So yesterday I wrote about my political views as I took the
political compass test (if you're reading this on blogspot, this post will not exist as I decided not to port it over). That took a while, and it was long, and I doubt
many people will want to read all the way through. So future posts will
be shorter, although I do have a habit of rambling on. That being said, I
want to explain my worldview and what to expect from me in a more
direct/distinct way.
Background
So I’m basically someone who studied political science and criminology (subset of sociology) in college and in grad school I took up a more general social science program with an aim at political science and nonprofits. I will be using this education a lot in approaching my worldview, since I tend to add a lot of sociological analyses to my political and philosophical views.
Epistemology
I was raised a Christian, and adopted a Biblical worldview when I was younger (I’m 28 now), but am now an atheist. This influences my worldviews significantly. Since God used to be the basis of my worldview, and no longer is, I had to rewrite my entire worldview from scratch, starting out with the fact that we live in a godless universe, and build up from there. This has caused me to shift from being fairly conservative, to extremely liberal, and being somewhat deontological in my morality, to being more consequentialist.
Morally, the world is inherently nihilistic. There is no purpose to life, other than subjective purposes, and all morality is human made and subjective too. This does not, like some Christians would say, mean I can or should just do whatever I want. A lot of Christians think without the moral anchoring of religion, people would turn into murderous psychopaths or something. Nope. I’m not a psycho. I’m actually quite humanitarian all things considered. The thing is, morality is actually in our self interest. A rule against murder is good because murder is inherently bad for our health and well being. It’s bad for our peace of mind and security on both a physical and psychological level. All morality exists to serve humanity. All social systems we create, from the economy, to the state, to ethical systems, exist for our benefit. I do not think there is necessarily a single correct way of doing things, and am fairly open minded to the merits of many systems but I do believe that some systems do a better job than others. Ultimately, I adopt fairly utilitarian views. I believe we should seek moral systems that produce the greatest good for the greatest number, although this can be fairly relative in interpretation. Still, it has led me to adopt, as per my political compass results, fairly left libertarian (liberal/progressive/social democratic) worldviews.
Social issues
On social issues, my beliefs are that you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t harm others. I think any moral prohibition against certain actions should be justified based on reason and evidence, and should be for the greater good. This leads me to adopt fairly socially liberal positions on issues like gay marriage, abortion, prostitution, smoking marijuana, etc. It should be noted even in the cases where harm can be presented, such as abortion, that I can still come to a valid conclusion that maintains keeping it legal. For example, abortion may harm a fetus, but if a fetus is not conscious and cannot feel pain or even be aware of my existence as per my atheistic worldview, then the concerns of the mother should take precedence. In the cases of prostitution and marijuana legalization, I believe that regulation could remove many negative elements, and believe that making such acts illegal in the first place have significant costs on society and individuals. As such, I may make a calculated decision to keep these things legal, despite potential problems arising from them. I simply think making them illegal would cause more harm. In cases like murder or theft, I believe that the regulations are more worth it, however.
On the structure of society
I believe society should be democratic. Everyone should have a say. Yes there are education problems with the populace and many people are stupid, but if everyone doesn’t have a say in how society is governed, then that gives rise to the potential of an oligarchic group forming and consolidating power and denying it to everyone else. This causes problems. Government is power, and power is like fire: dangerous, but useful when controlled. A proper check on controlling the populace other than the separation of powers and constitutional rights is to ensure that all individuals are educated enough to make proper political decisions, and that officials are directly accountable to the people.
On rights
Rights are not objective moral edicts, but subjective moral structures intended to achieve utilitarian ends. They exist for our benefit, because we believe that their existence does more harm than good. They also should not be absolute and should make reasonable accomodations for their curtailment if a clear harm can be demonstrated in adhering to them in an extremist manner. Even then, solutions should minimize harm to individuals and the concepts themselves. You have a right to free speech, but this does not mean you can scream fire in a crowded theater. You have a right to privacy, until the policy have a warrant. You have a right to property, but that does not mean you can monopolize it to the point you cause others to be in poverty, and it certainly does not absolve you from paying taxes (much to the disgust of the anarcho capitalists).
On the economy
Economics is a very complex and nuanced topic, and one I spend a lot of time focusing on. I like the idea of people having the freedom to do what they want, but don’t believe capitalism offers that in its raw forms. It offers the ability of the rich to do what they want, but the poor who have no property are relatively powerless and must subject themselves to being in the service of the rich, who monopolize large parts of their lives. To me, this isn’t “freedom”, and the right to actual freedom requires fairly left wing politics within a capitalistic framework. We need unions to bargain with employers. We need regulations to establish fair labor standards, fair wages, etc. We need strong safety nets for the poor and unemployed, because capitalism always has gaps in being able to provide a good standard of living to everyone. We also need a universal basic income to ensure that people can refuse to work. I believe the right to say no is an important aspect of capitalism, because if you cannot refuse to work, then employers can put whatever stipulations they want on you and you can’t say no. This rigs the game and reduces individuals to the position of a de facto slave. I’m not even opposed to some soft forms of socialism like worker coops, but do not think they should be mandated. All in all, I do not believe that the rich can be expected to look out for the interests of the populace, even though the economic system entrusts them to do so via job creation. There will never be enough jobs available for everyone, they will not pay well enough for people to live on, and the state has to come in and pick up the slack via regulation and wealth redistribution where the system fails to work. In the long term, I don’t even think work should be the way people acquire a living. I would like to see a balance between redistribution and work incentives in the capitalistic system, where we provide for peoples’ basic needs, while providing enough market based incentives to fit society’s labor needs as necessary.
As for socialism, I’m not for full on socialism. Looking at the conflict theory paradigm, capitalism is an oppressive system that the rich use to exploit the poor. But from the functionalist perspective, capitalism works. It just works. The supply and demand aspects of markets are an effective way to ration goods. State monopolies over industries leads to a stagnation in innovation as well as various shortages. With full on socialism/communism, you are putting your eggs all in one basket, and when things go wrong they go wrong in a big way. The diversification of capitalism allows for more innovation, and it allows for markets to more quickly recover when shortages and surpluses occur. It also provides freedom for people to make new goods they they think will help the world, and I think the profit motive is a good way to motivate people to work and innovate. I just think that capitalism, like the state, is like fire. It can get out of hand if not properly controlled and respected. Just like the state needs to be held accountable via democratic processes and separation of powers and constitutional rights, the market needs the state to intervene in ways that benefit the people. The invisible hand of capitalism is basically the same force driving natural selection. The strong survive and the weak perish. We want the good and bad ideas to be weeded out by market processes, but the same should not be the case to humans. Humans should be given a decent standard of living regardless, and then they work to earn more within the capitalistic system. Capitalism without the proper safety nets and restraints is an awful system, but doing away with capitalism without a proper replacement is just insane to me. We need to change the system via reformist methods, keeping a close eye on any changes so that we can control the negative effects and dial stuff back if we make a mistake. We shouldn’t just rewrite a whole new system from scratch.
I will likely cover these topics a lot, and plan to write a lot about what I see as wrong with capitalism more specifically and how to fix it within a capitalistic framework. I do think that the collective and the individual need to be reconciled. Individualism and collectivism both have their place, but neither should be taken to extremes.
As for anarchism, one topic I did not cover. I believe anarchism is a bit insane and probably dysfunctional. I do not believe that we can get social justice without the state. I believe the state is a major reason we are as advanced as we are economically. By providing the security to do business, and implementing the correct regulations and safety valves, we have made our societies very prosperous. We just need to do more.
On foreign policy
I’m an American. American foreign policy is a tricky subject for me. On the one hand, I believe that we have done a lot of harm in our foreign policy. Invasion of countries, overturning democracies to install dictatorships, having said dictatorships turn on us, or have them be overthrown to be replaced by extremists, etc. However, despite this, everything we have done, we have done for what we considered the greater good. Many of our actions were done during the Cold War, under the idea that we needed to beat the Soviets. Even today, we may be acting to ensure that we remain safe in our side of the world, and many of our actions and presence probably do make the world more stable. If we were not in Europe, would the USSR have invaded? Would Russia invade today? If we were not in Asia, would North Korea or China be more aggressive and imperialistic? I mean, there are lots of questions. Yes, many of our actions backfire on us, from Iran, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, but we do a lot of good too. As such, I do have a mixed view of our overall role in the world, believing we both provide stability and do good, but also occasionally do bad and cause more problems than it’s worth. I think we should intervene militarily in a region only when we have a clear national interest in doing so, and we do it for at least SOMEWHAT noble reasons. I don’t want us to be the villain or anything. I recognize we’re not gonna be perfect, but we do have to look out for ourselves at the same time.
That being said, to make more sense of my rambling there, we have a mixed impact on the world. I would not support reverting to full blown isolationism, but do think we should be fairly reluctant to intervene actively in world affairs and only do so when it is to our benefit and we are not overtly evil for doing so.
On the 2016 election
You’re going to hear me rant a lot about 2016, so I’m gonna keep it somewhat short. I hate the republicans, but I’m also growing tired of the democrats. I used to be a republican, was raised as a religious conservative, but then became far more libertarian and economically leftist over time. I believe that the republican party exists to serve as tools for the rich. Plain and simple. I believe they are tools of the 1%. The whole small government conservatism stuff is all about helping out their rich cronies for everyone else’s sake. All their screaming about the national debt is hypocritical, because they will try to cut YOUR social benefits, while giving tax cuts to the rich to “create jobs”, even though the rich already have a near record concentration of the wealth in America. It’s just the starving the beast strategy. They want to completely undo all of the economic progress made in the past century and return us to the gilded age. Socially, their views are backwards and based on religion, whereas I’m very socially libertarian. They base too many of their views on religion, where I question their ability to grasp reality. I have first hand experience with the dangers of this, so I’m very skeptical of the GOP. On foreign policy, they value this tough guy act, which is completely harmful and counterproductive. You can’t just go in and kick everyone’s ***es just because. Do people not remember Bush? Holy crap. Maybe Reagan’s toughness on the Soviets quickened their demise a bit, but other than that, their foreign policy is crazy and potentially inhumane considering how some individual conservatives basically advocate for genocide.
As for Trump, I actually believe he’s relatively benign by conservative standards. While people act like he’s the end of democracy and compare him to Hitler (there are some ironic comparisons to make there), I think he would be less ideologically harmful than Cruz, kasich, or Rubio would be. He flip flops on economically conservative positions and seems to have few actual convictions. The guy is an ignorant baffoon who can talk good and fool people. He has no idea what he’s talking about, and would be utterly incompetent as president (he will likely rely heavily on advisors), but he’s good at convincing other ignorant people he would do a good job. I can’t endorse him, and think he would be horrible, but I actually would fear a Ted Cruz presidency much more than Trump.
Now, the democrats. I ideologically line up with the democratic party in theory, and could be said to side with the progressive wing, but I DO NOT LIKE HILLARY CLINTON OR HER WING OF THE PARTY. They are effectively conservatives in my opinion. Socially liberal, moderate, fiscal conservatives. While that ideology may have been necessary in the 90s in the aftermath of Reagan’s successes, I think Obama had primed the country for a more leftward shift (I’ll discuss this in more detail in a future post), and that the modern democratic party has been suppressing a progressive movement in the form of Bernie Sanders in order to favor a party insider with questionable connections to the 1%, and who does not threaten to bring about the social and economic changes we desperately need, but that the rich oppose. In short, she’s in their pockets, and she seems to be serving as the 1%’s “good cop” to the GOP being a “bad cop.” I hear way more arguments against Trump than I do for Hillary, and she is just that, a lesser of two evil candidate. A candidate who basically says that all the good change is out of reach, and that we gotta settle for less, or else we get Trump. Also, we BETTER support her or else or something, because the democrats think that they’re entitled to left wing votes just because. I find the direction that the modern democratic party is going this election as an affront to my values. I see the one vehicle in our current two party system for social change turning to the “dark side”, simply becoming a less crazy and harmful version of the republicans, and it makes me sick.
As for Bernie Sanders, I am all for Sanders ideologically, and I believe he could move the country into the direction we need to go, with his calls for free education, universal healthcare, and an ideological shift toward social democracy (he calls it “democratic socialism”, but I see little that’s literally socialistic about his ideas). I do have issues with individual proposals though. For example, his financial transaction tax idea would likely NOT bring in as much revenue as he claims it will, because it would reduce the trading volumes of the markets it impacts. His healthcare plan has also come under fire of not being financially viable. So I like Sanders ideologically, but believe his actual ideas are a bit too populist, and are not done with the aim of solid policy in mind. Still, he’s just about the best choice available this election, and it disappoints me to see him blasted out of the acceptable spectrum of debate this election.
As for third parties. I can’t stand the libertarians due to their extreme pro capitalistic perspective, and I believe that the most extreme forms of libertarianism (anarcho capitalism) are very cult like. I like their social positions and even foreign policy a little bit, but even then they are a bit too extreme for me. Libertarianism is like turning anti government conservatism into a dogmatic religion, and as such it terrifies me. Even when it makes good points it often takes things to the strongest ideological extremes. As for the green party, Jill Stein keeps trying to do something similar. She tries to outdo Sanders on economic policy at every turn, pushing all of these crazy ideas that sound good in theory but are unworkable in practice. She also has some crazy anti science positions on issues like nuclear energy, GMOs, etc. I still might vote for her just to protest the democrats (Stein will never win anyway), but I really don’t like much of what Jill Stein has to offer. I am a pro capitalist leftie, I am more to the left than the Clintons, I’m pretty close to Sanders, but I also want sound policy based in fact. Stein may have a lot of good sounding ideas, but that’s all they are: good sounding ideas with no basis in reality.
As such, I am not happy with this election. Both parties seem to be controlled by corporate interests and oppose any economic changes that are counter to their interests, and most other choices tend to not have good policy positions anyway. Ideally, I would have Sanders take office because I believe his policy proposals can be modified and worked on to be more workable, and I also believe he will bring the ideological change needed to really get us where we can actually tackle the issues we are facing in effective ways. However, it looks like the system has turned their back on that path and wants to push more of the same old policies that aren’t working. It’s really sad and unfortunate.
Finale
So yeah. I recognize this also got long, but I had a lot of ground to cover. I just wanted to cover my general belief system in broad strokes before getting into detail, and as such, I wanted to give you guys an idea of what you are in for and where I am coming from in my views. From now on my posts will likely be a bit shorter, and more focused on individual topics, considering how I am now finished laying the groundwork for this blog.
Background
So I’m basically someone who studied political science and criminology (subset of sociology) in college and in grad school I took up a more general social science program with an aim at political science and nonprofits. I will be using this education a lot in approaching my worldview, since I tend to add a lot of sociological analyses to my political and philosophical views.
Epistemology
I was raised a Christian, and adopted a Biblical worldview when I was younger (I’m 28 now), but am now an atheist. This influences my worldviews significantly. Since God used to be the basis of my worldview, and no longer is, I had to rewrite my entire worldview from scratch, starting out with the fact that we live in a godless universe, and build up from there. This has caused me to shift from being fairly conservative, to extremely liberal, and being somewhat deontological in my morality, to being more consequentialist.
Morally, the world is inherently nihilistic. There is no purpose to life, other than subjective purposes, and all morality is human made and subjective too. This does not, like some Christians would say, mean I can or should just do whatever I want. A lot of Christians think without the moral anchoring of religion, people would turn into murderous psychopaths or something. Nope. I’m not a psycho. I’m actually quite humanitarian all things considered. The thing is, morality is actually in our self interest. A rule against murder is good because murder is inherently bad for our health and well being. It’s bad for our peace of mind and security on both a physical and psychological level. All morality exists to serve humanity. All social systems we create, from the economy, to the state, to ethical systems, exist for our benefit. I do not think there is necessarily a single correct way of doing things, and am fairly open minded to the merits of many systems but I do believe that some systems do a better job than others. Ultimately, I adopt fairly utilitarian views. I believe we should seek moral systems that produce the greatest good for the greatest number, although this can be fairly relative in interpretation. Still, it has led me to adopt, as per my political compass results, fairly left libertarian (liberal/progressive/social democratic) worldviews.
Social issues
On social issues, my beliefs are that you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t harm others. I think any moral prohibition against certain actions should be justified based on reason and evidence, and should be for the greater good. This leads me to adopt fairly socially liberal positions on issues like gay marriage, abortion, prostitution, smoking marijuana, etc. It should be noted even in the cases where harm can be presented, such as abortion, that I can still come to a valid conclusion that maintains keeping it legal. For example, abortion may harm a fetus, but if a fetus is not conscious and cannot feel pain or even be aware of my existence as per my atheistic worldview, then the concerns of the mother should take precedence. In the cases of prostitution and marijuana legalization, I believe that regulation could remove many negative elements, and believe that making such acts illegal in the first place have significant costs on society and individuals. As such, I may make a calculated decision to keep these things legal, despite potential problems arising from them. I simply think making them illegal would cause more harm. In cases like murder or theft, I believe that the regulations are more worth it, however.
On the structure of society
I believe society should be democratic. Everyone should have a say. Yes there are education problems with the populace and many people are stupid, but if everyone doesn’t have a say in how society is governed, then that gives rise to the potential of an oligarchic group forming and consolidating power and denying it to everyone else. This causes problems. Government is power, and power is like fire: dangerous, but useful when controlled. A proper check on controlling the populace other than the separation of powers and constitutional rights is to ensure that all individuals are educated enough to make proper political decisions, and that officials are directly accountable to the people.
On rights
Rights are not objective moral edicts, but subjective moral structures intended to achieve utilitarian ends. They exist for our benefit, because we believe that their existence does more harm than good. They also should not be absolute and should make reasonable accomodations for their curtailment if a clear harm can be demonstrated in adhering to them in an extremist manner. Even then, solutions should minimize harm to individuals and the concepts themselves. You have a right to free speech, but this does not mean you can scream fire in a crowded theater. You have a right to privacy, until the policy have a warrant. You have a right to property, but that does not mean you can monopolize it to the point you cause others to be in poverty, and it certainly does not absolve you from paying taxes (much to the disgust of the anarcho capitalists).
On the economy
Economics is a very complex and nuanced topic, and one I spend a lot of time focusing on. I like the idea of people having the freedom to do what they want, but don’t believe capitalism offers that in its raw forms. It offers the ability of the rich to do what they want, but the poor who have no property are relatively powerless and must subject themselves to being in the service of the rich, who monopolize large parts of their lives. To me, this isn’t “freedom”, and the right to actual freedom requires fairly left wing politics within a capitalistic framework. We need unions to bargain with employers. We need regulations to establish fair labor standards, fair wages, etc. We need strong safety nets for the poor and unemployed, because capitalism always has gaps in being able to provide a good standard of living to everyone. We also need a universal basic income to ensure that people can refuse to work. I believe the right to say no is an important aspect of capitalism, because if you cannot refuse to work, then employers can put whatever stipulations they want on you and you can’t say no. This rigs the game and reduces individuals to the position of a de facto slave. I’m not even opposed to some soft forms of socialism like worker coops, but do not think they should be mandated. All in all, I do not believe that the rich can be expected to look out for the interests of the populace, even though the economic system entrusts them to do so via job creation. There will never be enough jobs available for everyone, they will not pay well enough for people to live on, and the state has to come in and pick up the slack via regulation and wealth redistribution where the system fails to work. In the long term, I don’t even think work should be the way people acquire a living. I would like to see a balance between redistribution and work incentives in the capitalistic system, where we provide for peoples’ basic needs, while providing enough market based incentives to fit society’s labor needs as necessary.
As for socialism, I’m not for full on socialism. Looking at the conflict theory paradigm, capitalism is an oppressive system that the rich use to exploit the poor. But from the functionalist perspective, capitalism works. It just works. The supply and demand aspects of markets are an effective way to ration goods. State monopolies over industries leads to a stagnation in innovation as well as various shortages. With full on socialism/communism, you are putting your eggs all in one basket, and when things go wrong they go wrong in a big way. The diversification of capitalism allows for more innovation, and it allows for markets to more quickly recover when shortages and surpluses occur. It also provides freedom for people to make new goods they they think will help the world, and I think the profit motive is a good way to motivate people to work and innovate. I just think that capitalism, like the state, is like fire. It can get out of hand if not properly controlled and respected. Just like the state needs to be held accountable via democratic processes and separation of powers and constitutional rights, the market needs the state to intervene in ways that benefit the people. The invisible hand of capitalism is basically the same force driving natural selection. The strong survive and the weak perish. We want the good and bad ideas to be weeded out by market processes, but the same should not be the case to humans. Humans should be given a decent standard of living regardless, and then they work to earn more within the capitalistic system. Capitalism without the proper safety nets and restraints is an awful system, but doing away with capitalism without a proper replacement is just insane to me. We need to change the system via reformist methods, keeping a close eye on any changes so that we can control the negative effects and dial stuff back if we make a mistake. We shouldn’t just rewrite a whole new system from scratch.
I will likely cover these topics a lot, and plan to write a lot about what I see as wrong with capitalism more specifically and how to fix it within a capitalistic framework. I do think that the collective and the individual need to be reconciled. Individualism and collectivism both have their place, but neither should be taken to extremes.
As for anarchism, one topic I did not cover. I believe anarchism is a bit insane and probably dysfunctional. I do not believe that we can get social justice without the state. I believe the state is a major reason we are as advanced as we are economically. By providing the security to do business, and implementing the correct regulations and safety valves, we have made our societies very prosperous. We just need to do more.
On foreign policy
I’m an American. American foreign policy is a tricky subject for me. On the one hand, I believe that we have done a lot of harm in our foreign policy. Invasion of countries, overturning democracies to install dictatorships, having said dictatorships turn on us, or have them be overthrown to be replaced by extremists, etc. However, despite this, everything we have done, we have done for what we considered the greater good. Many of our actions were done during the Cold War, under the idea that we needed to beat the Soviets. Even today, we may be acting to ensure that we remain safe in our side of the world, and many of our actions and presence probably do make the world more stable. If we were not in Europe, would the USSR have invaded? Would Russia invade today? If we were not in Asia, would North Korea or China be more aggressive and imperialistic? I mean, there are lots of questions. Yes, many of our actions backfire on us, from Iran, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, but we do a lot of good too. As such, I do have a mixed view of our overall role in the world, believing we both provide stability and do good, but also occasionally do bad and cause more problems than it’s worth. I think we should intervene militarily in a region only when we have a clear national interest in doing so, and we do it for at least SOMEWHAT noble reasons. I don’t want us to be the villain or anything. I recognize we’re not gonna be perfect, but we do have to look out for ourselves at the same time.
That being said, to make more sense of my rambling there, we have a mixed impact on the world. I would not support reverting to full blown isolationism, but do think we should be fairly reluctant to intervene actively in world affairs and only do so when it is to our benefit and we are not overtly evil for doing so.
On the 2016 election
You’re going to hear me rant a lot about 2016, so I’m gonna keep it somewhat short. I hate the republicans, but I’m also growing tired of the democrats. I used to be a republican, was raised as a religious conservative, but then became far more libertarian and economically leftist over time. I believe that the republican party exists to serve as tools for the rich. Plain and simple. I believe they are tools of the 1%. The whole small government conservatism stuff is all about helping out their rich cronies for everyone else’s sake. All their screaming about the national debt is hypocritical, because they will try to cut YOUR social benefits, while giving tax cuts to the rich to “create jobs”, even though the rich already have a near record concentration of the wealth in America. It’s just the starving the beast strategy. They want to completely undo all of the economic progress made in the past century and return us to the gilded age. Socially, their views are backwards and based on religion, whereas I’m very socially libertarian. They base too many of their views on religion, where I question their ability to grasp reality. I have first hand experience with the dangers of this, so I’m very skeptical of the GOP. On foreign policy, they value this tough guy act, which is completely harmful and counterproductive. You can’t just go in and kick everyone’s ***es just because. Do people not remember Bush? Holy crap. Maybe Reagan’s toughness on the Soviets quickened their demise a bit, but other than that, their foreign policy is crazy and potentially inhumane considering how some individual conservatives basically advocate for genocide.
As for Trump, I actually believe he’s relatively benign by conservative standards. While people act like he’s the end of democracy and compare him to Hitler (there are some ironic comparisons to make there), I think he would be less ideologically harmful than Cruz, kasich, or Rubio would be. He flip flops on economically conservative positions and seems to have few actual convictions. The guy is an ignorant baffoon who can talk good and fool people. He has no idea what he’s talking about, and would be utterly incompetent as president (he will likely rely heavily on advisors), but he’s good at convincing other ignorant people he would do a good job. I can’t endorse him, and think he would be horrible, but I actually would fear a Ted Cruz presidency much more than Trump.
Now, the democrats. I ideologically line up with the democratic party in theory, and could be said to side with the progressive wing, but I DO NOT LIKE HILLARY CLINTON OR HER WING OF THE PARTY. They are effectively conservatives in my opinion. Socially liberal, moderate, fiscal conservatives. While that ideology may have been necessary in the 90s in the aftermath of Reagan’s successes, I think Obama had primed the country for a more leftward shift (I’ll discuss this in more detail in a future post), and that the modern democratic party has been suppressing a progressive movement in the form of Bernie Sanders in order to favor a party insider with questionable connections to the 1%, and who does not threaten to bring about the social and economic changes we desperately need, but that the rich oppose. In short, she’s in their pockets, and she seems to be serving as the 1%’s “good cop” to the GOP being a “bad cop.” I hear way more arguments against Trump than I do for Hillary, and she is just that, a lesser of two evil candidate. A candidate who basically says that all the good change is out of reach, and that we gotta settle for less, or else we get Trump. Also, we BETTER support her or else or something, because the democrats think that they’re entitled to left wing votes just because. I find the direction that the modern democratic party is going this election as an affront to my values. I see the one vehicle in our current two party system for social change turning to the “dark side”, simply becoming a less crazy and harmful version of the republicans, and it makes me sick.
As for Bernie Sanders, I am all for Sanders ideologically, and I believe he could move the country into the direction we need to go, with his calls for free education, universal healthcare, and an ideological shift toward social democracy (he calls it “democratic socialism”, but I see little that’s literally socialistic about his ideas). I do have issues with individual proposals though. For example, his financial transaction tax idea would likely NOT bring in as much revenue as he claims it will, because it would reduce the trading volumes of the markets it impacts. His healthcare plan has also come under fire of not being financially viable. So I like Sanders ideologically, but believe his actual ideas are a bit too populist, and are not done with the aim of solid policy in mind. Still, he’s just about the best choice available this election, and it disappoints me to see him blasted out of the acceptable spectrum of debate this election.
As for third parties. I can’t stand the libertarians due to their extreme pro capitalistic perspective, and I believe that the most extreme forms of libertarianism (anarcho capitalism) are very cult like. I like their social positions and even foreign policy a little bit, but even then they are a bit too extreme for me. Libertarianism is like turning anti government conservatism into a dogmatic religion, and as such it terrifies me. Even when it makes good points it often takes things to the strongest ideological extremes. As for the green party, Jill Stein keeps trying to do something similar. She tries to outdo Sanders on economic policy at every turn, pushing all of these crazy ideas that sound good in theory but are unworkable in practice. She also has some crazy anti science positions on issues like nuclear energy, GMOs, etc. I still might vote for her just to protest the democrats (Stein will never win anyway), but I really don’t like much of what Jill Stein has to offer. I am a pro capitalist leftie, I am more to the left than the Clintons, I’m pretty close to Sanders, but I also want sound policy based in fact. Stein may have a lot of good sounding ideas, but that’s all they are: good sounding ideas with no basis in reality.
As such, I am not happy with this election. Both parties seem to be controlled by corporate interests and oppose any economic changes that are counter to their interests, and most other choices tend to not have good policy positions anyway. Ideally, I would have Sanders take office because I believe his policy proposals can be modified and worked on to be more workable, and I also believe he will bring the ideological change needed to really get us where we can actually tackle the issues we are facing in effective ways. However, it looks like the system has turned their back on that path and wants to push more of the same old policies that aren’t working. It’s really sad and unfortunate.
Finale
So yeah. I recognize this also got long, but I had a lot of ground to cover. I just wanted to cover my general belief system in broad strokes before getting into detail, and as such, I wanted to give you guys an idea of what you are in for and where I am coming from in my views. From now on my posts will likely be a bit shorter, and more focused on individual topics, considering how I am now finished laying the groundwork for this blog.
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