So I got to watch her Tucker Carlson interview tonight once it got up on youtube. To discuss what she's saying.
1) She talks about wokeness and how if you don't agree with the democratic agenda on these issues, the left will use all of their power to silence you including working with corporations. I don't think the dems do this as much with silencing people who have anti woke viewpoints, but the left has a problem with this broadly. And this does betray my age. My views are more consistent with pre 2016 liberalism, you know, the ones who were concerned about corporate overreach with freedom of speech with net neutrality. The ones who believed that freedom for everyone regardless of what they said was a general good, because suppressing one person's speech could grow into suppressing all. I can't say I disagree with this point. I dont necessarily think it's fair to blame the democrats since even they kind of triangulate on wokeness in practice, but this is a massive cultural issue the left has developed since the SJWs took over in 2016.
2) Then she calls it an anti christian movement claiming that democrats hate freedom of religion. This is where I roll my eyes and I'm more like "oh god give me a break". Look, the left has historically been the ones FOR freedom of religion. We don't want to persecute people based on religion. It's the right that wants to impose christianity on them while claiming telling them NOT to is an infringement on their freedoms. Remember the kind of mentality we just had with Charles Murray in "In Our Hands". The right wants explicit government intervention out, but they want all of these private organizations to impose their morality on people in an authoritarian manner. And also, on issues like abortion, gay marriage, trans issues, yes, absolutely, the religious right are a bunch of zealots.
Also, as someone who was an atheist in 2016, wanna know what I discovered about the democrats? IT HAS A RELIGION problem. Due to the wokeness crap, and the excessive pandering to POC, they tend to REJECT secularism and atheism. because that's "white" liberalism. And "you see, you white progressives don't understand POC, POC are religious and aren't really big on that gay marriage and abortion stuff and blah blah blah". They literally view the secular wing of the party with hostility. Like we're an inconvenient minority that needs to learn their place. Heck, that's how the dems treat white non SJW progressives in general. This was the big 2016 shift. The shift away from the culture wars being about new atheism vs fundamentalist christianity and toward identity politics vs....white identity politics. And identity politics sucks. Dont care if it's the white (right) wing kind of the insufferable smarm of the SJWs on the left. It's all garbage.
But even so...atheists were for religious liberty. That's the thing. We literally framed all of our arguments from the perspective of freedom. Freedom FROM religion. As in, we dont want these religious authoritarian nutjobs to impose their silly little superstitions on the rest of us. You can have your beliefs. No one wants to stop that. But, you dont get to make laws based on your beliefs, and you dont get to impose those beliefs ON THE REST OF US.
So for gabbard to go on like that, at this point, she's just going full right wing pandering. Sure, she has a point about wokeness. But on this? She has no freaking clue what she's talking about.
3) And finally, her big point seems to be about warmongering and going on about Biden and Ukraine...okay. This is this weird area where the far left and far right start agreeing. Both are noninterventionist to the point of virtual isolationism. And while her anti war stance has been popular among the far left for a while...it also panders to the far right, and here we're having one of THOSE movements where the extremes of both sides start pushing back against the more interventionist center.
And honestly? In this case, she's wrong. While I understand the anti interventionists in the context of say, the Bush years, and pushing back against neoconservatism and this insane idea of invading people to force democracy on them, uh....it's a balance. And brutally honest, I SUPPORT Biden on Ukraine. We should be giving the Ukrainians everything they need to bleed the Ruskies dry. And while these extremists might scream about nuclear war...uh...it's PROBABLY not going to happen. The fact is, this is what dictators do. They get up on stage and they bluster and they make threats, but you know what? It's all an act. No one is stupid enough (hopefully) to actually launch nukes. This is just a repeat of Charlie Wilson's war in the 80s and funding the Mujahideen vs Russia. Except unlike the Mujahideen who later turned on us, the Ukrainians are likely far closer to western values in practice. Seriously, these "anti war" people are just blowhards who are literally advocating for caving to Russia. I know Hillary in her crazy neomccarthyism has implied Gabbard is a Russian stooge before...uh...I wouldn't go that far, but the far left and far right sure as fudge are useful idiots to Russia right now. Maybe there is something to be said about the effectiveness of their "propaganda." I hate going there, but yeah, it's been disturbing seeing how many people are for rolling over Russia. Given I grew up in the shadow of the cold war right after it ended, there was still a very anti Russia mentality in the US in terms of seeing them as the big bad and blah blah blah in our popular culture. I mean, we still grew up watching old 80s movies and a lot of stuff like say, Red Alert or MW2 still portrayed Russia as a potential threat to the US. This isn't how the country once was, in decades past there's no way we'd let Putin get away with this crap. Why the heck are people just saying "not our problem US bad"? Is it fatigue from 20 years of the war on terror making us question our interventionism around the world? I can get that to some extent. But theres a big difference between opposing mundane interventions that we probably shouldn't be doing and basically letting Russia just commit one of the greatest war crimes of the 21st century so far. This is Stalin type BS here.
4) I guess another thing that she mentioned was that you're not in the cool kids club unless you do what she say and she was shut out of stuff. i get that. She showed courage in backing Bernie in 2016, and I do imagine the dems blackballed her for it. She was once the vice chair but she gave up her power and resigned to do the right thing. That I actually respected, and it's why so many lefties respected her in 2020. it's also why the establishment dems hated her. Like really, she got a lot of hatred for a while from the craplibs. And it really was a sign of the schism within the party and the toxic mentality of the establishment. This I do sympathize with. Because I notice the dems are like this too. And I hate them for it. And a lot of liberals have a toxic groupthink problem these days. Again, I joined the democrats because I was a free thinker in 2012. I left christianity, I left conservatism, I wanted a new start with a new ideology. But...the dems really did show their true nature in 2016, and honestly, they lost my respect too.
Conclusion
Eh, I'm 50-50 on this. Honestly, she has points. The democrats have a woke problem and a cancel culture problem. They are very toxic, and they are very group thinky. And if you dont tick all of their boxes, they hate you. I bet a lot of the same democrats who hate tulsi gabbard also hate the likes of me. I've debated them online, and I know on one forum I used to post on and gauged their reaction to this news, they were as toxic as ever in discussing gabbard. Then again, I've also seen them talk crap about me when I came up, so yeah. Establishment dems hate anti establishment progressives...who knew?
BUT...honestly? I think tulsi sold out. She isn't even a liberal any more. Like whatever issues the mainstream libs might have with me, let it be known that despite my hatred of wokeness, I still am pretty liberal overall, and at worst, I'm like center on social issues. I'm not on the right. I just have nuanced perspectives. Tulsi is clearly gunning for a position in the republican party, which is why tucker carlson was talking about using her speech as a purity test for electing republicans. It's cringe. She's basically explicitly courting right wingers, and it's sad. I swear there really is an anti establishment progressive to alt right pipeline out there these days. And that's bad. This is the worst possible realignment we could have and it's why our politics are so haywire. The democrats have gone in precisely the wrong direction and they are repelling people, and many of those people are slowing but surely falling to the right and finding themselves on the other side as alt righters. it's scary to watch. And Gabbard might be one of the most high profile examples of this behavior.
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