Reacting to the WaPo article: are millennial leftists aging into right wingers?

 So, we've had some discussion on this previously. I asked if I was getting more conservative, but, I ended up just concluding that I just was never as far left as the current crop of "leftists" defining the left and its agenda. There is some truth to me that in the past 10-15 years, the democratic party has gotten more liberal with some members being socialist. But...let's face it, in the same time frame, the GOP has driven off several cliffs and the car is now bursting into swastika shaped flames of being borderline fascist. 

A washington post article recently also looked at this, and looked at how some millennials are rejecting the democratic party, but because the author seems stuck in the two party duopoly mindset of "if they aren't embracing the democrats they must be getting more conservative", they seemed to miss the mark.

Their core arguments for "millennials aging into right wingers" seems to settle on 4 main arguments surrounding how they see millennials as thinking:

1. The kids today are too self-righteous and judgmental.

2. The Democratic Party is corrupt and uninspiring.

3. Donald Trump wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone said.

4. I miss the good old days.

 Now, to go into each one briefly, here's my overall impression.

1) Seems to be a rejection of SJWs. Not surprising, because large majorities of the population do, but for some reason the democrats let these guys run wild and dominate the conversation on social issues. Rather than leaning into social issues with a calm libertarian mindset of "do what you want, I dont care", lefties have to be obnoxious and self righteous moral policers. I think a lot of people are rejecting that. But that doesn't mean they embrace conservatism.

2) Well, it is. We tried to push for change in the democratic party in 2016 and 2020. Look at how they rejected our efforts. The fact is, the democratic party as basically ignored us, and now talking heads who seem to be paid to NOT understand the problem are like "gee, why does no one like us?" Because you suck, that's why. No one likes biden, or the current brand of neoliberalism. Biden's approval rating is dropping ever lower, and it seems like no one likes him any more except for a small slice of center lefters. I don't think Biden has been a "bad" president, but I don't think he's been good either. Basically, he's Jimmy Carter 2.0, unfairly blamed for our problems, but also not really doing much to fix them. Kyle Kulinski has a good video on that from today.

But, and this is the essential thing to understand...we DO NOT necessarily like trump. While conservatism has gained ground during the trump years due to the democratic party's inability to actually appeal to people and meet them where they are. I'm under the impression we're still a left leaning generation. 

3) Okay hear me out. I've been shifting more and more post 2020 toward Trump being almost as bad as people say he was over January 6th and how he literally mobilized his insane fanbase to commit insurrection, but for the most part....the reason millennials dont think trump is as bad as democrats claim he is, is because all the dems have to hold together their party is TRUMP BAD. They just scream about how bad trump is and you're supposed to ignore the crappiness of the democratic party and vote for the dems...to stop trump. This isnt working on millennials so they're once again conflating rejection of "trump bad" with support for trump. Not the correct way to do things.

4) Who doesn't miss "the good old days"? Im of the opinion they largely didnt exist for us though. American capitalism has always been a dumpster fire, and the closest thing to the good old days is BEFORE WE WERE ALIVE. Seriously, our generation is born between 1981 and 1995 or so, and Reagan took over in 1980. While some of us miss the 90s because they were our childhood and we didnt have to worry about bills and crap, politically, they werent that amazing. American capitalism under the guidance of the neolibs was eating away living standards.

What we miss, if anything, was the glory days of our parents who grew up in the 1950s-1970s and had good jobs with good pay and unions. Where one income could feed an entire family, provide a house, go to college, etc. Where income inequality was tamed. But, the democratic party has turned their back on those politics, hence the malaise. And while I am my own finnicky self saying even THAT golden age had issues (and that I believe we need to go in a different direction, than old labor politics), what people really msis is those old labor politics. I talk to people my age. We're increasingly like FDR liberals in my experience. With the most conservative of us often being bleeding heart libertarians who still vote for Biden. Yes, some vote for trump. They're generally white and uneducated, but most people I talk to are just tired of the SJWs running everything. Like, I had a conversation with my best friend last night and he was going on about how he thinks the trans people are faking it. But the dude is like super leftist on economics and posts anti work memes on our private discord chat with each other. I mean, that's where millennials are. We're actually to the left of the democrats, rejecting the party and its BS, but also maybe a tad more socially conservative than the zoomers. 

But, boomer mcgeezax over here at the washington post, is asking, gee, are we becoming more conservative? I mean, yes and no, mostly no. Again, with me, I'm just realizing that I've never been as far left as a lot of modern democrats and leftists. I also reject the more moderate neoliberal branch of the party that represents the yuppie suburbanite class's concerns, and is obsessed over identity. I mean, I'm definitely left leaning. But I'm more LIBERTARIAN on social issues, not wanting to control people like the crazies on the right do, but not really okay with extreme woke politics either. And on economics, I'd describe myself as left of the democrats, but right of the newest crop of "leftists" who seem to push for literal socialism. Anyway, to actually comment on what he says in the article itself.

It came off as a portrait of the millennial generation midlife crisis-ing its way into voting Republican.

 Or maybe we dont like either party and we need a realignment in politics in general. Maybe its the boomers and gen x and silents making the decisions all along, and we just dont like them. Keep in mind I'm middle of the pack age wise for millennials. Born in the late 1980s. In my mid 30s. Some younger, some older. Our politics is more liberal overall. We had zero reason to support the GOP in my cohort. SOme will because brainwashing from parents/society, but most of us have rejected conservatism in the 2000s because of the Bush era and later the tea party. But that doesn't mean the democrats have done a good job either. They've quite frankly failed us. And while in the process they might have lost a few potential voters, I still believe under 40s or so want a different kind of politics not well represented by either party.

Many millennials (of which I am one) are now entering their 40s. It’s a firmly adult phase of life that tends to correlate with a recalibration of priorities, expectations and resentments. A substantial migration of millennial voters from left to right — including a significant chunk of those who might appear the unlikeliest of converts — will surely be one consequence.

Ok, so this person is a millennial, but here's the thing about life. We don't just turn on one day and say, gee, we're gonna move hard right. Some of us have been raising families for years, others are still struggling to find their way in the world. Some have their crap together, some are left behind. 

Every generation of American progressive has seen it happen. Ronald Reagan created “Reagan Democrats” from aging members of the war generation who supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy but grew disillusioned with statism. One faction of boomer leftists aged into neoconservatives as they became more anxious about the Cold War; another made peace with neoliberal economics once they left college and got good jobs in the prosperous 1980s and ’90s.

I mean sure, it happened, especially for boomers. Boomers arose in the golden era of american capitalism, but found the collectivism stifling and the state inefficient at solving problems in its time (and then there was that pesky issue of racism and civil rights), and as boomers aged, they aged to be more conservative. Some have argued they started out more conservative though. There was always a silent majority with hippies always being the vocal minority. Isn't that what Nixon's strategy to win over people to conservatism was about? That these leftists have gone too far and most americans are more moderate and we need to go back to that? And then reagan came along during a time of high inflation and extremely ineffective government (hello, 2022!) and killed the democratic party for a generation.

And as far as the democrats they let themselves be changed too. The establishment fought their voters, and the newer boomer generation of democrats that arose in the 1970s were more educated and thus socially liberal but economically conservative, like the clintons and the like. And as those guys replaced the new deal people as they retired, the party went in the "new democratic" direction in the 90s when the shifts within the democrats hit critical mass and they forced themselves to the right with the "third way" guys. 

But, I'm not sure this works for millenials. Sadly history is repeating itself with the democrats fighting its voters and being out of touch, but at the same time, most of us are poor. We're worse off than our parents, the first generation to be so since before FDR. We're generation screwed. We were raised to follow our dreams, came of age during a financial crisis, and never had a good economy. While some have made it, we're financially in a bad place generally speaking. We're a generation that never made it. That were held back by crisis after crisis in our adult years. And we're angry and want change. I think we want something neither party has actually offered, and I think that politically we just havent had a good job at voting in an organized way to affect politics. We've been consistently outvoted by Boomers and Gen X, who are wealthier and have more conservative attitudes.

Spend any time listening to left-wing millennials on their vast archipelago of blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels and Twitch streams and you’ll hear hints of the terms on which this generation’s shift will unfold; their growing distaste for their own political tribe seems as much a product of cultural alienation as anything.

Many millennial leftists say it openly: They’re apathetic about “social issues.” It’s the economic stuff that really concerns them — and certainly there are plenty of metrics that can be cited to argue millennials face generationally unique economic hardships. But if engagement with this reality rarely rises above a rote denunciation of the capitalist system itself — the continuation of which isn’t exactly an active debate in U.S. politics — then economic malaise probably isn’t going to dictate many votes one way or another.

 Yeah, we're alienated by the political system. Both parties have ignored us and failed us. We want social democracy man. Not third way neoliberalism or fascism, although given the two party system when we're unable to support anything different we might end up voting in weird ways. 

And yeah, as far as "we dont care about social issues", it's because this is all the democratic party offers. They've abandoned us and ignored us on economics at every turn, obsessed with centrism and appeasing old boomers and gen x people who still embrace the old way of politics. And they turn to social issues to try to bully us into voting for them. We're told to check our privilege and vote out of solidarity with black people or something, DUDE WE DON'T CARE, WE JUST WANT AN ECONOMY THAT WORKS.

It's like no one is hearting us and we need to keep screaming it and people like this are just like "but what do they really want?"

WE'RE TELLING YOU, WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN?!

I mean, it's right in front of you. We want economic change. But you keep blowing us off to push identity politics and that nonsense.

Unless, that is, apathy toward social issues is seen as a form of economic justice unto itself.

America’s biggest brands have received a lot of fire from the millennial left in recent years for ostentatious virtue signaling — rainbow Oreos, Black Lives Matter shirts at Walmart, that sort of thing. There is rage at this imagined disingenuousness; corporate America is assumed to be full of a bunch of greedy hypocrites who don’t believe in the causes they’re exploiting to pitch products. Yet at some point this anger becomes indistinguishable from purely aesthetic distaste — instinctive revulsion at a new highly visible evolution in the culture that finds common cause with a populist right equally contemptuous of “woke capital” and the liberal politicians they finance.

 Again, we want change, and this is how we see the parties.

Republicans: no

Democrats: no #BLM

The democrats are a corporate party. And it is profitable for them to play the SJW game to win approval on culture war issues. And the yuppies in suburbia go for it, but meanwhile we're still there, and suffering and just becoming more and more disillusioned. 

We reject this stuff because it's clear the democrats aren't on our side, but end up working with the rich to push social issues while ignoring issues that actually motivate us. We're not becoming more conservative, we're dealigning from both parties. 

Further overlap comes from a shared perception that the social causes of today simply aren’t worth much. Just as some boomers felt their progressive views on civil rights and feminism justified indifference — or hostility — to the gay rights movement that came later, aging millennials who feel they’ve proved themselves supportive of gay rights may find prissy and frivolous the younger generation’s insistence on things such as pronoun introductions and perfectly race- and gender-balanced workplaces. Layer on that most disorienting anxiety of middle-age — not knowing what’s offensive anymore — and you have a generation primed to be at least a little reactionary-curious.

 To be fair, this is what I said by social issues going further left. Around 2016, the dems shifted hard left on social issues and it did create a form of backlash politics that led to the rise of Trump. But ultimately, I think most of us still have similar economic views, we're just fed up with social issues sucking the air out of the room. Because we still have economic concerns that need to be met.

However, a shared loathing of the liberal establishment is probably the right’s most convincing case for leftist conversion.

In the days of Reagan, or even Newt Gingrich, conservative politics was philosophical and policy-driven. Theoretically at least, voters either supported the “Contract with America” or didn’t. Today, however, the Republican Party has abandoned the idea of even offering a platform: You either hate the cringey, crooked lying libs or you don’t. A left that already enjoys dwelling on the misdeeds of the Democratic elite — “denying” Bernie Sanders the presidency and so on — is an open door for conservatives to push. In time, Democrats devolve in the millennial leftist imagination from being “no better” to objectively worse; the GOP rises from “making some good points” to being actively necessary.

Fueled in part by anti-liberal animus, Sanders-to-Trump voters were a well-documented phenomenon that helped Republicans retake the White House in 2016. Many of those voters never came back, and the Sanders coalition became smaller and more ideological in 2020. Yet the Sanders-to-Trump migration continued, with some polls taken before the 2020 vote suggesting the number of converts could be as high as 15 percent. Doubtless this played a role in Trump increasing his share of the millennial vote by 8 percent.

 Eh, yeah, some of that did happen. I've talked to voters like that. I generally dont respect their viewpoints much, but yes, the GOP is a party with no platform that some people support simply to punish the democrats and their obsession over social issues. And I do think that in the process dems have permanently lost some voters due to their decisions. Pursuing centrist neoliberalism combined with wokeism did drive some sanders people to trump. We see this with the jimmy dore type people. It happens. But those guys are generally extreme, and not very smart. But yes, some have backlashed so hard they're now republicans. I'm not sure that they can be brought back or not, but the demograpghics I posted above show that most millennials still lean left. We just dislike the current brand of conservatism as it exists.

Like really, those guys existing is part of the reason I've explicitly shifted toward Yang support. Because the left has gotten so extreme they're at times going full on stupid, and I just don't have a low enough IQ or education level to follow them. But still, will they remain lifelong conservatives? Who the hell knows? I would say if they do, it was the democrats' fault. They had the perfect opportunity in 2016 and they blew it because they were too corporate and too centrist to realize what they had. 

Fast-forward a decade or two and imagine millennials in their 50s and 60s. Do you suppose we’ll find a crop of seniors still interested in being on the bleeding edge of left-wing politics? Or a generation that’s simply settled into a kind of conservatism they would have recognized in their parents and grandparents — a conservatism born from confidence that they did their part when it mattered, but what the nation needs now is a strong Republican government capable of keeping a new, illegitimate progressive movement from ruining the nation with its immature nonsense?

The second scenario strikes me as a matter of “when,” not “if” — and the “when” is already underway.

 Honestly, if this happens, it will be a darned shame. It will mean that the democrats failed to win over this generation, and that they've instead given into reactionary politics. Instead of rising above the duopoly as it exists they became its victims and ran like mice through a maze toward the predetermined point the maze makers intended. It would mean that the elites won over the voters, and the voters allowed themselves to be brainwashed into complacency. it could happen, but if it does, that speaks more to the volumes of how badly the democratic party screwed up than anything else. 

Still, I think there's time to reverse course. In all honesty, I think millennials and zoomers have politics unlike those of the older generations of politics. Hillary, Biden, and Trump, are primarily gen X and boomer candidates. They pushed these guys. Young people like us and gen Z? We were just stuck going along for the ride. We were outnumbered in primaries (or in the GOP's case barely present at all), and the powers that be foisted these candidates onto us. Because they didn't want to give us what we wanted.

The future this author offers is scary. It's one where we just grow to accept the duopoly as it exists. But...I'm not sure that's going to happen. 2024 and 2028 are going to be important elections, and they could go in many different ways. Normally toward the end of a realignment period, there is a period of crisis, and that of flux. We might even see third parties become more common and supported.

HOnestly, I think the rational move right now, is to embrace third parties. To reject both the democrats and the republicans. If we allow ourselves to be lulled into complacency by fear and lesser evilism, a weak and ineffectual corporate democratic party obsessed with social issues and a backlash driven conservative party driving itself toward fascism will be the future. But, it doesn't have to be that way. But in order to derail this future from happening, independents need to do their part to throw their weight around, and push for other alternatives. This is why i supported the greens in 2016 and 2020, I knew there was no good future to come out of supporting the democrats. You just keep voting them and they'll ignore you. But supporting the GOP is just madness to me. 

Anyone backlash driven who wants to take on the whole system, in my opinion, must reject BOTH parties. DON'T support Trump's GOP. But also don't support the democratic party. Reject both. And vote for third parties, and then watch the realignment happen. Millennials regularly say they want a third party...but then they end up voting for the duopoly. Stop doing that. If you don't want this guy's predictions to be the future, you have to organize to derail the whole thing.

I personally support the forward party, but I could see more traditional leftists supporting the peoples' party or the greens. And I could see some on the right supporting the libertarians. Kinda cringey too but hey, given Trump they aren't looking that bad right now.

But yeah. If millennials, and gen Z, want to change things, that's what they have to do. if the politicians dont listen to you, don't vote for the other major party, if you really wanna screw the system up, vote third party. That's way more impactful than "owning the libs" with a Trump vote.

I still think this guy misreads the situation. The problem is the democratic party isn't listening, but the solution isnt supporting republicans. it's supporting neither. Dealign from the two parties, and make the system move toward you. Remember, the politicians are responsible to you. Not the other way around. The parties might scream about how you must vote for them or else, but if both options are terrible, you can't support either of them. If enough people do that, we'll have a realignment.

My reaction to "The Nordic Theory of Everything"

 So I read the Nordic theory of everything by Anu Partanen, and much like the last several books I read, I'm going to respond to it.

Generally speaking, I liked the book. I will say one thing it did make me was depressed. Depressed at how messed up America is. The author grew up in Finland but immigrated to America and ended up seeing both sides of the spectrum. And the big thing that came out for me was how STRESSFUL American life is. How we have no decent safety nets, and an extremely individualistic culture that tends to put everything on the individual in a sink or swim fashion. 

The Nordic theory of everything is really the Nordic theory of love, and how Nords see themselves in relation to each other and society. And honestly? Their views are a lot closer to my indepentarian views than the US is. They desire a society in which people can come together in free association as equals, promoting financially independent individuals by having the state provide the basics in life. From cradle to grave, as you often here it said of Nordic countries, the government takes care of a lot of things for you. Nordic countries provide free and universal childcare, free and universal schooling including college, safety nets to get people into suitable jobs, universal healthcare, and of course, care for the aging. Their relations to their work is also far healthier than America, with little pressure to work long hours, long parental leaves, and long vacations. Most jobs are unionized, and wages are good, and exploitation is low overall. Honestly, it's almost utopian. While Nords tend to grumble about everything, they have the best lives on the planet as it is, and their system works. 

As Anu came to America and had to deal with life here, the stress of everything freaked her out, from having to worry about healthcare, childcare, and saving for childrens' college. The effects on her mental health are again, pronounced. It reminds me of how I feel about living in America as an adult, and how I struggle to handle this stuff myself. Our country is very backwards, and very stressful. We think that living with less government makes us free, but it really doesnt. Our system is extremely backwards and regressive. I think the real lesson is the real free people are in Scandinavia, because they're the ones who have government services to ensure we never have to go without. Yet, we like to gaslight people into thinking they're weak and cant hack "real freedom" if we actually want that stuff. THe toxic positivity of our country's culture is very harmful from a mental health perspective, and honestly, it affects me too, so I have to sympathize with the author here.

Like, I'm gonna be honest, I don't agree TOTALLY with the Nordic theory of everything. Mostly because I take things one step further, and support a UBI and the right to say no. I tend to generally agree with the ideology. Yes, by having the government do things, we can be more free, we can not worry about the basics in life. Many difficult and challenging logistics are taken care of and we dont need to work ourselves to death to survive. And i like the idea of people being independent and not being forced into coercive relationships. But here's the thing. To me work IS a coercive relationship. And the nordic theory of everything still is conditional about working a job and putting in your time. You're not getting this just for existing or being alive. You gotta work and contribute too. And while this model is a step up from America, this is more Bernie Sanders than Andrew yang for me, if that makes sense. Like all of these benefits are taken care of, but you're still expected to work at a job. And while work culture is far less oppressive and there is work life balance, idk, I feel like living in America I've soured on work in general.

I guess a big issue I have with the Nordic theory is I dont think it can be applied super well here. Even if we implemented all of the policy changes, unless the culture changes, it's not going to matter. if anything that's the problem with America in the first place. We were moving in this direction and then people fell for Reaganism because the collectivism was stifling, and we quite frankly have a racial dimension to our politics that ethnically homogenous Scandinavia doesn't have. Like, this stuff requires a collectivist mindset to work, and our country is just too divided. There's too much identity politics, too many sub cultures, and I really don't think that Americans can and will accept the stifling collectivism that is required to make this work.

In some ways my indepentarian mindset actually is kind of like an American approach to the Nordic Theory of Everything, but rather than expecting the culture to dictate the policies, I simply allow my policies to give people the freedom to self determine and then sit back and watch the culture change from there. like in Finland, most jobs are unionized. Here in the US, we undid unionization. Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, union jobs in manufacturing gave way to non union service jobs, and any attempts to unionize are crushed. I honestly think if we just had a UBI or could get that through, it would FORCE changes here, because the people would have the freedom to say no. It would force changes because the people would no longer accept the status quo because they dont have to. I feel like that's the issue with Putnam's upswing too. His model had like decades of cultural shifts eventually translating into policy, and then America regressing back to individualism. I try to harness individualism to give people freedom, and this would force changes that have collective outcomes. While UBI would be incredibly difficult to pass, once it did, I suspect it would stay because like social security no one would wanna touch that stuff. It would basically have a ratchet effect making rollback impossible, because the people would probably riot if they did. Currently, the US is able to avoid having safety nets because the ones that do exist are limited and conditional. They split america into people who benefit from them, and those who dont and largely resent their existence, and we're unable to enact changes as a result. Our discussion involves one side defending flawed safety nets, and one side not doing so.

I know Partanen claimed it's not culture and this could happen here too, but policy, but honestly, i do think to some extent it is culture. Like the education section just seems foreign to me. We have education funded by local governments, some overburdened, some not so much, with wealthy suburbs not wanting their precious tax dollars to go to the unwashed masses who live in the inner cities. We have a very segregated society, racially, culturally, and as long as that exists and there are multiple Americas each with their own special interests, we cant have nice things. Also, living in an inner city. Yeah, like I can see independent students with little oversight working. The crime in my area is insane, and it's mostly teenagers and young adults. Because of the poverty, and the sub cultures that go with it. Again there's a lot of elements of American society that the Nords just don't have to deal with. 

Also, the US is such a large country geographically, with so many different areas, and honestly, i just dont think it's possible to have a system where everyone can get a job, let alone a good job. Our economic model seems to defy the very concept, and resists it at every turn. You raise wages you create inflation or unemployment. You reduce wages and you have more employment, but people cant make ends meet anyway. How is someone in rural south carolina or west virginia or mississippi supposed to benefit if their towns are poor as crap? What about someone in the rust belt like in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan? I mean, honestly, I feel like the author just kind of handwaves away some of the deep economic divisions that exist here. We have cities sometimes where people are extraordinarily wealthy and opportunities abound, and then tons of the country with the opposite, where poverty and joblessness are increasingly a way of life and people struggle to get by. There's a real reason behind my mere laziness why I say "jobs are not the answer". It's because they AREN'T. If you expect everyone to have a good job at a good wage and fair working conditions these days I have a bridge to sell you. Yang is right. Trying to make more jobs for people is like filling a bathtub with a giant hole in it. 

So, idk. I feel like my own ideology is borne out of my uniquely American circumstances, living through the 4th industrial revolution and it wreaking havoc on my community. There's a lot we have to learn from the Nordic model. Universal healthcare, free college, free childcare? BASED! But we also need UBI. And that's one gap that I feel like the Nordic theory has. It's still based on jobism, and we need to move beyond it. My ideology is basically, the Nordic model, but with a UBI. I see it as the next step in our political evolution toward a better world. It's like Nordic Theory +. 

One thing I will say though, and I know this is much to the dismay of the person who recommended me this book, but I will say this just further cemented the idea that "leftism" isnt the answer. I feel like the calls for "leftism", as in "socialism" and other similar ideologies in the US, are borne out of a system that has largely abandoned the economic needs of America. It rings of JFK's quote that when the means for peaceful change become impossible violent revolution becomes inevitable. America is failing its citizens, so some are radicalizing into "socialism" and seeing things in increasingly dogmatic ways, where in 2016 I would agree with these guys on mutual goals surrounding the Bernie Sanders campaign, but now I think these guys are looking increasingly extremist. Look, we don't need to go full socialism to achieve our goals. The Nordic theory demonstrates that. The Fins, who much of the book is about, fought several wars against the USSR to preserve their way of life. They're not fans of literal communism neither. Nor am I. The Nordic model accomplishes all it does under a system of free market capitalism, and my own Yang style human centered capitalism isn't much different. Again, it's just nordic theory with a less job centered focus and more emphasis on UBI. So, honestly, the solutions come from improving capitalism, not overthrowing it. The two party system, however, must be overthrown as it exists in its public form. And it should be done peacefully, through a mass voting effort against it. Join the forward party, people. 

Anyway, that's my opinion on the Nordic theory of everything, I have a lot of positive things to say about the book, but I also have some gentleman's disagreements with it on topics like UBI, the future of work, and whether its changes can apply to the US, which is a much different and more diverse country culturally, ethnically, and geographically. Honestly, I feel like my politics are basically the Nordic theory, but applied to the US's specific problems and needed solutions. There's a lot of similarities in theory, but also a ton of differences. Ultimately, I see a similar divide as the Putnam book between individualism and collectivism here, and the solution isn't one or the other, it's a hybrid of both. The collectivism of the Nordic countries or the past 1950s era of the US is a bit stifling to me. But at the same time, we go WAY too far with individualism, and we implement it in all the wrong ways. We need a theory that reaps the benefits of collectivism, while also reaping the benefits of our individualist culture. And that's why my politics are as they are.

Three major reasons why college should be free

So, to me, free college is a no brainer. I might not push it as hard as much more needed healthcare reform or UBI, but I strongly believe in the concept that college should be free, and by extension, student debt should be forgiven. I would argue my justification for this comes down to three major things.

1) Cost

Free college would be CHEAP. I mean my UBI plan costs just short of $4 trillion a year. Medicare for all would cost $1.75-2 trillion, with a cheaper medicare extra public option costing $280-500 billion or so. Free college for all? Much less, around $80 billion a year according to multiple sources. Even Bernie's plan would cost around that much, discounting his student debt forgiveness plan. With that the cost would be closer to $220 billion. But if we did all of that, no one would have to go to school and leave school with $20,000, $30,000, or even $50,000+ in debt. It's insane we do things this way in this country. We provide K-12 education as a right, what's 4 more years?

2) Equality of opportunity

So a lot of people would argue that paying for free college is stupid because we don't need everyone getting college degrees to get jobs. For many, college is simply about investing in a future work force, and nothing more. Well, here at outofplatoscave2012.blogspot.com, we tend to look at things from a less cynical point of view. Sure, we could argue a huge reason the value of college has gone down, with many people unable to find good jobs out of college, because too many people have a college degree, but so what? The fact is if we truly want to live in a fair and just society, everyone should have the same access to higher education, and be allowed to rise and fall based on their merits. The reason college arguably was such a good payoff in past generations was because college was only accessible to the rich. my boomer parents never went to college, nor did a lot of people in the boomer generation. They couldn't afford it. And many had to take lower paying or physically demanding trades jobs after school to make the bills. College was seen as a privilege afforded to the wealthy class, where rich people went to college, and then went on to get rich people jobs. So when boomers sent my generation to college, they saw it as the key to success. Except it isn't any more. We're churning out tons of people with college degrees, but those degrees are oversaturated and don't provide good jobs. And many of us who went are left saddled with student debt we can't afford to pay off. But let's face it, is the solution to allow college to be only a privilege for the wealthy and well to do again? Well, that's the alternative to having college free for all. If we want a society where everyone has an equal shot to get ahead, college can't be something gated off for only the wealthy. Everyone needs access, and we need a level playing field. Either college is free and everyone can fight over scarce jobs, or college isn't free and only the wealthy can afford it. or we can stick with our current system of pressuring people to go to college, saddling them with student debt, and then wagging our finger at them for daring to go to college and better themselves only to not find jobs that don't exist. Your choice. But I personally believe in equality of opportunity at least. While in my ideal system no one should be forced to work, those who want to should be given all tools needed to succeed.

3) Building a stronger, more educated society

So, there's been a lot of controversies in recent years regarding things like information. Since 2016, and the rise of Trump, it's become scarily apparent that a good half of our society is grossly uneducated. And that gap appears in our politics. Uneducated people tend to drift toward the GOP and are susceptible to misinformation, and educated people drift toward the democratic party. Our politics are based on a class war of sorts as Thomas Frank has pointed out. But, rather than it be the lower class vs the upper class, it's more the educated vs the uneducated, with the GOP essentially being the party of the ignorant masses with Dunning Kruger syndrome. Even Rammstein touched on this with their "Angst" music video, which showed a bunch of people listening to crazy nuts in straight jackets who shouldn't have a platform, but have a platform, and go crazy themselves as a result. 

However, I find the debate on this issue post 2016 to be very unsatisfactory to me. Rather than try to deal with the issue in a way that is respectful to free speech and the free flow of information, we instead insist on talking about censorship. Everything is about reigning in fake news. In talking about how the Russians are propagandizing us. How the stupid masses should be censored for spreading misinformation. And given my own intellectual path, this just rubs me the wrong way. I am, in essence, a child of the internet. A millennial, raised shortly before the take off of the digital world, but who has spent most of my teenage and adult years in it. And for me, the internet has been a liberating force, not one that made me stupider, but one that made me smarter. In the early-mid 2010s, I'd always marvel at how the internet is like the new printing press, spreading information the authoritarian gatekeepers who control institutions like religion and traditional media don't want the masses to have. I mean, ever since I left the "cave" ten years ago, I've always stood on the side of educating people, freedom of thought, etc. And in my opinion, most of the problems with our current society on this issue can be solved with free college. One of the things I learned in college were things like authoritative sources, peer review, how to research things and how to sift through the BS. I learned things like statistics and research methods to understand how science works and why it's reliable, and much of my worldview is based on these things at its core. For me, the problem with America isn't that we have too much information, and that people can say what they want, it's that people are too stupid and uneducated to be able to distinguish between good information and bad information. And rather than educate people so they can figure this out themselves, we insist on censoring people spread bad information. In my opinion, critical thinking classes, including things like research methods and discussion of logical fallacies should be a mandatory part of schooling. We shouldn't tell people what to think mind you. Even though I am biased, i encourage people to reach their own conclusions intellectually. But we should give people the tools to be able to research things themselves. if we did this, we wouldn't have anti vaxxers who don't understand things like statistics. We wouldn't have people who believe the water turns the frogs gay, or that trump rigged the election, or that climate change isn't real, or the earth is 6000 years old. These people would be laughed at and relentlessly mocked for their horrific views. They wouldn't hold any power over it. What we have right now is bordering on an idiocracy, with half the country cheering on a political party of lunatics in order to own the libs and their educations. 

Look, I'm an ex conservative. A huge reason I was able to make that jump was my education. If I had the same mentality I did in high school, I'd SO be a Trumper right now. And that is terrifying to me. But, when you're raised in an environment that doesn't give you access to a proper education, that's what happens. You have a stupid population that falls for authoritarians. And the scary thing about our society is the hordes of uneducated middle America threaten to take us back in time because of it. That's a good half of what's wrong with America at this point. I'm not saying America will be perfect if we only educated people, but it would solve the most egregious problems, and shift the right side of the overton window back to the center and away from fascism. 

Seriously, our democracy is, in my opinion, at stake, because our population is literally too stupid for democracy. That's what electing Trump was about, that's what January 6th was about. We should do something about that. And that something is free college education.

Conclusion

Honestly, free college seems like a good investment to make. it's very cheap, and well within the grasp of our 22 trillion GDP to accomplish. Just think about it, free college for all at the cost of roughly 1/9th of our defense budget! And it would do so much good. It would even the playing field for getting decent jobs. While we wouldn't be able to guarantee good jobs for all, we would at least make the competition for the ones that exist fair, instead of having a de facto caste system in which the advantages of wealth simply reproduced themselves generation to generation. And we would be able to educate the populace to use democracy and free speech responsibly without restricting such things because our population is too dumb for them. People might wonder how the elites would control people if we had college education for all, and you know what? I agree. They shouldn't, and maybe if we had an educated populace our political discussions would involve the best ways to improve this country, instead of one party just savagely exploiting the fact that the other country is full of regressive uneducated people who threaten to undermine the entire thing in their stupidity. Really, free college would solve so many problems in my opinion. Our system is so regressive sometimes. It actually depresses me how much.

Discussing why overturning Roe v. Wade is a bad decision

 So, Roe v. Wade being overturned is a terrible decision. And, we're starting to see why, just looking at how the republicans are salivating to roll back other rights. Mitch McConnell is talking about a nationwide abortion ban. Marsha Blackburn claimed that Griswald v Connecticut is also constitutionally unsound prior to this ruling, which could imply intentions to restrict birth control. Some have feared that Obergefell vs Hodges, which legalizes gay marriage, could also be impacted. This is the big problem with repealing Roe v. Wade. Roe. V. Wade wasn't just a case of judicial activism out of nowhere like the right claims. It was a case that expanded the precedent of other court cases that followed from the right to privacy. It was actually based on Griswald v Connecticut, which ensured access to legal birth control under the same logic. Roe v. Wade was just an expansion of that right. And I got news for you, gay marriage? Also based on similar legal logic.

So if you pull out Roe from this house of cards that so many personal rights and freedoms surrounding sexuality are based upon, the entire thing starts to collapse. Because by establishing overturning Roe as precedent, claiming that previous precedents were wrong, it weakens those precedents in other court cases allowing them to be overturned. This is BAD. Very BAD. This is what the court is doing. It's playing with fire here. And while the right might be okay with that, wanting to go back to the conservative 1950s socially, most people don't want to live like that any more, and that would be horrifically stifling. 

The right loves to claim that the left engages in judicial activism. They think if the founders didn't explicitly intend something or it isn't explicitly mentioned in the constitution, that it shouldn't be recognized legally. That's what "textualism" and "constitutionalism" is about. But that's a horrendously regressive stance, and one that undermines so many personal rights and freedoms that even conservative Americans largely enjoy today. If you overturn Roe, you weaken the others, and allow them to be repealed too. because Roe doesn't exist in a vacuum, it was one domino in a larger row of them that established many of the rights to privacy and freedom that we have today. 

This decision that the court is planning to make is extremely dangerous. And while the right loves to claim that the court is to be above the fray of politics, uh, the court is political. It's true that in the past that they may have been an institution that was apolitical and above the fray, but after the 1960s, after the right started engaging in moral backlash politics against the court for not being uniformly conservative and ruling their way, they started politicizing court rulings, pushing extremist conservative judges like Bork, Scalia, and Thomas. And in the more recent age, they've used their institutional power to delay obama from filling Scalia's seat with a replacement, and then Trump nominated 3 judges of his own. And now they're trying to repeal Roe. This is a political coup. The right rejects sound legal logic regarding Roe and other legal rights because they wanna force their morals on the population, and now that they have the seats, they're going for it.

I know I tend to downplay social issues. I mean, my main dogs in the fight are stuff like economics. UBI, healthcare, free college. But, i feel a need to defend my view on social issues here. I don't care about idpol and all that crap, but generally, I am libertarian. I personally think you should be free to live your life as you want without interference, and I do resent the right trying to impose their religiously inspired morality on us, weakening our rights in the process. That's wrong. And even worse, it's "unAmerican" in my opinion. 

This decision is a travesty.

Why do jobists always insist on watering down UBI? Discussing "What's Wrong With a Free Lunch?" and reciprocity

 So I recently just finished another book, "What's Wrong With a Free Lunch?", which was about Phillippe Van Parijs' "real freedom" argument for UBI, and objections to it. And of course, most objections basically came down to everyone's heads exploding at how he dare suggest that people get a basic income without working for it. Many proposed alternative forms of UBI such as a "participation income" in which the income is tied to at minimum raising kids or volunteer work. But for the most part, people seemed to really be stuck in the old ideological outlook of tying work to income in some ways. I know I'm being a little overly simplistic here, but it did kind of irk me. 

I mean, honestly, I just don't see the problem, outside of people being so indoctrinated into the old ideologies surrounding work that they have had their imagination robbed by them. I get it, most older, established ideologies are based in some ways on work. The right doesn't have an explicit requirement to work for the most part these days, as economically they are akin to "right libertarianism", but without much in the way of a UBI, you basically are forced to participate, and that's where that comes in. Their objection isn't so much people not working, it's expecting people to pay others for not working, believing people are entitled to the fruits of their labor and that any redistribution is wrong. The left tends to actually believe similar things in a sense, particularly the last part. THe labor theory of value requires that people be entitled to the value of what they produce, and their big argument against capitalism is that the owners of the means of production are parasites who steal surplus value from workers. While social programs are guaranteed to those who are sick and unable to work, if you're able bodied, you're required. And of course, you have more liberal and social democratic traditions, which have views based on reciprocity. Behind their generous safety nets is a moral requirement for those who are able to work to contribute, and many of them have their heads explode at the idea that someone dares not work and surfs Malibu or whatever. So they tend to have means tested welfare that separates the deserving from the undeserving. But none of these guys are really anti work in any capacity.

This book seems to mostly focus on critics from the more liberal/social democratic tradition. Most aren't arguing for socialism and siezing the means of production, nor are they arguing for right libertarianism and laissez faire. Most are welfarists, but typically have some sort of objection to a universal basic income with no work requirement at all. 

 Some of this is for pragmatic reasons. They might simply acknowledge that our society is not there yet and we need to compromise. But moral compromise seems dirty to me. Perhaps at the end of the day, to get stuff done, some compromise is necessary. But on a moral basis we should make our arguments as strongly and as clearly as possible, only ceding ground when people are elected and we need to get enough votes to pass something. Liberals seem to have a horrid tendency of pre-compromising before we even get to that negotiation table, almost talking down their supporters for daring being bold optimists, only to further compromise in office, to the point that when it comes to passing anything, they literally can't pass anything of value. This is the folly of the democrats and the Biden administration. And it sickens me and offends my moral sense. No, I'd rather argue for what I want and lose, than argue for what I do want, and end up selling out where my "win" means nothing to me. We need to stop compromising with "the way things are" and advocate for what we want. While we can debate the actual logistical pragmatism of policy, we shouldn't just give up before the fight started.

Ironically, some actually propose their own niche social values in opposing UBI. One argument that was made in the book was that if we have a UBI that gives everyone money as a right of citizenship, then this isn't compatible with our open immigration system. You know what? I recognize this argument, it's valid, and it's a huge reason I'm far more of an economic nationalist than most lefties. A lot of lefties, especially in the US, are pro immigration. They tend to specifically try to pander to immigrant communities for votes, often obnoxiously so, and this is part of their strategy to undermine the economic left. While some on the economic left are also open border, as well as socialist, this doesn't work for me either. The fact is, they're right, an anti work society is a society with relatively closed borders. because open borders and UBI would cause mass migration to the country in question, causing a massive free rider problem. If the grand bargain we have to make with the right to get UBI passed is closed borders and a strict immigration policy, I'm all for it. Build your freaking wall, as long as I can get my UBI, it's a waste of money and a racist eyesore, but I don't care. My motivations here are not based on xenophobia and racism, but on economic sustainability of my preferred programs. I would happily make that trade for those reasons.

But a lot of lefties won't. They will insist I sacrifice my own priorities on my anti work ambitions, but if I dare suggest they axe their pro immigration stance to accomodate my ideas they double down. I've had people calling me selfish and racist for proposing such a compromise before. A lot of liberals are perfectly fine with sacrificing other's values if they don't identify with them, but then when the shoe is on the other foot they act like I'm evil for it. Well, sorry, I'd rather have UBI than open borders. I know a lot of libs will hate me for that, and I've been told as much before, but that's my own stance on that dilemma.

Anyway, this brings me to the core reciprocity question. A lot of liberals believe that reciprocity is essential for the safety net exist. They believe in a government takes care of you, but only if you do your part and work if you're able to mentality. And when UBI is proposed, they constantly insist on watering it down. "Participation income", blah blah blah.

Now, I admit, Van Parijs' ideology on UBI is a little differently than mine as I explicitly support Widerquist's "indepentarian" framework, but I am sympathetic to "real libertarianism" too. But this is where I feel like "real libertarianism" fell apart. I don't believe he offered a strong rebuttal to the recprocity objection. For me, it's about freedom. A freedom from coercion. if you means test or work test UBI, you make the policy worse. You impose more government control over who gets it and when. You exclude people who should get it. You make people fill out forms and jump through hoops to prove their worthiness. You take away their freedom to participate in the market as they want to. Indepentarianism is based on the freedom to say no, the freedom to be left alone. UBI is a compensation for society existing, and coercing people into participation via their propertylessness. UBI is essentially like a form of reparations in this sense. It's a right as a citizen, and it gives everyone the right to participate. 

Some of the fears involving a lack of reciprocity are logical, in the sense that at the end of the day, someone has to make the sausage, someone has to do the work. Yes, they do. But if a UBI is implemented properly, it would be high enough to ensure a basic existence, but low enough to ensure most people would want to work. As long as enough incentive exists to reward people with higher living standards if they work, who cares if everyone gets a minimum? Honestly, I think any practical objections to a UBI on the grounds of reciprocity can be dealt with, if they are not already debunked by the social science on the topic. And even if GDP is a bit lower than it would be without a UBI, as Van Parijs himself pointed out, maybe the freedom that comes with UBI is more important than having a "hyper productive, overworked society". By my calculations we're talking like $60k per capita GDP than $70k. Big deal. You can still live well. We don't need an extra $10k GDP per capita at this point. We need freedom.

As for why people should get money in the first place when others put the effort in? Well, theories of value are subjective. Marxists will claim that capitalists steal surplus value in the first place. And even marxist labor theory of value seems to fall apart under criticism. When you have 50 people working in tandem to produce a product, who deserves what exactly? it's subjective and debatable. And when you start automating jobs, it becomes even more questionable. The fact is, as much as we like to claim people get exactly what they're entitled to in society in correlation with their efforts, this isn't really true, it's never been true, and it's impractical to figure out anyway. While the market gives a nice approach that is largely in line with freedom, it's missing one piece, UBI. Because markets without a UBi are coercive and one sided. 

Honestly, I have nothing against free riders to a large extent. my only issue with immigrant free riders is one of sustainability. But as far as people born in a certain country, if they grow up not wanting to work, and want to get by on a near poverty level UBI, let them. And in the future, if we as a society decide to work less, automate more, and make UBI higher like Van Parijs want, let us. I have no issue with that. None at all whatsoever. 

People are just brainwashed to hate on people who dont suffer for their bread, because we have a society where we're all expected to suffer for theit bread, so we contort ourselves into knots talking about the virtues of work and why it's so necessary, but in reality, I just see all of this as massive indoctrination. 

And I hate having to give these guys an inch on the moral discussion for a UBI. No. I don't believe that people should be forced to participate to get money. I think doing so undermines the simplicity, elegance, and libertarian value of UBI. it cheapens it. Turns it into more welfare. Which might be fine for a lot of liberals and socdems, but I'm more libertarian than that.

Some people said that minus the freedom argument, that UBI just offers nothing you cant accomplish with other, more targetted policies. Maybe you're right. But those targetted policies have costs just for existing. They lose their simplicity. They lead to bureaucracy. They lead to loss of freedom. Maybe on paper you can achieve similar benefits, but simply dealing with the hurdles of welfare is a cost, and simply getting money for nothing is a benefit for UBI.

This is why I lead so hard into the freedom argument for it. I could make any other argument I want. That it could lead to better outcomes, more employment, fewer welfare traps, less poverty, but for me, UBI is unique BECAUSE it provides a level of freedom and security no other safety net can. To me, it doesnt matter how you do "welfare", I mean we've even looked at "social credit" type systems in the UK and the like on this blog. They suck. In part because they're still welfare.

Honestly, the reciprocity people need to just chill out and stop being so controlling already. Whenever I read their arguments, and see them arguing with UBI supporters on reciprocity grounds, and proposing compromises, I just see them wanting to get their authoritarian hooks into a good program and ruin it. They want to control people. They want to be the puppet masters. Dance, puppets, dance. They can't just let people be and leave them alone. They have to make them work their their bread. To put in their suffering for their right to exist. And they tend to dress up their reasoning in obnoxiously self righteous ways, as if they never outgrew that old time protestant work ethic. They need to just get over it already. That's my stance.

Dear pro choicers, please shut up

 Okay, I'm not saying this to be mean, and as I said, I'm fully pro choice myself. But, honestly, watching the left wing backlash to the fall of Roe v Wade is making me cringe. We just discussed "What's the Matter with Kansas" and with that still fresh in my mind, I can't help but notice that many of my pro choice allies are extremely cringe. 

Look, here's the problem with the culture wars in this country. It's all backlash. You understand you're just giving the right ammo right? The right is enjoying the taste of liberal tears right now. You guys are all being so hyperbolic that the right is reveling in the moment. This is mobilizing them.

Thomas Frank talked a lot about backlash politics in his Kansas book. How the right seems motivated by owning the libs. How the pretentiousness and self righteousness of the libs alienates and pisses people off, and some people want nothing more than to see these people cry. And you're giving them exactly what they want. 

Really. It's like the left doesn't know how to do politics. I'm pro choice, and unapologetically so. And I actually have a sick "own the cons" mentality on the subject since I'm an ex conservative and not opposed to fighting fire with fire. I'm the kind of person that given my rammstein obsession will unironically respond to pro lifers being uppity with the praise abort music video. 

But the rest of the left seems to go in a different direction. I'm seeing a lot of identity politics here. Don't people realize that's alienating by now? Jesus. How many elections and moral battles do we have to lose because the left decides to frame things in the worst ways possible?

Most people I see are doing this stupid explicitly gendered stuff that's alienating. Going on about how we need to start regulating male bodies now because they're the source of pregnancy and how men have no right to have an opinion on the subject.

As a man who won't shut up, I agree with you, now please shut up with this crap. All this stuff does is add fuel to the fire. We need to deescalate these stupid culture war spats, not play into the right's hands. 

I defend abortion on the basis of secular politics, science, and sound philosophical considerations about the harm abortion causes and doesn't cause. I support it on the basis of personal freedom. As a childfree person myself, I don't ever want kids. I have skin in this game too, as a man. I am pro choice for primarily libertarian reasons. And that's how you beat the right on the culture war. The SJWs need to shut up already with their stupid identity politics. Do you not understand how much of a turnoff it is? it's a turnoff even to me, and I'm an ex conservative myself. For reference, I'm not above the backlash effect, despite my philosophical ideas. it's why I spend so much time dragging SJWs. I'm alienated, and I philosophically agree with them. That's how alienating they are. 

Also, stop blaming people who refused to support Hillary for this already. As one of those people, you're doing nothing to with me over. Wagging your finger at me and blaming me doesn't solve any of the root problems that caused me to defect from the democrats in the first place. Heck at this point given how short my stint as a "democrat" really is I've spent more of my time on the left arguing with and fighting with democrats, than actually supporting them. How you could turn an ideological convert like me off in one election cycle is just baffling to me. it's like you guys want to lose, or are so out of touch you don't know how to reach people.

But hey, sit on your high horse. Be self righteous. Continue lecturing us about how we need to settle for less and vote for democrats because "privilege". See how well that works again. It didn't work last time, what makes you think it will work this time? Sometimes you need to meet people where they are. And the democrats would do a lot better to drop the pretentiousness, the smug sense of moral superiority, and the identity politics. That just causes the backlash effect. Do you understand? When you talk like that, people WANT TO SEE YOU FAIL. Even me to some extent. Because again, I'm an ex conservative who reformed myself to some form of left wing politics.

And speaking of which, before you say I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face....all you guys really have to do is embrace, UBI, medicare for all or at least a strong public option with automatic enrollment, and free college/student debt forgiveness. Seriously. I only hold out like this because you guys are literally refusing to give me the policies I want, telling me I need to check my privilege and vote for other people over vague social issues, and then get rabid on me when I say no. You work with me, I work with you. You work against me, then much like the conservatives, I kind of low key revel in your failure in a schadenfreude type way. I don't really want to see the left fail ideologically mind you. And I find trumpism and the right to be increasingly scary as well, so I really don't want that either. But that's the thing. i don't want any of this. This political landscape is hell to me. We have a right wing that's scarily right wing, and a left wing that's embroiled mostly in social issues and identity politics and still right wing on stuff I care about more. This is hell. We are in hell. 

You know, I didn't like Yang's "centrist" framing when he formed the forward party, but I've warmed up to it a lot. On culture war issues, his mentality is exactly what we need. Nominally left wing, but doesn't really engage with that stuff, often to the point of alienating the left who insists he bow down to the altar of identity politics and focus more on the threat that is "white supremacy". Uh...maybe that would cease being an issue if the left wasn't so obsessed with idpol. Seriously. 

Yang focuses on economic issues and political reform mostly. He ignores the drama and focuses on pushing UBI, human centered capitalism, and more recently, electoral reform like ranked choice voting. He's focused on actual solutions to America's problems. Not just a circlejerk of who is more moral on social justice issues. 

Be like Yang. I bet he doesn't support the fall of Roe v. Wade either. He's a cultural liberal without any of the pretentiousness or self righteousness. That's how you win on those issues.

Discussing my views on abortion

 I guess now is the best time as any to get into my actual views on abortion.

I'm staunchly pro choice. 100%. Like, pretty much among the most extreme positions that you can take. 

Legally

As far as legal abortion I'm pro until birth. And here's why. While I may have moral misgivings post 24-28 weeks or so, the vast majority of abortions happen prior to 20 weeks, and most that happen after are for reasons associated with the health of the mother or, the fetus itself. After watching conservatives pass laws in the Tea party years that seemed to restrict abortions happening for legitimate reasons like stillborn fetuses, stuff like that, I decided that these guys have no idea what they're doing, and if they can't govern on this issue properly, they shouldn't govern at all. I just don't believe in restricting a woman's right to choose. AT ALL. Hope that late term, they use their powers properly, but to my knowledge, most do.

Morally

Now, as far as my MORAL position. Well, I have to go with the secular worldview here. I don't believe a fetus is inherently life worth protecting. It's life, but it's life in the sense that bacteria or a tumor are technically life. Without a conscious agent to feel pain and suffering, I just don't believe that abortion is wrong. For me, when a baby is conceived, it's a clump of cells. When it plops out on the operating table, there's a "baby". We just have to decide at what point one becomes the other. 

I'm not convinced by stuff like omg, there's a heartbeat or stuff like that. For me, we need to figure out what really separates a baby from a clump of cells. For me, there are three criteria we can use.

1) Viability. Viability is a fetus is able to exist outside of the womb. This essentially being a big line between "fetus" and "baby", as a fetus outside of the body is just a baby. If it can live on its own, then it can be classified as a baby. This is the stance Roe v. Wade used, setting the limit at 20 weeks. If we look at the science, you START having viability at 22 weeks where only 5-6% of fetuses can live outside of the womb, and by 26 weeks we reach 86-89%. The 50% mark is around 24 weeks, and is what I generally use as a guidestick in that sense. 

2) Consciousness. Philosophically, what separates a moral agent that can have harm done to it from a rock is the ability to be conscious and experience things. This is a tricky subject, but the earliest estimates are actually 24-28 weeks, with the development of the thalamo-cortical complex. Without this, if a fetus is aborted, who is harmed? Sure, the fetus, but has the fetus ever experienced life? No. It doesnt even exist from its own perspective. So how is harm really done to it in a way that we should be held morally or legally accountable for it? Some would argue that the babies don't even truly experience consciousness until some time after birth. It's kind of an emerging thing. Given that some societies have even allowed infanticide in the past, I could see arguments for that being legitimate, although I wouldn't advocate for such a thing in our society. 24-28 weeks it is. 

3) Ability to feel pain. This is tricky, but generally speaking the nervous system isn't all set up and ready to go until around 27-30 weeks. While PARTS of it exist before that, it's not all hooked up until around then. 

So what can we deduce from these? Well, we can deduce that abortion prior to 22 weeks is completely a okay in my views. I have zero moral qualms about abortion pre 22 weeks. However, post 27-28 weeks, eh, it gets tricky, doesn't it? If I had to draw the line somewhere it would be 24 weeks. This would be the mark of 50% viability and the very beginning of consciousness, and prior to feeling pain. Of course, I could be convinced to shift my opinion to around as late to 27-28 weeks or as early as 22-23 depending on the criteria I use. 

What about my spiritual views?

So here's the thing about pro lifers. Many of them are religious. Many believe in souls and stuff. I won't say you HAVE to have such a mindset to be a pro lifer, but the secular pro life perspective is in my opinion, very weak. 

And given how I do have spiritual views, how do I see it from that perspective? Well, I tend to believe in reincarnation. From what I've seen reading books related to my specific spiritual perspective, the soul attaches to the fetus some time around the 5-6th month, although it can happen as early as the 4th or as late as the 8th. And if an abortion happens, well, the soul probably knows that's a possibility. So they just end up going back up to heaven and plan another life out. Maybe come back to the same parents later, maybe more on entirely. So my spiritual perspective is also very consistent with my secular ideology on it. Generally speaking, abortion before 20-22 weeks is a okay, 22-28 weeks gets increasingly morally ambiguous, with late term abortion being generally immoral.

How I feel about the right

It shouldn't come as any surprise, but being the libertarian childfree person that I am, I have nothing but disdain for the right for trying to impose their morality on everyone. This is America, a secular country, not a theocracy. And I believe that banning abortion is an egregious overreach of our civil liberties and freedoms. If you don't like abortion, don't get one. I don't want to make any pro lifer against the concept have one. But don't tell me I can't have one (or my girlfriend or whatever) because of your religious morality. 

Even if you try to wrap it up secularly, again, I'm not convinced by the secular pro life position. It seems to just be "but it's a human life" and seems stubbornly simplistic to me. It just doesn't work with my own moral system well. I like to focus on things like consequences, the harm principle, stuff like that. And in my opinion, abortion prior to 22 weeks harms no one. Harm is more subjective 22-28 weeks along, and post 28 weeks a very clear potential for harm is there. 

Conclusion

Honestly, the supreme court and the right wing need to keep their hands off of my abortion rights. This upcoming SCOTUS decision is regressive and sets reproductive rights back by decades. I see no issues with early stage abortion, and am only morally opposed to late stage abortion. 

Legally, i would go all the way to birth. The fact is, even with Roe in place, the far right of this country has proven it can't properly regulate this issue in a way that's fair to the mother and her health and considerations. So they don't deserve any privileges in regulating it at all.

My message to the democrats regarding Roe v Wade

 So, it's come to my attention that the first thought that half the left seems to have in response to the right overturning Roe v Wade is to wag their finger in the left's face and tell them "elections have consequences" and blame us for not voting for democrats.

And like always, I'm going to say "not my problem." Yes, I voted third party in 2016. But I did so to protest a democratic party that decided to ignore the needs of working class voters to appeal to rich suburbanites. Chuck Schumer said, about the democratic strategy in 2016:

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

And then they lost. Yes, elections have consequences. But who is responsible for the result of elections? The party/candidates, or the voters? In my mind, it's the party/candidates. It's up to the candidates to appeal to voters. The voters are consumers, the party are producers. And it has to be this way in a free society. Expecting voters to show up for the party is inherently authoritarian and undermines democracy. The democratic party is effectively anti democratic and wants to hold the country hostage to extract votes from people. Roe v. Wade was a hostage, and now they're executing them. Is this my problem? If you care about democracy, no. 

The democrats are responsible for their own defeats. Since the 1970s, they've pursued upper class suburbanites over the working class, driving both parties to the right economically to the point the working class doesn't even have representation. And when the left wanted things, like $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare, and free college, the democrats said nope, screw you, you get what you get or else. And then they lost. This is on them. 

Elections do have consequences. I lament the repeal of Roe V. Wade. But ultimately, they shouldnt have hold abortion rights hostage to extract votes from their unhappy voters. The democrats could've, you know, supported policies that benefitted us, that we wanted and asked for, but instead, they chose not to. This is on them. Instead of pursuing working class voters like Obama at least tried to do, they decided to appeal to the professional class. Trade votes of people like me for rich people in Philly. Then they blame me for not voting for them. Sorry, but elections have consequences and you miscalculated.

I'm not giving an inch. I am of the genuine belief both parties are trash, and we need a party realignment. This professional class strategy cost the democrats 2000, 2004, 2016, and almost 2020. The only time they actually won was when obama at least pretended to be progressive and there was a recession going on in which the GOP was trying to screw people over. And honestly, after reading both Thomas Frank books, it's quite clear the current coalitions of the two parties are the root cause of all of our problems. We got ignorant working class right wingers being attracted to the right over culture war nonsense, and we got the snarky professional class left and SJWs just stopping anything from getting done over there.

If we want to get Roe v Wade back, we need to deescalate the culture war and stop feeding right wing stereotypes, and we need to actually be a party that does stuff for the working class again. Obama's strategy was onto something. It just needed to be expanded. Do more for working class Americans like universal healthcare, free college, $15 minimum wage, UBI, what have you. I have ideas myself, and I might clash with others, but at least with most of the rest of the left my disagreements are more gentlemen's disagreements than actual hard moral opposition. I might dunk on bernie bros who crap on UBI or push for jobs programs and stuff, but at the end of the day I know those guys would do a lot more good than the neolibs and conservatives would. I'm willing to side with them until we realign the parties and then we can handle our spats over individual policy preferences. 

Ultimately, we need to either take over the democratic party, or split the coalitions in such a way it causes a realignment. The democratic party as it is is just gonna keep losing. Even if they win, they lose, because they don't do anything for anyone. So we just have the right go further right and the left follow them to the new "center". This is ridiculous. Something needs to change.

So SCOTUS is actully doing it (roe v. wade)

 So, it looks like Roe v. Wade is effectively dead. A draft of SCOTUS's opinion on recent abortion cases is coming out and they're finally overturning it. *sigh*, say it with me guys, we are in hell.

Now, I didn't read the whole 98 page opinion but I did read enough to get an idea of it. Essentially, it comes down to textualism. Conservatives, in line with the whole "anti intellectual" tradition discussed on the Kansas book, tend to approach the constitution in the same way. The idea of judicial review, precedent, ti doesn't matter. SCOTUS basically said roe v wade was a mistake, the text of the 14th amendment says nothing about abortion, and threw it out. It was a very bad, and very dumb decision. 

So what does this mean? Well, if you live in a blue state, nothing. If you live in a red state, say goodbye to abortion rights. Purple states like mine are safe for now but the second the GOP controls the government they'll move to pass laws here too. Say it with me, we are in hell.

And before any snarky liberal wants to lecture me for my third party vote, since I've seen this on forums already: screw off. Seriously, read the two Frank books I reviewed. This is why this happened. The right is crazy populist and anti intellectual, and the dems abandon the working class for the professional class, while basically demanding people support them as a lesser evil. Then when that strategy doesn't work, because it almost NEVER does, they blame the voter. Nope, it's all you. If you're gonna blame me, look in the mirror. Your self righteousness is what drove people like me out of the party. You couldn't bend. You couldn't actually appeal to peoples' interests. You had to scream BUT THE COURT and moralize and lecture to us, and you STILL do that. And then you wonder why we're alienated. Seriously, shut up and look in the mirror. YOU are the problem. The dems decided to ignore the white working class for minorities and the professional class. They even had this calculus that for everyone they alienated they'd win over 2 new moderate republicans. Apparently the math worked the other way. Then they have the gall to blame the swing vote.

Look. I'm pro choice. Staunchly so. I supported Roe. I'm childfree myself. I go further with it morally than most people do, including the moralizers who love to lecture others about it. I lament the fall of Roe. But honestly, the rot of the democratic party and the populist outrage of the republicans is what got us here. This has been their dream for decades, and the left, demotivated and deflated due to decades of betrayal, just ended up collapsing. It's not the voters, it's the politicians, it's the culture, it's the democratic party. And unless they shape up, we're just gonna keep losing to the right. Every time. Because the left has no power and is a toothless opposition power as long as it remains in its current form.

We need a party realignment. NOW.

Discussing Musk's overton window meme

 So, it seems like the left has a serious case of Musk derangement syndrome these days. I mean, personally, I have mixed views on the guy, but sometimes politics do make strange bedfellows and I do agree with him at times. I mean, the left is in an uproar about his purchase of twitter, while Musk claims he cares about free speech. I mean, given how crazy the left is on speech these days, I have to agree with him. And then we have him supporting UBI and automation and the like. So, guy is right sometimes. At the same time the dude is an egomaniac billionaire, who tends to be anti union and do other things I don't like, so I'm all over the place with him. But recently, he posted a meme about the overton window, showing the left moving increasingly left over the years and claiming it's moved so far left he's now center right whereas in 2008 he was center left.

Honestly, there's a lot wrong with the meme, but let's focus on what he's right about. I mean, the liberal BASE has shifted left a lot since 2008. 2008 democrats were very moderate, almost so moderate that I could've supported Hillary over McCain despite being a conservative back then. But then Obama got the nomination, I perceived him as being much further left, and backlash effect drove me right that election cycle. 

By 2012, the democrats were still pretty moderate, and I waltzed right in there as a refugee from the tea party. but that's the thing. The dems barely moved left at all. The GOP moved WAY right, as the establishment conservatives were purged post 2008 and the tea party movement took over the party. So that's problem #1. The GOP got more extreme. The democrats didn't. 

As far as how I fit in the 2012 democratic party now, while I get the overall social and foreign policies about right, economics i DID move left. I now support UBI, Medicare for all, free college, stuff like that. I'm fairly progressive. Much more so than old school moderate "new democrats". 

2016, the democratic party doesn't move. And I'm now to it's left and feel like it's betraying its core principles. i didn't quite realize it had abandoned those principles long ago and the centrism wasn't just a political strategy of necessity but one of desire, but yeah. But, the party did move in weird ways. The social justice left, a part of the left previously considered a laughable minority no one took seriously, became ascendant as Hillary Clinton decided to pursue the culture wars against Trump. And this is where we got cancel culture, and the like. When I joined the left in 2012, with the atheist movement, I was pro free speech. it was the right that wanted to censor stuff. But the left started adopting attitudes of bashing the fash, and trying to censor people. They were driven to fear, just like the right, and ended up becoming authoritarian, jsut like the right.

That seemed to be the thing musk was talking about, as his big thing right now is "free speech", and on that specific thing, I agree with him. The left went further left and it alienated people. But the right also went further right. Tea party politics now seem moderate compared to Trumpism. Conservatism, as understood by Thomas Frank, is a cancer that's been growing for a while, and now it's metastasizing in worse and worse forms. Musk's meme ignores these changes. 

And in 2020 and beyond, now the left is more extreme, as in the people. While the moderate wing is still alive and well, progressives have, on the other hand, gotten too extreme for me. There's too much socialism and luddite politics in economics, there's too much social justice BS and calls for censorship and regulation of media, and there's too much anti Americanism in foreign policy. The left is a fun house version of themselves. but at the same time the centrists with power are as worthless as ever. And despite the far left gaining ground, the centrists still control the party. Of the mainstream dems, I feel they moved very far left on SOCIAL issues, some of which was good (2008 dems are to my right on issues like gay marriage for example), but other times not so good (SJWism is cancer). On economics, they're still too centrist. And while I'm not liking the progressives turning into the tea party 2.0 and the kind of fanaticisms they're cultivating, let's face it, they have a point, and the democratic party does need to move left. 

So idk. To me, the meme does make a point about SJWs at least but at the same time it's just wrong. The right has moved WAY right since 2008, and while there are leftists who are WAY to the left of 2008 liberals, the party hasnt really budged much outside of doubling down on social issues. And while that might be what musk is talking about, eh....it's just one issue. And while I would agree with musk on say, free speech over say, the SJWs, all in all it's still ignoring that the right has moved further right than the left has left, outside of a few fringe elements of the left no one takes seriously. 

So yeah, Musk does sound kind of boomery on here. He's still based on UBI and free speech and stuff like that, but eh, I wouldnt describe MYSELF as center right at all. I'm pretty center left on most issues, and my "Musk like" economic politics are still, in my mind, left. 

 I mean tell the left you wanna automate jobs, and give everyone money so they don't have to work any more, they'll call you a communist.

The problem is then the literal communists will call me a right winger because my left wing politics isn't based on "labor". As if those dinosaur politics have a monopoly on "the left". 

I mean that's the thing. When you're somewhere in the middle, the extremes think you're the other extreme. I would say I'm ultimately a sane center leftie these days, but not in the way the neolibs call themselves "center left". I reject "socialism" but adopt class politics and utopian visions of the future. That's still pretty far left. 

But yeah. Musk's meme is silly. 

Discussing What's the Matter with Kansas: We are in hell

 So, I finished "What's the Matter with Kansas" another book by Thomas Frank. And I have to say, my knee jerk reaction? Between the republicans and the democrats, we are in hell. In Listen Liberal, frank talked mostly about the democratic party and the forces that made it as it is today, notably its rejection of the labor movement in favor of professional politics and centrism. What's the matter with Kansas looks at the GOP. And it's not a pretty picture.

According to Frank, the GOP IS essentially the party of the working class and of "normal people", but that in a sense, the whole concept of class is actually missing from the equation. In Frank's eyes, the right is waging a class war on the professional class, and it's mostly over culture. Conservatives see themselves as humble and authentic. They work hard, they go to church, they pay their taxes, and have to put up with dripping condescension from the liberal class on the coasts, who hate them for existing. Now, conservatives don't hate these guys because they're successful, but because they are cultured and snotty and look down their nose at the common man. They put their fork on the left and knife on the right. They think they're so superior, and that we're all living under the thumb of their arbitrary commands and edicts.

He sees the right as engaged in a culture war against this upper class left, and it's a culture war driven by backlash. Liberals say and do stupid things, or want to do things that threaten their way of life, and they react against it, in a perpetual state of outrage. I have to say, much like Listen Liberal, I think he's right about a lot of things, but I also think he's wrong. 

Like one thing that stands out to me is that he doesn't think the right has a coherent ideology. Maybe history has proven him right with the acceptance of Donald Trump and withdrawing further into anti intellectualism (something Frank predicted all the way back in 2004), but as someone who had my political awakening during the 2004 election cycle as a teenager, I really feel like, as someone who was on the inside and a conservative at the time, he missed a lot. 

I mean here's the thing, as an ex conservative, I can honestly say, yeah, he's right. There is a lot of conservative disdain of the left. The concept that the left thinks they're so much better. That conservatives are more humble, god fearing, and moral. But, I'm going to be honest, they DO have a consistent ideology. Something I learned fairly well early on, in my conservatism was actually the importance of ideology and worldviews. So allow me to do a brief taxonomy of my former conservative views here. 

Ultimately, while conservatism has always been a coalition movement based on multiple factions, as I saw it, these factions came together and formed a coherent ideology, where people of these different ideologies all got something out of voting conservative.

For me at least, I think the big underlying principles are ones of "god" and "country". My own conservative worldview always had a religious overtone to it, in which the world was based on biblical principles (according to modern conservatism fundamentalism), and that god and christianity was the most important thing to me. God wanted the world to be a certain way, and it just so happened that society peaked in like, the 1950s. Women had their place in the home, we lived in a very evangelical culture, and our country had always been founded on God and Christianity. The founding fathers, as I understood them, were like prophets. They understood the sinful nature of man so made a conservative government based on democracy and separation of powers in order to control the sins and vices of man. And America was founded on those ideals. All men created equal, the constitution being morally correct. And society reaching its peak with the founding. over the years, any deviation from the founders intentions were bad, and America was built on God, conservatism, "freedom", and capitalism. And America is constantly under assault from the left. Starting in the 1960s those darned liberals went too far and started changing things, like taking God out of schools, and legalizing abortion, and stuff like that. This led to the moral decay of society and increased crime rates from the 60s onward, blah blah blah.

On economics, my views were always weird. While I would describe myself as a Reaganite and a believer in the free market, I was really only trained to hate America from the 1960s onward, meaning I actually did have a more nuanced view of FDR and realized he did "save" capitalism with the new deal and stuff. But I also understood that we werent in the 1930s any more and that government had gotten too big, especially with Johnson. I was especially raised to hate welfare. Welfare for me was something that deserving people couldnt get, and that lazy goodfornothings and immigrants always got. There was always a tinge to racism in how I viewed it, because let's face it, the boomer generation that taught me these thigns hated it for those reasons. it was part of the dog whistle politics of Nixon and Reagan. And while I was never explicitly racist, there were always latent racist undertones in my views that I didn't realize until decades later. 

Still, there were a lot of elements Frank talked about in my views. I was always in an uproar over liberal wars against america, and blah blah blah. And as far as the more anti intellectual things go, here's how I saw it. Liberals were basically "playing God" in my view. While many of them were well intentioned, as I saw it, things like the markets and human nature, were literal forces of nature that are best left alone. Markets and human nature were unchangeable. Humans were evil, and greedy, and needed to be controlled, but mostly through religion. Government efforts to rein in these forces normally did more harm than good. Leftists were seen as "intellectuals" who thought themselves as intelligent, but arrogant. They wanted to make society better, but they did so in ways that didnt work and made things worse. Like, the government might make a program that helps the poor, but it does so in taking from productive people who work, and giving it to those who dont, making them lazy and dependent on government. The real solution was to show tough love, to MAKE them work, and MAKE them be productive, so that they can pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Stuff like that. Regulations just led to less efficiency. Shift burden to customers, etc. And of course, we were still enthralled in the boogeyman that was the USSR. The USSR was what peak liberalism was, a dystopia where people who tried to engineer a better society failed miserably, leading to a dystopia. Liberal efforts to control everything inevitably lead to that kind of society, and that's why we had to fight the liberals. We had to fight for the real america and "freedom". 

Now, much like Frank described in his book, I had a falling out with conservatism. His falling out came in college with him not getting the same opportunities as his richer classmates who were being groomed for republican party positions while his social class ensured he never got anywhere. And as such, he eventually became a democrat and left.

With me, my shift to the left was a bit more gradual and slow. While I was one of these conservative culture warriors around the time he wrote this book, in the later 2000s I went to college and moderated a bit, taking up political science as my major because I thought that that's what "God" wanted. And while I tried to resist changing in college, it was impossible. Because education teaching you things. And challenges your views. So over time my conservative worldview ended up becoming more and more fragmented as more and more holes developed in my worldview. While backlash culture did temporarily shift me back in 2008 to be anti Obama, intellectually I largely compensated by shifting from a religious form of conservatism to a more Ron paul style libertarianism. And after 2010, the tea party horrified me so much that I ended up leaving for good, causing me to become one of those snooty, secular liberals who wanted to give everyone free money (literally). 

I kind of find it interesting how Frank seemed to predict this shift would happen. Frank seemed to have a lot of mention of infighting between moderate establishment republicans and conservative masses. And while the moderates remained in control of the party for a while, eventually the inmates took over the asylum and post 2008 they were purged from the party. This drove more intellectual conservatives out of the party and toward liberalism. And then Trump did the same thing. And of course, even back then, Frank was criticizing the democratic party for playing up stereotypes the right had of the left, being fixated on winning over those moderate conservatives leaving rather than winning the working class back. So he called that one.

 Honestly, reading this in 2022, it seems clear that despite my criticism of Frank on conservatives not having an ideology, his model is proving to be correct. The cons HAVE taken over. The party IS anti intellectual. It IS powered by backlash politics. And the democrats ARE more interested in simply winning over moderate professional class voters than actually taking the dialogue back. 

Honestly, 2016 was the perfect time to bring back working class politics, but the dems have stacked the deck so far against that that their coalition of professional class moderates and minorities is unstoppable at the time, with progressives and people like me (yang gangers) having little chance to make it in a democratic party primary. 

Honestly, we are in hell. The democrats have zero interest in a working class movement to improve peoples' lives, having sold their souls decades ago, and the republicans are basically entralled in this "schwarzen mann" mentality akin to the Angst music video I discussed, with anti intellectual nutjobs leading movements and driving the country off of the cliff. 

While this arrangement is great for the rich (until it tears the fabric of society) apart, it's terrible for anyone who actually wants to improve things for the better. Whether it be Frank's politics or my own. So yeah, I have to recommend this book regardless of my differences with Frank's view and his politics.

On a side note, to discuss my post 2012 politics a bit, it does make sense, given both of Frank's books, why I never got into the democratic party's politics. I am, demographically, one of those working class white guys who was conservative and was at one time, religious and humble and caught up in culture war BS too. And I always had these stereotypes of the left that were broken when I came over in 2012. In 2012, the GOP became rabidly crazy post tea party, while liberals seemed more moderate, cordial, and nothing like what I was raised to believe. yes, they were snarky, and reality did have a liberal bias, but at the same time, I still had that deep seated disdain for elitism. While I would occasionally be elitist, it's ebcause as a political science major i understood experts actually knew what they were talking about, and how they werent all dumb. But, I quickly tried to engineer a new type of liberalism in a few short years to counter the right's perceptions and break the working class free of their perceptions. UBI was based on old school conservative/libertarian principles from the new deal era, when conservatism was moderate. It was an approach to welfare that rebuffed most of my criticisms of it when I was a conservative. It was simple, you couldn't mess it up, and the science showed IT WORKED. Instead, dems seemed to go for these weird fragmented technocratic solutions that didnt work, and just fueled the conservative mentality of government nto working. I also tried to avoid most culture war battles. Id take on the anti intellectualism and the religious crazies on the right, promoting a form of secular intellectualism intended to engineer our societies to be better, but again, I always advocated for what i believed worked. But then in 2016, the dems ruined it with their professional class bend. They instead ignored economic issues, leaned into culture war BS, and alienated the masses. And as such, we are still in hell. With one side actually LIKING trump, and the other being clueless and stuck in their upper class social justice warrior mentalities that just end up inflaming people and driving them to the right. 

Say it with me guys, WE ARE IN HELL. Politically? This is hell. We've been here for a while. I'm just realizing the full implications of this in the past few years, and yeah, we're screwed. We literally need a full on party realignment to get out of this mess. As long as we keep feeding the technocratic democratic party and the anti intellectual GOP and fight mostly culture war nonsense, we are SCREWED. And yeah, that's my take on things.