New house map looks more fair to both parties

 This is just a blurb, but it's worth discussing, apparently we have a better idea of the 2022 map for congress and it's looking a lot less gerrymandered than the previous 2012-2020 cycle maps, which had a high republican bias. Now we're only looking at R+1 rather than R+5. To put things in perspective, that means in terms of how I calculate percentages republicans go from a roughly 89% chance of holding the house at any given time, to only around 60%.

Still, given the fact that 2022 is looking to be a very red year, I still expect democrats to lose seats this time. Still. They should be able to more quickly gain them back once momentum starts going the other way again. 

It also looks like there's more competitive districts in general, which is a reversal from the country's districts looking increasingly polarized and biased toward one direction or another. It's crazy how polarized things have gotten over the past few decades. And I don't think it's healthy either. Even though I'm biased toward one direction, the current state of increased partisanship isn't healthy. Because it seems to come more down to things like racial demographics and the urban/rural divide than actual ideology. It makes it impossible to run an impassioned campaign on the issues, but instead to just cynically pander to "your demographics" at the expense of "their demographics". This has actually led to why our politics are so awful and dominated by culture wars nonsense. Also makes it hard for people with actual ideas to win within the democratic party, since idpol is such a deciding factor these days. 

So, if we can reverse such trends, that would be great.

How to avoid authoritarian thinking

 So, in my previous post on how I feel about the Russian people, I kind of noted a lot of similarities between Russians and a lot of conservative jingoistic sentiments expressed in the US. And how I don't really hate the Russian people because they're mostly subject to propaganda that cause them to think as they do. And how the same thing can happen here, and in some ways often does happen here. So I just wanted to express some pointers on how to avoid this kind of thinking and how to ensure that you're not one of the people who push comes to shove would unwittingly support literal nazis.

1) Question everything

I mean, this sub is called "out of plato's cave", Plato's cave being an allegory of being chained up by some authority and fed a diet of BS that causes you to view the world, not as it really is, but as someone wants you to see it. In order to break free of this, you need a free thinking mind. And this means you need to question everything. No authority should be above question. Not the state, and not even God. My trial by fire actually came when I ended up questioning my religion, and ended up deconverting from Christianity and becoming an atheist. And for a while there, I questioned God. I questioned his morality in the Bible. I questioned divine command theory. The euthyphro dilemma, and I kind of realized that yeah, god as portrayed by religion is a cosmic dictator, and this doesnt represent the pinnacle of human morality, but just the many failings of it and its authoritarian thinking. So yes, you should question religion and question God even.

You should also question your government. When I was in political science classes, we were trained to spot fake democracies. And Russia, for example, is the epitome of one. I mean, people can vote, but then the opponents of the guy in charge are jailed. And the same guy always wins, and they stuff the ballot boxes. And his opponents mysteriously end up dead. But hey, there's voting, it's a democracy right? Wrong. It's a fake democracy. it looks like a democracy but it's really a dictatorship.

But let's go further and question our system. Our political system has two parties. And they're the only ones that can win. And they bully people into supporting them, claiming they have to or the other side will win and it's their fault. But in voting for one of the two, we are expressing our voice, but we're also using it in a way that props up this system. Alternative viewpoints are suppressed.

Consider Chomsky's propaganda model with the media. We dont have strict state controlled media, but most media on TV is owned by a handful of companies. ANd they are subject to the owners whims, and have relationships with advertisers and even people in the political sphere itself. And they dont dare rock the boat as that could cause them sponsorships, money, and access to politicians. So they play ball.

Consider how the democratic primaries and the media seem to collude. How they tend to elevate some candidates like Clinton, Biden, and Harris, while suppressing others like Bernie or Yang.Consider how the influence of such propaganda outlets might influence elections. maybe even compare it to what happens in Russia.

Speaking of Russia, consider how Russia leaked some info in 2016 that implicated the democrats in engaging in the above behavior. While the propagandists and the tribalists might act like you can't accept both that the dems had their finger on the scale in choosing candidates and that the russians leaked info of it, both are actually true and should both be acknowledged. Democrats might think you're a russian stooge for believing the collusion narrative. And bernie or busters might think you're brainwashed by corporate media if you believe Russia leaked the info. You should be aware of manipulation both ways and call that crap out. Don't be anyone's puppet. Again, question EVERYTHING. 

Question this blog even. I sure as fudge have my own biases. 

Which brings us to point #2

2) Who does X benefit?

When looking at ANYTHING in politics, you should always look at it through a lens of who benefits. While it's possible to do this too much (see: leftists such as marxists or critical theorists), in moderation it's perfectly valid. Does the idea that wealth trickles down actually benefit people? Or does it just benefit the rich? What is the benefit of framing rich people as "job creators"? Who does "vote blue no matter who" benefit? What about invading a certain country?

The more you look at politics through a lens of who benefits, rather than just a list of solid principles, the more you realize that a lot of politics tends to favor certain groups over other groups. And this should be called out and corrected. 

Also, just to throw a bone to leftists. Yes, leftism shows how the rich run the world. Critical theory can point to systemic advantages that whites and males get over others. These theories absolutely have legitimacy in the real world. And again, while we should be able to maintain perspective, is it valuable to be able to look at things through a lens of who benefits to see if a policy is a good idea. Because often times, flowery moral justifications and ethical arguments surround political actions, but under the surface is a very real current of some policy benefiting one group at the expense of another. Educate yourself and be aware.

Russia isn't denazifying Ukraine. Russia is interested in territorial expansion for geopolitical reasons and access to natural resources. 

3) Develop your own system of morality and ethics

If you question stuff enough, you'll eventually find enough faults in everything to the point that you break down your current belief system. From there, you need to build it up into something else. Think about ethics on a meta level. What is the purpose of morality and ethics? What are the goals of whatever morality and ethics you develop? Who does this serve? Study different theories of ethics. Look at consequentualism. Look at deontology. Look at Kant's categorical imperative. Utilitarian ethics. Natural rights theory. Contract theory. Ethical egoism, etc. Weigh the pros. Weigh the cons. What are you for? Don't be afraid to mix and match systems for your own special form of ethics. I mean, my own system (which informs my political views) isn't a pure system itself. I base it in a combination of secular humanism, utilitarianism, and libertarianism. 

For many people this is scary. Religious thinkers dislike this kind of thinking, equating it to Adam and Eve's original sin of thinking about morality themselves rather than doing what doing what God told them to do. BUT, I like to look at it this way. If you just do what others tell you to do, are you not running the risk of becoming a follower of someone like Hitler or Putin? Keep in mind, the nazis were "only following orders". And I hear a lot of people in Russia who were captured saying similar things when grilled over their war crimes. I saw a video of a Russian pilot captured and they said "we were just told to bomb those coordinates". At those coordinates was a hospital or something. Oops. The fact is, a lot of people say it's a sin to disobey authorities. Sometimes it can be. Sometimes rules are in place for good reason. But sometimes you're being asked to kill at the order of another. 

4) Recognize the limits of your own system and improve it along the way

Okay, so you're starting to develop your own system. Cool. But don't be afraid to be self aware of your weaknesses when doing this. Building your own ethical system can take months or years, and require tons of research. While my core political system has been in place since around 2014ish, I'm still not afraid to course correct when necessary. For example in 2014 I'd be a lot more positive to much of the left than I am now. I learn through reaction to others. Watch them make mistakes and then I course correct. 

Honestly, one lens that I would encourage everyone to learn is the structural functionalist lens of "does this work"? In step 2 I introduced conflict theory in terms of "who benefits", but as I kind of implied, the left tends to do this a lot, but gets overzealous about it. This is how you get SJWs, who on social policy start seeing the patriarchy or racism in literally everything, to the point that things that are intended to be quite benign suddenly come off as racist or sexist. This is how you get, for example, calls to abolish the police, or say all cops are bad (ACAB). People see the systemic violence in everything, some of which is legit, but then they go too far.

Or take the Marxists. They see capitalism as so evil that they start advocating for socialism. And socialism has little real positive data suggesting it "works". I mean, even if it does, it has some major drawbacks compared to capitalism like inefficiencies, the threat of authoritarianism, etc.

Or take foreign policy. Some people have become so anti US imperialism they start sympathizing with and defending Russia and China.

It's dumb. Like, okay. Some levels of criticizing things as they are is fine, and building up your own alternative belief system can be difficult, but try to avoid making the basic mistakes of those who have come before us. If those ideas don't work, or aren't helpful, or are applied overzealously, that can do more damage than the status quo. Sometimes things are the way they are to benefit one group of people over another. But sometimes they're that way because it works. And sometimes, like in the case of the police, both can be simultaneously true at the same time. Yes, police seem to spend a lot of attention defending a system designed by rich people. But we also need police to do things to keep law and order. We can criticize them being militarized and repressive against peaceful protesters, while understanding they also serve legitimate purposes like responding to things like violent people or drunk drivers. You know? So don't overextent. And don't become so high on your own brand you lose touch with reality.

5) Don't be afraid to follow your own path

If you break down your own system, and build it back up again, don't be afraid to follow your own path in doing so. One thing I notice when a lot of people leave one belief system for another, they end up just unqustioningly accepting their new system. A lot of former conservatives who become liberals end up adopting strong "blue no matter who" mentalities. Atheists end up never really expanding their horizons after becoming atheists. Liberals who move further left often fall into the pitfall of Marxism and stay there. 

No. Don't just question your old system, question your new one too. And don't be afraid to choose forge paths people haven't made before. As I said, my belief system isn't really a commonly accepted one. In a lot of ways, it's one I made myself. This is why, when I keep bringing up Yang and his human centered capitalism, I keep talking about how I was advocating for some of this stuff five years before I started becoming a fan of his. Because i WAS. I WAS advocating for yang in 2014, and while I wouldnt have called my political ideology human centered capitalism at the time, it's influenced by the same influences that later influenced Yang. And our resulting systems aren't QUITE the same, but they're SIMILAR. Very similar. I've discussed some differences I have with my strongest influences in other articles, but I'm not afraid to diverge at times, whether it be in the details or major doctrines or dogmas. 

People often don't do this. They just leave one tribe, to join another tribe. But if you do that, are you really not being subject to some level of authoritarian thinking? Are you in control of your own belief system or are simply having it be dictated by others? For a lot of people, it IS the latter. Which is how so many people seem to fall into the pitfalls of stupidity I've mentioned above in both 4 and 5 here. 

No system is perfect. I try to make mine as perfect as possible, and I see it as defensible from my perspective, but others can just disagree on the basis of different ethics. We can critique each others' ethics, but ultimately, you have to choose what you stand for. So choose wisely. Make sure it works, but don't be afraid to experiment. Experimentation is how we eventually get new ideas. Like human centered capitalism. 

Heck that's what scholars did. Precursors of mine like Phillipe Van Parijs and Karl Widerquist, who made works my own system is loosely based off of, themselves experimented and branched out from other prior ideologies. Van Parijs seemed to want a leftist response to neoliberalism and the failures of the old pre 1980s "left", something I see common in anti work/UBI oriented left libertarian leaning literature. Karl Widerquist designed his own system in a similar vein of Van Parijs but decided to create his system under different principles. And my own system I would say is slightly more conservative than Widerquist's at times, but more progressive at times than say, Yang's version of human centered capitalism. 

6) Prioritize your preferences, and seek common ground

One downside to doing the above is that in doing so, you're going to be rather lonely in practice. When you question everything, break down your own belief system, and build up your own in its place, you may be able to resist a lot of authoritarian BS others seek to impose on you since you're a free thinker and your views are your own, but you'll still have to make compromises and ally with others to get something done at this point. You might not agree with people on everything, but you need to work with others for common goals. For me, the pecking order looks a bit like this.

Forward party/UBI advocates- Since UBI is the defining policy of my specific political ideology, and tends to take priority over others, people who seek similar policies under similar ideological banners tend to take precedence for me. It should be noted simply being a UBI supporter in any form doesn't mean i'll support you, as there are bad implementations of UBI I'll disagree with (see my UBI metric for details), but generally speaking I'm inclined to seek out likeminded political groups such as the forward party. 

Progressives- If I can't find a viable pro UBI alternative like the forward party, I tend to align with progressives. I don't agree with progressives on everything, with the UBI vs green new deal type divide being the biggest schism between my views and theirs, but I believe progressives do want to do good things, and I'm willing to accept we just have differences of how to get there.

Centrist liberals- Generally by the time I get down to this group, I'm kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel. As I see it the centrist wing of the democratic party sucks. But still, there are worse alternatives out there. Like Trumpers. Or even hardcore tankie leftists who I see as a particularly dangerous version of progressives. 

Generally speaking, ultimately, I try to find people who conform to me, rather than the other way around though. Some groups like centrist libs seem to want it the other way around, with them wielding the power and me just following. But just following mindlessly is authoritarian thinking that I reject. And honestly if a group is sufficiently different than me or goes against my morals in a significant way, I'm just not going to support them. That said:

7) Always remain in charge of your beliefs

You are a moral agent, and only you can decide when someone is sufficient enough to accept as your leader when you need to follow another group. Someone like yang, I'm not making a lot of compromises. Progressives I tend to make more but I deem it worth it. Centrist democrats love to try to bully people and frame the issue on their terms. Don't let them. In a democracy, you're not beholden to anyone, they're beholden to YOU. This is why I take such a hard line against blue no matter who rhetoric for example. If you just cave to them, you're not using your power to hold them accountable. And no accountability is a problem. In order to stop evil, good people need to not support said evil. Of course, if push comes to shove and you must yield to force, then yield to force. I'm not going to ask anyone to sacrifice themselves for their beliefs (although some would demand that of people). But if you're able, resist authoritarian efforts to corner you and get you to do something you're not comfortable with. Don't vote for democrats when they do nothing for you and try to bully you.

And as far as the Trumpers go, don't support them at all. Seriously, the trumper mindset is the same mindset as those who live in Russia and support Putin. It's the mindless jingoistic "support our troops unquestioningly" mentality that we see there. As I said in my previous article, when Russia held a "Z" rally, it just reminded me of the parts of a football game where they aren't actually playing football but are singing patriotic songs and doing vapid pro American virtue signalling. Same crap, different country. And if you followed the steps above, odds are you think blind nationalism is a bad thing by now, so you won't fall for it. 

Conclusion

While I did not intend to do so when I started this article, I ended up describing step by step by deconversion from Christianity and shift away from conservatism around 2012. I basically described how I left plato's cave. And now you know. You essentially break down your belief system, question everything, build it back up, and then remain firm in your newly held convictions. That's the TLDR version. But in doing so, it will make you resistant to authoritarianism. The key to avoiding such thinking is to be an autonomous moral agent that thinks for themself and isn't afraid to go against the grain. So feel free to not support that war if you don't want to support that war. Feel free to not vote for that political party if you don't want to. You do you. Don't let other people tell you what to think, decide from yourself what you think. Eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Don't be afraid to deny anyone, including "god" if you have religious convictions. 

People who are authoritarian might view this path as a dangerous one, one that leads to lawlessness, nihilism, and amorality. These are seen to be avoided at all costs by those with pro authoritarian mindsets. but it's only in embracing such things that you can really find yourself, and find out what you stand for and what you support. Otherwise, you're just someone else's puppet. In America, you might be the puppet of your favorite political party. In Russia or China, you might be your favorite dictator's puppet. In religion, you might be the puppet of those who run and control the religion. 

But here's the thing. That kind of thinking, is exactly how you get fascism and other authoritarian ideologies to thrive. You get a bunch of people who don't question their beliefs and view their leaders uncritically and just do what they say. What happened in Nazi Germany CAN happen here. What is happening in Russia can too. It's up to you to do the work to make yourself resistant of these efforts.

So what are we to think about the Russian people in all of this?

 You know, I normally tend to see the best in people, or I at least try to, understanding that we are all nuanced beings who are susceptible to propaganda, with many of us subject to authoritarian tendencies (see: the Milgram experiment), but there's a lot of talk about how we should view Russia in all of this mess. And honestly, I think there needs to be some levels of nuance here. That said, I think we should talk about how we should view Russia in all of this.

Vladimir Putin and the Russian Government

I'm just going to say flat out, we should view the Russian government negatively. And I tend to view Putin at this point as like Stalin or Hitler. I never did have a high opinion of Putin. He always did come off as like a Russian Dr. Evil to me, and it seems clear he sabotaged Russia's fledgling democracy and turned it into a dictatorship over his tenure. And the more I learn about the guy, the less I like. He arose to power by bombing his own citizens. He then broke his own country's democracy by abolishing term limits and killing off his critics and political opponents. His elections are blatantly rigged and involve poll workers stuffing ballot boxes. And he has basically bullied and invaded his neighbors regularly over the course of his term in office, invading Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine twice, once in 2014 and once this year. This last one is the worst yet, with the Russians pulling out all the stops to be as destructive as possible and target civilians and infrastructure.

I have no sympathy for Putin. I think he's a monster. There's a reason I come down so hard on this guy and it's because he literally reminds me of Hitler and Stalin here. F Vladimir Putin. I won't go so far to say anything beyond that as I don't want to potentially violate TOS here, but yeah, I very rarely see things in terms of pure good or pure evil, but his behavior both in Russia and abroad is very close to the pure evil side of that scale. 

As far as "the government" goes...well..the government is made up of puppets for Putin. So, most members of the government are just Putin's little tools. The higher ups are cronies, and while I may not hate your typical civil servant that much, the core power structure exists purely under Putin's authority.

The Russian Military

Now, once we get away from the Russian government, the Russian military is a bit more nuanced for me. I'm under the impression that a lot of Russian soldiers don't want to be there. I mean, they're 18 year old draftees, they are basically told they're going on training exercises or lied to and told that the Ukrainians would welcome them with open arms, and many of them are forced to fight, and threatened with jail or execution if they don't. Many Russian soldiers surrendered in the early days of the war, and some are still trickling in. And you know what? I applaud the Ukrainians for showing them mercy.  Many people who surrender do so willingly, they turn over valuable equipment like tanks to the Ukrainian military, and they're basically being rewarded and given a new life in the west for it. So, i clearly have a soft spot for at least SOME members of the Russian military. Clearly some of them are just dumb kids who don't want to be there.

However, as time goes on, my sympathy for the Russian military as a whole has declined. While yes, some don't want to be there and surrendered, others have, quite frankly, committed war crimes. They've killed Ukrainian civilians. I'm hearing reports in recent days online of things like looting and rape happening in some of the more besieged areas. And I've seen intercepted phone calls where some of these guys have a callous attitude toward civilians and intentionally target them. Some are told to by their superior officers. And you know what? The older and higher ranked you get, the less respect I have for members of the Russian military. Because there are some seasoned guys there who are "true believers" and essentially represent the same embodiment of pure evil that Putin does for me. And even a lot of the front line troops are basically not just innocent bystanders in a tough situation at this point. Some are zealously committing war crimes too. Taking jewelry and other things off of Ukrainian civilians they kill. Telling their wives at home that they'll be giving them stuff taken from dead civilians. It's sickening.

So, mad respect to the Russians who do lay down their arms and surrender, but F any member of the military that commits war crimes, and F the chain of command. I might have sympathy for individual conscripts, but the Russian military as a whole, I don't have respect for. 

The Russian people

So, this is where I really want to delve into this, because this is where things get even more nuanced. And I'm seeing a lot of legitimately anti Russian sentiment here toward the civilians of Russia. A lot of this is on the basis that they support the war and like Putin. I mean, okay, yeah. I think around 70% of Russians support Putin. And a lot of people think something is wrong with Russia itself to express that view. Eh...I'm going to disagree here.

The fact is, Russia is an autocracy. It's a 1984 esque society where anything BUT undying support for Putin is met with repression. There were anti war protests in the opening days of the war in Russian cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg. They were arrested. heck, they arrested anyone who expressed any opinion at all. And while Russia might have a lot of supporters of the regime there, it's not like citizens are given any other choice.

Also, propaganda is a thing. 70% of people support Putin. Yeah, well, 40-50% typically supported Trump, and STILL support Trump. And Russians are who are pro war are just expressing similar types of sentiments of American conservatives. I saw people online post pictures of pro war rallies lately, and to me, it just reminded me of your average sunday during football season here in the US. People waving flags, showing pro war sentiment. it's weird, when people in other countries do that we go "look at how brainwashed they are". but then we basically say our pledge of allegiance every morning in school, and sing the national anthem during football games. And scream over that one black guy (Kapernick) who refused to do it. And how blah blah blah support the troops. You don't think these same jingoistic attitudes exist in the US? I remember the war in Iraq and how the citizens were misled on that one. Don't get me going about how suddenly Russian people are bad when they end up being subjected to insane levels of pro Russia and pro war propaganda, and they tend to believe it.

The difference between the US and Russia is Russia is effectively a one party state with Putin at the top, and 70% of the people supporting him, and the US is a 2 party state with 40-50% supporting each party. Again, I've watched RT before. I've compared it to CNN. because that's basically what it is. Russian CNN. The Russian people are deeply brainwashed by an authoritarian regime and the consent is manufactured to achieve the regime's goals. Don't think we're any better. We're not. We just give people two options instead of one and more quietly suppress dissenting opinions. Rather than jailing critics, the media just doesn't cover them and pretends they don't exist, and people are none the wiser.

Huge reason I'm so hard on media come election time and why I believe candidates I like such as Bernie or yang don't get fair treatment. because they don't and the media manufactures consent.

You know, before this war started, i would sometimes surf a subreddit called r/anormaldayinrussia. It was a sub with Russians doing weird and crazy things in it. but you know what. Deep down, we're all just people. We might be indoctrinated into our own systems of government, with most Russians uncritically supporting Putin and most Americans uncritically supporting the democratic and republican parties, but all in all, we're the same. And if we were raised in Russia, we would be part of that 70% of pro Putin people. And we wouldn't know any better.

So should we hate the Russian people? Eh, I would say no. Even if they support the war. Because in supporting their war, they're just making the same mistakes we made post 9/11 with Iraq. I do think that our government and military acted far more ethically in Iraq than Russia is in Ukraine (we don't actively try to commit war crimes, for example), but honestly? I see Russian people waving their flags and sporting the Z insignia on everything and I don't see how it's fundamentally so different than our conservatives in their jingoistic "support our troops or you HATE AMERICA" type sentiments. It's the same kind mentality. 

Again, there's been an uptick in interest in psychology since World War 2. In the post war world, we wondered what happened with Germany and why they were able to support Hitler and such a heinous regime. But as we started to test people, we found out that the same traits are universal, and that the same thing could easily happen here. 

 Conclusion

So, my opinion on this? Hate Putin. Hate the government. Hell, even hate the military. But, eh, hatred toward average Russian people seems extreme. I mean, I hate to whip out Jesus here as a nonchristian, but this is what he was talking about when saying before you criticize the speck in someone else's eye, make sure you rip the plank out of yours first. As in, before you criticize other peoples' faults, make sure you address your own first. 

The Russian people, as I see it, are victims of the Russian regime. It tells them what to think, and they think it. And the ones that don't think it tend to have a bad time because the government doesn't like that. So, can I really blame Russians for being as they are? Not really. As long as their support remains abstract and they're not the ones actively ordering or perpetrating violence, I'm not going to hold their abstract support for the regime against them. My actual hatred is more directed toward those at the top pulling the strings, and those who are actually committing acts of violence. hence why I separated this article as I did. The government I hate. I think Putin is more or less 21st century Hitler/Stalin. The military I have mixed and nuanced views on. I hate those who do bad things in it, I dont blame those who are forced to participate against their will. And as far as the average people, well, they're just people, and we like to think we're so morally superior in the west, but trust me, we're just as susceptible to brainwashing push comes to shove and I don't believe we're in any position to judge the citizens of another country as long so many people support authoritarian idiots like Trump. And even democrats tend to be unquestioningly tribalistic in supporting their brand too, hence my disdain for blue no matter who rhetoric. So yeah. That's my views on Russia, it's government, it's military, and it's citizenry.

Trump should be in jail

 So...today it came out that there's a 7 hour gap in communications during January 6th in the Trump White House. This is very problematic. This is similar to what happened in Watergate, where 18 minutes in the presidential record were missing. But 7 HOURS?! On the day of Trump trying to enact a coup in the US? It's crazy, man. it's crazy. It baffles me this guy isn't in jail. He wants to run again, and he could win, simply between his idiot fanbase blindly following him and democrats being unpopular because they suck. This guy is a disgrace. Seriously, I tried to kind of give him the benefit of the doubt, and treat him like a moron, but seriously, this guy tried to overturn an election in order to seize another term. Imagine what he might get away with if he is in power again. 

Anyway, the 7 hour gap is important because it shows that he either deleted the records during that time, or was using a burner phone of sorts. We know he was "ecstatic" when it was going on, which was problematic. And we know the national guard response was delayed several hours that day. All in all, it seems like Trump and his loyalists were trying to make the coup happen. 

This should never be seen as acceptable. I can tolerate Trump being an idiot. I don't like it, but honestly my opinion of the GOP is so low that as far as I see, people get what they voted for. But this dude literally tried to overthrow an election.

When i was growing up, the right was always screaming about executive overreach in office. Any time Obama did everything ever, people screamed about it. And even during Bush, while most republicans supported executive overreach for "national security purposes", that crap became more and more questioned, including within the republican party, as his presidency went on. With the tea party not just being a blacklash against Obama, but also a wholesale rejection of the Bush administration and his authoritarian approach on foreign policy and national security. 

Now the GOP seems to be enabling a literal wannabe dictator. Someone who aspires to be like Putin or Kim Jong Un. And the scary thing is he actually made a pass at trying to pull it off. 

Again, this guy should be tried to the fullest extent of law and be barred from ever running again. He presents a unique threat to the country, even more so than other conservatives. And I hate to say it, but i MIGHT actually have to back Biden up if this joker DOES run again. I'm not sure, I'll have to think about it as lesser evil voting goes against my principles, but if the alternative is someone who is an existential threat to the country and that this characterization of events is NOT being hyperbolic? Eh, I might have to do it just this one to preserve the union. Who knows.

I'll have to see how 2024 plays out.

Discussing the FY2023 federal budget proposal

 So, Biden released his FY2023 budget today and while I won't gloss on too many of the details as this thing is massive and the size of a book, I do want to discuss it broadly. Now, to be fair, it should be stated that over time, budgets grow. We have commitments from previous programs, and often the previous year's budget is adjusted to be the new year's budget. 

But then you gotta keep in mind, I've read shorter books than this. And this is kind of why I feel like people on the right lose faith in government. They keep trying to do too many things in peacemeal type ways and honestly? NO ONE NOTICES. While some of this stuff is likely needed, some of it seems like complicated ways to address things. So we're just adding complexity on top of complexity, we're spending nearly $6 trillion, and some of it is on stuff we don't really need. It just makes our life incrementally better in ways we don't notice. I mean the funding for some things seems to be way higher than inflation and I'm not sure it's justified. 

Anyway, just to hit some of the basics:

Medicare and medicaid were $1.382 trillion.

Social security is $1.313 trillion

And let's be honest, these are the biggest items and necessary. I wouldn't mind reforming social security long term into part of my UBI (with an additional earnings based supplement for seniors) as it starts to hit sustainability walls, but given current recipients wouldn't accept a benefits cut, I support my current plan of simply taxing it like income and clawing it back that way.

Medicare and medicaid, well, that's healthcare. And we should have a single payer system if anything. We spend as much as some single payer systems cost just on our inefficient system that takes up 18% of our GDP and going another $1.75-2 billion would plug all holes and ensure everyone has healthcare. 

Other mandatory programs dropped to $993 billion. I'm assuming that includes stuff like unemployment and welfare. I base this on the fact that spending was insane in 2020, and in 2021 dropped in half, and dropped further into 2022. 

Defense is going up to $795 billion, when if anything we already are spending overkill, but it mentioned wanting to stay ahead of Russia and China and I agree with that.

There's a lot of nondefense stuff, $915 billion in various government agencies, and some of the stuff looked useful, but other stuff I probably would cut if it were me.

But all in all, this comes out to $5.8 trillion. This is slightly less than last year, with some sectors going up and some going down. Generally speaking the automatic increases to social security and medicare just offset the cuts to welfare.

Can I complain too much? Not really. I do feel like some stuff is unnecessary here, but I don't know how much we could realistically cut. I would rather do a few things well, like UBI and M4A, rather than doing a lot of things in a half ###ed way though. All in all, given our $21 trillion GDP, this is only like 28%. If we implemented my spending cuts as per my recent UBI budget, we could cut the base spending back to $4.6 trillion, but then we'd be increasing it by $3.9 trillion for UBI and $1.9 trillion or so for medicare for all. That would mean a $10.4 trillion budget or roughly 50% of GDP, although replacing a lot of stuff in the current private sector with the public sector and having tons of redundant UBI transfers in that. It would actually be smaller in practice with M4A leading to savings. And if we viewed UBI as more like a NIT, it would be a fraction of the size in practice, so this isn't as oppressive as it seems. 

But yeah. Idk. To me, I'd rather have a bigger government that does less things. Democrats like smaller governments to appease conservatives, but tend to prefer complicated governments that do tons of things and are wasteful. So I tend to have a bit of an ideological difference from conservatives. In some ways I'm actually more like a Nixonian republican ideologically. I guess this is why the left treats me like a right winger.

But still, a right winger in the new deal era is, in my opinion, far more progressive than a "new democrat" in the post reagan environment. Because the right is having to work within the left wing paradigm of government doing things. Whereas now the left works within the right wing paradigm of cutting government in harsh ways. 

Nixon republicans actually proposed valid alternatives at times to the democrats, being like "yeah, let's have government programs, but instead of a trillion programs all doing different things, why dont we have a handful of really big programs that simply do the job while minimizing intervention in peoples' lives?" 

Meanwhile, centrist dems these days are like "gee, the republicans want no government and we want bloated and inefficient government, why dont we meet them half way?" So they cut bloated programs and make them anemic without actually improving things. It's the worst of both worlds. 

And yeah. That's why I dont like democrats. While I'll take the democrats over republicans simply because I'm more on the side of "some government" rather than "no government", i would rather have "efficient but large government" over "smaller but inefficient government". 

And yeah. This is why to an extent the left right paradigm is BS. The left seems to be defined by bloat and inefficiency, and me simply saying "let's accomplish similar goals but in a more straightforward way" makes me a right winger. I do want to increase the size of government, but do it in a way that makes government more efficient and less interventionist in their lives.

But yeah, i digress, I'm going of rambling more about my ideological differences with the dems at this point.

Why is democracy failing?

 So, Andrew Yang's podcast got a bit dark today talking about the downfall of belief in democracy, and how social media and the rise of the internet seems to have an impact in negative belief in democracy. You know, as someone who has been around on the internet for a while at this point, I kind of have some views on this, and that's what I want to discuss here.

The internet as the new printing press

Remember how during the middle ages all of the information was controlled by the monarchies and the church? You had one church, and all of the services were done in latin. People couldn't read the bible for themselves. And then you had monarchies with tight information control. And then things changed. The printing press came about and then people were given access to all of these ideas. And it led to the enlightenment. It also led to turbulence like the protestant reformation, which broke the grip of the catholic church, and the development of social contract and natural rights type philosophies, which weakened the divine right of kings and eventually led to the rise of democracies.

Well, I feel like the internet has done that. I can imagine, in ages past, most Americans just had a steady diet of information given to them. First it was newspapers, and then Radio, and then TV. And people, outside of scholars and the highly educated, were only given information from those sources. So what they were exposed to ended up dictating their views. This is propaganda at work. And while we had tumult in the 1930s that I'll get to in a bit, the internet kind of counteracted that. Suddenly people were allowed to view whatever information they wanted. And this led to people accepting views that they otherwise wouldn't have.

I myself have changed in drastic ways because of the internet. It was because of the internet I was able to become an atheist and put my thoughts on religion and spirituality at the time into perspective. I was educated too, in political science and sociology no less, but ultimately, the internet allowed me to supplement my studies a bit, and this led to a lot of non mainstream conclusions.

The same thing happened with politics. After becoming an atheist, I had to rebuild my entire political view from the ground up too. And this led me to leave conservatism and move to the left, adopting a form of human centered capitalism as a positive force for good in the world (as I see it). I never really questioned the underpinnings of democracy as a concept, but I did realize after 2016, which will be a main focal point in this article, that our democracy is not as free or democratic as we like to make it out to be, and I feel like this actually is the huge reason why things are backsliding. Long story short, i feel like Americans are waking up to the flaws of American democracy, and that's causing a breakdown of the belief system, especially as we go into a new party realignment. 

The last time this happened

The last time the world faced problems like this was the 1930s. The world fell into the depths of the great depression, and with that, society's fabric unraveled.

During this time, we had three great ideologies controlling parts of the world, liberal democracy, communism, and fascism. Communism arose in 1917 in Russia, as poor conditions there led to the people rising up and getting rid of the czars. Lenin formed the soviet union, which was the first communist society based around worker councils. Under Lenin's rule things didn't seem awful, but then he died and Stalin took over. And that led to the country becoming a hardcore authoritarian dictatorship, as Stalin was a rather psychotic dictator who just mass purged anyone he disagreed with and had questionable policies. Later on, China, North Korea, and Cuba would follow suit in their own ways, with the two former countries basing their ideals on Stalinist Russia at the time. Generally speaking, communism wasn't the utopia people thought it would be, and a lot of this was due to the ideology at the time. People like Lenin thought that if they would have a communist revolution that it would lead to a "dictatorship of the proletariat", after which, the state would fade away. But...as it turned out, it just led to a dictatorship with a highly inefficient command economy that made people both poor and oppressed. 

The rise of communism led to red scares in the 1920s, but at the same time there was a healthy labor movement that really took off in the 1930s as people couldn't survive under capitalism as it existed. let's face it, raw capitalism sucks too. And in this case, you had high unemployment, people being wage slaves, pay being low, rent being high, and life being unliveable. This led to a rash of leftism in the US that really took off in the 1930s, with some fearing the same thing that happened in Russia would happen here.

At the same time, the rest of Europe went in the other direction, toward fascism. The losing axis powers, and even some allies who felt displaced from negotiations like Italy, felt unhappy under liberal democracy. The Weimar Republic formed after World War I in Germany, and by the 1930s problems were rampant. The terms of the treaty of versailles, which unfairly blamed Germany for the war, put the country under harsh conditions. They had to pay tons of reparations to other countries. Hyperinflation gripped the economy on top of the global depression. Germany wasn't allowed to militarize, and German attitudes became one of resentment against the allies. This led to funny mustache guy taking power, claiming to "make germany great again" to make a difference to a certain American president. He rejected the terms of the treaty of versailles and focused on an economic recovery that put the country in the best state it had been since world war 1. Massive public works projects in infrastructure and rebuilding the military put people to work, and things seemed to improve. While he was popular at the time, he started using the situation to seize power for himself and turn the country into a dictatorship. This led to him doing things like killing the Jews, who he believed were the source of the world's problems, and eventually going on territorial conquests to expand Germany. This led to World War II, and the holocaust. Yeah. He was not a nice guy.

So....ultimately, this put the US in a tough spot, as it faced many of these forces too. On the far left was a faction that wanted the US to become a communist state like the Soviet Union, and on the right, there were a lot of fascist elements that led to some wanting us to be like Nazi Germany. And FDR, realizing he had to save liberal democracy and the republic, had to implement strong reforms that fixed the country. This led to the rise of New Deal Liberalism. FDR put people to work on infrastructure, giving people jobs that the free market failed to do. he implemented labor regulations, conceding to long term demands of the labor movement such as that for a minimum wage, safety laws, and the 40 hour work week. He taxed businesses at up to 90%, although this was more for show than in practice. And he established social security for the elderly. While some hated him for this, he was quickly able to suppress dissent. He blackmailed the supreme court with court packing, while arguing the country needed this for its very survival, and the right lost almost all influence in the US. FDR saved America, honestly. He saved us from going in either a fascist or communist direction. How? BY SOLVING PROBLEMS AND RESTORING PEOPLE'S FAITH IN THE SYSTEM. 

As I see it, people turn on democracy when democracy does nothing for them. When the system is unresponsive to their demands. For decades the US had suppressed the labor movement. The demands FDR addressed were common rallying cries in years past, by the likes of Eugene Debs of the socialist party. But, the US, being a 2 party oligarchy, conveniently ignored the people for as long as they could until the demands became so great that they had to cave into them to save the people. The same pattern happened about 70 years prior with the slavery issue culminating in the civil war. America has a habit of doing this. It likes to sweep problems under the rug and continue with business as usual until the country, one way or other, forces a change. And, when Yang talks about the decline of American democracy, I feel like that's what's happening today.

How we got here, as I see it

Honestly, as long as belief in the system works, we're fine. What happens where people start questioning the state of democracy is that democracy simply stops working.

Let's continue where we left off. FDR saved democracy. He enacted the New Deal, and realigned the parties to the point we had a democratic monopoly on politics. The right was weak, and it largely couldn't resist the new deal, which was overwhelmingly popular. This led to republicans being wiped out electorally, and not coming back until the 1950s when war hero Dwight Eisenhower ran on the republican ticket as a moderate. FDR was insanely popular, and only death caused him to leave office. He actually planned to do far more once World War II was won, and proposed an economic bill of rights, but this was not to be as he died before the war ended. This led to Harry Truman to take over, and he was significantly less popular, barely winning his 1948 reelection and by 1952 the dems ran out of steam. This led to Dwight Eisenhower winning as a moderate republican. He ran on preserving FDR's legacy and ended up also expanding the interstate. In the 1960s the democrats took over again, but by that point the country faced new sets of problems in the form of the cuban missile crisis, vietnam, JFK's assassination, and the war on poverty and civil rights movement. These issues made the democrats far less popular, and the country more divided, and the civil rights stuff really caused a schism. 

This led to the decline of the new deal coalition starting in 1968. The southern democrats abandoned the party and voted for Wallace, feeling betrayed by the party over civil rights. The rest of the party was also divided, with the establishment faction pushing Humphrey and the anti establishment not going along with it. Sound familiar? This led to Nixon winning the presidency. Sound familiar? However, unlike Trump, he won in a  landslide. The fact was, the rest of the country was just over the democrats. Vietnam was unpopular, civil rights divided the party, the war on poverty also divided the country. And things just weren't in a good place. Nixon himself was a liberal republican much like Eisenhower, but he spoke to racists and authoritarians in a coded manner. But then he lost the trrust of the country himself due to his corruption over his reelection, and resigned. Ford took over, but was never really popular, leading to the democrats winning again in a sort of last hurrah for the new deal coalition. By this point the country was facing inflation, an invasion of the Soviet Union of another sovereign country, a hostage crisis, and various other issues. Sound familiar? And ultimately, people just lost faith in the democrats by this point. Between them being too culturally left at times, having bad optics, the establishment wing of the party being weak and ineffective, and nothing happening, the people just turned away from the left and embraced the right.

This led to a party realignment in 1980. In retrospect, the parties started realigning back in 1968, but it took several elections for things to get straightened out. And this led to the decline of the new deal paradigm that had united the nation since the 1930s. What replaced it was a conservative paradigm, and this is where things really start accelerating where we start understanding politics as we see it now.

Reagan was popular in the 1980s, and his ideology of deregulating everything and government being the problem was very popular. And one thing he deregulated here, relevant to Yang's discussion, is the media industry. For much of American history, the fairness doctrine was a thing for radio and TV. Due to limited bandwidth on the radio and TV bands, media was required to be fair and balanced and give all sides a voice. it led to a media that was very bland and very limited in its actual spectrum of debate. And it largely led to discussions being had within the acceptable paradigm at the time. Which for the most part was relatively culturally liberal. But the decline of the fairness doctrine led to conservatives being able to make their own media giving a voice to conservatives who had long felt not adequately represented under the old system. So older networks like ABC and NBC started to be deemed the "liberal media", while conservatives started giving a voice to middle americans who had long felt neglected. 

This led to the right radicalizing starting in the 1990s. Hopped up on these new news networks, they started becoming more ideologically conservative, leading to a wave of conservatism which further wiped out the left. Newt Gingrich had the contract with america in 1994, leading them to overturn the democrat's decades long control of congress, and allowing for conservatism to become even more dominant.

Meanwhile, the left had shifted right as well. The establishment of the democratic party decided the problem was they were too far left and this led to the rise of the "new democrats", who were culturally left, but not crazy left like the old 1960s-1970s left, but fiscally moderate. Under the pressure of the republicans in congress, Bill Clinton became insanely moderate, to the point of just being a de facto republican. He pushed for things like welfare reform, and don't ask don't tell, and the repeal of glass steagal, and it simply reinforced the right wing hegemony in the US. While the right did this to the left in the 1950s, they started moving right again with Barry Goldwater and later Ronald Reagan. 

In the 2000s, the GOP became more extreme, and this is where I became interested in politics. At the time, the dems were everything evil in the world to conservative me, while in reality the democrats were bending over backwards to accommodate the right, and actually alienating parts of their voting base in the process. 9/11 caused a patriotic fervor to cover the nation, with people expressing virulantly pro american sentiments that were actually deeply alienating and toxic in retrospect. Democrats lightly criticized them starting in 2003, and got a bit shriller over the war on iraq, and the GOP just kept bullying them into submission. Inevitably the democrats proved correct on the matter, but it took a while for people to realize that. But Bush's popularity imploded in his second term and by 2008, people wanted change.

2008 was really the beginning of the modern realignment process of the republicans. From 1980-2008, the establishment mostly kept control over the party. It was in charge of its agenda, and most of the voter base was in the same page. But honestly, things were changing. The GOP was genuinely unpopular. Bush era neoconservatism became highly unpopular not just with the left, but the right, and there were calls to return back to traditional conservatism. Ron Paul represented my views as a conservative at the time, and was socially libertarian, fiscally conservative, and anti interventionist in foreign policy. And while most people fell in behind McCain, well, he was basically a Bush third term and unpopular.

Meanwhile on the left there was a dynamic between Obama and Hillary, where Obama was seen as cool and progressive, while Hillary was more centrist and moderate. And this is one of those scenarios that really opened up pandora's box I think. Hillary I think, given the more conservative state of the country, might've been more of a uniter at the time. While I don't think it would've lasted, she would've been an effective executive like Obama, and I dont think that she would get the same hate Obama did.

Obama being a more left leaning candidate at the time, and I can tell you as a conservative unhappy with the GOP, I probably would've been more open toward Hillary at the time. Because I KNEW she was moderate. But Obama? He came off as more left wing, and there was a lot of rhetoric of him being literally socialist. In addition, a lot of conservatives actually seemed openly racist and hostile toward his black and islamic backgrounds, thinking he was a radical when he wasn't. By this point, the conservative narrative was so strong them and the left were in two different worlds information wise. And this was before the internet became prominent. And you started seeing glimpses of the future in which the right would start seeing the left as a literal threat to the country. Had Hillary been the nominee, this could've been avoided, but Obama stirred up the hornet's nest.

Ultimately, between low conservative morale, and high democratic morale, Obama won. And this caused the right to start shifting its alignment even further right. The tea party arose to prominence in 2010, and essentially was that "return to conservative principles" that conservatives like me wanted. And they wrecked the more moderate establishment republicans. But it didn't take very long for me to realize after they took power in 2010 that they were horrifying. I highly disliked their policies in practice, and it shook me to my core enough that I felt comfortable fully abandoning conservatism, leading to me supporting the democrats in 2012. Meanwhile, obama? Obama was moderate just like I expected Clinton to be. He was compromising with the right, and the right just kept screaming he was socialist. He wasn't. He did the bare minimum to fix things, and as I moved left, I realized this.

That said, I feel like during the Obama years two things happened. One, the right became even more radical, going toward the tea party, which was so far right that it actually did become damaging to the country. Things shut down under the republicans in congress. We had gridlock and extreme dysfunction. The GOP was willing to sabotage the very mechanisms of democracy itself to get its way. Which leads to the second thing. Obama was ineffective at dealing with the GOP. he just enabled this behavior and was a punching bag. And I feel like this led to a lot of people to become disappointed in Obama. I mean, for me the tea party caused me to completely lose faith in the right. And then Obama caused me to lose faith in the left too. Because the left was ineffective.

Which is what led to 2016, which is what I consider to be the powder keg realignment year similar to 1968, where all hell breaks loose. The GOP went into the cycle deeply unpopular, with Jeb Bush being the presumed frontrunner and no one really liking him. DOnald Trump quickly rises to prominence on the republican side due to him being more populist and having a "tell it like it is" attitude that resonated with conservatives. 

Meanwhile the democrats were split between Hillary and Bernie. By this point Hillary was the centrist candidate I feel like many no longer wanted. Possibly a good healer in 2008, but just the wrong person for 2016, as that centrist ship had sailed. Bernie ran on "democratic socialism" but in practice his ideas were social democracy and FDR's second bill of rights, which is why i supported him.

For me, Bernie winning was essential for a good outcome here. Because I feel like his ideas would've united the country enough to rally everyone around him. But between Trump and Hillary, we entered the worst possible timeline.

For the right, it just allowed them to march even further right, this time flirting with literal fascism. Trump is essentially a fascist at this point. He's deeply authoritarian, has strong man dictator fantasies, and in 2020 literally tried to steal the election, inciting a mob to attack the capitol to overturn the results. 

But the left....just ended up failing miserably. By using such dirty tactics to win their primary, they undercut trust in their own base, causing them to lose. They ended up trying to win the south, and ended up losing the rust belt, an area of the country struggling from recent decades of automation and outsourcing. But Hillary was very unsympathetic and unwilling to change the economic direction despite it being deeply unpopular, and instead incited a culture war against Trump. 

So the democrats and republicans became embroiled in a culture war, while the country just marched further right economically. During the trump years, both sides radicalized in their own way. Socially the left became far left, much like the unpopular 1960s and 1970s version again. The right became far right, once again flirting with fascism.Economically the left became increasingly bifurcated as the wounds of the 2016 primary never healed. The democrats never admitted to screwing up with their left wing voter base, and the left became more and more alienated from the party. While some fell back in line behind the party, those who didn't often radicalized into literal socialism. Which is why the far left is as extreme and far left as it is today. 

And while Biden won in 2020, it doesn't look good going forward. As it stands, there's no way he can win reelection, and the right is just increasingly far right and anti democracy. The center left claims to stand for democracy while only giving it lipservice and undermining any competition they have. And the far left, much like the right, has also developed anti democratic tendencies.

Lessons to be learned here

For me, I blame the current radicalization and development of anti democratic attitudes on the failure of the system to healthily work out a consensus. While social media does make it where we're able to retreat in our own bubbles, this problem had been developing for decades, back to the 1990s when the internet was only in its infancy. Simply allowing people to form their own echo chambers caused the division as we see it. And even without the internet, the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Mark Levin and Fox News would've continued to divide us relative to the new deal era.

On the left, the split happened in part because of the internet, but let's explain what this actually means. The democrats alienated much of their own voting base. They were out of touch, outdated, and offering a platform no one really wanted. Hey Hillary, the 1990s called, they want their politics back.

The fact is, the democratic party, much like the USSR in its dying days, had become a gerontocracy. One of stagnation, and old ideas, and people being alienated from the system. I feel alienated from the system. It's been said in the USSR, "i pretend to work, and they pretend to pay me". I feel like this sums up America in the 2010s and 2020s. The parties have lost the plot. And while the right is simply listening to their hopped up increasingly fascist voter base, the democrats did not allow for a proper course correction, instead opting to enable the right, rather than push things back to the left.

Honestly, when I envisioned a new new deal in 2015, I imagined an FDR like figure coming along and providing a paradigm that restored peoples' confidence in the people. Not a radical socialist one like the far left has become, but a social democratic one. But in rejecting that, the democrats bifurcated into two factions where one is insufferably moderate and alienates everyone who isn't them, and the other is increasingly leftist and out of touch with reality. Bernie could've been that person. But instead we got hillary. 

Had hillary won in 2008, and obama ran in 2016, would the same thing have happened? Im not sure. While I think obama would've been disappointing in practice, since he was anyway, I think that it would've alienated people. But it would've led to another course correction, that allowed the overton window to move left into that nice social democratic zone we want.

Right now, we have a far right that's too far right and bordering on fascism, a far left that's too far left and bordering on communism, and a weak and ineffective center that people don't like. And I think that's the core reason why faith in democracy is failing. What good is democracy if you're not gonna get something you want anyway? What's the point if the corporations control the system? What's the point if you have two options and they both suck, and actively repress anything else?

I dont blame social media. Perhaps social media inflames this as getting more access to information and echo chambers exacerbates tensions, but I feel like the core problem is NOTHING IS WORKING. We keep bouncing between a crazy far right faction that everyone hates, and a centrist faction that everyone hates. The left is too left. The right is too right. And we just can't agree on a vision. Because there is no vision that is mainstream that actually unites people. The left wants what it wants, the right what it wants, the center keeps trying to maintain a status quo no one wants, and we've lost the plot.

Honestly, my solution for this IS the forward party. Yang offers the same ideas I originally had in 2015. And matches me better than bernie did in some ways. But at the same time, given how polarized people are I see people ignoring him too. The right thinks hes a communist, the left thinks hes a neolib, and the neolibs think he's too far left and inexperienced. So no faction wants to back him. 

But, honestly, if he were able to be in charge, I think he would do best at realigning the parties in ways that are productive. Because he offers the solutions we need. Both on a political level and an economic level. 

Beyond that, where do we go? I don't know. Biden is completely worthless on domestic affairs. He's facing tons of crises, some of which arent' his fault, but he fails to offer any meaningful long term change that resonates. He's going to have a mediocre obama like legacy or worse.

And Trump? Well, I'm scared of Trump at this point. I might actually end up having to break my "earn my vote" philosophy and vote for Biden to stop trump if he runs again. The more I think about it, Trump winning again SCARES me. Because this dude tried to overturn our democracy, and he incited an angry mob to do it. I don't think he should ever be allowed to hold office again and due to his personality type he poses a significant national security threat to the country in my opinion. If he wins again, he might try to become the dictator he dreams of. And his base might go along with it. That's dangerous.

Also, watching his handling of Ukraine is scary. He's oscillating between praising putin to threatening to nuke him, and oh my gosh, can this guy never be allowed to hold office ever again? 

Still, even if he didn't, the alternatives aren't much better. The fact is, the cancer that is the republican party has been allowed to metastatize over the past 30-40 years, and at this point we might be stage 4. If it ain't Trump it might be DeSantis, or Pence, or someone else. And while I trust Pence at least to keep democracy intact, I dont trust anyone else. That voter base, that coalition of voters is still there, and if democrats don't get their crap together, they might be a force to be reckoned with for a long time to come. While the democrats just keep being this weak party that simply enables the right.

We need some sort of left wing shift to keep fascism out of the spectrum. But at the same time, we can't go so far left we start drifting toward socialism. Again, that's why I support Andrew yang and his policies. I think he's what the left should be. More liberal in some ways, but not stupid liberal. Also not socialist. offers practical solutions that resonate.

my second choice with be the bernie progressives, but while the elected representatives arent that bad, the base is becoming a problem, with the left wing voters starting to sound like the tea party in all the wrong ways. Progressivism is fine, but I could imagine a scenario where much like the GOP of the 1990s, the progressives of today become the socialist whackjobs of tomorrow. So while I could still get behind a bernie style progressive, they NEED to crack down on this obsession with socialism and SJWism in the party. These extreme ideas are cancer that much like the far right threaten the institutions of this country. 

Seriously, there's a reason I have growing disdain for leftists. They're nuts. And recent events made me realize this. So I'm trying to carve out a more moderate direction that still drags the democrats to the left enough to fix issues, without succumbing to either socialism or fascism. 

Honestly, if we could just go back to the 1960s political spectrum of the left being socdems and the right being also socdems/liberals, that would be great. Although I'd really like the yang style human centered capitalist spin to take off this time. I mean, I dont want to just return to the peak of the 20th century's paradigms. I want to improve on it. 

And yeah, that's my views on this issue. it isn't social media per se that's driving the division. It's the failure of mainstream institutions. Social media just gives people more information and allows people to gather in relative echo chambers. Ultimately, I dont see a way to fix that without abridging freedom of speech. I don't want to do that. So I want to get a paradigm that would be popular enough to secure an electoral majority and is actually effective at solving problems. That's what we're lacking. As I see it, the reason we're facing the problems we are is because the right is too strong and the left is too weak and ineffective, and because as a result people are losing faith in the current system. If you want to restore that faith, you need a new democratic party that actually works.

Discussing more gatekeeping from r/antiwork

 This time they have a topic called "if you're 'anti-woke', you're anti worker", with the following quotation:

Trans rights are workers' rights.

Women's rights are workers' rights.

BIPOC rights are workers' rights.

Social justice is justice for workers.

 Uh....this is a load of crap. The reason I take shots at the "woke" crowd is more often than not they DON'T want universal workers' rights and other stuff. They're mostly too focused on their own stuff. I can't tell you how many times as a white male I'm that I need to check my privilege and essentially give up my interests to go along with the group. I'm sorry, but on the modern left, social issues are weaponized against economics.And honestly? The whole reason I'm so anti woke these days is because of this. Woke people don't WANT solutions that help ALL of us. They want solutions that help their little specific groups at the expense of other groups. They aren't pushing for UBI, for example. They push for divisive crap like affirmative action, or reparations and stuff.

That's not to say that woke stuff can't interact with worker's rights in a positive way. And when it does, of course, i support that stuff. I'm not a bigot, and I do understand systemic injustice. But, let's be honest, the purpose of this thread being made seems obnoxiously self serving, and anyone who speaks out against it would probably be banned on that sub because of how woke and inclusive most left wing spheres are these days. 

Honestly, you can be pro worker while being against or critical of woke politics. How? By putting the needs of the many above the needs of the few. Pushing for policies that help everyone, and not getting bogged down in sectarian issues that help some at the expense of others. A lot of woke politics are a zero sum game. If you insist on racial quotas for example, you're displacing other workers. And then when those people point that out, they're told to "check their privilege". The fact is given how the system works, for everyone to be equally rich, we also need to be equally poor, and I'd rather focus on ensuring no one is poor than ensuring the right amount of certain people are poor. 

So, let's face it. Wokeness has this weird toxic positivity around it, and the worst part people can't point out the obvious without being "cancelled" for it. hence why I'm expressing my thought here rather than there. There are some places where the two politics intersect, but there's also places where they don't, and they're mutually exclusive. It's perfectly fine to support equal pay laws, or anti discrimination laws for example. But let's be honest. Pro workers politics are pro worker politics. Woke politics are woke politics. And while there is some overlap SOMETIMES, there's also a lot of places where this stuff DOESN'T overlap, or it even conflicts. Again, this whole concept is just self serving virtue signalling BS. 

 

I'm really getting tired of r/antiwork's gatekeeping at times. That's not to say that there needs to be SOME gatekeeping, but it should be about ensuring people are being anti work. Not this "mirror mirror on the wall who is the most leftist of them all" crap they're doing recently. Being leftist doesn't mean you're anti work. All the purity tests are about whether you're a "leftist" and believe the right things ideologically on things that aren't about being anti work. I've seen leftists pushing LITERAL JOBS PROGRAMS while arguing against anti work sentiment gatekeep me on there. And now the woke crap. it's stupid. Leftists, you don't own anti work as a concept. I'm willing to share it with leftists as anti work does have some anti establishment and even anti capitalist currents at times. But you don't own it. So let's not conflate topics marginally associated with the core topic at hand, with said core topic.

Signed, your economically "center left" (by your standards) and socially moderate ally.

Andrew Yang should really update his UBI plan

 So, with me updating my UBI plan twice in the past two years , first to $1100 a month, and now to $1200, it seems blatantly obvious that Andrew Yang should do the same. After all, the dude ran for president, and I imagine he will be running again in 2024. While he said he wouldn't when he first started the Forward party, he has dropped hints more lately that he or someone similar to him is thinking about it. 

The history of $1000 a month

I started getting into basic income around 2013-2014 through the basic income subreddit. I was newly out of grad school, relatively speaking, and looking to find my niche in terms of politics. I had been frustrated with the direction of the American economy due to the great recession, and how broken everything seemed. I searched for years for answers to the greatest problems we faced, and eventually found UBI. Like most people, i originally thought the idea was too good to be true. But, being educated in social science, I did ask for evidence of the idea, and surprisingly there was a lot of relatively strong, and relatively well put together social science on it. While all social science has some limitations, after studying the issue from many angles, I quickly began to support it. But there was one final barrier to my support of the idea, and that was that of cost. 

UBI isn't cheap. It cost $3 trillion or so at the time, and more recently, closer to $4 trillion for a good one. I knew this early on. And this seemed to be where UBI was considered the weakest. How do we raise the money? How do we fund this? Eventually, someone created a tool about funding the idea. It was some github or javascript type thing or something. Basically, it looked at the size of the US economy and had various methods of taxation to raise the money, including income taxation, VAT, etc. The tool was very much an oversimplification, but I could find that we could raise a UBI with roughly a 15-20% flat tax on the economy, or alternatively, around 40-45% for the entire federal budget PLUS a UBI. Through the coming months I fine tuned this, until I eventually was approached by a mod on the subreddit to write a blog article with my UBI plan. And I took them up on it and wrote my first ever UBI plan on their blog. I won't post it because again, want to remain anonymous, but my 2016 plan was a revision of this original work. It was pretty popular at the time and Scott Santens even used it at the time in his work, to discuss how UBI would reduce income inequality. From there, the idea stuck, and while we all kind of branched out from there, with Scott going on to be pretty famous in the basic income community at large, and me mostly sticking to internet activism due to my natural tendencies. So, $1000 a month was a pretty common rallying cry for the basic income community for a while. And I imagine as Andrew Yang consulted with Scott Santens in his 2020 campaign, he went with $1000 a month for his plan because it was the common number.

Before we got to that point, we need to explain why $1000 a month. When I was in the early phases of designing my first UBI plan, I really didn't know what a good amount would be. Clearly it should be high enough to live on, but not high enough it greatly discourages work. A little work reduction is fine, but if it threatens core industries, that's a problem. So, we kind of aimed for around the poverty line, give or take. In 2014, that was $11,670. So we wanted something similar to that. Three amounts were considered for me. $10,000, $12,000, and $15,000. All three were attractive sounding flat amounts. All three were aiming for the general zone we were aiming for. 

Originally, because I didn't know what I was doing, I looked at $10,000. I figured at least this was feasible, and anything lower than this wouldn't even be a full basic income. Hence why I talk about full UBIs and partial UBIs. Full UBIs are ideally above the poverty line, but at the very least, close enough to it to get you most of the way there. I figured any amount under $10,000 wasn't even worth looking at. $12,000 was a much better target and above the poverty line. And not only is $12,000 a flat amount per year, it's also flat per month, being able to be marketed at $1000 a month. And given it was above the poverty line at the time, it seemed like the perfect amount. What about $15,000? Well, that was mostly hypothetical, and seemed a bit high and optimistic. And I really couldn't make the numbers work without higher amounts of sacrifice. $12,000 was hard enough to make work as it was, and I considered it the most that was realistic. So I stuck with $12,000, and even that seemed to be very good in practice, and would do a lot of good things for humanity.

It seemed like the community seemed to rally roughly around that amount ever since. 

Just to add a footnote here, I'm not saying I'm the only one who came up with the idea and that it belongs to me. i'm sure anyone at the time was looking at it too and coming to similar conclusions that I was. I was just explaining the thought process at the time. But I have noted that I did discuss the concept with Santens at the time, and since then he went on to advise Yang, so it makes sense that those original discussions might have influenced him, and thus influenced yang. So, I don't care if I get credit for it or not. I'm just explaining my side of the story here, and my logic behind it.

The fact is, In 2014, $12,000 was just...a good amount. it was the best amount I could think of for a UBI. $10000 was too low, and while it was popular in some plans from the 2000s I read like Allan Sheahan's plan who wrote about a $10,000 UBI in 2006, by 2014, $10,000 was becoming on the low side due to inflation and was no longer enough to keep up with the poverty line. If anything, $10,000 in 2006 was like $12,000 in 2014. And that's kind of why we need to once again update the amount.

$1000 a month since 2014 and declining value

As we all know, inflation is a thing. It's always a thing in a healthy economy to some extent, and a lot more recently, it's a big thing. Every year, the dollar loses a little bit of its value. Normally it's around 2-3%. Last year it was almost 8%. And that means that $12,000 isn't worth what it was in 2014. It has declined in value, and the amount needs to be raised. 

I mean let's just compare my UBI supported amounts over time to see the clear problem here. 

Year	UBI amount	Poverty line	% of FPL
2014	$12,000	$11,670	102.83%
2015	$12,000	$11,770	101.95%
2016	$12,000	$11,880	101.01%
2017	$12,000	$12,060	99.50%
2018	$12,000	$12,140	98.85%
2019	$12,000	$12,490	96.08%
2020	$12,000	$12,760	94.04%
2021	$13,200	$12,880	102.48%
2022	$14,400	$13,590	105.96%

I mean, in 2014, my UBI was almost 103% of the poverty line. And it was fine that I reused the number in 2016, because it was still good. Honestly, by the time I got to 2019, it should've been raised. But, yang ran on the now deprecated $1000 a month amount, and given it was kinda sorta good enough, nowadays, it's not really. I mean if I let it go until now, it would only be 88% of the poverty line. That's not far off from where 2006's $10,000 number was in 2014. 

$12,000 a year is still a fine amount to get your foot in the door, but it's starting to now border on "UBI lite" territory. where it's more a partial UBI than a full one. Although to be fair most "partial UBIs" I create are in the 50-80% range of the poverty line, rather than close to 100%.

The fact is, I probably should've upgraded to $12,600 or $13,200 in 2019. I mean, I knew that every passing year $12,000 a year was becoming increasingly easy to fund. And if we did that, well maybe my UBI curve would've looked like this:

Year	UBI amount	Poverty line	% of FPL
2014	$12,000	$11,670	102.83%
2015	$12,000	$11,770	101.95%
2016	$12,000	$11,880	101.01%
2017	$12,000	$12,060	99.50%
2018	$12,000	$12,140	98.85%
2019	$13,200	$12,490	105.68%
2020	$13,200	$12,760	103.45%
2021	$13,200	$12,880	102.48%
2022	$14,400	$13,590	105.96%

 And let's face it, that's fine. If you're going to let an amount stay for a couple years, it doesn't hurt to overshoot a bit. That's actually why I aimed for $14,400 rather than $13,800 or $14,000 which both would've been adequate. I figure that I need the $14,400 amount if I want to outlast another year with high inflation, or alternatively I want my plan to weather the next couple years at a more normal inflation level. 

Conclusion

And this is why I'm saying Yang should upgrade his UBI plan. When I came up with the $12,000 number in 2014, I intended for UBI to be an above poverty line "living UBI" sort of situation. And while I highly doubt it will be truly livable without work without at least another adult in the household in practice, mostly due to rent prices, the fact is, UBI should at least try to eliminate poverty. By the time Yang adopted it for the 2020 cycle, it just kind of sort of cut it. It was getting a little anemic and while it would still mostly do the job as it was still around 94-96% of the poverty line, it would need to be updated quickly after implementation to reach a higher amount.

So some shower thoughts on what this blog is about and why different posts vary in quality

 So...I wanted to write this in response to a friend who gave me some critiques about my blog lately, especially in relation to my article ripping people on r/nostupidquestions for not understanding UBI.

This blog...is...generally speaking, an outlet for me to get my thoughts out on paper in a relatively neutral space. If I debate on reddit, or another message board, I'm arguing with someone. Here, I'm just gathering my thoughts and discussing things of interest. And in that vein, the quality of these posts vary. As you guys know, if you read my posts, I'm likely autistic, and to a large extent, my UBI and anti work aspirations are a bit of a special interest for me. And being an unemployed guy with all of these political science degrees, I use my skills to try to fix the world in the ways I best see fit. So, this can lead to me writing some very detailed, well sourced articles on UBI and other policies of interest, where I try to propose policies that would change the world in ways I would like to see changed. Another thing I like to do is do political forecasts come election time, especially in terms of the presidential race. I got into that back in 2008 when I was in college, and I've been doing it every campaign ever since.

But, not all posts are like that. Sometimes I'm just shooting my mouth off talking about whatever comes to mind. And sometimes I'm criticizing other elements of the left. Because I debate them and I feel the need to criticize them. And with me, I understand that to some extent, there's just different value systems at work here. Like, one criticism I got was that that post wasn't persuasive. Well, it wasn't necessarily expected to me. Readership of this blog is very low. Like, until recently I'd get like 0-2 views unless I shared the articles directly with people. Now I'm getting 4-6 because a friend of mine appears to be sharing them, but yeah. This is mostly a labor of love. Sometimes I write articles I intend to share, sometimes I just write stuff I feel like writing. That post the other day was the latter. A friend shared with me that thread, knowing I'm a hardcore UBI guy, and I just couldn't get over how ignorant the posts were. But not wanting to argue with people who didn't understand UBI and not being subbed there anyway, I decided to instead reply to comments on my blog. And I kind of knew I wasn't going to be particularly persuasive there.

On the topic of persuasion, i think this goes into another topic this friend mentioned recently. He asked me whether I would debate a fascist, and I basically said no, because I understand that the morality underlying a fascist's views are so incompatible with my own that no amount of debate will change our minds. If our ideologies and assumptions about the world are ideologically opposed to each other, then why would I even entertain such arguments, and why should they entertain mine? When I was younger, i did this a lot. I would debate say, right libertarians, we would argue for 12 hours about whether taxation is theft and work is slavery, and we would just walk away hating each other. Because our core values are just so fundamentally different. 

Heck, I'll say this on the topic of right wingers. I DON'T really talk about right wingers much on here. And when i do, I'm fairly dismissive and hostile toward their views. And it's because it's boring, and it's a waste of time. My ideology is just so much different than theirs, I can't even sympathize with their views, or find them interesting, or in any way intellectually stimulating. If anything, it's the opposite. I just get to the point I can't even intellectually respect or entertain those sorts of views, where there's little point in me writing about them, because I'm just going to call them stupid anyway. 

So what DO I talk about? The left, mainly. Because for a while I considered myself a "leftie", but over time, I've just had a falling out with them. The fact is, while I came over to the left after my deconversion in 2012, I never really mixed in with the party and always forged my own path and tried to build up my own brand of politics. That's the thing, morally and ideologically, I'm a leader, not a follower. I only follow and cheerlead for people I approve of. Because I support freedom of thought, and as my friend knows, I have a deep dislike of authority and institutions. And while I "follow" Yang, I'm not afraid to disagree with him when necessary, as I have in the past, and support him, because, well, read this post from 2016 when I was a full on Bernie Bro. Particularly this part:

Economics is my main focus this election cycle. I believe that while capitalism is a good system on the whole, in the sense that it provides a lot of stuff, it is very deeply flawed and requires significant overhaul to fix. I largely support Bernie's platform. Higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, free education, etc. However, I do go farther in some ways. I believe we should implement a universal basic income to ensure every citizen has the ability to live without work. I see this as the only way to solve poverty, since jobs will never produce a good living for all, and I also believe forcing people to work is more or less de facto slavery and that it's unneeded in modern times and actually harmful. I'll port some articles from my old blog on this later.

Generally speaking, I believe the economy is made for humans, not humans for the economy, and that we need to stop treating people as means and treat them as ends. Our economic system, while very functional, fails on many levels to do this and reduces human beings to mere tools for wealth accumulation. I believe this alienates us from our lives, and that the structure of the system ultimately benefits a few at the expense of the majority. My views are ultimately a mixture of pro capitalist views combined with some anti capitalist ones. I believe it's important to understand both sides of the story and use them accordingly. Meanwhile, our current system and mainstream ideology, even on the left, only tells one side of the story.

As such, I'm significantly to the left of the current democratic party to an extent, but I would still say I'm largely to the right of socialism and communism. I believe capitalism is a necessary system to have at this point of time, and that we need to keep it. However, I am deeply critical of it and also believe that we need to enact some very serious reforms to make it work for the benefit of all. My ideal system is capitalistic, but also has a lot of safety nets, unionization, and even workplace democracy. Over the longer term, I would also like to see automation replace jobs, so that we can finally live in a post work world where we're free to do whatever we want to do. I don't see work as a good thing. I see it as a necessary evil and believe we romanticize it too much. I think people should have the option to seek it, but I disagree with our current system of forcing it on everyone under the threat of poverty if they refuse.

 Gee, wanna know what this sounds like? Indepentarianism and a primitive form of human centered capitalism to me. While I knew about indepentarianism and was influenced by Widerquist's thinking even then, Yang didn't even think about UBI and human centered capitalism yet. And here I am saying things similar to what he said when he proposed the idea in his 2020 run. You can also see why I've had falling outs with the left. Back then, the main enemy was the institutional democratic party. But, you can clearly see, I didn't like socialism then either. Honestly, my views then are just what they are today. As I said, I have not changed much. It's the environment that has changed and I'm reacting to it. 

Honestly? What I'm interested in, is advancing my own version of these ideas, and supporting those who think like me. In 2016, Bernie was THE BEST guy. He wasn't perfect, but he had some good ideas. But the centrist wing of the democratic party essentially decided to suppress any good ideas. And because I believed we needed the institution of the democratic party for politics to change in this two party system, my intent was to criticize them and pressure them. But, we know how that worked out. Bernie lost. Then Hillary lost, and the whole conversation changed to Russia, Trump bad, and culture war nonsense. And I mentally checked out.

Speaking of culture wars, I also ended up criticizing the  SJWs. I was never huge on SJWs, but due to the fact that starting in 2016, their ideology became so dominant, and they essentially aligned with the centrist wing of the democratic party in such a way that they attacked the Sanders wing of the party, i was forced to take action in criticizing them. Because it seemed clear their main goals were to push their crazy identity politics and culture war nonsense and used bullying techniques against people like me in order to force us to support the democrats. And that just drives me the other way. I'll abandon THEIR ideals before I abandon my own. You gotta reach out and build bridges with people, form coalitions, don't minimize their concerns, and try to compromise with them to get them on your side. While nothing in my ideology outside of my freedom of speech stance is fundamentally opposed to their stance, the fact that they aligned with the "blue no matter who" people against me and weaponized their politics made them a target for me. Again. My main concern is to advance MY OWN ideology. I can compromise and work with people in doing so, but you need to actually work with me. if you work against me or try to undercut me, I'll attack you rather than work with you.

I supported Bernie while his movement was still the best way to move forward, but let's be honest. I never agreed FULLY with him. You can read the above statement over and over again about my ideals in 2016. I ALWAYS supported UBI, human centered capitalism, and anti work stuff. I only backed Bernie because he moved us in that direction. And then yang came along and my loyalties shifted, especially after 2020. 

The fact is....I tried to work with the left because I saw them as potential allies. But, it seems like, the more I analyze their policies, their ideology, they're not really so much allies at this point, but competition. Their views are close enough to me where they're worth criticizing, but I also understand that at our core, our overall epistemologies and worldviews are different. And none of these factions care about many core aspects of my own ideology. As I said, I'm sandwiched in between the berniecrats and socialists on the left these days, and the centrist wing of the democrats on the right. And I don't get along with either these days. The centrists are useless, and the far left is too obsessed with crazy purity tests that essentially amount to an ideological difference between myself and them. They want minimum wages and jobs programs, I want UBI and an end to work. We are not the same. And two can play at that game. Even worse when it gets to socialism. Like, a lot of the bernie wing of the party has descended into peak insanity and literally wants communism. It's crazy. I can't support that crap. Sorry. Again. i'm true to my own ideals above all else. I'll burn bridges with anyone politically if we conflict enough. You get in the way of my core ideas and ideology, and I'll simply become your political enemy rather than ally.

And that's why when I responded to that topic on basic income, I was so hostile and dismissive. I wasn't necessarily intended to persuade always. In some cases I clearly was, because I did write lengthy posts proving them wrong, but let's face it, i've written most of this on my blog before at some point. And if I haven't covered it, I'm sure the likes of Scott Santens did. At a lot of point, i'm just willing to point out the general ideological difference I have with such people, and call that out. And that's what some of my posts were doing. I was just dunking on people at times who I had ideological disagreements with, and calling out those disagreements. At some point nothing I can say will persuade people, because my ideology is different. 

 I'm fine, at some point, just ripping people for ideological differences rather than trying to persuade people. Because if our core differences come down to deeper ideology or values, I would need to attack that entire value system to change your mind. I CAN try to persuade people within their value system to some extent. I can point to right wingers stating that UBI would eliminate the current inefficient safety net, and replace it with one that works. And that MIGHT win over some people on the right, but many just don't want social programs at all. And then on the left, people will scream that my ideas would remove welfare, and while I can mitigate that by removing only programs objectively worse in most instances, while keeping the most valuable and important ones, if you just genuinely believe welfare is good and that removing it is bad, and you would prefer to defend a handful of extreme niche cases who do benefit with the status quo over the needs of many, well, that's your choice, and I can't convince you. So I'll criticize you instead.

The fact is I can only persuade so much, and I know this. I've debated enough to be aware of what those limits are, and I know when people are beyond convincing. And when that happens, I'll just rip their underlying beliefs and ideology, because it's about all I CAN do. I can explain why I think as I do, why they think as they do, make a case for why my views are better, but I know they aren't going to change their minds. Because just like I'm slow to change my core ideology and views, so are they.

I just wanted to lay all of this out and address a criticism I got on this blog. Just so we're all on the same page going forward.