So, after doing an exercise where I look at my political views on the political compass over the course of my life, I kind of realized that my views from 2014 to now basically went in a small circle. While from say 2014 on my views havent changed much and any changes have happened slowly, I did shift left from 2016-2020, only to come back to the right again in 2021 and 2022, where now my views are back to my 2014 self mostly.
I don't think my convictions changed that much in this time period, what changed was the political context. For the 2016 election, I ultimately supported 3 major proposals to fix the country as I saw it, UBI, Medicare for all, and free college. UBI was kind of a no go in 2016. I saw UBI as a proposal that would be good to discuss in 20 years, but the country wasn't there yet. Before the country would be open to it, we needed an overton window to the left. The fact is, Reaganism had dominated the country since 1980 and made UBI, once a relatively conservative proposal, seem like a leftist wet dream, something that the far right would scream that the communists were for, and that was one of the reasons communism failed. We needed to destroy conservatism as we knew it and shift the overton window left in a party realignment before UBI and other proposals would be possible. So, I decided that I would support the candidate who pushed the views the furthest in my direction. Bernie Sanders was a good fit. He supported medicare for all, and free college, and when asked about UBI said something like "if you want it, you have to fight for it", implying potential support, but not overtly supporting it. He pushed for a "political revolution", which sounds a lot like my call for a party realignment. So I was die hard for Bernie.
But, of course, the democrats made the first mistake of opposing him. I swear the democrats had a secret deal in 2008 to support her in 2016. They just seemed all in lockstep for her, and were promoting her. And democratic party hostility toward the left became apparent as they tried to bully Sanders supporters into voting blue no matter who. I was a republican in 2008, this was my first democratic party as an insider. And I did NOT like how I was being treated. And I decided that I was not going to support the democratic party if it was going to treat me this way.
This pushed me toward more left wing circles. Whatever anti establishment sentiment I had was amplified. And a lot of people in these circles radicalized into socialism.A lot of the justification for this was because the establishment wouldn't treat a leftie running for president properly, that the system is hopelessly corrupt and needed to be replaced. I didn't realize it at the time but the leftists started slowly taking over the Bernie spaces online, and people I was on the same page as in 2016 started radicalizing a lot.
Still, I largely respected them, and believed in 2020 we could come back and maybe Bernie would win. We were aware of all of the tricks, and we were approaching this from a no BS approach. But then for me, I started going in a different direction. In February 2019, Andrew Yang appeared on Joe Rogan. And while I knew about his campaign but never saw it as particularly serious despite the fact that he was for UBI, I was willing to listen to the guy. And I ended up liking him. A lot. And he was saying all of the things I had been saying going back to 2013-2014 and even earlier. I live in an environment in which the so called "war on normal people" is happening, and a lot of those factors are what drove me toward UBI. And they drove him toward UBI too. And he talked about medicare for all, human centered capitalism, and his whole pitch was...exactly what I wanted all of this time. Sure, he was more moderate on other things, but he had the room to be so, because his UBI proposal was so progressive I could give him a pass.
Bernie was, admittedly, more polished. Bernie was everything I wanted in a president, except he didn't support UBI. He became harder against UBI in the 2020 election cycle. While he seemed open minded in 2016, he start surrounding himself with all of these MMT economists like Stephanie Kelton between election cycles, and she was extremely AGAINST UBI. She was a huge proponent of the rival program, the job guarantee. While there are some arguments for a job guarantee I can see as convincing, I honestly am not a huge fan of work, or jobs. And I've always recognized the two proposals as being at odds with one another. Obviously money is not infinite, unless you want hyperinflation. And obviously, what we can do when it comes to large proposals is limited. UBI was $3.5 trillion or so at the time. Medicare for all $3 trillion. Obviously a green new deal would be out of the question. But...I was convinced that it wasn't quite time for UBI yet. The country wasn't there. We needed the party realignment first. The overton window shift. And while the Bernie faction seemed to be the best way to get there, obviously this meant deferring my UBI goals. Honestly, given the graveness of the climate change threat, a green new deal could be a good proposal for NOW. We could update our infrastructure, save the planet, then come back around for UBI on the rebound. Honestly, I kind of knew a jobs guarantee was always a flawed proposal. It would work for the short term, but eventually we would just be creating jobs for its own sake, and I saw this as absurd. Like creating "opportunities" for sisyphus to roll rocks up a hill for eternity. So, on that big proposal, Yang seemed more attractive.
Which...brings me back to Yang. For much of 2020, I was really leaning toward Yang. I loved his core platform. And while he was a little more moderate on other proposals, almost like a Biden style democrat, I was willing to accept that for my big two issues. Even his climate change and student loan proposals weren't bad. Analyzing his climate change proposal he had the strongest proposal of the 2020 candidates outside of maybe Bernie. And even then in some ways Yang was better, in others, Bernie was better. Bernie did more, but Bernie did stupid things like being anti nuclear. Yang's proposal seemed more "work smarter, not harder". it was lean, but it targetted the most good with the least amount of resources. And it was certainly better than anything Biden, or Buttigieg, or other 2020 candidates seemed to consider.
So...Yang supported Medicare for all and UBI, while being weaker on other proposals. Bernie was near flawless as a candidate, except he didn't support UBI. And I could have gone in either direction. If not for Yang, I definitely would've headed toward Bernie. I would have possibly put my UBI aspirations on hold for a while, possibly even forever based on where the political winds would have taken me. While I would have supported the concept, I would have compromised and begrudgingly supported Bernie's proposals, flaws and all, believing UBI being a policy for the future, but not now. But Yang kind of brought it to the forefront. And for that, despite his flaws, I am grateful.
But...yang is flawed. In 2020, he miscommunicated a lot on his positions, and he seemed to back away from medicare for all throughout the campaign. It was his darned conciliatory attitude. Yang is not someone who can handle conflict. He doesnt stand in his own power well, and will compromise his ideas away to appease people and stop conflict. And given the contentious primary fights over medicare for all, where the bernie faction rightly purity tested on the issue, and Yang moving to a public option and then toward next to nothing at all, the balance tipped toward Bernie. I could've justified a Yang vote had he been for UBI AND M4A, but only supporting one? Well, it felt selfish and wrong to support UBI vs an entire well oiled platform full of superior proposals. Given my purity testy bernie bro brain, I just felt Bernie was stronger at the time, and I went with him. I really like UBI, but it was not time yet to support it.
Of course, throughout this process, I tried to be a bridge between both camps. I was convinced Yang was the real deal and we all were progressives, we just had different ways to get there. But the Yang people would attack the Bernie Bros, and the Bernie Bros would attack the yang gang. While I've run into crap people on BOTH sides, I have to say the Bernie side was more obnoxious, and the first cracks started forming. The bernie bros were right to purity test candidates, sure, I mean, lots of fake progressives like Harris and Buttigieg running in 2020, and I can always respect looking at proposals and calling out weaknesses. But the amount of hostility I seemed toward Yang seemed...unjustified. He was far from perfect, but the amount of hostility I saw was insane and deranged. People were screaming that he was a techno libertarian, that his UBI was a conservative trojan horse to eliminate "welfare" (is medicare for all a "trojan horse "to eliminate the ACA? and even if it is, is that necessarily a bad thing?), and blah blah blah.
It was ridiculous, and the more I tried to reason with people and clear up misconceptions, being a UBI advocate myself and somewhat of an expert at this point on funding plans and being familiar with what all of the various aspects of his plan were attempting to do, the more I realized that these guys just weren't reasonable. And many of them just didn't want UBI. They hated the idea of it, for some reason. I think the Marxism went to their heads honestly. While I always kind of used marx lightly to frame my arguments for UBI to win lefties over, I never really drank the Marxist kool aid. I mean, I had become a bit more open toward socialism, but under the conditions that it would be done in a reformist way, that doesn't eliminate markets, and isn't violent. And even then, I was never overly impressed with the idea. Compared to UBI or even unions in a functioning social democratic state, it seemed...pointless. I honestly think some antagonism between labor and capital is better than a system where everyone is on the same side. That said, the more I started putting up with the same canned arguments over and over again freom UBI, the more I realized they just hated the idea. And while they did claim to support the idea, the conditions they put on it were just...unreasonable. They wanted amounts that were too high, and couldn't be funded, and wanted things like price caps because something something landlords (we discussed the landlord issue to death on here, but while there are some potential issues with them, all in all, it's just the fact that the market is distorted and there isn't enough housing to meet demand).
Honestly, this actually kind of alienated me from the "left". I always supported UBI, and while I was willing to defer it in favor of other ideas for now in a display of unity with the left to finally beat the conservatives, I kind of began realizing that yeah, these guys weren't necessarily my allies either. Yang actually showed me that. Because if he didn't run on UBI, I wouldn't have seen the left turn hostile to the idea. Now I understand, after rereading Understanding the Times, that I'm dealing with people who have fundamentally different worldviews than me (postmodernism and marxism rather than humanism) and that various aspects of the left ultimately are at odds with one another, but honestly, I might not have done that if Yang didn't run. Yang showed me I don't really fit into the progressives either.
And then in the last days of the 2020 primaries, COVID hit. By then, the damage had been done. Yang quit after New Hampshire, Bernie was screwed after the party coalesced around Biden, and it seemed clear Biden would be the nominee. We would have no major step forward, centrism won again, and no matter what faction of the left we were, we were screwed. While neoliberals have some humanist influences, they also are functionally a softer version of the conservative worldview, kind of a version of conservatism that moderates itself in the face of reality. I ended up supporting Hawkins after that, refusing to support the neoliberal wing of the democratic party, but either way, we lost, pack it up.
But...in a way, COVID changed the game. And it changed how I looked at the world. I always saw UBI as a far off thing...but then we faced a crisis that further UBI pilled me. As I said, in 2020, I compromised on UBI, to back Bernie, knowing that perhaps the climate was more important than my UBI ambitions. But then...this crisis just echoed the need for UBI. As I watched the country shut down, I noticed a lot of companies were trying to force people to work. And I knew a UBI wouldve helped that. And then millions couldnt work. And UBI would've helped that. And how do you provide for a society in a world where working is dangerous and deadly? Well, UBI would've helped that.UBI seemed unambiguously the solution to the woes of the pandemic. The economy was forced to shut down and reduce economic output by as much as a third. I mean, we couldnt go out and do stuff, but hey, our needs were met. And it seemed like the perfect time to push for UBI. So....COVID radicalized me in the direction of UBI. My specific anti work brand of capitalism seemed to be a better fix for the crisis we faced than anything the two parties were doing, and even the jobist left was calling for monthly checks. I honestly would've just run a trial of UBI as a recovery package, although I'm kind of glad we didn't because reopening the economy led to an inflationary shock that would have been blamed on UBI itself.
Which brought me to Biden's solutions. Biden thought like a normal jobist politician. How do we get people back to work? He basically wanted to open schools to get kids back in schools, provide preK and child care, and free up the parents to take on jobs. Typical jobist. For me, COVID proved to me the sky wouldnt fall if we shifted away from work. And shifting away from work was arguably just as good for the environment as a green new deal would be. No long commutes to jobs that as it turns out don't need to be done, or could be done from home. Fewer greenhouse gas emissions, etc. It wasn't perfect but it seemed like a positive step.
But, the jobists won out. The right screamed about wanting to reopen the economy and go back to work, we reopened the economy and went back to work. They screamed "no one wants to work any more" because of worker shortages and inflation, and while I believe inflation can be dealt with in other ways, as far as worker shortages, people need to get over it. It really does seem that people expect others to be slaves to provide them middle class luxuries they dont need. You dont need that manicure. You dont need that restaurant or movie theater open. And if you cant staff it, well, tough crap. I don't believe in forcing people to work unless it's necessary for human survival and well being. This crap isn't.
Of course, we didn't do a UBI, but the small cash grants given like the CTC and those $1400 checks were blamed for the worker shortage, despite no one being able to live on them. Biden's unemployment was blamed too, despite evidence being weak and anecdotal on the front of people turning down jobs because of it, and that not really being UBI any way. Honestly, I feel like a lot of people just go by feels over reals with their ideas of the economy and how it should work.
But yeah, between Yang 2020, the Bernie Bro reaction against his campaign and UBI, and then COVID, I went HARD in the Yang direction. And then there was just normal development post 2020. Realizing I was no longer fitting in with this increasingly radical left, and watching these guys make jerks of themselves all through 2021, I moderated more. I started redoing my numbers, and questioned if I could do M4A on top of UBI. After it was unclear if I could, I researched alternative proposals and found a public option I can live with. While I still would support M4A if possible, I wouldn't compromise UBI for it, and I would bargain down to a public option if needed. The Bernie bros would hate me for this. But, as they got more deranged, with some of them spouting anti vax theories, and others screaming that people like AOC and Bernie were sell outs, I just realized nothing will ever make these guys happy. And honestly, I became more moderate and other stuff, mostly out of accomodating my UBI proposal. I would support a yang 2020 approach to the climate based on being progressive as fudge, but spending only a fraction as much as the green new deal, not believing we need to retrofit every house in the country and build high speed rail and blah blah blah. Work smarter not harder. I dont believe in guaranteed jobs. Jobs only exist to make things we need. Jobs as an end in themselves, not a means to an end, just leads to bloat, waste, and working for the sake of working. I wanna work efficiently as possible so we don't have to do stuff any more. And Biden kind of made me lukewarm on ideas like free childcare, preK, etc. I mean that stuff is NICE, but it's not my top priority. If you don't have kids it doesnt make your life any better, and even if I did have kids, yay...now I can...work? Again, like, I just realized my priorities are not the same as these people.
So....on top of Yang running, the left going bonkers, COVID really hammering home UBI and my anti work ideas, and then build back better being a mediocre flop for me (with me literally saying "id rather just take a lot of this money and give people a UBI instead"), it really became clear that my vision really IS more like Yang's. And through 2021 and 2022 i moderated a bit and distanced myself from a lot of the left, particularly those with postmodernist and marxist worldviews. I wouldn't classify myself as a moderate either though, as Biden is way TOO moderate for me. Im clearly progressive and even radical, but my ideas are just fundamentally different than much of the left.
But at the same time, they always were. if I go back to my original 2014 vision, it hasn't changed. I'm literally back where I was back then. Maybe with a few differences. Climate is more urgent. I hate the democrats and the two party system with a passion. I sound like a raging angstheist (despite being spiritual) when attacking the right in this country and its lack of having a worldview based in reality. I hate SJWs with a passion, seeing them as the left wing equivalent of religious zealots. And I'm back to rejecting socialism, and rejecting leftism in favor of something that could be described human centered capitalism or humanist capitalism.
I know yang created the term human centered capitalism, but I will insist that I did have a rudimentary form of the idea before Yang did. It was based on an obvious humanist worldview, recognizing that the economy was made for man, not man for the economy, and work was a means to an end, not an end itself. But, functionally, similar ideas for similar purposes. Need to stop thinking in terms of GDP and maximal growth, and jobs for the sake of jobs. My own iteration really does have a more explicit anti work bend to it, but otherwise it's a similar ethos to yang's.
So yeah. Ultimately, while I did go Bernie in 2020 over Yang....in the long term, Yang's ideology won my heart in the long term. In the past 2 years, i've distanced myself from bernie and the left, realizing we no longer want the same things and the ideological bases for our views is different. And while there is some overlap, I just really go in a different direction, and that direction is more yang like.
People will insist yang has no ideology, but honestly human centered capitalism IS an ideology. It's an ideology unlike anything that has existed before, and it doesn't fit in any preconcieved boxes. Adherents to more traditional worldviews will wonder wtf it is, but in reality, I just see it as an offshoot of secular humanist tenets, leading in a specific direction that meshes with the problems of the 21st century and offers new evidence based solutions for it. It kind of reclaims the old utopian visions from the keynesian days of a world with no or less work. And while in the american system is IS left by default, as humanism is an inherently liberal worldview, in terms of the more traditional right left divide, it's not left or right, but forward. A new third way, akin to social democracy and FDR liberalism in the 20th century. But updated for the problems of the 21st.
Of course Yang aint perfect either. And at this point I can see why the left hates him. While he isnt a bad guy and has a compelling vision when he sticks with it. Sometimes he just screws up really bad. He has a habit of being too conciliatory and trying to appease people and make them happy, when he just...can't. You can't make everyone happy. And sometimes you have to stand in your power and stick to your convictions. Yang...doesnt do that. He backed off of Medicare for All in the 2020 race, which alienated me and other progressives at the time. He had cringey enlightened centrist takes during the mayoral campaign, which didnt cost me support as he didnt alienate me on any major purity test, but some of his takes were cringe and predictably alienated lefties, and his new "centrist" rebranding of forward where he dropped UBI is alienating too. he still claims to support the issues and would run on them, but his party isn't a reliable vehicle for those ideas.
THis is where I feel like I'm realigning and moving away from him. I can't be kumbaya with the other side and a team player and someone who tries to get along with everyone. As I see it, I'm here to spread my ideas. If you support my ideas, cool, but if you don't...well, I have problems with that. And in recent weeks, I feel like I'm growing increasingly intolerant of BS. Like rereading Understanding the Times made me realize how different the various worldviews are and how while there is some overlap, ultimately people do view the world differently, and I am for some ideas and against others. And I can't just get along with the others. In the right's case it's because they're nuts. And rereading Understanding the times has made me go full angstheist on organized religion again (despite me retaining my evidence based spiritual views), and the right in general. These guys are NOT living in reality. And we can't work with them or compromise with them. They're NUTS. I have zero intention of working with actual full on right wingers. Sorry, I don't. That doesnt mean everyone has to meet every left wing purity test either, as I have issues with the left that I'll get to in a minute, but the right isnt' worth coddling. The centrist left a la the democrats and now yang try too hard to appease the right, and you can't. They're a bunch of radical nutcases living in their own world. And I have no intention of compromising or appeasing them. Screw them. Abortion for all. Gay marriage for all. Trans rights for all. UBI for all. medicare for all. Free college for all. I won't stop fighting for what I believe in. I am my own branch of leftie through and through, and I have no intention of compromising with religious nutjobs, fascists, or others.
At the same time, I'm also taking a hard stance against other factions of the left. The moderates are too moderate. The extremists too extremist. The democratic party I stand up to because they act like they're the only game in town and act like a bunch of centrist do nothings with their egos up you know where. And i refuse to cave or bow to them.
I cant stand the postmodernists (SJWs). They put their feels over reals, and while I did just express support for abortion, gay, and trans rights, i do so on libertarian terms. I wont buy into that hardcore identity politics BS, requiring I affirm every identity positively, buy into certain ideas that to me sound like psuedoscience, or continually compromise my ideal on the altar of white male liberal guilt, constantly trying to appease all of these other groups that feel oppressed. While they have some points with the critical theory stuff, I once again cant see myself building an entire worldview on it, and it comes off like its own cultish religion to me. Just replace original sin with privilege and yeah, it's just about the same thing as christianity to me.
And of course, I'll stand against the leftists. How anyone can still defend the USSR, CHina, or other such places is beyond me. And while many socialists are more moderate, I still dont understand their obsession with "socialism" being the answer to everything. It's not. Socialism is one of the most overrated ideas ever, up there with the likes of right wing libertarianism and georgism. The zeal by which these people push their ideas is crazy to me, and I feel like their ideas are kind of dangerous. Again, moderate leftists, not so much. But even then, they'll still just start spouting off deranged rants about UBI being bad while pushing for full employment schemes. Despite the fact that systemically understand the economy, they do so in their own biased and ideological ways.
I guess at the end of the day, I'm ideological too. I guess anyone who has strong convictions is ideological to some extent, and I know some people have found me closed minded in the past. Well, in all honesty, as I see it, I know what I am, I know what I am not. I've been doing a lot of working on myself in this sense in recent years, and while my views have essentially regressed to my original 2014 vision that I built up since deconverting from christianity and conservatism in 2012, honestly, that's where my heart of heart lies and where I really stand.
And I won't stop advocating for that. That's what I believe in. I dont believe in conservatism. I dont believe in centrist neoliberalism. I dont believe in postmodernism or marxism. I have my own unorthodox worldview that vague resembles Yang's vision. We are cut from the same cloth, me and Yang, but I tend to have a more Bernie bro style temperament of being ideological, uncompromising, and purity testing, rather than the more moderate conciliatory approach he champions. And yeah. I guess I have Yang to thank for this. While it's possible covid could've caused the same thing to happen, thanks to yang, and the other factions shifting around UBI and the like, I know what I am, and I know what I'm not.
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