiliates target websites that criticize their narratives. The establishment is the trusted name in news, everything else is just fake and should be censored. Fake news becomes anything with an unconventional narrative. My blog here could theoretically be deemed as fake news.

Look, fake news is actually a problem. The amount of people who have fallen for sheer conspiracy theories and BS this election is scarily high. But censoring alternate opinions is a far greater evil than allowing them to exist. It should be up to the reader to decide what is true and what is not, not some authority that deems what is good for us or not. Trying to get rid of "fake news" is like establishing a literacy test when voting. It sounds like a great idea, until we realize it's a way to persecute one's political opponents and ensure that they win the narrative and the elections. It's censorship, plain and simple, and while I can see social media sites actually cracking down on explicitly harmful content that translates to people being hurt in real life (for example, I don't shed a tear for reddit banning subs like "fatpeoplehate" and "watch(racial expletive that starts with the letter N)die", anything more than obvious dens of villainy and hatred should not be censored. Freedom of speech and freedom of press are essential for a free society to exist. And yes, people being dumb***es is sometimes a result of that, but it's a lesser evil than censorship in most cases. Only if the site in question is explicitly spreading irrational hate that leads to real harm in a direct way should it be censored in my opinion.

Dear David Brock, you know who you should really be angry at? Yourself.

So, David Brock, founder of CTR, recently went on a rant blaming everyone from James Comey, to Jill Stein, to millennials, to "fake news" for the loss of Hillary Clinton, and doubled down on the idea that the democrats did no wrong this election and that it's everyone else's fault. What Mr. Brock doesn't realize is that I believe his actions played a huge part in alienating people, including the Millennials and Jill Stein voters that he so blames.

For those of you who don't know, David Brock is the mastermind behind "Correct the Record", a super pac that basically flooded social media with TONS of Hillary propaganda. I discussed this a few months ago, in noticing how Reddit had changed in the aftermath of the democratic national convention. Brock's superpac spent MILLIONS of dollars astroturfing sites like Reddit and Facebook and flooding it with pro Clinton propaganda. They also spent a significant chunk of time trying to suppress the voices of those who did not like Clinton. He would swarm these people with downvotes, flood their inboxes with tons of pro Hillary crap. In some cases, they even took over entire subreddits and infiltrated the mod teams, pushing people who didn't fit into their little culture off the mainstream left wing subs. r/politics and r/progressive are the two biggest examples that come to mind, although there certainly are others. Before these guys showed up, Reddit was overwhelmingly pro Bernie. After that, we were suppressed. We were forced to retreat to specifically pro Bernie or anti Clinton subs to get a good idea of what was going on, because Brock spent his resources controlling the narrative and gaslighting people on the most dominant political subs of reddit. He really did have enough power to change the culture of the site seemingly overnight. This is no exaggeration. This is scary crap.

For all the talk this guy has about Bannon and "fake news", and all of the talk about Trump threatening freedom of speech, this guy is completely hypocritical and sleezy to start pointing the fingers at others compared to what he's done. I mean, this guy has been regularly compared to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister. That's how freaking messed up this guy and his movement is. They literally tried taking over a whole site and displacing the locals who disagreed with him. Total scumbag, and in my case, he made me double down on my vote for Stein. Because, as a millennial who "sat on my hands" and voted third party, I have no respect for a party that resorts to such underhanded tactics to control the narrative to win. Screw David Brock. Screw Correct the Record. This guy is everything wrong with the democratic party. He helped cost Clinton the election, because he didn't bring people to Clinton by appealing to their ideals. He tried to bring them over by controlling the narrative on social media and shutting down everyone who didn't agree with him. And those people were pissed, and those people doubled down by saying "I'll NEVER support Hillary Clinton as long as she keeps pulling this crap."

It doesn't matter who the leaks came from, what matters is that HRC was a bad candidate

So, the CIA apparently came out and said that yes, the Russians hacked the DNC, and also the RNC, and that they leaked the DNC's stuff to tip the election toward Trump. This will likely be used as ammo to persuade electors in the electoral college to not vote for Hillary on December 19th, and will also likely be used to deflect blame away from them democrats and their flawed candidate.

Imagine this scenario. Imagine if you've been suspecting for months that your spouse was cheating on you. They're showing suspicious behavior, acting distant, even hostile toward you, are very secretive, and are showing up around a person named "Hill" a lot. Now, imagine someone who you really don't like, who's name is "Vlad", who may have ulterior motives, checks their phone, finds evidence of cheating, and gives it to you. Yes, Vlad might be a jerk, yes, checking a person's phone without permission is a bad thing, but now that you have this information, does it really make a difference? Even if Vlad got the information through wrongful means and has ulterior motives in showing it to you, what matters is that if the information is true, the person you've been suspecting has been wronging you for a while is in fact wronging you.

And that's what happened here. What is happening here is the cheating spouse is trying to convince you not to break up because that's Vlad wants. But honestly, should a bad relationship stay together just for the sake of spiting Vlad, even if it's bad for us? I don't think so. We are perfectly capable of continuing to think Vlad is a scumbag while also thinking lower of those we are close to too.

What the democrats are doing is "poisoning the well", which is a logical fallacy. They're saying that because the information is of Russian origin, we shouldn't listen to it, and that the people were duped, and that the election may even be illegitimate (in the case of the persuading rogue electors angle). But honestly, it doesn't change the fact that yes, Hillary Clinton and the DNC are scumbags, yes, they did wrong us, yes, they were weak candidates. Yes, what the Russians did isn't okay either, and I don't respect them for it. But it doesn't change a darn thing with our relationship with the DNC.

I'm pretty confident that if this were Bernie Sanders we wouldn't have this issue. We wouldn't have any FBI investigations or malfeasance to torpedo him over like this. He would have been popular. He would have united the party. And while yes, there would be conservative smears against him, they likely wouldn't be any worse than the crap Obama went through in 2008. The problem with Clinton was that she was a uniquely weak candidate because she not only had the right going after her, but she pissed off the left. She tried to "triangulate", and only succeeded in opening up a two front war against her and that's what really torpedoed her. When the left starts thinking your candidate is crap too, you have problems. And Clinton was a flawed candidate who was not liked by people on both sides of the aisle, and who had a lot of baggage over the years. That's what killed her campaign. We can shift the blame around, but at the end of the day, the biggest problem with Hillary Clinton was Hillary Clinton. And the DNC corruption. Let's not forget about that.

Okay, I'm tired of people talking like America isn't ready for a female president

An annoying line I'm seeing is this idea that America isn't ready for a female president. This is something I see a lot from the sanctimonious feminism crowd. Some people are interpreting Clinton's loss as a sign that America is just too darned sexist for a woman president and that that's why people would take such an incompetent candidate like Trump over Clinton.

As I've said for my own voting habits, I don't think it's that America isn't ready. I think people just didn't want Hillary. She was an awful candidate. She ran a status quo campaign during an anti status quo election year and alienated large swaths of the country. She was scandal ridden, and fundamentally flawed. This is not a sign America is sexist. I believe if she ran in 2008 against McCain she would have won then. And I believe a stronger female candidate could've easily won.

I mean, if we can elect a black dude with a Muslim sounding name 7 years after 9/11 and 5 years after the invasion of Iraq, we can elect a woman. Obama dealt with way more legitimate racism than Clinton experienced sexism this year. The most sexist things that happened to Clinton this year outside of the obvious air heads who always exist are jokes about how she couldn't satisfy Bill. Meanwhile Obama had to deal with crap like the whole birther movement, which persisted several years after his election. He had to deal with his ties to radical black preachers like Reverend Wright. He had to deal with constant accusations of communism and, combined with said religious ties, accusations of supporting "liberation theology" and that he wanted to destroy America to bolster the third world. He faced all kinds of slander for his heritage, mostly imagined, and STILL WON. TWICE.

Yet America is too sexist to support an unpopular candidate like Hillary? The problem with Hillary was Hillary. And the obnoxious toxic brand of feminism her supporters touted was the biggest liability in relation to her womanhood. The fact that pushing the fact that she was a woman every 5 seconds was a much bigger problem than the fact that she was a woman, and even that would've been inconsequential if she were actually a good candidate. But she wasn't.

America is ready for a woman president. You just need to run a woman worth voting for, and Clinton wasn't it. 92% of people claim they are willing to support a female president, which is the identical number to a black president (and once again, Obama won TWICE). A woman president has an easy time compared to an evangelical Christian like George W. Bush (73%). And you know what? Someone with my views are among the least popular of all. Only 58% would support an atheist. And while I tend to associate more with social democracy, I do flirt with mild forms of socialism like the concept of workplace democracy/worker coops. Only 47% of Americans would support a socialist. Im not trying to make this about me, but let's be honest, at least in terms of electability, someone like Clinton is very privileged. Her womanhood is not a major reason that she lost. America is overwhelmingly ready for a female president, it was just that Clinton wasn't the right person to the job.

On Obama being the "Seinfeld president"

So, I was watching some Youtube clips of Jimmy Dore's show (highly recommended if you don't listen already) and one of them brought up an important point. Dore had a political science professor on discussing the Obama presidency, and he called it the "Seinfeld presidency." Why? Because Seinfeld is a show about "nothing", and so was the Obama administration.

Essentially the argument is this, America is in need for change. Obama's presidency didn't really change much, he simply acted as a steward of the status quo, and ignored the desire for change. Over time, this led to people getting sick of Obama, and when given the choice between more of the same and change, even bad change, people will take the bad change. He drew parallels between Trump winning in 2016 and the Nazis winning in Germany in 1933, and how it was the same thing. The Weimar republic was ineffective at solving the problems at the time, so along came Hitler, promising change, and they voted in Hitler. I found the argument to be effective and persuasive, and I really just wanted to say that I agree and I saw this coming.

Obama did a lot of good in his first term, although in his first term I was much more conservative than I am now. He did save and fix the economy, he did preserve workers who were unemployed through unemployment insurance, and he did fight the republicans to get them to pay off screwing over the 99% of America. Being relatively centrist around 2011-2012, I even respected Obama's move to the center to attempt to compromise with them, and it really did appear that Obama was an adult in a room full of children.

But this kind of act wears thin after a while. Maybe 2008 was too early for real change. I don't think the country was ready for progressivism in 2008. We just started entering the recession. The fatigue had not really set in yet. America had not yet gotten to a point where it was really ready for actual change. But we did. Obama laid the groundwork for fixing the economy in 2008-2010, and passed Obamacare, but after the GOP won, he didn't do anything. I respect his attempts to compromise at first. I think it was noble of him to try to do so. But this good guy act only works once. After that, you become a doormat. And as the fatigue of years of recession and a bad economy sets in, people become more and more desperate, and are more and more willing to push for change. I felt this fatigue myself in his second term. I really began realizing around 2013 or so that what we were doing wasn't really enough, and started looking into alternative solutions like basic income and stuff. The recession is really what pushed me far to the left, as I looked for solutions to our problems and found that our very governing ideologies were what was failing us. And that's when I developed the economic views I currently hold and realized the democrats weren't doing enough. People can only stand obstruction and inaction in the face of serious challenges for so long before they start yelling at Mr. Doormat to throw a punch once in a while, give the tea party a taste of their own medicine. Use the bully pulpit. Do stuff even if it can't pass the other branches of congress. But Obama didn't, and when the 2014 mid terms came around, the democrats were nowhere to be found, and the republicans came out in droves for tea party people in congress. Most of the country went hard red in 2014, save my state, which kicked its tea party governor out of office.

By this point, I realized we needed serious, systemic change. And looking at the upcoming presidential election, 2 potential candidates stood out to me, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. I preferred Sanders since his policies were a bit more well thought out, but I would've settled for Warren. But then, as we know, it was "her turn." Hillary was back to claim what was "hers" and the wave of change building within the democratic party was suppressed. We were told to shut up, that our ideas were crap, and that we needed to fall in line. Sanders would have given the democrats the morale boost to win this election, whereas Clinton did the opposite, she sapped the party of energy, and her approach to politics came off, to me, as a huge middle finger for everything I stood for.

And what happened? On the republican side, while Trump faced opposition from the establishment, he managed to win his party's nomination against 16 empty suits with no enthusiasm. And going into the general, the people who wanted change either voted for Trump or stayed home, or voted third party. And the establishment candidate lost. Way to go democrats, way to go.

It's rare for a party to maintain the presidency for more than 8 years. You need to have an extraordinary legacy to pull it off. You need to be a Reagan or FDR in today's climate to make it happen. And while I suspected Clinton would do it by default based on how horrible the GOP was, no one really wanted to continue the Obama legacy.  She was a mere lesser evil candidate. The country wanted change, and because the democrats suppressed it on their side of the aisle in favor of running an antagonistically boring status quo campaign, Trump won the election.

I can't say Obama's legacy is a complete wash, but most of the groundwork for what he accomplished happened in his first term. His second term was a waste of space. Let's be honest. The guy was an empty suit, and he didn't do ANYTHING. I understand he's a president and not a king, as he always likes to say, but he needs to stand up and try to do something, anything, even if it is only give stump speeches to rally the troops (his voters). The bully pulpit exists for a reason, USE IT. He should have gotten out there in 2014 and said to the American public "look, you want crap done? GIVE ME A CONGRESS! GIVE ME A CONGRESS AND I'LL DO X, Y, and Z!" But no, he just sat there like a lump with his "I'm a president, not a king" line and twiddled his thumbs and pushed for the TPP.

And I could even forgive him for this, IF WE RAN A 2016 CANDIDATE WORTH A DARN! I mean, okay, Obama didn't go as planned, let's do something different to offer new solutions and keep peoples' attention. Even 2014's losses could be salvageable if the democrats changed direction right then and there. We needed someone who could distance themselves from Obama's inadequacies, not continue them. Someone who pushed progressivism, but does it in a way that motivates people and inspires them and offers them solutions. Sanders did this. Clinton didn't. Clinton was more of the whole lukewarm tepid "we can't do anything because republicans" line of thinking. And the country rejected that. Yes, she won the popular vote, but she lost entire regions of the country that were de facto democratic strongholds because she not only was unresponsive to the plight of the people, but antagonistic toward it.

And yeah, that said, I agree, Obama was a Seinfeld president, and I'll go further, the democrats have become a Seinfeld party. For the record, this analogy has an extra meaning for me, because I don't even like Seinfeld. I mean, I've tried watching it, but it's always so boring that it can never keep my attention, ever. And that's what the democratic party is nowadays. They are boring, uninspiring, and fail to draw people in. Even worse, they are antagonistically comfortable in this role. They tried to force Clinton down our throats like a 1950s mom trying to force broccoli down a kid's throat by bringing up there are starving people in China. And now instead of eating a healthy middle ground, the person who was offering candy, soda, and a one way ticket to Diabeetusville is president. Way to go, dems, way to go. You had them eating out of the palm of your hand and you blew it through your own ineptitude. Way to freaking go.

Trump's too smart for that learning crap now

This guy is bafflingly stupid. I mean, what the actual fudge? Now Trump is saying he doesn't need to attend intelligence meetings every day because he's smart. I can kind of understand how they can get monotonous, but what the heck? Keeping up on developments is important because you kinda needs to do that to do the job effectively. Between this and ditching the press to go to a New York steakhouse, he's one of the laziest presidents I've seen. And while I don't necessarily resent someone for not wanting their life to revolve around their job 24/7, this is one job that really does require a go getter.

Let me say a little bit about intelligence. The most well informed people are the ones who actually do apply themselves. The ones who do read the news, or the scientific articles in their field, or, if you're president, attend intelligence briefings. Knowledge is power, and you kind of need to research things to understand what's really going on. Until then, you're just a dude who is shooting his mouth off without having a clue what he's talking about. Which sums up Trump perfectly. The guy has dunning kruger syndrome. He thinks he's way smarter than he actually is.

Once again, the only solace I take in the fact that this buffoon is president is the fact that he will likely tear down the republican party with him. Between the radical far right agenda in congress and his sheer incompetence and ineptitude for the job, Trump may very well be the end of the modern republican party. They've been going in a radical right wing and anti intellectual direction for a while and now they're getting exactly what they wished for.

So...does any Trump voter regret their decision yet?

While it's still early and we won't know the full extent of what Trump's policies look like in practice, the early signs are not good. There are some indications that Trump, combined with the Tea Party inspired congress, will enact just about the most right wing policies we've seen in a long long time. A few highlights:

1) Republicans are already floating a bill that will enact MASSIVE cuts to social security, raising the retirement age from 67 to 69, and decreasing benefits for everyone except for the lowest earners.

2) Trump picked a fast food CEO for labor secretary, who will likely declare war on labor rights, and who is hostile to many pro worker policies the left like the minimum wage, mandated healthcare for workers, and expanding overtime pay. It looks to me like Trump will likely "make America great again" not just by lowering companies' taxes like in the Carrier deal, but will also slash worker benefits to give the so called "job creators" more money.

3) He picked an Exxon Mobil CEO as secretary of state, completely eliminating the pretense that our foreign policy is about anything other than oil.

4) He picked Ben Carson as the head of housing and urban development. You know, the guy who thought the pyramids were actually grain silos.

And this isn't even going into what's happening to abortion on the state level yet. Honestly, I think the working class voters who supported Trump are going to be in for a rude awakening when Trump starts doing crap hostile to their interests. I expect a honeymoon period that will last about 6 months to a year before people become horrified at what's happening. That's about how long it took me before I gave up on the tea party in 2010. And I expect what will happen over the next year to be at least as bad as that.

Seriously, you guys got hosed if you thought Trump would save us. The dude was a charlatan from day 1. He was a trojan horse to get the republicans elected. And the modern republican party is horrifying. I mean, for all the crap I give the democrats for their problems, the republicans are the face of pure evil in this country. And I think people are going to realize just how insane they are. The modern republican party is more extreme than the party under Bush, or under the other Bush, or under Reagan. These guys want the working class under their boots. They want the people living in a fundamentalist theocracy. They're NUTS, absolutely NUTS.

I just hope that what happens becomes seared into our collective consciousness forever as an example of what we should never ever do again. Hoover, Carter, Bush Jr., Trump. Heck, Carter and Bush Jr. are probably gonna look good after Trump gets done with us.

For all the time of draining the swamp, he's sure picking a lot of CEOs with special interests to run his cabinet. A lot of rich people who don't give a crap about the little guy. A lot of people with vested interests in what they will be governing. Hearing him read off his cabinet picks is like Lex Luthor assembling his legion of doom. It's almost comical how bad and how scary this administration is shaping up to me.

My only solace in all of this is that I hope that this is the end of the republican party as it exists. Under Obama, the GOP was only enabled, and festered for 8 years from what they were under Bush to this radical monstrosity. If Clinton won, this trend would only continue, and we might be facing someone worse in 2020 or 2024. Our whole political paradigm is a freaking failure. Between radical republicans and lukewarm democrats. I sure as heck hope this leads to a party realignment more favorable to the people. If not, we're only going to descend further and further into a corporate oligarchy, where the people don't matter and the rich control everything.

Debunking this idea progressives can't win because of a few losses once and for all

So, I'm tired of hearing it. It's a David Brock-esque talking point at this stage in the election. The narrative goes that progressives can't win because of what happened in a handful of races throughout the country that supports the conclusion that progressives are unelectable.

Three races in particular seem to come up regularly. The first, and most common one was Zephyr Teachout, who was a progressive who ran for congress in New York. I covered this already. To recap, while the cook partisan index and polling suggested a close race, in practice, the district looks rural, and republicans have a history of winning since redistricting in 2013 by large margins. It's a rural district, it's in upstate New York, and the analysis of it by pollsters seems to have little bearing on the results since it leans red by high margins. Teachout's 9 point loss was actually far narrower than the loss suffered there in 2014. Next.

The next race brought up is Russ Feingold's unsuccessful run in Wisconsin for senate. Establishment dems point to his loss, and the fact that he lost by a slightly larger margin than Clinton did, as evidence progressives are unelectable. What isn't said is that Feingold used to be the senator there and was voted out in 2010 when the tea party came to power. So, perhaps there was a history there that stopped him from being elected? Maybe Wisconsin was tired of him and liked Ron Johnson better?

And let's not forget the big elephant in the room: this was a bad year for democrats. Democrats got shellacked all over the country. Polls were off by several points across the board in many regions of the country, and races that were supposed to be competitive weren't. Yes, two progressives lost, so what? Didn't moderates like Katie McGinty here in Pennsylvania lose too? Does that mean centrists can't win? Or maybe the fact that both centrists and progressives lost, and the party as a whole is in a bad shape across the board suggests that maybe it was a party wide phenomena? And maybe Clinton even had an impact? I have a theory that when people turn out for candidates, they often vote down ballot the same way. While some people pick and choose from both parties, many likely support the same party all the way down. And if the presidential candidate is unpopular, maybe that translates to losses down ballot? And maybe there was a lack of funding at the down ballot level because the funds were going to Clinton?

I don't know, there are just too many factors to suggest that these candidates lost specifically because they were progressives. The biggest factors I would say influenced the race was the fact that Clinton and the DNC was just highly unpopular this year and people at all levels of government suffered as a result. Centrists lost, progressives lost. Sure, there might be variations depending on where they ran and their personal relationship with the state, etc., but the big factor seems to be that this was a bad year for democrats in general.

By the way, that third race. Establishment democrats seem to blame Colorado's single payer initiative losing as evidence against single payer. The word on the street in reddit from people in Colorado seems to be that the proposal was vague, not well designed, and and fundamentally flawed. If this is true, it might not be a repudiation of universal healthcare, but of this specific plan. Once again, the issue seems to be complicated and I don't think it's reasonable to blame progressives for losses. This seems to once again be establishment propaganda to support establishment narratives.

Debunking the idea that I won't compromise with the democrats

So, a lot of establishment democrats don't seem to understand me very well. Whether this is innocuous or not, who knows (as we all know I don't trust the dems much at all these days), but the fact is whenever I get into debate with the establishment left, the narrative comes up that I and people like me are unwilling to compromise and that we're not worth appealing to as a result.

I just want to say that this is blatantly false. If you read back in my blog here a few months, I grappled with the decision to support the democrats or not, and waffled back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein. In my original article about Hillary, I gave my thoughts on Clinton about how she seemed to have this grand strategy to run JUST to the left enough to attempt to placate progressives, while largely ignoring and dismissing their ideas. I pointed out that most of her strategy to win us over was damage control, and an attempt to scare us into voting for the democrats under the impression we had nowhere else to go. Looking at my argument, it seems readily apparent that I did not feel welcome in the party this year. I was expected to vote for her, but my ideas were largely ignored, and the relationship between us was very one sided. It was very clear who was in charge in this relationship, and it wasn't me.

I also expressed reservations with Jill Stein, pointing out her ideas being unworkable and that she was more pie in the sky rather than practical or pragmatic. But I toyed with the idea of supporting her, basically suggesting that moving the democrats to the left was more important.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that Stein was a better candidate for me to support. And I want to post a few quotes from this article suggesting some of my reasoning for this, which really get to the heart of my intentions.

Look, if this primary played out differently and the democratic party didn’t seem so hostile toward Bernie and his ideas and spend so much time specifically trying to rein him and his supporters in without so much as attempting to appeal to us the old fashioned way, maybe things would be different. If Hillary herself started more to the left and displayed some level of consistency in her views, maybe.

 Here, I'm clearly pointing out how if things were different, I would have supported Clinton. If the dems were more welcoming to us to begin with, I would have likely supported them. But they weren't, they ignored us and focused too much on silencing us and doing damage control to bully us into supporting them.

Clinton was also an extremely flawed candidate. She was too inconsistent and trustworthy to be willing to stand up for progressive ideas. Quite frankly, even if she spoke the language, she was too "damaged" as a candidate given her history and the democrats' actions to support.

But the fact is, the democratic party as it exists seems hopelessly out of touch with Bernie supporters like myself and can’t appeal to us to save their life, or their electoral chances. They literally don’t understand how our minds work, and they’ve missed so many chances to appeal to us that it’s pathetic. Between the candidate, their inconsistency, their hostility, condescension, and arrogance, the rift in the party may be damaged beyond repair this election. I can’t speak for everyone here, only myself, but as I’ve said before, this election has been a blow to my faith in the democratic party being an agent of change. At best this comes from an out of touch older generation engaging in group think and simply not being able to appeal to younger folks (hence the condescending tone to “educate” the youngin’s). At worst, it comes from a targeted effort to suppress a movement that threatens the interests of their cronies and donors. So at best, they’re just hopelessly out of touch, and at worst, they’re malicious and subversive.

 The core problem here is that the democrats were out of touch or even subversive. They did little to appeal to us, and I quite frankly felt hostility and ill intentions from the Clinton camp. I felt like the democrats were trying to suppress us and shut us up. That they didn't welcome our views, they just wanted our votes without doing anything in return. I mean, here's a list of things I felt they did wrong in this article:

1) They appeal to party loyalty, without recognizing that we’re not your average rank and file follower you can order around.

2) They tell us our ideas are bad, can’t be implemented, or even appeal to the same kind of national identity crap that you would expect from republicans and their special little snowflake-ism (American Exceptionalism). They lecture us and tell us to settle for less.

3) They accuse opponents of being sexist, making up derogatory terms like “Bernie Bros” to attack us.

4) The media ignores us, the DNC stacks the debate schedule against us, the superdelegates line up behind Hillary, and various primaries had potential voter suppression issues in states in which Hillary had won. It’s almost like they’re trying to shut down our movement. Like they’re part of the problem and their facade of being the “good party” is crumbling.

5) They don’t talk about what they want to do or what vision they want for America, all they talk about is how bad Trump is and how they’re better.

6) When they fail, they blame us. Nothing is ever their fault, it’s always our fault, for not being good little democrats that fall in line.

So, let's go over this. 1. They appealed to party loyalty. They didn't appeal to us. They just told us to vote D above all else and put our squabbles aside. 2. They ran to the right to appeal to republicans, and talked down to us and our ideas. 3. They clearly attacked us and used smears to discredit our movement. 4. The media and the democratic primary structure clearly existed to back candidates like Hillary and suppress candidates like Sanders. I felt that the democrats were trying to shut us down more than anything. 5. They appealed to lesser evilism, not running a positive platform. 6. They blame us when they lose. Just like they're doing now.

Speaking of that last point, these attacks about how we're just uncompromising is basically a combination of 2 and 6. They talked down to us like we're children and then try to revise history to make their losses look like our fault. Now they're suddenly claiming Clinton had the best platform ever and had all this progressive stuff but because we weren't good little rank and file voters, it's our fault they lost. They're trying to make us look bad and uncompromising, when my view of the story clearly has the democrats as the bad guys. They were dismissive, they didn't appeal to us, they didn't give us a seat at the table. They expected us to show up and then get mad when we say no. I mean, this smear that we wouldn't compromise with Hillary seems to have more to do with the DNC and Hillary's behavior than actual policy.

I really want to emphasize what the party looks like, taking all of the above points into consideration. It looks to me like, some deal may have been reached in 2008 to get Hillary to step down and support Obama. A promise of future support or something. So Hillary, like a good little democrat, stepped down and obeyed. After 8 years of Obama, the party promises to give it to Hillary. So, this whole primary process has been about getting Hillary the nomination. So they go on a full on offensive against Bernie, rig the process in many many various subtle ways that they can deny when directly accused, and then corral the Bernie supporters into supporting Hillary because they have nowhere else to go. Again, my big issues with the dems involve these shady attempts at suppression, their obvious attempts to ignore us, and these attempts to make us fall in line. It’s like the democrats think we are stupid and controllable. In this hostile environment, giving them a vote only shows that these tactics work.

Bingo. The core grievance is that the democrats tried too hard to push Hillary down our throats and told us we better fall in line or else. They expected us to cave and vote out of fear, in absence of a positive message from them. If the democrats tried so hard to compromise and appeal to us, why did the Bernie crowd feel so alienated? Why was so much time and effort focused on damage control? Why did so much of their narrative focus around "look, we know you don't like Clinton, so we're gonna try every trick in the book to make you vote for us anyway?" Why the endless appeals to party loyalty? Why call us "Bernie Bros" and call us sexist or privileged if we disagree with her? Why creepy dystopian "I'm with her" tag line? Why the endless reminders that Donald Trump is the alternative? .

So much time and effort was spent not trying to appeal to us, but to subdue us, to beat us into submission, to crush our hopes and dreams and then tell us we can expect no better and we gotta settle for less. And this was the problem, and this was more important than any policy the democrats had. This was about power. The democrats made a power play to silence us and make us submit to them. They didn't give us a seat at the table. They didn't want us at the table. They wanted us to be eating off the floor like the dogs we are to them. Their message is this, "we don't take orders, we give them, so fall in line." If they were really appealing to us, there would be no need for these tactics. The fact is they were only pretending to offer an olive branch, as long as we submitted to them and played their game, and if we didn't surrender, they would come at us via other ways to try to shut us up. The fact that they were ready with these lines of reasoning clearly tells me that they expected fallout from the party for this and were prepared to do damage control.

Further evidence that they expected fallout from their approach to the left comes from Chuck Schumer, who pretty much gave away the whole strategy by saying the following:

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” 

Let's not pretend that the democrats didn't know what they were doing, they knew exactly what they were doing (love that Rubio line). Their whole strategy all along was to basically ignore the left, try to bully them into submission to minimize the damage, and run to the center. And all of this would result in an electoral victory in which for every democrat they piss off they would pick up 2 moderate republicans who hate Trump. At the convention it couldn't be more obvious too. The whole first night they were booed, and they eventually silenced the the dissent and went on with the show as if nothing was happening. Meanwhile thousands of people were outside protesting the democratic party. They knew what they were doing. They knew people were pissed. They just didn't care. They had their agenda, and their candidate, and we just have to get behind it. Any compromises are minor and were carefully stage managed to give the impression of good will, but for the most part they just swept us under the rug and tried to forget we exist.

And you know what? They lost. Their whole strategy was a failure. We know what happened on election night. Pennsylvania went red for the first time in 2 years. Wisconsin went red for the first time in 32. They also lost Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa. They ALMOST lost freaking Minnesota, which hasn't gone red since since the Nixon administration, and would have been monumentally embarrassing for the democrats to lose.

For them to lose this whole region of the country, they clearly did something wrong. And I think it goes back to triangulation. They pissed off the left. They know they pissed off the left. They didn't care if they pissed off the left, because the way they saw it they would win so many right wingers it wouldn't matter. Well, that strategy backfired. They lost the left and the right supported Trump anyway. And now they have the gall to deflect and blame us and say we're unwilling to compromise.

I have news for you, look at the articles above, look at my statements, it has little to do with actual policy here. If I felt that the dems reached out to me and that this is the best we could realistically do, and that this is what we came to after they listened and we actually united as a party, that's fine. I mean, I'll say it now, Clinton's platform was more reasonable than Stein's in a lot of ways and I had issues with Stein. I voted for her because I was willing to compromise. And honestly, not even Bernie gives me everything I wanted. I compromised by supporting him too. It wasn't about the platform, is was about the democrats and their attitude. It was about forcing a fundamentally flawed, unlikable candidate on us, refusing to listen to us,  and basically pissing us off and alienating us because they had cool republican friends now. It was about, instead of running to the left and pushing an actual progressive platform, they would fake left and go hard center. It was about moving the needle to the right, not to the left. It was about the establishment telling us this is how it's gonna be and we better settle for it or else. All images that gave the pretense of unity and compromise were well scripted publicity events. The reality is the democrats did everything they could to ignore us and piss us off and win over the centrists to the party. And in doing so, they lost both the left and the center.

I don't think they care either, for reference. Schumer just got promoted to Senate Minority Leader with Harry Reid resigning in January. The people in power still maintain power. It's the iron law of institutions. The people in charge would rather the party fail if they keep their cushy positions in it, than to have the organization succeed if it means they cede power. Which was really what this was about. They were scared of the Bernie people I think. They don't want us to take control of the party. It puts them out of the job and pisses off their donors. So they likely suppressed us because they would rather lose and maintain control than win and risk losing it. They don't want us to have a seat at the table, and beating us is clearly more important in their minds than beating the republicans. And now because they lost they're trying to pin the defeat on us and double down on a bad strategy that clearly failed for them, thinking they can win us back just by letting the republicans do their thing. Sickening, just sickening.

On a side note, I will say that appealing to moderate republicans worked in 2012. I was a moderate republican until 2012 who left the tea party because I thought they went crazy and crap. But you know what? They did it not by appealing to my values at the time, but my challenging my views, forcing me to choose between a radical right wing i knew did nothing for me and a left wing that clearly had a positive vision. And after adopting those left wing values I moved to the left ever since. I changed my views completely. The way to win people over isn't to try to run to the center and appeal to the opposition's views. It's to show people the failures in those views' logic and present an alternate vision. And that's what the democrats failed to do. The democrats dont win elections these days by becoming republican, they win by proposing an alternate vision from both the status quo and the opposition that resonates with people.You win the ideological battle by persuading the other side to agree with you, not by adopting their values. The latter is called losing.

Pizzagate, the media, and loss of trust in our institutions

So, as some people have heard, there's this conspiracy theory called Pizzagate which involves John Podesta and other DNC officials running a child sex ring through a Washington DC pizza restaurant. The basis for this claim comes from wikileaks, in which the "top minds" (read: conspiracy theorists) of the recesses of Reddit and voat looked at the Podesta emails and came up with some crazy theory involving references to pizza being code for pedophilia or something like that? Anyway, the theory progressed so far that some guy decided to shoot up the pizza joint at the center of this theory and yeah, it kind of spilled over into real life in which people were put in harm's way.

The Clintons and their affiliates get a lot of flak from both the left and the right, but nothing on the left really compares to that which is on the right in terms of attacks against Clinton. And I've seen a lot of crazy crap on the right before. Claims that Hillary is abusive to secret service agents, that she has temper tantrums and meltdowns and even had a violent one on election night that she lost, that Bill went to some dude's private island to have sex with kids, that they murder tons of people who get in their way, etc. I try to ignore most of this crap because it has a very weak and flimsy basis, and comes from right wing propaganda mills with no basis in reality. I do occasionally float some mild "conspiracy" like theories, like the idea that the dems have been preparing for a Clinton presidency in 2016 since 2008, but I normally like to at least put some facts forward and explicitly state that these things should be taken with a grain of salt before putting them out there. But a lot of people legitimately believe these ideas wholeheartedly, and often without good evidence to do so, and this is what makes these things so questionable. They're not well supported and their supporters grasp at straws.

Now, some people might be wondering why people believe this stuff? And I think I have a theory for why that is. I believe that the rise of all of this fake news and echo chambers that spew it come from the fact that the media cannot be trusted to report on facts objectively. We are in problematic times. News networks are rarely objective, and as we've seen this election cycle, once trusted outlets like, say, CNN, have been shown to be quite biased in putting forward media coverage to support various candidates, particularly Clinton on the left. This has caused many people to lose trust in these institutions. The left is starting to show signs of this with all of the Bernie people having reason to be skeptical, but the right has been seeing through this charade the mainstream media has been doing for years and have responded by developing their own ideologically driven media networks to spin their narrative their way. And it's just gotten crazier and crazier. With sites like Infowars and Breitbart picking up steam, many people are now so far out of touch with reality that they buy up these conspiracy theories and act on them thinking they're real.

I think that the thing driving this so called "post truth" movement is the fact that the mainstream cannot be trusted to report on stories objectively. The people have rightly saw through the propaganda of the mainstream and the centrists who like to peddle their agenda as objective facts, and with one's sense of reality questioned, people develop an alternate reality in that place. The best of us go back to looking at science and thinking critically and develop a basis for truth based on reason and evidence, but many others fall into these enclaves getting more and more out of touch with reality until they think shooting up pizza places over child sex scandals in basements that don't exist is a good idea.

I'm not sure if there can be a solution media-side that can fix this lack of trust. Perhaps reinstating the fairness doctrine could restore faith in our institutions at the cost of some degree of freedom of speech, or perhaps the solutions rely on us. It's good to be open minded to things, but claims must be backed with reason and evidence. The more outlandish the claim, the firmer the evidence is needed in my opinion to justify it. And sometimes we do have to make decisions about beliefs with incomplete evidence, but when we do so we should be aware of the shortcomings of said evidence that exist. Stuff as crazy and elaborate as pizzagate requires an insane amount of evidence in my opinion, and it seems quite clear that there's no good reason to accept something so outlandish, given the credibility of the sources and the like. It's also good that people get their news from a variety of sources. If you get your news and engage with people strictly from a certain ideological persuasion, you will lose perspective as to what's going on in the country and world as a whole. Since it's clear no source seems infallible, it's up to us to sort through them and decide what is worth believing and what isn't within our mental frameworks. And we must always go back and question our assumptions of truth and ensure that we are not getting sucked into an echo chamber as well. This isn't just an alt right thing, this isn't just a "bernie bro" thing, this idea of being sucked into an echo chamber. Look at what I've written about the Hillary supporters since the election. They're in an echo chamber too. It's possible for everyone, including the best and brightest among us to get caught in an echo chamber, and I'd argue that the most trusted people in news reporting being caught in one is what led to this predicament to begin with. Once again, when people lose faith in mainstream institutions, alternate frameworks for seeing the world exist for better or for worse. To some degree, these frameworks can be great and can lead to a whole new way of thinking that had not been considered before. Whole revolutions have been sparked out of people losing faith in their institutions. When people lost faith in the catholic church, for example, it led to the protestant reformation and the enlightenment. And perhaps rejecting the mainstream media narratives is necessary for us to progress too. But always remember, this progress can be a double edged sword and it can backfire if people don't use the proper discretion in examining the evidence, or if they lack the tools or resources to do so. We can either reject the narratives put in place by the establishment to see things we otherwise wouldn't see and apply that knowledge to making the world better, or we can use it to come up with crazy conspiracies about pedophiles and lizard people and 9/11 being an inside job. It's really up to us. Let's use this power wisely and not give into utter foolishness with it.

No, basic income will not reduce freedom by giving the government more power, it will increase it by giving them less

A common argument I hear to the basic income proposals I support is that basic income is a bad idea because it gives the government more power and thus, reduces our freedom. By encouraging dependency on the government, the government has more power to control our lives, and thus increasing the size of government in this sense is a gateway to tyranny. This is an argument that plays well with small government conservatives and libertarians I guess, but it's completely false. There are several major reasons for this.

1) The government already has this power, and basic income reduces it. The government controls many facets of our economics, manipulating the economic system to accomplish certain goals. There is a complex tax system, full of incentives and tax breaks and disincentives and penalties. The tax system is a huge carrot and stick. It provides incentives for behavior it deems good, and it provides disincentives for behavior it deems bad. Want to buy a house? Tax break. Want to pay off student loans? Tax break. Is this not power over you? Isn't manipulating your behavior via an incentive/disincentive system manipulating you? Same with the welfare system. While its incentive structure is a bit screwy because of the 'welfare trap", ultimately, there are many incentives to manipulate behavior. You get unemployment insurance if you "play by the rules" and get laid off for the "right" reasons, but for the wrong reasons? Screw you, you can starve in the street. The welfare system has work requirements, and job search requirements, and drug testing, lifetime limits, and tightly controls the behavior of those who are on it by ensuring they can only buy certain things, and are doing certain things to earn their right to have it, etc. Combining this with the tax system, and we have an incentive structure that strongly encourages citizens to behave in certain ways. To seek employment, to buy certain things, etc. You already can't live as you want to live. You are basically coerced into work via propertylessness, and are only "helped" by the system if you behave in certain ways. This is freedom? I guess for some it is, which brings me to the second point.

2) The freedom that this argument frames the issue on is one of right wing "negative freedom." It's basically an argument against the concept of government. Now, government is inherently freedom reducing in some ways. But this isn't a bad thing. By giving up our freedom to just go around killing people willy nilly like we can in the state of nature, we gain the freedom to be able to live our lives in peace without fear of being randomly killed by people. Sometimes reductions in freedom actually lead to greater freedom overall, because they change the environment to open up new possibilities for people to live their lives that wouldn't exist in a less regulated state. I reject the negative concept of freedom the right uses to define it, because I see it as the freedom to serve or the freedom to starve. This concept of freedom tends to be narrowly defined on the concept of "government" interfering with our lives, and the fact that without government no one *has* to do anything. I mean, you don't HAVE to accept employment, you don't HAVE to work 7 days a week for peanuts, you don't HAVE to do this, you don't HAVE to do that, but the thing is....you will. As surely as a bear craps in the woods. Why? Because in order to survive, you must take action to ensure your own survival. And this requires acquiring property working for others, because obviously the government or in ancapistan, some "rights enforcement agency" (read: Pinkertons) will protect the property claims of the rich and powerful. So, you're ultimately playing their game by their rules, and while you don't *HAVE* to, you certainly will, which is just as bad. Under this system, you don't have freedom to act as you want, because you are forced into servitude by your bodily needs. That being said, a positive view of freedom based on being able to do what you really want, is favorable to one without mere government interference. Without government interference, life is brutal and, well, sucks. "Nasty, brutish, and short" as Hobbes put it. The thing we actually want is for the government to be on our side and to structure an environment that gives us more choices for how to live our lives without harming others.

3) This brings us back to basic income. Karl Widerquist, a scholar who emphasizes basic income a lot, wrote a book called "Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom and the Power to Say No." Since the book is expensive and I got to read it free when he posted it to reddit a while ago, let me summarize. Karl Widerquist spends this book breaking down the assumptions of our system, and separates "status freedom" with "scalar freedom." Status freedom is the freedom given to you by status, whether you're free or a slave. Scalar freedom is your effective freedom to do what you want. And basic income gives people the freedom to live their lives without interference, and the freedom to effectively say no to labor, which is something our system desperately lacks. You're not free as long as long as the powers that be limit your scalar freedom to force you into unfavorable work arrangements that give you the short end of the stick and force you to slave your life away for profit. While the right likes to go on about the "right to work" and stuff, they're really talking about the right to work more for less money. What the right doesn't understand is that when you're free to work 7 days a week with no unions and no regulations, everyone ends up having to do so as long as they can't say no.

4) That being said, basic income actually gives people freedom, and going back to point 1, it scales back the government's ability to influence you. Remember that welfare system I mentioned above that is all about making people good little worker bees using a carrot and a stick? With a guaranteed income, an income given to all with no strings attached, peoples' freedom INCREASES, not decreases. And if we replaced the tax system with a flat or flat-ish rate in conjunction with that, where we got rid of all the loopholes and deductions and stuff outside of the most necessary ones, we remove the government's ability to use "incentives" there too. By simplifying the system and ensuring everyone gets treated equally, rather than having a complex system of incentives to pick winners and losers, the deserving and the undeserving, we maximize peoples' freedom by allowing them to choose for themselves how to live rather than being "incentivized" (read: coerced) to act a certain way.

That being said, no, basic income only reduces freedom if your idea of freedom is that the less government involvement the better. But I tend to adopt a more positive view of freedom, the idea to live one's life as one wishes. And in order to accomplish this, basic income is necessary. It reduces propertylessness that forces them into unfavorable work arrangements, and it simplifies the bureaucracy of the current system, reducing the government's ability to "incentivize" people to act in certain ways. We should not fear basic income. We should fear the system we have now. Basic income is a massive improvement in a lot of ways.

You know, a lot of democrats are getting exactly the wrong message out of this election...

Maybe I spoke too soon when I said that the democratic party was learning something. Sometimes they look like they're learning something, but then it appears they learned nothing at all. And I know I covered their lack of learning a lot, so sorry if I sound like a broken record, but it needs to be said.

Now democrats are already trying to set the narrative for this election's loss by claiming it was BECAUSE THEY MOVED TOO FAR LEFT. This narrative goes that Hillary Clinton moved way to the left to adopt "the most progressive democratic party platform in history", and that the country soundly rejected it by alienating the centrists. They argue that because lefties like me refused to vote for her, we're unreliable voters who can't be counted on and that they must move to the sweet, sweet center in order to appeal to more disaffected republicans and centrists who could go either way. In other words, they're doubling down on a failing strategy.

I've already covered many angles on this topic already, but as you know, my belief is that the democrats failed to unite their party be alienating their left wing supporters and telling us to settle for less and fall in line. They may have FAKED left and pretended to appeal to us (I discussed their compromises when they happened), but they really had no intention on acting on them. As Clinton said in the leaked emails, she has a public position, and a private position, and her private positions....WHOOF. She doesn't really have a progressive bone in her body. And we millennials who get our news from non corporate sources have a well tuned BS detector to detect her fakeness from a mile away. It didn't even matter if she tried to appeal to the left, because she was such a fundamentally flawed candidate to do so, and no one believed her anyway. And honestly, many of the compromises she made seemed like mere window dressing. Okay, sure, she moved to a $15 minimum wage from a $12 one. This is the most minor and meaningless compromise she could have made. Free education was the big one, but even then it's a wonder how much of her original lukewarm plan she would have reverted to after the election. And she totally ignored universal healthcare. So, maybe she was mildly progressive by modern democratic party standards. But honestly, she had to be dragged to the left with no guarantee of acting on it. She drew the lines of her limits of progressivism at some pretty big policies that mattered, and the second the pressure was off of her, she likely would have let her "private positions" take hold and not do crap.

Quite frankly, I think the only positions she was legitimately too left on was social issues, and even then, SOME social issues. She wasn't far enough left to me on abortion and gay marriage, and seemed reluctant and apologetic for supporting such things to me (her "private" position on the latter seemed to indicate a certain moral repugnance on embracing the issue). She was too far left though on identity politics and guns. On identity politics, the democrats were insufferable and repelled a lot of prospective voters. I already covered this. On guns, she basically wanted people to be able to sue firearm manufacturers for gun deaths. This would put gun manufacturers out of business and make getting firearms virtually impossible. Sanders was much more to the center on this and I think it would have played well with rural voters.

That said, to recap, the problem with Clinton, at least on economics, isn't that she was too far left. It was that she faked left when she was a centrist at heart and showed a significant amount of contempt for the left wing base. Let's not let the democrats revise history here. This is a common theme of theirs. They sabotaged McGovern, and then claimed the democratic party was too democratic and too far to the left. So the neoliberal centrists got control of the party, established superdelegates to keep the people down, and moved to the right ever since, simultaneously blaming left wing voters for their failures while refusing to seriously consider what they have to say.

Look, Clinton was a uniquely flawed candidate who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She would have made a fine president in 2008 when Obama ran, but in 2016, ain't nobody wants any of that. Half the democrats despise Clinton. She's too far to the center, too inconsistent on supporting liberal values, and has TONS of baggage and skeletons in her closet that alienate people from her. As Obama himself said in 2008, she'll say anything and change nothing. Don't you ever forget that. And on the right, people hate her too. They use every attack in the book against her, bring her down with tons of fake news and scandals, make mountains out of molehills, etc.

And that's why she lost. She tried to triangulate by appealing to the center while making a fake appeal to leftists while running to the center, and ended up losing core constituents she needed to win. Don't forget it. Don't let the democrats change the narrative. They'll say anything to justify their narrative that the democrats need to move to the right. And this is because they're part of the problem. Follow the money. Look at whom this policy shift benefits (hint, it's not lower classes). The establishment is entrenched, they don't want to give up power, so they're trying to gaslight us into believing this BS about how we can't move to the left. And then they sabotage any attempt to do so. Don't forget it.