So, this is probably a long time coming given my trajectory over the past year, but I think that just as I'm done with the democrats, and Bernie Sanders, I'm also done with the "progressive" movement too. This is kind of painful to write, but after reading back the response to Kyle Kulinski's post on doomerism, and dealing with other progressives online recently, I think it's gotten to the point I formally cut ties with them.
The fact is, I just don't fit in the modern progressive movement any more. My ideology runs parallel to theirs, but it's fundamentally different. Before I say anything else, let me just say I feel like I need to do this, mostly because I'm sick and tired of progressives taking pot shots at me, and Andrew Yang, and how they act like it's their way or the highway. If progressives were more open and accommodating to those with differing perspectives, this post would not be necessary. A long standing belief I've had on the progressive movement is that I really believe we have more in common with each other than we don't. But, at the same time, it's become apparent to me, starting from around 2019 when the Yang-Sanders dichotomy started to form, to now, that some serious rifts have been beginning to form. And quite frankly, the progressives are the ones who took the first shot.
Purity testing
A big issue I have with the left as a whole is the purity testing. Now, I admit I'm not innocent in this. heck, the reason Ive been able to remain in the progressive ranks for so long was quite frankly because progressives and I have a common enemy, and that is the democratic establishment. We also have some very similar goals, often supporting things like Medicare for all and free college. Support for those two things are why I tied my wagon to the progressive movement for so long. Because I've been saying, since around 2015 (and I have no changed in this sense), that we need a new new deal. We need to fix the country, and it isn't just a little change we need around the edges. We need major change. And quite frankly, Sanders rose to prominence around that time, and I globbed onto him. But my major change was based on three things. Basic income, medicare for all, and free college. And basic income wasn't even discussed in the mainstream then, so basically I just decided to join up with them for the healthcare and free college and worry about the rest later. But the dems and Hillary pushed back in 2016, and this caused me to ultimately support Bernie and become associated with the progressive movement out of certain priorities.
And a lot of us became paranoid of the democratic establishment, who would use dirty tricks to bully us into supporting them without offering us anything of value in return. But, since then, things have gotten out of hand. When Yang rose to prominence in 2019, I really had to rethink my loyalty to the progressive movement. And while I ultimately did go back to supporting Bernie, if I had to do it again, I probably wouldn't this time. I'll get to that later. But honestly? Yang was not recieved well by progressives. And the core reason was that he was not Bernie. He was a bit more mixed on medicare for all. He didn't support full on free college. He supported UBI and human centered capitalism, but he was fairly moderate on other stuff. This alienated a lot of Bernie people.
But, to some extent, they just didn't understand the brilliance of Yang's ideology, and I did. Yang meant well with his UBI. I could understand why some progressives didn't like it, but their reaction was....less than hoped for. Instead of, like me, saying, okay he has these flaws but this is a good idea, they seemed to come out against UBI in general, arguing Yang was a right winger and a neoliberal shill who wanted to demolish the welfare state (oh what a tragedy that would be assuming we got a UBI out of it /s), and how his plan was evil. Rather than an honest exchange ideas they just instinctively bashed it because it wasn't Bernie and attacked it. As someone who considered myself progressive AND Yang gang, I was baffled by this, and frustrated. UBI is one of the most progressive ideas we could implement. Why were these people against it?! For a while I just didn't get answers for that.
I thought these were just one off wannabe larping socialists and that most progressives liked UBI, but these attacks gotten to me over time. And it wasn't just on this topic I ended up having issues with progressives, it's a lot of them.
I'm kind of moderate on social issues and foreign policy. But if you're not the most extremist leftist on all of these things, you're bad. We've discussed my many issues with the SJW community before. The anti war community is just as bad, how the far left wants to end all wars and pull out of everywhere and they see the US as an evil occupier and blah blah blah. Again, more moderate/reasonable on this. but those philosophical differences matter. And the fact is, the progressives have these long laundry lists of policy positions you're supposed to hold and they scream and get uppity if you don't adopt LITERALLY ALL OF THEM. They have zero tolerance for impurity. I can be purity testy on my top few issues, but then on most I'm willing to compromise and work with others. I focus mostly on economics, and stick to my top issues, but progressives are never satisfied and keep screaming about people over anything. If you are "lukewarm" on black lives matter, you might as well say you're for Hitler. If you support Israel at all like Andrew Yang does, you're bad bad bad. No tolerance or nuance for any difference at all. It gets too much. And I guess that's why the Kyle Kulinski enforcer idea isn't going well with me. He wants to create more flak for impurity and while I understand his frustrations with the progressive movement, it just gets too much for me given I don't align with them on exactly everything.
Differences over policy priorities
Beyond not being enthusiastic over purity testing progressives, I'm starting to realize that I have different policy preferences. I recognized as early as 2019 that we can't have it all. While we can probably spend A LOT more than we do on social spending, we have limits. We have to prioritize what we're for. And the progressive movement has just chosen a different approach to economics.
The fact is, they just genuinely don't support UBI. They say they do, but whenever the subject comes up they reflexively attack it, saying it destroys welfare, and while they theoretically support their super special UBI plan, that plan isn't feasible in practice. We can probably spend an additional, roughly $5 trillion in additional social spending. Bernie's agenda is around $4.4 trillion, consisting of priorities like the green new deal, housing, medicare for all, etc. He supports large expansive programs, but obviously, if you are going to support a UBI, you might have to trim them a bit to make them work. And I spent much of the past year on this blog working out those numbers. And push comes to shove, I WILL compromise on other issues to make UBI work. I even looked at whether I would prefer UBI + moderate ideas or M4A + compromised UBI. I preferred to support UBI. So UBI is my priority #1. But the "progressive" movement just craps on it constantly and it's basically "well if we can fit it in AFTER everything else", and lets face it that after will never come. Because they'd spend tons of money on medicare for all and a green new deal and then turn around and say "UBI? we can't afford that!" And that's because we simply have different priorities. I admit many are overlapping which is why I tended to align with them, but there's some real significant ideological differences driving these differences too.
Differences over ideology
At the end of the day, I just different with the progressives on ideology. Bernie Sanders, in running for president, was a bit of a standard bearer for progressives, and presented a full ideology that his supporters have expanded upon. And that ideology is a lot more like 20th century liberalism a la FDR, combined with some "socialist" influences. As such, preserving existing safety nets, both old and new, is sacrosanct. Sure they want to expand them, even offer universal safety nets in a lot of areas, but they simply don't support a UBI, or at least prioritize it high enough to essentially support it. As such, their approach has many of the trappings of 20th century liberalism I find unattractive. Like supporting bureaucratic safety nets that often aren't universal, and proposing what I amount to band aid fixes.
All in all, all of the fixes, without a UBI as a core program holding everything together, amounts to a bunch of band aids that alleviate symptoms of capitalism, but not causes. It's like having a Thanksgiving dinner of all sides, and no main course. Sure the stuffing is there, and the vegetables, but where's the turkey? Something is just missing to me without a UBI.
Now, the more "socialist" factions kind of act the same way, but they see UBI as a "side dish" so to speak and promote socialism. And I don't find socialism to be worth investing in. Not only does it alienate the American people, but it isn't just some magic wand to wave away every problem. Economic democracy is nice, but market socialism doesn't alleviate poverty in and of itself, or free people from economic coercion. And more hard line socialists seem to want a command economy full of universal basic services, government bureaucracies, and potentially work requirements. So while they want to replace capitalism with their own system, it just isn't appeal to me and I end up coming off as more moderate with my indepentarianism and UBI and wanting to opt out of social systems and free from coerced participation.
But even without that. Social democracy is a step up from neoliberalism or conservatism, but it's only a starting point. We were trending toward that in the 1960s, and some people decided you know what? This isn't good enough, we need a UBI. The fact is, as long as income is tired to work, poverty will always exist. Because being coerced into the labor force is, in my opinion, the root of all evil under capitalism. There will never be enough jobs, businesses will fight like hell to stop them from paying enough, they'll fight like hell to squeeze as much out of their employees as they can, and the regulatory state is slow and limited in how it responds to this. And quite frankly, people shouldn't be forced to participate in the system anyway, and I see trying to do so as de facto slavery. From a secular/state perspective, none of us asked to be born, so why should we be coerced to work in a system that seems to create jobs for its own sake to push us toward excessive levels of wealth we can never enjoy because we're working so hard?
Thats where I differ from social democrats. Social democrats are still believers in work and what essentially amounts to a flawed version of capitalism, they just believe in reforming it a bit more from other liberals. And while those changes are good, implementing too many of them will make implementing a UBI prohibitively expensive, so it's a matter of this. Should we have UBI plus more mild other proposals, or a bunch of more extreme proposals that help but don't solve the core issue?
I've done the philosophical and policy driven work on myself, and I've ultimately chosen the Yang gang route of UBI plus more mild other stuff. I'd prefer left libertarian human centered capitalism over basic social democracy or socialism.
Conclusion
I want to make clear that I still praise progressives for having better ideas than most of the competition and meaning well, but I'm not quite on the same page as them. And given how purity testy these guys are and how ideologically rigid both they are, and I am, I think we're just becoming increasingly incompatible. We're similar, which is why I've supported them up to now. But the differences are coming to a head with Yang establishing the forward party and virtually every progressive im talking to repeating the same crap about UBI being bad while advocating for welfarism or socialism, and yeah, I'm just done. The fact is, while I'm open to a lot of progressive goals, I'm more willing to compromise on them, and I am less pure than them. As far as they go, they are increasingly hostile to the one goal I absolutely won't compromise on, and yeah. Different ideology, different priorities.
I still respect them, but I'm more a forwardist/yang gang at this point. And the ideological and policy driven work I've shown on this blog over the past year shows. I've clearly gone in that direction, and my politics are far more compatible with yang than the traditional left at this point. This is not to say I agree with yang on everything. Sometimes he is too moderate, and I wish he would adopt more progressive proposals like medicare for all, free college, and climate change legislation. But still, i can live without them, or with compromised versions, if I get UBI. And honestly, that makes my ideal ideology more in line with Yang, than Bernie in the first place. That said I have changed. In 2020, I went for Bernie over Yang, but if I had to make the same decision 1.5-2 years later, i'd go for yang with a smile on my face.
I still might vote for progressives if Yang gang aren't available though. I mean, progressives are still better than neolibs or right wingers. But I have to go my own direction, and I'm drawing the line in the sand for 2024. If you don't support UBI, and someone else runs who does, I'm gonna vote for the UBI guy. Even if the other person literally adopts Bernie's entire platform. It's just what I believe in.
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