Trump's idea to publish immigrant crimes is stupid and fascist

So...Trump had the brilliant (sarcasm) idea of publishing the crimes committing by immigrants to inflame anti immigrant sentiment in the United States. This is....wow. I can't believe we're actually having this discussion. I hate to play the Nazi card since it's so overplayed with Trump, but this idea really is reminiscent of the Nazis publishing crimes of the Jews, as others have pointed out.

But don't worry, I don't plan on just calling this idea fascist and leaving it at that. I want to dissect why this is a stupid idea. So, say we publish a list of crimes committed by illegals every week. There are 11 million or so illegal immigrants in the US right now. Say 1% of these guys commit crimes over the course of a year, that's 110,000. That means if there were a weekly newsletter detailing their crimes, each news letter would contain a list of 2115 crimes a week. That seems like a lot of crime, and taking it in all at once, the reader of these newsletters who are already skeptical of illegal immigrants will confirm their bias that illegal immigrants are horrible people who should be deported. They'll talk about how X person murdered so many people, or how Y person broke into their house. They would point to the victims of these crimes and talk about how if we had decent immigration policy we wouldn't have had all these problems. The message of the newsletter will paint illegal immigrants, and arguably immigrants in general in a bad light, and stoke xenophobia in the masses.

But here's the problem with that. If 1% of illegal immigrants committed crime in the United States, that's really not that bad. Translated to crime rates, it would be 1,000 people per 100,000 people. Meanwhile the most recent statistics put violent crime at 373/100k people, and property crime at 2487/100k people. Combined, that means that a little less than 3% of people commit crimes or so. Which would make immigrants in this hypothetical scenario more peaceful than your average American.

Before going into what the actual illegal immigrant crime rate is, I'm going to point out that I'm trying to demonstrate just how irrational it is to post a newsletter full of names and the crimes they committed. It paints this horrible picture of immigrants that just is not necessarily true when looked at statistically. It's very misleading and plays on peoples' emotions. For all we know, sure, illegal immigrants might commit more crime, but they might also commit less, or they might commit the same amount, and if they're not committing significantly more then it's kind of stupid to blame a whole group over crimes when the overwhelming majority of people who are illegal immigrants are peaceful and harming no one. Even worse, to actually get into the real rates, they actually do commit less than native born residents. Oh crap.

This is the faulty logic of xenophobia, so many of their arguments just aren't based on statistics. They base their views on emotions and anecdotes, often with incomplete information, and this can present a misleading picture. It only takes one nut like the San Bernardino shooter to argue that migrants from Muslim countries are bad. That one guy will put an image in peoples' heads and get them scared, and it doesn't matter if there are tens of thousands of good examples for every bad one, people will focus on the bad one and base their entire argument on that. Same with welfare. I already did an article on that. I always hear how illegals are sucking up our welfare, but once again, such an argument is not necessarily based on data. These people don't care about data, or statistics, or facts. They're making their decisions based on fear and emotion. And that's exactly what this proposed newsletter would accomplish too. It would stoke peoples' fears of immigrants, ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of them are law abiding, and even though they actually commit fewer crimes than people born in the US.

That said, this is a stupid, dangerous, harmful idea that will fan the flames of xenophobia unnecessarily. Not only is this idea that illegal immigrants commit these crimes based on anecdotes and emotions, but it does not paint a good picture of what's going on with crime within the illegal immigrant population statistically. All the person will see is a list of crimes and the kneejerk reaction to that will be "how horrible, we must be something". In reality, illegal immigrants seem to commit less crime than native born residents, and policies implemented to publish their crimes will create a false image of the problems with illegal immigrant crime in our country. This is some scary stuff.

The democrats have gone off the deep end

So, I've been criticizing the democrats for a while. I go after them more than Trump all things considered. But it's necessary being a leftist who is pretty independent in my thinking and whose views are separate from the democrats.

I've been echoing a lot of the sentiments I'm going to discuss here for a long time, but never really in this exact way. Quite frankly, the way a lot of people who follow the democrats and the mainstream media closely are starting to scare me, with Trump taking office. They're scaring me just as much as Trump all things considered, because this is what the opposition to Trump is shaping up to be.

The democrats are whipping people up into a frenzy over Trump. I mean, some of them are really going all out. They're more polarized than I've ever seen, more group thinky than I've seen, and many of them are LITERALLY defending violence. I try to engage in dialogue with some of these people and am called a so called "nazi sympathizer" simply for disagreeing with them or being part of their little hive mind of a cult. They're so buying into this idea that Trump is the apocalypse, that Trump is like Hitler, that Trump is an existential threat to them, that they're behaving more and more radically.

One way in which they do this is political correctness and that whole BS. Once again, let me restate my views, so we are clear. I'm not necessarily opposed to the goals of political correctness. Heck, I'm quite supportive of treating people with respect and like human beings, but the way people are using it is a way to control people. If you aren't giving these particular liberals and their pet causes all of the attention they are, or expressing the proper amount of outrage, or posting as many tweets and facebook statuses about how evil Trump and the alt right are, you're with them or something, apparently. If you think it's bad to hit a nazi because you believe society should act civilly in its debates, you're in league with them. If you're not with them, 100%, you are with the enemy. And they treat you as such. This is NUTS. Look, I shouldn't have to perpetually be in a state of outrage and tweet incessantly about how Joe NeoNazi thinks black people are bad. I really shouldn't. Just like I don't constantly talk about how water is wet. I work with that assumption implicitly, and quite frankly, it's insulting for people to insinuate I support them just because I don't make meaningless symbolic acts of opposition against them. Same with hitting nazis. I don't advocate for that because I'm generally against violence. I oppose the means of revolutionary socialists who want riots to seize the means of production, and I'm against people who think it's okay to hit people for having differing views, no matter how horrible they are. But hey, screw saying this right? Apparently it makes me privileged (yes, actually been called that), apparently it makes me a Nazi sympathizer (been called that too).

This is what pisses me off about the PC movement. It's well meaning, I support the same goals, but this kind of hive mind is quite frankly, dangerous. These people have given up their critical faculties to this mess of emotion, passion, and constant outrage. They're so against Trump, and so against the alt right, and so carried away by passions, that they're attacking people who would otherwise agree with them for not being extreme enough. Geez, and they say we "Bernie Bros" are bad. Look, I just got done bashing Trump and saying everything he's done so far outside of killing the TPP is bad. Okay? That's a pretty strong statement there. I don't approve of Trump or the alt right, or the republicans, I dislike them just as much as the rest of the left does. The difference? I still have my wits about me. I'm not so passionately out of control I start advocating for violence to achieve my goals and say anyone who doesn't think exactly like I do, even if they agree with me 90% of the time, are the bad guys.

The worst thing about this is I get the impression that this is what the democratic establishment wants. Keep in mind guys, the republicans aren't the only problem. The democratic establishment is too. And I get the impression they're pulling the strings here. They don't want people to think critically, they don't want people to have their own agendas, they want people to accept theirs. So what they do is whip everyone up into a frenzy, act like Trump is an existential threat, and get people so riled up in their passions they freaking forget that the democrats are a problem too. Which is what this is really about. The democrats don't want people to focus on them. They don't want people to focus on the bad crap they do. They don't want people to focus on the loss and demand better of them. They just want people to attack Trump, without really having an alternative people can get behind. They're counting on people to be so pissed and outraged against Trump they forget all about the divisions within the party. It's the same crap Clinton tried in the election all over again.

And the worst part is this is costing the left supporters as well and leaving people pissed off and disillusioned with them. Some people, like me, become resentful of both sides. Others (and I've actually seen people do this) get so fed up with the perpetual manufactured outrage and with us or against us mentality that they go on a crusade against these people and join the alt right themselves.

Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't oppose Trump or the alt right. I just condemned Trump's presidency literally 20 minutes ago. I can't stand Trump. He's shaping up to be the worst president in modern American history (I can't say the worst ever, as we had some really bad ones in the 1800s, but likely the worst in our lifetimes). But we need to act peacefully, and we need to act rationally. We need to keep a clear sight on our goals, and not get whipped up by manufactured outrage and the corresponding passions. The democrats are morphing into this angry mob of pure hate and outrage right now, and it's scaring the crap out of me. This outrage has no good end. And when you come down from this high, you will regret how you're acting. This is the same kind of anger and outrage that led to the formation of the tea party and how awful the modern GOP is. It's the same kind of outrage that made the public so receptive to invading Iraq without evidence. This level of anger and outrage is also responsible for many violent revolutions that ended very badly, with the people just as bad off as, if not worse off than they were before.

That being said, people need to calm the fudge down, take a chill pill, and look at this situation rationally. We need an opposition of Trump that's worth fighting for. But the democrats suffering from what some call "Trump derangement syndrome" isn't it. As Caitlin Johnstone said (read the above article I posted), until the democrats cobble together an actual alternative to Trump, they're not really a "resistance", they're just complaining. We need to stand for something different, something better, and we need to push for it thoughtfully, rationally, and peacefully. As I said in my last article, I believe we are witnessing the self destruction of the GOP. But unless we can put forward some solid progressive goals, what comes next won't be much better. Even if rational, we'll go back to the same old oligarchic democratic party...after all, they're the ones getting you so pumped up to begin with. They're trying to keep politics partisan and keep you as focused on "the other" as possible. We need change, not more of the same. Please, look at the big picture. Think this though. Don't act out of radical passion. I feel like the left is going to the "dark side" so to speak when it needs to be the voice of the light, the voice of reason.

So...my opinion on Trump so far

This isn't going to be long. If I went into every single thing Trump did that I don't like, I'd never shut up, and I don't have the energy to do so. If you want to look for compilations, you will find some good articles on the mainstream liberal media about it, and you will also find some good stuff on this guy's facebook page, he seems to make daily images listing everything this guy has done so far that's bad.

Quite frankly, my opinion is very one sided. He's horrible. The only good thing he's done so far is kill the TPP, and that's because I actually align with him somewhat on trade issues. Other than that, it's all bad, between moving to repeal Obamacare, to silencing federal agencies from talking about science, to making his own inauguration day some sort of despotic patriotic holiday, to assaulting womens' rights, Trump's presidency so far sounds a bit like a cartoon villain. He is like, the epitome of everything wrong with America right now, and I honestly don't think the country will tolerate him for long. His approval rating is already historically low entering office, and I would be shocked and would lose all faith in humanity if it actually went up from here given his current policy agenda.

I may occasionally pick apart an individual policy or two, but I've concluded there's just too much to cover in terms of Trump's escapades, and there is no way I can realistically cover all of it. He just does so much bad stuff. All I can do is hope the public realizes what's going on and is outraged by this presidency, and that this kills conservatism as we know it in America. I don't expect the GOP to go away completely, but much like the GOP of the 30s and 40s and the democrats of the 80s, I expect them to have to take a good hard look at themselves and reform themselves dramatically in the face of a new political paradigm. We really are reaching the Hoover/Carter stage of party realignments it seems. I just hope this is worth it and we get a FDR/Reagan out of it, rather than another lukewarm Clinton or Booker like candidate.

This is a necessary evil, I guess. I still believe that. If Clinton had won, the republicans would continue to obstruct, the democrats would continue to twiddle their thumbs, and we would face this situation in 4-8 years anyway. And if someone else won, say, Cruz, or Rubio, or Kasich, or Jeb Bush, then we  might be facing someone with a similar agenda hostile to the American public, but who would be more masterful in spinning it to their benefit. At least now we get to see the GOP self destruct in its full glory, with a president too stupid and too into himself to even try to hide what he's doing. It's all out in the open, all the corruption, all the nepotism, the ignorance of science, the radical agenda. And with the dems in the weakest state since 1928, whatever comes next will be squarely on the GOP. The republicans won't be able to shift blame, or attack the democrats any more, this is all on them. This is their show and they're screwing up hard. Let them have their fun, they're digging themselves into a hole with the American public, and I doubt it will be something we forget any time soon.

A brief discussion on condemning violence and advocating for nonviolent ways of protest

So...Trump is officially our president. I don't like it. Its gonna be a long four years, but the time is now to resist him and his agenda. And resist him we shall. Any bad legislation trump or the republicans out forward should be vigorously opposed. And we need protests in a mass scale like we've been seeing to voice opposition against him. Make no mistake, I support using every legitimate means possible to oppose a trump agenda.

But...we need to have a talk about something first. Some people seem to think violence is the answer. The amount of people I see supporting and advocating for violence against a Trump administration and supporters is too darned high. Learn from the women's march yesterday. Millions of people protesting and you know what? They did it peacefully. And they outnumbered the amount of people to support Trump at his inauguration. That is great. That is what a real show of force from a peaceful perspective looks like and everyone who participated should be proud.

What isn't okay though is the use of violence. I watched some of the protests against Trump get violent where people did things like threw stuff through Starbucks' windows and set cars and trash cans on fire. And I've also seen people assaulting white supremacists as well.

This is not okay. Keeping our discourse civil and respecting people's right to their views is important for the future of freedom of speech in this country. There can be no freedom of speech if people are afraid to speak up for fear of being assaulted. It is fundamentally dangerous for an angry mob to start burning things in response to an election outcome they don't like. The rule of law is an important part of our society and without it we are just bands of raving lunatics who need to live in fear of one another. The first imperative for society is to push for an environment in which people are safe. If we don't have that, we have nothing. And when you advocate and support political violence against other human beings, you are disrupting that first imperative of civil society.

You are not moral if you supporting "bashing the fash" or breaking things. You are threatening the order of society and bringing it dangerously close to a full scale breakdown. And not in a good way. As Bruce Willis once pointed out in Die Hard 4, the "system" is people, and bringing it down means bringing down the people.

I have a lot of grievances against our society. And people who oppose the alt right and other similar movements have their hearts in the right place. And you know what? We deserve to air these grievances. We have a right to protest, make our voices heard, and try to change the system in a peaceful way. There is a lot to oppose to a Trump presidency on all fronts. Socially, economically, morally.

Socialists, social democrats, etc. Our views are outside of the political spectrum. People fear us. They do. How would you like it if the alt right started beating us up for holding the views we do? Well, by beating them up, you're confirming that we are something to be feared, something that threatens the order and fabric of civil society. And people will fear us,and people will fight us. The American public does not have a stomach for violent protests. They don't sympathise with the causes of the agents acting violently. And they just make things harder for the rest of us, who want to change the system from within. Who respect law and order and civil society. Because now we have to deal with the idea that we are violent extremists.

Even worse...the critics of violence are correct. Since most of this violence takes place on the left, let me remind people what happens when the militant left gets its way. Russia, China, Cuba, north Korea. What do they all have in common? They were all born of left wing revolution. The people rose up, acting as a mob, overturned the system, killed the dissidents, the people in charge formed dictatorships, and became repressive toward the people. When I see the far left advocating for violence, I see the seeds of a violent communist revolution that only will end in violence and repression. This is not the path I wish for society to take. We must make our change a peacefully, incrementally, in the stability of a civil society. And we must never act violently against those who disagree with, as repulsive as they may be. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. Those who live by the law generally live long peaceful lives. Our system is flawed, but its not so unbelievably tyrannical and broken it warrants violence to correct. The risks and costs simply outweigh the benefits.

As such, protest, oppose trump, oppose the alt right as you feel is right. You have a right to do it. Call them out on their bs. Protest by the hundreds of thousands. Filibuster them, organize against them, run for office. But don't advocate for violence. Violence is bad. Violence is a threat to the very fabric our society is built on. It is sometimes a necessary evil, but this is not one of those times.

A brief analysis of RT

So, after my last post, I decided to take a look and watch some RT myself. After all I got a Roku now and RT is available to watch on it. So I sat down and watched it like I used to watch CNN and MSNBC when I still trusted them as media outlets.

So, first the good. They have a lot of progressive outlets on RT. I already knew about Lee Camp and Thom Hartmann who I sometimes listen to in terms of podcasts and the like on YouTube, but I also got to watch Ed Schultz, who I used to watch on MSNBC. So a lot of progressives on there, left wing bias on domestic politics.

However, watching Ed Schultz really told me all I need to know about the network from a bias perspective. Ed Schultz, who used to toe the democratic party line on MSNBC, is now pushing the narrative of attacking the democratic attacks on "fake news." Seeing how I watched Lee Camp going on for a half hour about the same thing before that, it is quite clear that RT was pushing a narrative. I got similar vibes from RT that I got from MSNBC or CNN. That there was a bias, a slant, a narrative, and it was pushing propaganda.

Even though I at least in part agree with RT on the whole fake news thing and do agree its an attempt to censor outlets like RT, this doesn't excuse the fact that it was a narrative nevertheless. It is quite clear RT wishes to deflect from the possibility of Russian interference in the election and even if they say similar stuff that me and other Sanders supporters have been saying a lot, we need to remember that like corporate media, this is an outlet owned by certain interests and will not be willing to cross those interests. Seeing Ed Schultz go from dancing for the democratic party and MSNBC's owners to RT's owners and the Russian government really shows how much a narrative and being in someone's service can change a man.

Still, regardless, the similarities are there. And considering the outcry RT gets,how its called a propaganda outlet relentlessly, this is worth discussing. RT is clearly biased, and its words should be taken with a grain of salt and its interests in mind. But its no worse than corporate media outlets, and if RT is sooo bad, and is fake news, and propaganda, and blah blah blah, where does that leave CNN and MSNBC, let alone fox news? Aren't they propaganda outlets? Don't they have narratives? Or should we turn a blind eye to it where its only bad when the dirty evil Russians do it because hooray, tribalism? That's what it is. When other countries push narratives and propaganda, we act like they're so evil and manipulative, but then when powerful American interests do it, it's suddenly okay? If RT is fake news and propaganda, then mainstream outlets are too. And they should be approached with the same skepticism and criticism. Let's do away with double standards and allow both kinds if outlets to thrive in a country based in free speech, while criticizing the biases of both.

Because honestly, RT and mainstream corporate media are two sides of the same coin. They both have narratives, owners, biases, and things they they can't discuss in an objective way. And they should be treated similarly. What the mainstream media fears from a foreign media network in terms of brainwashing and indoctrination is constantly done by our own American media outlets, and people don't even bat an eye. What people see in RT is what I see when I watch CNN, for example. It's ALL propaganda to me. Yes, RT deserves its share of criticism. But it does not deserve censorship. Likewise, mainstream media deserves similar criticism for brainwashing the American public.

The fake news witch hunt and censorship: Facebook blocks Russia Times

So, as we know, there's a huge outcry against "fake news" in response to the whole Pizzagate thing. And while there are concerns with fake news sources misleading people, I can't help but feel that this push is really about censorship of other perspectives. Case in point, Facebook is now blocking RT (Russia Times) from its website.

On the surface, this sounds like a logical extension to the crackdown on fake news. The democrats are worried about Russia influencing people, so they go after a network that is essentially owned by Russia. But honestly, I can't help but feel that this was either done out of ignorance, or done out of some nefariousness.

Look, it's pretty clear that RT is going to be biased at times. It probably can't be trusted in dealing with issues related to Russia. I mean, going to Russia times for objective coverage on Russia's involvement in the world is like going to CNN to hear objective coverage about the democratic primary.

....which is kind of my point. Where's the outcry against CNN being "fake news"? Trump made the argument but then the left freaks out about it and goes on about how this is an attack on the press by the alt right. But honestly, I don't trust CNN as far as I can throw them. Doesn't mean I'd censor them in particular unless we just full on brought back the fairness doctrine and applied it to everyone. Hopefully all the people on the left freaking out about Trump going after CNN is why I'm freaked out about going after RT.

And honestly, I can't say I watch RT often, but from the small clips here and there I've seen, RT seems to mostly be home to a lot of progressives and people who can't make it on corporate news networks for not pushing their narrative. I see a lot of good stuff from people like Lee Camp and Thom Hartmann. People like Larry King, Ed Schultz, and Jesse Ventura are also on RT. So....perhaps RT isn't as bad as we think it is and that calling it "fake news" is just a blatant attempt at censorship of viewpoints outside of the mainstream?

Again, I'm not claiming RT is perfect. It probably isn't. But no news network is. They're all biased in different ways. And honestly, unless they are so egregiously over the top with falsehoods that are leading to real tangible harm in the real world (say, hate speech or something), I don't see why we should be banning specific viewpoints off of certain sites at the top level. Individual debate groups or subreddits  in Reddit's case, fine. But on a site wide level? Unless there is a compelling reason to ban something that can be defended and is acceptable to a good proportion of reasonable people, I don't see why we should allow social media to be manipulated like this. It's just flat out censorship to do so. We should want a greater scope of media in America. The "mainstream" networks are all owned and bought and paid for by a small minority of corporations and as such, censoring other networks as fake news in order to prop up these networks seems like a blatant attempt to give these guys an oligopoly over the accessibility of the press in America. This is scary. This is how freedom dies in this country. This attempt to muzzle the media should be resisted by the public and supporters of more independent media.

Oh hey, look! Rick Perry realizes the government does things!

So, it looks like Rick Perry has made a realization that is, at this point, an assumption in my left wing "statist" worldview. He now realizes that the government does things...important things critical for the proper functioning of society, and that we would be worse off if we start mindlessly cutting agencies without looking at their core functions.

Rick Perry has once said he wanted to cut the department of energy in his quest for smaller government. This was appealing to his anti government right wing base, but it lacked any understanding of what the department of energy does, and why it is important for society. Since Perry was named head of the department, he has gotten an intimate understanding of its functions very quickly, and now regrets saying he wants to cut it, citing he didn't understand what it did.

My response? No crap, Shirlock. I mean...this is how I perceive the right in general. And this is how I was when I was a member of the right when I was younger. The right doesn't understand just how important government functions are. They complain and moan about all their hard earned tax dollars being stolen from them to fund these departments they don't understand, but then when they start learning what these departments do and why they're necessary, they suddenly realize that their existence is actually very reasonable. This was really the first step I took in abandoning conservatism. I realized that the government did things, important things, that many people don't understand the workings of, and push for abolishing out of sheer ignorance.

Here's the thing. The right hates "government." I use quotes because honestly, it's more of an ideal than a practical perspective. They hate the idea of government. So they try to cut it out of principle. They want to reduce its functions, and its scope, and they want to lower taxes. The less government, the better. Government is a dragon, and it must be slayed. It is a Leviathan, and it was the founding fathers' intentions to keep it as limited as possible. So they go on this crusade to just cut "government" without learning to understand what exactly government is.

But let's be real here. The government, when done correctly, is us. It's an entity that does things that cannot be entrusted to individuals to do properly otherwise. And we are all better off for it. I'm not going to say there can't be debate over the scope of government and what its functions should be, I think that that particular issue is still a dividing line between the right and the left, but the right wing perspective of hating government just because is so stupid. It really is. And the sad thing is, so many people on the right have this idea that if you aren't one of them, you are for "big government" and want it to run everything, as if the opposing view is the exact opposite of their extremism. But it's not. Government agencies and functions come about normally as a form of problem solving. The people find problems developing from a lack of regulations or whatever, so they make rules to solve problems. Murder is a problem for a society, we so ban it. Same with theft. And then we get into more nuanced issues. We deal with land usage and whether some dude who lives up river has a right to dump toxic waste into said river, poisoning everyone else. We deal with whether the government should step in to regulate exchanges in the free market to protect the exploitation of workers, or making dangerous products that hurt people. The government is a TOOL. The opposite of being anti government isn't being mindlessly pro government. It's just being for using the government to solve problems in society. And often times when we start talking about repealing stuff without replacing it properly, people get hurt, and people can even die. Because we're re-introducing problems that were supposed to have been solved.

This is why, for example, a lot of people on the right are starting to have an "oh crap" moment when they realize that Obamacare and ACA are the same freaking thing (really guys? you didn't know that?) and that if the republicans repeal it without replacing it, as they're trying to do right now, that oh crap, they might lack health insurance, oh crap, they might get sick, oh crap, they might even die. No crap shirlock. We could've told you this before the election and heck the last 6 years in general but no one listened.

This is why I think the republicans are going to not last long in Washington, and that we might be one republican controlled government away from a complete paradigm shift. Because honestly, the right should look like the democrats do, because they actually believe in the government performing core functions of society, and the left should be to their left. Our problems in society exist because half the country doesn't even believe in the freaking government they rely on to live a decent life, and the other half seems to believe government should perform some core functions necessary in society but is afraid to push forward and is pretty conservative in their outlooks. Believe it or not, the way I see it, the democrats are conservative, as in, they want to conserve the system largely as it is and make mild changes at best, and the right is regressive, as in, they want to undo the system to return to a mythical simpler past time that never was that great to begin with.

And this is why this paradigm sucks. The democrats introduce band aids that kind of fix the problems, and the right just ignores the problems exist and tries to undo legislation done over the years by democrats, which in turn re-introduces past problems and sends our society backwards. I really hope over the next four years right wingers start to realize that government actually does things, and that these things are good for society. Even if they fail to support my progressive vision for America, I hope that they at least move toward where the democrats are so we as a society can all be on the same freaking page about the uses of government. In an advanced society, we shouldnt even have to debate whether the government is actually useful at solving problems. It definitely is. The real debate should be over what problems we want to solve and how. And there is, admittedly, room for disagreement there. But it would be a huge step over a radical right that doesn't believe in the very concept of government.

So way to go Rick Perry, a bit late to the party, but hey, you're learning, just like I did. I hope you and the rest of the right half of America expand their education on this subject over the next few years. We might actually be able to get crap done for once if you do.

Discussion of an MLK quote on MLK day

So...today's MLK day. I have a lot of respect and admiration for the man. He saw wrong in society and he strove to fix it. He told it was it was and pushed for change against two parties unwilling to budge, and he will be remembered I think as one of America's greatest heroes. Hats off to you Martin Luther King Jr., you were awesome.

Now, I have a lot I could say about him. I could discuss his criticisms of capitalism and support for the basic income (yeah, he was for that and saw a lot of the same problems with capitalism that I talk about frequently), but in my current mood railing against the democrats, I have a better quote to discuss:

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." 

 Source

If you wonder why I spend so much time railing against the democrats when we're dealing with a radical republican party who is a much more blatant and greater threat, my logic is very similar to this quote. We know where the republicans stand. We know they're against our cause. We know they are an opponent and that they must be defeated. But more nefarious than that is the moderate who will try to sympathize with you and pretend to be on your side...before selling you out and stabbing you in the back. The democrats are the moderates here. They do exactly what MLK described. And you know what? They're a greater obstacle to change than the GOP. We know where the GOP stands, we know what they're capable of. They're the enemy we know. But the democrats are the ones we don't know. They take up our cause only to sell us out and dash our dreams in the eleventh hour. And when their betrayal, our cause is lost. Real economic and social justice cannot be achieved until we bring the democratic party into line or until we can replace it. If they refuse to stand for anything, no one will.

The democrats' feet must be held to the fire. They must support the progressive cause without wavering (outside of legitimate pragmatic objections) and not sell out to the right. There can be no waiting. No voting people into office with the promise that they'll maybe address our issues at some distant future date. No "incremental change." No ignoring us. They must stand for our cause, or they must be voted out and replaced with those who do.

Who needs the republicans with democrats like these?

So....as we all know, The republicans are already moving to repeal Obamacare. I don't have much to say here that you can't get in a million other places, but let's be honest, if you didn't think the republicans would try, I don't know what planet you've been living on for the last 6 years. They are radicals, and they must be stopped.

Unfortunately, the only force in the current two party system that can stop the republicans are the democrats, and the democrats are almost as bad as the republicans. Another vote recently was a vote on Bernie Sanders' proposal to import drugs cheaper from Canada to bring healthcare costs down. Several DEMOCRATS opposed it. You know, it's bad enough when the republicans are why we can't have nice things, but when the DEMOCRATS obstruct good legislation too, that's a freaking problem. This is the same mentality that got us Obamacare too, fyi. Obamacare could have been more progressive, but the more moderate democrats watered it down or threatened to torpedo the whole thing. So, republicans aren't the only obstacle to fixing healthcare, centrist dems are too.

And one of the big democrats mentioned who voted against this was none other than an early favorite to run in 2020, Cory Booker. To be fair, Booker CLAIMS that he voted against it because he did not trust Canada's safety standards, but honestly, my faith and good will toward these guys is nonexistent.They have obstructed the progressives too many times, on too many issues. After all, it's not like they couldn't just ensure only drugs otherwise available in the US could be imported or something.

I don't want to hear another darned word from Hillbots who say that Sanders never accomplishes anything. Maybe if the centrists would get the heck out of his way, he would. Kind of hard to do anything when the ideological sell outs on the democratic side stop things from getting done. Seriously though, who needs the republicans when these guys stop us from getting crap done too? And dems wonder why people think both parties are the same...

Well, there goes my interest in the Nintendo Switch...

So....for once I'm going to talk about gaming. I'm a big gamer, but this blog is primarily about politics and philosophy, so why am I discussing gaming here? Well, because in this case, gaming is POLITICAL. There's a whole politics to gaming, within the market economy and peoples' behaviors to certain business practices, and the concerns mirror many of my concerns relative to the labor market and capitalism in general.

So, today, I'm going to focus on the Nintendo Switch announcement. I'm not gonna lie, while I'm a huge gamer, I dislike consoles (glorious PC gaming master race for the win). And I've lost a lot of interest in Nintendo over the direction it went under the DS and the Wii, and how they seemed to put gimmicks like motion controls and touch screens over quality. But here comes the Nintendo Switch, a game console that also doubles as a handheld, and is much more powerful than most handhelds to date. It can run skyrim, that's impressive. And honestly, being able to take a handheld capable of running, say, 360/PS3/5 year old PC games is something that is appealing to me. So I actually was gonna be open minded to this one....well...until now.

You see, Nintendo announced yesterday that the Switch was gonna have paid online gaming, joining the ranks of Microsoft and Sony in this respect. Me, being an opponent of the increasing monetization of games (I miss the days I go to the store, buy a $50 CD or a $60 cartridge, go home, and get the full experience, no strings attached), am completely turned off by this.

Look, I despise the monetization of gaming. I despise paying more for less. I despise people having to pay for services that used to be free. I despise anything that is against my interest as a consumer. And quite frankly, reader, you should too. It's the same philosophy I have with work. Why should we want to work harder for less money? Why should we pay more for less? Why do we let businesses get away with this crap? The gaming industry is a good example of the "creeping normality" found in capitalism in general. If these changes were made all at once, people would oppose them, and fight against them, but because these changes are being made incrementally, people don't notice that the environment is changed until it's too late to do anything about it. This happens in the gaming industry a lot, with things like DLC and paid online services.

With paid online services, Microsoft was the first to pioneer this idea. On PC, online gaming was both high quality and free since the 1990s. Nintendo and Sony didn't have developed online services, but when they developed them, they were generally free. Yet, people still bought xboxes, they bought them to play halo, to play call of duty, etc. And people gladly forked over their money for something you can get elsewhere for free. And you know what? In 2013, when Sony announced the PS4, they did the same thing, paid service, comparable to Xbox Live. And now Nintendo, the last console holdout, is joining the trend with the Switch.

While 10 years ago, people had the dignity to at least oppose these ideas in principle, today, they don't blink an eye at them. Heck, people who still oppose these ideas are considered the weird ones. People who complain on reddit are being told about how this is now an "industry wide standard" and that it's expected to have to pay for a service that's...quite frankly, always been free on my platform of choice, the PC. And beyond that, people are defending the console makers' right to make money, and blah blah blah. It's a shame people have more empathy for the game companies than for the consumers. As consumers, with our own interests, we should be outraged by this idea and oppose it vigorously. But again, people are complacent, because they've been trained over the years to accept this as the dominant business model and if you don't, you're weird or entitled or something. Well screw it, I'm weird, I'm entitled, and no, I won't be buying the Nintendo Switch, and I'll even make the case that neither should you, if you care at all about this stuff.

It's the same crap that happened with DLCs. 10 years ago, people were freaking out over Oblivion adding horse armor to the game. But now, it's expected to fork over $60 for a game, and another $50 for a "season pass" to have access to all the extra content. DLC isn't something that's done to make the game better, it's something done to extract maximum profits from the consumers and make games worse. Multiplayer games have split player bases and sometimes premium players get advantages in game for paying more. And the microtransactions on the mobile market, forget it. So many games are crap on mobile because they're made to extract maximum profits from you. And people actually buy this stuff, that's the real problem, people actually buy this stuff. And ultimately, it doesn't make the gaming experience better, it makes it worse, as pursuit of profit trumps all other concerns.

Listen, it is important for us consumers to oppose business practices we don't like. I won't say I never ever get DLC these days, but it's rare. Outside of Battlefield premium a couple of times, far cry 3 blood dragon (a standalone game that's "DLC" and a few other examples, I almost never buy DLC. I do it on principle. I want people to include content in the base price of the game, not withhold it to get more money from me. I refuse to pay for online services when free alternatives on PC like Steam exist.The only way we can put a stop to these practices is if we vote with our feet. Think of it like striking. You need to have collective action by all members of a party to withhold your labor, or in this case, your money, to force a business to stop doing crappy things. If even a few people do it, like is the case with paid online and DLC, it is validated, and then it becomes industry standard, where you're seen as weird if you don't do it. If you buy a nintendo switch, you are validating the end of free online on consoles, which is a major blow for gaming as a whole. This is the equivalent, using the striking example, of being a scab. You go out, do what the business wants, and stop it from folding and buckling to the majority in the name of the greater good. And unlike work, which is unfortunately involuntary to a degree in our society, gaming is a luxury, you don't need it. And even more, free alternatives DO exist on PC.  Steam is free, and you can play many of the games coming to switch like skyrim and rocket league on cheapish laptops, let alone desktop PCs. Heck, there's even handheld PCs now like the GPD Win if you want something with the switch's form factor (let's be honest the switch is a glorified nvidia shield tablet). You have no excuse.

I can't stop you from getting a nintendo switch, it is your choice to get one. But, I can at the very least argue why it's a bad idea, and why the choice to do so validates certain bad business practices that should be opposed and avoided. I really hope I convince at least someone to think it over if they were going to get one, and understand how doing so validates the creeping normality that is screwing over consumers in the gaming market. If you let them do it, you validate paid online gameplay for all time. With Nintendo going to the dark side, free paid online on console is effectively dead and will only be a thing on PC. Think about it.

The republicans are hypocrites

You know, as someone who has been against the GOP for a good 5 years now, this should be blatantly obvious, but since I don't talk about them a lot and have been focusing more on the democrats, I figured it was time to throw some fire the GOP's way.

The GOP are hypocrites. They are completely unprincipled political opportunists who say one thing and do another. They have no principles, except looking out for their rich cronies and screwing over everyone else. Whatever grievances I may have with the democrats, the republicans are far, far worse. And it's time we discuss some of the crap they're doing.

For the last year, they've been stonewalling Obama's supreme court nominees. They wouldn't even have hearings on Merrick Garland, even though his nomination was more or less selling the progressives out in pushing a center right supreme court nominee, and they've been saying that congress has every right to not hold hearings and any attempt by Obama to force it through would be some sort of tyrannical executive action against the constitution.

Now that the republicans are coming to power, they're about facing on that. All of the sudden, Mitch McConnell, the turd who more or less masterminded this extreme obstruction of Obama, is all of the sudden saying the public won't tolerate obstructing the republicans in nominating their own justice. Hey, Mitch, I got two words for you:

SCREW YOU

After the 6 years of hell this guy has put the democrats through, no, I hope the democrats obstruct this to the very end. Unless the GOP is willing to nominate Garland themselves, or someone to the left of him, the democrats should do everything in their power to stop their plans. Maybe with future justices we can make a legitimate case that yeah, those are legitimately there for president Trump to nominate, but as far as Scalia's replacement goes, this nomination was essentially STOLEN from Obama, and the democrats should shut down the entire procedure with filabusters until they're willing to push for a justice that would be in line with Obama's tastes.

I don't necessarily support the democrats opposing something SIMPLY because the republicans are for it, but insofar as the GOP is trying to push an agenda not in line with the best interests of the American public, the democrats should use a scorched earth strategy against them. And on the topic of supreme court nominees, it's only fair and just for them to pretty much stonewall any nomination not in line with the left's interests as hard as humanly possible under the constraints of the institution.

Now, with that out of the way, time to cover the other story in which the GOP is hypocritical. Apparently it turns out that repealing Obamacare, something the GOP is insistent on doing right away without really replacing it with anything better like, you know, single payer will actually COST us money and add to the federal debt.This shouldn't come as any surprise. The GOP uses debt reduction rhetoric to further their ideological goals and nothing more. They don't really care about the debt, they just use it as a weapon against the democrats in order to tell them we can't afford anything. But honestly? Reagan tripled the debt. Bush Jr. doubled it with tax cuts and going into Iraq. In 2011, when the tea party took charge did they care about the debt? NO! They didn't. They waved it around to force spending cuts, but then they tried to give tax breaks to millionaires, which would...surprise, surprise, raise the debt! And this is what the republicans will do here. Those tea party republicans are about to expose their true colors and raise the debt significantly during their term. They will do it by cutting taxes, getting involved in unnecessary military conflicts, and do stupid things like repeal republican lite healthcare programs (because let's face it, Obamacare is rebranded Romneycare) that save money. All in order to push for this grand ideal of theirs of "smaller government." They're ideologues. They don't care about the people. They care about their ideas. This is a well known political strategy known as "starving the beast" intended to restrict what democrats can do in office by claiming we can't afford stuff, while lowering taxes and sabotaging social programs. The end goal is to go to some form of minarchist libertarian government because we can't afford to do any more because our debt balloons to levels where funding programs is impractical. The GOP is sabotaging our government intentionally, they're sabotaging the American people, in order to push abstract ideas out of touch with the people, and even more pertinent, give the rich a better deal. We all know what will happen in libertarian type societies, I've railed against this enough on this blog. About how wealth will concentrate to the top, the poor become de facto slaves, and people will struggle just to survive in perpetuity.

These ideas MUST BE STOPPED. I wish the democrats were more trustworthy in taking up the fight against the GOP here, and I hope they grow some cajones in the next 4 years, because we need a strong, unapologetic democratic party that stands up for liberal and progressive values to stop this. Unfortunately, the democrats seem to be part of the problem and seem to play along with the GOP. They run to the center to appease them, they try to compromise with them, and they sell out their values in the process. They're like Neville Chamberlain in trying to appease Hitler, when we need a Churchill to actually TAKE THEM ON. It's not enough to be the lesser evil, because that only feeds them in the long term, they need to be the greater good. I hope in the next 4 years people turn away from the republican party for good and embrace much more left wing values. Because these republicans are hypocritical ideologues who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, and we need to be just as firm in the other direction if we want to stop them. We  need them to say, "NO, we won't let you nominate far right supreme court justices who died on the democrats' watch, NO, we won't let you repeal Obamacare these ideas are counter to the interests of the American people and the greater good, and we will not only oppose you, we will present even better ideas for you to implement." We need to not only oppose the GOP, we need to stand for something better than them, and be willing to fight for it, which is where the democrats have lost their way. It's not good enough to be a sell out opposition party, you need to stand for something and be willing to achieve it. And you need to take the fight to the GOP. I wish Obama would have done this, especially in his second term, and I hope the democrats learn from their defeat and do this now. The GOP is like the terminator. It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, and it won't stop until it achieves its goals. The democrats have to be willing to stand up to them if we have any hope of ever defeating them.

Always be skeptical when people try to portray their views as "reality"

Something I've noticed among various factions, both on the left, and on the right, is that they often try to portray their views as some sort of objective reality that cannot be disputed and must be accepted. Often times, these views are very subjective and based on ideological narratives, and as "reality based" as they are, things are that way often times because "reality" is engineered that way. In this article, I will look at various examples of this behavior at work.

"If you don't vote for Hillary Clinton, you will get Donald Trump, that is reality"

This is a common example I've seen of "reality based" rhetoric recently. In this example, the democratic party gives people a choice, either you vote for Hillary, or else. And while yes, after the primary was decided, this was the choice, since only one of them had a viable chance of winning, let's not ignore the intentions of the people wielding this rhetoric. The people who use this rhetoric had the intention of electing Hillary Clinton from the start. As we know, the primary process was not fair, media coverage was not equal between all candidates, and the nomination of Clinton was very likely engineered by powerful forces within the democratic party and its affiliates. So, after that's all said and done, then these guys come along and tell you that "hey, you might not like Clinton, but you have to vote for her, if you don't, you'll let Trump win." Quite frankly, I took this as a bit of extortion, as if their whole strategy was to ensure we couldn't get what we want and then try to strong arm us into taking the less evil option over Trump. Honestly, I didn't fall for this, and I basically thought along the lines of "no, you engineered this 'choice', this 'reality' as you call it, I refuse to play along as your little pawns. This is extortion, and I don't negotiate with terrorists." And this is how it goes with many people using "reality" based rhetoric. More often than not, in my experience, people using this kind of rhetoric are trying to get people to adopt a certain point of view, and trying to get you to behave in certain kinds of ways, and by playing along, you're their willing pawn so to speak.

I've gotten in pretty heated arguments with friends about this. I still have friends who insist that the democratic party wasn't extorting us into supporting Clinton, but that she is there to save us from Trump or something along those lines, and I generally don't buy it. They're telling me that I'm the one extorting them, only being willing to give them my vote if I get exactly what I want, when from my perspective, I'm basically giving them a counter offer to their perceived extortion. There is some room for debate here, don't get me wrong, but from my perspective, the democrats engineered this outcome, they made this "reality" and tried to force it on voters, and tried to get us to play along with their game. As unhappy as I actually am about Trump winning, I can honestly say at least we dodged the bullet of allowing a party that relies on extorting people like that from a win. Rejecting these peoples' "reality" and basically refusing to play along was the right move, because it takes away the reward tied to this behavior, and, hopefully, the incentive to do it in the future. By rejecting their "reality", we get to replace it with our own going forward, and that might become a more dominant narrative in history. Remember, history is written by winners, and there are competing narratives to decide what goes in the history books, and by rejecting one narrative, we have the opportunity to replace it with another. And that's what these ideas of "reality" really are most of the time, one's own narrative, which is often no better or worse than other narratives (although occasionally are, I'll get to this later in the article).

The ideology of the center

I don't plan on spending this whole article going after the democrats, I actually do plan to attack the right too, but I want to criticize the centrist dems one more time before moving on. One thing that steams me about the center, and I originally planned on writing an article just dedicated to this, but it is better fit into this larger article, is the fact that the "center" often tries to portray itself above the ideological fray, and above partisanship and politics. Every other point of view is ideologically driven, while theirs is simply "reality" based. We saw this a lot, once again, with Clinton's ideas. We see it a lot with economics. We're often told free trade is good for us because economists say so, despite the fact that many high paying union jobs are replaced with low pay service jobs in this "new economy" in the process. And as I discussed in another article, economics is in part ideologically driven to support things like maximum growth and unemployment, and often times its conclusions are simplistic and based on models that may not accurately represent what actually happens. In a lot of ways, the downsides of policies are downplayed and the positives are emphasized, which is, in essence, an ideology. It's a narrative.

But honestly, it's not just trade either. It's everything related to the mainstream dems. Their policies were called more "reality based" than Sanders by virtue of being more incremental and thus easier to implement. Ideas pushed by the Sanders camp were seen as "pie in the sky" and "unrealistic", and while even I will admit problems with them, the fact is, the center is actually taking a side and pushing a narrative and trying to portray it as a fact. The rest of the world has these systems, why can't we? Why is it when the richest country on earth tries to implement these plans suddenly they can't work? Because this is a narrative. The democrats have an ideology too. And while their "reality based" approach might work well against the ignorant base of the republican party that denies basic scientific and economic facts about the world in pushing their narratives, it doesn't work well against other narratives, such as the Sanders camp.

Honestly, I'd also consider myself centrist and reality based in some ways. My ideas push for a hybrid type economy somewhere between capitalism and socialism. And I do believe they are founded in facts, so I do believe they're legitimate. But at the same time, notice how different they are from the democrats' ideas? I'm not even attacking the legitimacy of the democrats' ideas. They are valid...from a certain narrative, but so are mine. Just because some narratives are more factual than others, and not all of them are admittedly equal, doesn't mean that there aren't competing narratives that are just as valid as one another. There is a role for ideology to guide views, and as long as these ideas are based on science and other academic disciplines I'm okay with them on a factual level regardless of the ideology. But there is also a role for ideology, and I don't believe there is a such thing as being above ideology on the spectrum. Even among those with hybrid ideologies like  myself and the democrats, some people emphasize different ideologies more than others. Democrats tend to be a bit more capitalist in their approaches, and I am a bit more socialistic, despite both of us having hybrid ideologies. And even if both of our views are "reality" based, they can also be opposed on subjective, value based grounds as well, as long as those are also based some sort of factual, scientific basis.

6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person

So, every once in a while, I'll see someone, normally an edgy right winger trying to "educate" the left, post the above article, which is a long tirade about how the world doesn't care about you, only what you can do for it, how you are your job, and generally spouts all kinds of extreme pro capitalist, rugged individualistic sentiments. Except it isn't clear that it is, in essence, pushing a sort of ideology. It tries to push its narratives as factual, using words like "truths" and making appeals to the "real world" to push its claims. Moreover, the goal of the article appears to be telling those sissy liberals, hippies, socialists, etc., that they are WRONG about the world, and trying to convert them to their ideological perspective. They're trying to make the reader CONFORM to a certain narrative, rejecting other narratives in the process. They are "right", and you are "wrong." Now shut the **** up and be a good little wage slave, will you? Its underlying values remind me a lot of that SWEAT pledge I discussed about a month ago. That you're entitled to nothing, the world only cares what you can do for it, blah blah blah.

I don't deny there is a component of our society that is like this, but in a lot of ways, it's ENGINEERED to be like this. I don't deny that humans are, to some degree, self interested, but our society also extols the values of self interest, claiming that a society in which everyone is constantly trying to screw each other over in a struggle to attain more wealth is the best way society can be organized and that other ways don't work. While they are right to an extent, much of what I blog about is also about compensating for the problems with this. And there are problems with this the author of the article totally ignores. It ignores how it forces everyone to work harder and harder for less while those at the top just continue to amass more and more wealth. It ignores the fact that we can reach some happy compromise between having a system governed by self interest, and having counterweights to compensate for the downsides of this. I mean, I don't deny it either, I'm selfish to a degree too. But let me explain the left to a selfish person. Capitalist society is like a prisoner's dilemma. You can either cooperate with others to reach mutually beneficial arrangements, or you can try to screw each other over, with some people coming ahead, and others getting nothing at all. I'd argue the most beneficial arrangement involves cooperation. While some people might do worse under the arrangement, many many others do much better, and as a result, we'll see everyone better off on the whole/average. People will have higher standards of living, and they will be more secure. Unions and other collective action are in the rational self interest of the working class. Regulations are in their self interest. Safety nets like universal healthcare and basic income are in their self interest. Having a democratic work place in which people are part owners and help make decisions for the work place are in their self interest. These ideas are actually in the rational self interest of AT LEAST 50% of the population in my opinion. The people opposed to these ideas are the ones who benefit from the current arrangement, and often they try to engineer outcomes to their own benefit, trying to convince people they would be worse off if they don't support such ideas, or even trying to get people to "take one for the team" in support of an abstract ideology....

Which is another thing. Not everyone is often as self interested as portrayed. A person who sacrifices his life for people in war is not that interested in his own benefit. He's interested in a greater cause. Individuals who support religions are often told to act in ways counter to their self interests, and that this is "good". And even some "small government" conservative types I've talked to, when I tell them of the greater benefits they would achieve from my ideas, consider them immoral and "theft" from the rich. So it seems people aren't as self interested as we're told. Sometimes they do sacrifice their interests for a "greater good" as they see it, an ideology, a narrative. I just have a much different one. As such, while one can debate the content of this guy's arguments all day, the fact is, they are based on an ideology, a narrative, of how humanity works. And quite frankly, I have a much different approach. It's totally up to you which you accept, his, mine, or something different altogether, but don't be fooled by this guy's use of the word "truth" or "reality" or any other similar buzz words. Those are a bunch of crap, and what the far left would consider "pure ideology."

Atheism, "relationships with reality", and the limits of relativism

Despite all of this, I do not wish to advocate for some sort of "factual relativism" that implies all facts are ideological and there is no absolute truth at all. There often is. And the one example I'd like to bring up is atheism. Atheists get a bad rap a lot of the time from the religious, and even some holier than thou atheists who think they're somehow superior for "respecting" religion. Despite there being a lot of latitude for a lot of "reality" based things being more relative, sometimes there are narratives that conform more with facts than others.

In response to Christianity being a "personal relationship with Jesus", atheists like to call atheism a "personal relationship with reality." And in a lot of ways, it is. Atheists who use this phrase often try to use things like science, and logic, and reason, to support their views, while characterizing the religious as having views based on nothing verifiable. As an ex-Christian, I will conform this perception of religion. All in all, after analyzing my former religion, and covering just about every angle I can think of, I have to say, there's no valid reason to accept Christianity, except out of blind faith. On a factual level, it just appears untrue, and the amount of mental legwork needed to justify it in accordance with the facts just seems to be a blatant violation of occam's razor. By the time you can come up with narratives that explain away all of the contradictions and philosophical problems religion causes in my opinion, the much simpler explanation is just that there isn't a god, at least none active in our universe, and that the religion is false.

If you have evidence based reasons to disagree with this, then fine, all the power to you, I'm not really attempting to persuade anyone out of their religion in this article at least (I used to blog about atheism and debunking religion but it gets so boring after a while, tbqh, and most good arguments can be found on sites like RationalWiki and Iron Chariots anyway, not to mention many many youtubers and other websites that have debunked this stuff over the years). However, I am going to use this as an example to explain how not all views are on equal ground. Some views are, quite frankly, much easier to defend than others. And some seem to conform more with objective facts than others. The real debate regarding relativism comes with things like emphasizing certain facts over others, or valuing certain things over others, assuming both sides do their research and have evidence based perspectives. This is why I said, for example, the democrats can be complacent in knocking around conservatives with their "reality based" narratives, because when you are forced to choose between the democrats who use facts and republicans who ignore them, of course the democrats are far more reality based. But that doesn't mean that their ideology is the only reality based narrative out there or that their ideas are objective truth. Having a reality based narrative is a prerequisite for the real debates we SHOULD be having. We should all have reality based narratives and THEN we decide what is the best way to organized society. The fact that only one party in our country has a reality based narrative is problematic as it gives them a relative monopoly on facts and gives them a license to act as arrogant and entitled to votes as the democrats acted this election. But no one has a single idea of truth which is correct, and that others are wrong. There are competing narratives, some of which are good, some of which aren't. It's up to us to decide what's truth, rather than just taking someone's word for it.

Conclusion

When someone tries to portray their views as a sort of "reality" or "truth", be skeptical, very skeptical. More often than not, they are trying to force a certain ideological narrative on you. Question everything. Question capitalists, questions socialists. Question atheists, question religious people. Question republicans, question democrats. Question this blog. Question the mainstream media. Question and criticize EVERYTHING. If you haven't reached the point that you had an existential crisis or questioned things to the point of entertaining ideas like freaking solipsism at some point in your life, you need to question more. I'm serious about that, too. You should really strip your sense of reality down to the bare minimum, where you legitimately question the universe we live in as being "real", and then completely rebuild it up from there, as if it's a blank slate or canvas for you to paint your own narratives on. Don't just accept peoples' narratives as reality. Don't allow people to herd you into a certain perspective, or into making certain choices or adopting certain values. These are up to you to grapple with yourself. Make your own decisions, make your own reality, based on science, evidence, logic, and what you find to be valuable. Don't let people do it for you. Don't be a follower, be an independent thinker. More often than not, reality is not as straightforward as it seems and not as straightforward as people pushing certain narratives want it to appear.