Tuesday, July 12, 2016

A little rant about what it means to follow someone

Well, I'm still waiting on blog.com to come back up so I can port my articles over, but yeah, I figured I'd rant about something in the mean time. I've noticed that there's a common habit among Hillary supporters to think that because Bernie plans to endorse Hillary, that his supporters better vote for Hillary or that they're not true Sanders supporters or something. Or that they're extreme and irrational Not only does this reek of no true Scotsman fallacy, it tends to imply a flawed concept of what it means to follow someone.

I'm a free, independent thinker first. When I support someone, I support them as long as they advance my ideals. As I said on the old blog, around 2014 or so, I decided that we are in serious need of fundamental reform in America, and I planned on supporting candidates that had a similar vision to me. Sanders fit the bill. As such, I pretty much put my support behind him, as a candidate, fairly early on. He spoke of the insane income inequality, the fundamental flaws of our current system, and how our current solutions did not go far enough.

But don't get me wrong, my concept of following Sanders is purely transactional. I have not drank the Kool Aid so to speak. I'm not going to jump off a cliff for the guy, and just because he decides that he needs to support Clinton and unite the party does not mean I'm going to support him in doing so. I supported him for the office for president, because I believed that he was the best person for the job. If he throws his support behind a candidate I do not like, I will not vote for them. But people seem to think this means that we are traitors to Sanders' cause, or that we're turning on him, or that we were never true supporters to begin with, this is bullcrap.

I believe that Hillary supporters and mainstream democrats have a fundamentally flawed and authoritarian outlook on what it means to support people. They believe in hierarchical structures, in which a leader gives orders to followers, and followers carry them out without question. It's actually what's so offputting about the democrats this year, the fact that they try to treat us like little sheep, tell us to put aside our grievances, and support them no matter what. To submit to their authority, so to speak. The concept that I view candidates like Clinton or Sanders as intellectual equals, and that I treat my alliances with them as transactional and based on common interests, rather than surrendering my ideals, my mind, and my concerns to them, it just seems foreign to them. They don't understand it. They can't wrap their heads around this kind of individualism, this kind of intellectual independence.

Well guess what Clinton supporters, this is how I think, and from what I can tell, this is how a lot of Bernie or Bust people are thinking too. I don't submit myself to your ideals. I surrender my views to no one. If I can leave a religion like Christianity, in part on the basis that I put my own intellectual honesty above faith and unquestioning submission, what hope does the democratic party have of controlling my mind? The republicans couldn't control me either. I wouldn't submit to them. And you know what? I knew some republicans around that time that this actually angered. And I got the same crap. That I wasn't a real ever republican, that I was a traitor to the cause, blah blah blah. Yeah, it's called independent thinking. It's called looking at evidence and making your own decisions, and putting your own convictions above group solidarity. Try it some time. It's good for you.

As far as I'm concerned, you can think what you want of me. But the fact is, for this election cycle, I am, for all intents and purposes, a Sanders supporter. This doesn't mean I agree with him on everything. It doesn't mean I'll jump off a cliff for the guy. It doesn't mean I'll submit to the democratic party machine just because he endorses them. As a matter of fact, in his position, he HAS to endorse Hillary or he will be remembered as the guy who split the vote and gave Trump the presidency. Think about it. If Sanders didn't endorse Hillary after running on the democratic ticket and using their party to stage his campaign, the democrats would destroy him. They would ensure he would never be a credible voice in Washington again. His colleagues in congress would shun him. The media would smear him. The democratic party would make an example out of him, to scare anyone else who would defy them. He would be the new Ralph Nader and George McGovern all in one. But you know what? As a private citizen, I'm not subject to the same rules that they are. I can say and do what I want without consequence. And honestly, I think telling the democratic party that they just can't browbeat people into submission is a message that needs to be sent. Honestly, it's the only way to make them change. They're just gonna marginalize us and think their current approach is "good enough" until we, the people, make them change. And the way we make them change is by not voting for them. It's our leverage. Again, votes and support are transactional to me. I'm not a team player. I give you what you want, but only if you give me what I want. If the democrats think they can get me to give them what they need from me without giving me what I want from them, they got another thing coming. Trump or no Trump.

So yeah, generally speaking, it's come to my attention that Clinton supporters and the mainstream democrats have this odd, creepy, authoritarian outlook toward their voters in which they think they can just rally tons of people to support them out of some civic duty or something, in which they command and we follow. Sorry, it doesn't work that way for we Bernie supporters. This is why many of us are unhappy with his endorsements of Hillary Clinton. We support him in a transactional manner. This idea that we give them what they want (a vote) when they give us what we want (a progressive platform built around change and fixing America's fundamental problems). We don't support him out of duty. We will not support him no matter what. The second he stops saying what we agree with and can get behind, we're done, we're gone, we'll find someone else. The fact is, we're free thinkers, and we can't be browbeaten into supporting someone no matter what. We think too much for that. We're too individualistic with that. We have too strong of a sense of conviction for that. And if you can't understand that, then I feel sorry for you and your submission to a party that may not even advance your interests.

No comments:

Post a Comment