So, David Pakman and Andrew Yang had a sit down recently discussing his forward party. It was a pretty decent interview, if anyone wants to watch it. However, there does seem to be some drama extending from it, and I kind of get the impression David Pakman is kind of fanning the flames of it.
Essentially, when he was discussing his forward party and trying to appeal to the right, David Pakman asked him if right wingers with crazy ideas would be welcome into the forward party. Yang responded basically saying that everyone is welcome. So Pakman asked him more specifically what about white supremacists, are they welcome if they agree with yang on core issues, and he basically said people can disagree with him on lots of stuff, but if they agree on the core issues, they're welcome.
Of course, the left lost their crap over this, claiming that Yang is supportive of white supremecy and blah blah blah. This forced Yang to respond with a tweet disavowing white supremacy and saying white supremecists aren't welcome in the movement, because you know, grace and tolerance. And then yang went further calling this a" manufactured controversy...dragging down our public discourse" and flinging accusations of racism "isn't the path to enlightenment." Pakman is now asking "well is Yang mad over the question?"
So, what I want to do here is discuss the answer, discuss the outrage, the backtracking, and give my own answer on this question.
First, Yang's first answer. I see where he's coming from. And to cut straight to my own answer, which would be similar to the first answer, this is how I feel about it. I don't agree with people on everything. And I understand people are going to disagree with me. I certainly don't approve of hateful ideologies like white supremacy. But say I ran on basic income and a white supremecist supported me. Would I tell them I don't want their vote? Not really. And here's why.
I DON'T SUPPORT WHITE SUPREMACY!
Like, period, end of story. And here's how I view running for office. You run on a platform. You support certain ideas. You build a coalition of voters. Now, those voters might not agree with you on a lot of things. I mean, let's look at the reverse when I look at who I support. Even the people I agree with most, I'll only agree with say, 70-80% of the time. That's your Andrew Yangs, and your Bernie Sanderses, etc. By the time you get to establishment democrats, you're talking 40-50% of the time. Republicans? Eh, like 10-20% of the time at most normally.
Politicians have their views, and voters have their views. If a white supremacist wants to vote for someone who they agree with on a few core issues, say, UBI, or ranked choice voting, I don't see a particular issue with that. I mean, isn't it better to maybe try to draw them away from white supremacist political campaigns like say, Donald Trump, and neutralize the impact of their harmful views by getting them supporting candidates who aren't white supremacists? I mean, that's kind of how we have been able to suppress a lot of these harmful views over the past 75 or so years. People don't like to talk about it but I mentioned it recently. We've always kind of had a fascist streak in the population in this country. And the way we've been able to neuter it is by pushing the overton window AWAY from it. And getting those white supremacists to vote for politicians who aren't fascists. That's exactly what FDR did. He saw the rise of fascism in Europe and Bolshevism in Russia, and he realized in order to save democracy, he needed to promote a version of liberal democracy that actually worked for the people. And thus, we got the new deal and social democracy.
And while that paradigm wasn't perfect, I mean, FDR's coalition was largely racist, it did stop us from descending into fascism or communism. But then the racists got butthurt when the democrats decided to crack down on segregation and the like, so they joined the republicans, and the republicans wooed them with dog whistle politics. Again, it was kept low key, and other issues were put forward, like anti welfarism. But ultimately, the republican party has, until recently at least, been able to at least keep up the appearance of not being racist and pushing for color blindness. Even Trump tries to use tokenism to give the impression of not being racist.
I mean, as I see it, a lot of people are going to have the views they're going to have. We can try to change peoples' views, i would suggest doing so through reason and evidence, but if we can't, I think the best strategy to deal with white supremacy is distraction. And if we can encourage white supremacists to spend their time campaigning for issues that actually would help America at large, and they're willing to leave those politics at the door in the process, well, I don't see a problem with white supremacists supporting yang. Isn't it better that they support forward thinking ideas, rather than trying to promote their crap? Now, if they try to use the party as a springboard for their horrid ideas, yeah no, yang should shut that crap down, and I would too if I were running a campaign, but that isn't really what's happening here.
The left is essentially trying to purity test Yang. As we know, the SJWs are obnoxious in promoting their brand of politics. And they like to shove their ideas down everyone's throats and "cancel" people if they don't submit. And I see that as what's happening here. The left made a big uproar over this, like, well, we don't want THOSE people in the coalition, and if you welcome them, you're bad people.
Okay, fine, cool, you can drive them out of the movement. But where are they gonna go? To their own movement. And what are they gonna base their movement around? White supremacy. And who are they gonna be fighting against? YOU! If you want to concentrate all of the racist people all in one party, so they can create a coalition based around racism, which will just fan the flames of racism and more culture war nonsense, all the SJWs need to do is keep chasing people with any impurity on these issues out of their movement.
And this inflames tensions, causes polarization, and is one of the reasons why politics has such a crapshow in the past 6 years or so. When we ended up with Hillary vs Trump, we ended up in the worst timeline imaginable. We ended up with a worthless milquetoast centrist dem obsessed with social issues, and we ended up with an actually popular republican who pandered more openly to "racists" and "deplorables." And this essentially led to the crapshow that we have today. Trump's populism is popular, and even breathed life into a dying GOP. And well, now the democrats look like they're dying as the party seems obsessed with social issues and can't do crap to improve the lives of its citizens in a meaningful way.
And this is actually why i have become a "moderate" forwardist, and have been checking in and out of politics over the more recent years. Because this sucks. Culture wars suck. making the defining issues about race and culture is just so...useless. And everyone as at each others' throats, and honestly, both sides are guilty. I don't like trumpers. But SJWs are pretty much just as toxic and obnoxious these days.
And honestly, I'm sick and tired of how prominent these issues are. I feel like they take over everything and we can't get anything done.
And to get mad in Yang's place, and understanding the frustration he feels, because it is a manufactured controversy, and quite frankly, the left needs to stop witch hunting yang, or anyone else for that matter, who doesn't fully agree with their ideology.
Honestly, we can either continue along the path of culture war BS that will lead to unnecessary polarization over nothing, or, we can address issues, and create coalitions that diminish the impact of harmful ideologies, while moving us in a more positive direction on other stuff.
That said, should we be open to white supremecists voting for someone like yang? Sure, given they leave those politics at the door and don't fan their flames or feed them in some way. I'd rather they vote for forward party principles than white supremacy.
And the same applies to the other side. yang has been careful to avoid giving any power to the culture wars. he seems to understand the issues with them and wants to stay out of them and remain neutral. Which is a good move. but it seems like the left is obsessed with making yang constantly take their side when he just wants to stay out of it. It's kind of pissing me off. Because that's what the left does. They must try to force people to agree with them, and they will castigate anyone who doesn't.
Honestly, this strategy is one of the reasons why the internal politics of the left is such a crapshow. I really do feel like sometimes it's either wokeism or social democracy. The left will explicitly push away socially conservative but economically progressive independents because they don't want THOSE people in their party. And as someone who is more moderate on the social and more left on the economics, I feel like they don't even want me. They've basically written people like me off. I'm one of those central Pennsylvanian dumb####s they don't want in the party, and they're ignoring, in order to bring in more moderate suburbanites who live in near Philly.
But, what's in most central Pennsylvanian cities? Lots of poverty. Lots of crime. Lack of jobs. They're exactly the normal people Yang tries to appeal to. Except, you know, he treats us like humans and tries to solve our issues rather than purity testing for woke ideology.
Honestly, it's a crapshow. This shouldn't even be an issue, and bravo for Yang finally lashing out at these guys. They need to shut up already. We got other issues to worry about and quite frankly they're a lot more important than culture war nonsense.
Yang gets it right. He's being neutral on the cultural stuff. He's focusing on the issues that he finds most important. He's trying to be open to everyone and avoid controversy. But then you got some people who try to force him to take a side. it's really kind of sickening.
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