So...I decided to follow a recent political compass trend and describe my political journey over time with political compass balls. This allowed me to research and categorize my political ideology at various points in my life like I never have before. While most of my journey post 2014 is easy to talk about given how consistent I have been in recent years, my earlier years were always a bit harder to categorize since I constantly remade my conservative ideology before the big shift. This is where I finally start to discuss my political journey on the chart with balls. Here is the chart I will be referring to, if anyone is curious.
2001-2003 (Generic conservatism/neoconservatism): I will largely describe my politics before 2001 as being largely apolitical. I guess I always had a conservative bend. I mean, I was religious and my dad listened to Rush Limbaugh. I would say the first time I ever paid much attention to politics at all was 9/11. 9/11 was an earth shattering event at the time, and it was what pushed me to look into politics more. I would say that between that, and soon entering a fundamentalist Christian school for my high school years, I quickly developed conservative attitudes. Everything in my life was conservative. My parents were conservative, my schools were conservative, my peers were apolitical being young teens but given the environment most of them were conservative too. So as a result I became conservative too. I will say I had neoconservative influences at the time too though, because let's face it, 9/11 happened and we were still in that "America #### yeah" phase of being drunk on wanting revenge. While I later came back down to earth in the later Bush years, in the early Bush years, I was in lockstep with the GOP. And I just got worse as we approached the 2004 election and the democrats started diverging from the right on policy.
2004-2005 (Christian theocracy/conservatism): I wouldn't say I was a literal theocrat, but after reading some homework I had saved on a flash drive from that era recently, yikes, I was awfully close. Basically this is where I got the idea that I should go into politics from. I thought I would be bringing glory to God and that we needed more Christians in politics. All of this is incredibly cringe nowadays, but by this point I was a Rush Limbaugh listening, "Understanding the times" reading Biblical Christian whose trigger issues were abortion, gay marriage, and immigration, and a literal biblical creationist who believed that the world was 6000 years old. I believed that the founders always wanted the nation to be Christian, and that the whole first amendment business was more about not having an official church like England. I also believed that hurricanes were God punishing us for gay people for some weird reason. Made sense at the time, but again, yikes, this whole period was cringe to me.
2006-2007 (Liberal conservatism): As I exited that toxic Christian fundamentalist environment and went to college, I moderated quite a bit. In 2006, the first year I could vote, I supported a combination of democratic and republican policies. learning political science and that discriminating against gay people was probably a bad thing and that maybe the Bible shouldn't be taken literally shifted me to the center hard, and I embraced a kind of liberal conservatism where I could have gone for either party. I just didn't want extremes of either party. I even considered supporting Hillary Clinton over John McCain in 2008, as I kind of realized that the centrist dems did a better job on the hot button issues that influenced my vote at the time, most notably the budget deficit, which exploded under Bush, and getting out of Iraq, which I had come to realize was a massive mistake.
2008-2010 (Libertarian conservatism/right wing populism): However, ultimately, a few things pushed me back toward the right, hard. First, was discovering Ron Paul in late 2007 when the republican debates were being held, and recognizing that the right needed to go back to the basics, and also, the nomination of Barack Obama as the democratic candidate. Obama, at the time, was portrayed as being far more extreme and progressive than Hillary, with the right being shocked into thinking that his election would cause us to descend into socialism. There were a lot of crazy myths going around. That his upbringing with his dad radicalized him. That Reverend Wright radicalized him (remember his "God damn America" speech?). That he wanted to destroy the country and give our wealth to the third world. That universal healthcare would lead to "death panels", it was wild. But I also liked Paul a lot and he shifted my politics a lot, and he seemed to be the answer to the right's excesses during the Bush years, we need real fiscal conservatism, we need less spying and government in peoples' lives, but despite the libertarian vibe, I still had traditional conservative views on stuff like Abortion. So I wasn't really either purely conservative or purely libertarian. I was like a combination of both. And given this was the ideology the tea party, I quickly fell into that movement post 2008. Unlike the democrats, I feel like the GOP was a lot more willing to let the voters take charge. The Bush era neocons were quickly removed from office, and it felt like the whole right tended toward these kinds of politics.
2011 (Liberal conservatism 2.0): But, let's face it, those right wing populist ideas sounded a lot better on the campaign trail and in sound bites than in practice. By 2011, the economic recession and recovery was wearing on us. Despite the rich having more money than ever and making record profits, they were laying people off. As it turns out, when you give rich people money, it doesn't trickle down to the workers, which was the first time I had the realization that yeah maybe josb aren't the answer. But yeah, the right wanted to take away peoples' unemployment checks and give them to people who were claiming record profits and saying it would make more jobs. So at this point I started realizing government had a purpose and perhaps the free market isn't the solution to all problems. That unemployment was still like 9% or something, and my city was even worse (it literally got named the poorest city in the country by some metrics), there weren't any freaking jobs. And of course employers were abusing the situation treating people like garbage. Anyway, while this stuff did eventually radicalize me into the views I have now on jobs and work and safety nets, at the time I was just like "come on have a heart". I totally got the whole concept of wanting to reduce the deficit, but my brother in christ, you (the republicans) wanted to give the rich all of these tax cuts at the expense of safety nets for the rest of us, which were a lifeline at the time. Things weren't much better on social issues. I began realizing being pro life was a mistake and wondering wtf the GOP was thinking passing radical laws with no exceptions to them. I was pro life for elective abortions, but I always recognized some lines should never be crossed. And on the GOP's brinksmanship, suddenly, Obama looked reasonable. He wasn't a radical, he was a moderate. He was compromising and trying to meet the GOP half way. And the GOP wasn't. And then I started looking at the GOP primaries for 2012 which happened that year. And as I analyzed the policies from my political science perspective, they sucked. They all helped rich people at the expense of everyone else. Honestly, as the year went on, I got more and more moderate. I just couldn't stand the tea party, they were too extreme, and terrible on policy. I went back to the kind of 2006-2007 wonkish moderate conservatism I had at the time.
2012-2013 (Social liberalism/Secular Humanism/Keynesianism): But then something kind of snapped toward the end of 2011, and through the first half of 2012. My worldview fell apart. I kind of got to a point with the GOP where I realized that hey, it's not the policies or implementation of the ideas that's the problem, the whole ideology is toxic, this is just the logical outcome of that. And as I lost my faith in Christianity simultaneously as I was making this realization, my politics flipped. It's hard to describe EXACTLY what my politics were in 2012, but some form of liberalism. I went with social liberalism as it was left of third way democratic politics, which never actually appealed to me much and were closer to my actual conservative views, but I also wasn't a social democrat either. Coming off of conservatism I was still leery of government programs and while I accepted some government is good, I didn't really have an idea as to what form of government programs I supported. I kind of realized that a lot of these ideas were flawed and had a lot of unintended consequences. It took me a while to come around on Obamacare for instance and I always accepted it as a flawed approach to healthcare. With welfare I disliked the extreme complexity of programs. I wanted to go in the direction of finding my niche for what would fix the economy, but I really didn't know where to start. I would say my ideology was vaguely FDR or John Stuart Mill or something, but I really am just approximating. I did have a strong secular humanist stance due to leaving religion though. My social ideology was a lot better defined and I was generally progressive for the time, in contrast to the Christian ideology I left. Essentially I became everything that 2004ish me would hate. A secular liberal who supports welfare. Looking at social liberalism it seems to hit all the right notes with where I was thinking at the time. Being pro secularism, utilitarianism, believing in liberty and equality, being pro tech, etc.
2014-2015 (Social Libertarianism/Social Democracy/Social Liberalism): This is an approximate time frame for the sake of simplicity. This period arguably started in 2013 some time and may or may not have ended before 2015, but it was generally post 2012 election, and pre 2016 election, I spent a lot of time fleshing out my ideology. And I essentially got to where I am now, roughly. I came across UBI around this time and was UBI-pilled, after realizing it would solve our current economic woes at the time while fixing whatever flaws I had with welfare. I also became less content with the idea of working and jobs, after being exposed to the job market myself and realizing how screwed everything is. Yeah, we are all wage slaves, and we shouldnt have to count on employers for survival in the first place. It's really screwed up that we do this and we should work on liberating people. I came across real libertarianism and indepentarianism from within the UBI community. And my thinking strongly resembled Yang's thinker later on when he developed human centered capitalism. I never would've considered myself a social libertarian, the term didn't seem to exist until much later with Yang, and probably would've considered myself a form of liberal or even social democrat. Social liberalism still is a good term here though as my social libertarian worldview came out of a social liberal one and reading more into social liberalism you can clearly see how one led to the other, but by 2014, I would say my views were much more developed and defined, and definitely laid the baseline for the views I've had since. This is also where I unknowingly fell out of lockstep with the democratic party. While the moderate liberalism might have been enough for me in 2012, studying the economy and its problems made me realize there's a lot more to what's wrong with society than we talk about, and I adopted much stronger solutions. As I said, UBI, medicare for all, and free college were hallmarks of my ideal platform at this time. And I called this the "new new deal" in honor of FDR's new deal. This also is what led me to supporting Sanders in 2015. Speaking of which...
2016-2018 (Left wing populism/social libertarianism): I didn't really change my views much from 2014, on, but I did try to form a coalition with sanders supporters. The fact is, the democrats pissed me off, and given what I wrote above about the economy having serious problems and needing serious fixes, I decided to hold the democrats' feet to the fire. I identify more as a left wing populist here, because left wing populism is nondescript. It is a coalition of social democrats, socialists, and even some social liberals/libertarians like me. Basically, what united us were that mainstream liberalism wasn't enough and we needed stronger solutions, and given the democrats were unwilling to listen to us, we got angry. I became a bernie or buster around this time, and voted for the green party. I deemphasized UBI realizing it wasn't politically feasible yet (I figured give it 10-20 years but focus on stuff like healthcare and college now), and I tried to work with the progressive movement in general toward mutually beneficial goals. I even started flirting with market socialism in 2018ish. But mostly, post 2016 I kind of checked out of politics for a while for my own sanity.
2019 (Social Libertarianism/Left Wing populism): I would still say I had the same two ideologies, but in 2019, Yang came on the scene, and given he had the politics I wanted in the first place from the Bernie movement, I got on board with that. This represented a relatively chill social libertarian bend to politics in which I kind of "came home" to what I really believed. But, I tried to maintain my support of the Bernie movement as well, believing both were important at defeating the third wayers who seemed more intent on winning 2006-2007 or 2011 me than current me. So the populist aspect never went away, but it took a back seat. This is where I also started having my first rifts with the left wing populist movement in general too. A lot of it came over my Yang support. A lot of these guys started going all in on socialism and screaming that yang was bad because he wasnt a socialist, and I just felt that to be cringe. I've never been big on literal socialism. Market socialism maybe. I listened to enough Richard Wolff through the 2010s to consider his ideas valid, but talking to these guys it seemed like they wanted a command economy. No, guys, no. Anyway, by the end of 2019 I was cooling on Yang due to his distancing from medicare for all and buying into the far left's rhetoric on the climate emergency, so through 2020 I switched my support back to Bernie.
2020 (Left Wing Populism/Social Libertarianism): In 2020 social libertarianism took a back seat with Yang's campaign collapsing and feeling a need to support the Bernie and green movements to counter the new democrats (again). Once again came the return to pissed off me hating the democrats with a passion and voting green to spite them. And I did vote for the greens. And ONLY the greens. Because the dems alienated me so hard by removing Hawkins from the ballot in my state.
2021-2022 (Social Libertarianism): But the alliance with the Bernie Bros didn't last too long and post 2020, I kind of looked around and realized, hey, these guys are NUTS. I realized I was actually politically homeless. I didn't fit into the neoliberal/third way centrist democrats and their ideology, but the left was getting...too far left and too dogmatic. Screaming about literal socialism and through 2021 calling everyone a sell out for simply not believing the same thing they did or being as extreme as them. So I cut ties with them. As 2021 went on, I drew closer to Yang's ideology, as I fleshed out my policy preferences in more detail and started putting a cohesive platform together with actual numbers. I realized I could compromise on healthcare if we had a robust public option. And as you guys know I've studied climate policies, as well as a lot UBI policies. And when Yang started forward, I jumped on board because it seemed to combine my left wing populist vibes with my social libertarian ones, as Yang was both representive of my ideology and against the democratic party too. However, I can no longer say I support Forward due to the merger with the Serve America Movement and Renew America Movement. Those guys are "liberal conservatives", a la me in my moderate right wing phases. I don't really want to align myself with those types as they aren't going to agree with me on policy.
Will left wing populism come back?: It seems pretty clear that for most of the past decade, my primary ideology has been social libertarianism with left wing populist elements. My actual beliefs are social libertarian, but I have left wing populist views too. But, since 2020, that side of my has been more dormant, as the left wing populists in the progressive movement are actually nuts. And I've distanced myself from them significantly since then. But going forward into 2024, will that side of me come back out? Perhaps somewhat. I do have a populist streak and always have had one in retrospect. I just recognize that populism is a balancing act. A little is fine, but a lot can be destructive. We need to advocate for causes and hold elected leaders accountable, and be willing to not vote for them if they don't follow through, but at the same time, too much seems obviously destructive. My experiences with both the tea party and the bernie movement demonstrate that. I definitely don't like my politics snooty and anti populist and think the fact that the democrats try so hard to be anti populist and elitist is a huge reason why they lose elections. They lack popularity, and dont know how to relate to the common man sometimes. But...too much populism is bad because it seems like populism unchecked just creates huge angry mobs who won't know when to quit. The tea party started like that, and look how the GOP had turned for the worst. And the Bernie movement and its fixation with leftism and socialism is also problematic in the same way. Again, it's a balancing act. I see populism as more of a political tool. It's a strategy for advocating for my ideas. But I only use it to advocate for my ideas, I'm not a nutcase.
Given we are about to enter the 2024 election cycle, which I see as kicking off in January 2023, we may see a return to populist me. But I'm a lot more skeptical of populism than I was. Because let's face it, a lot of the "left" is off their rockers these days and they are very intolerant of those who call them out and tell them as such. So I don't know.
Will my core convictions change from here on out? Maybe not. I mean, my actual political views have been remarkably stable since 2014ish, and while I can't say I'll never change, most changes are going to be slow. And most likely a shift in emphasis rather than substance. I doubt I'll become more extreme than I am or have been in the past. I think market socialism is my limit there. Could I become more moderate? Eh, maybe. At this point I'm probably more likely to go back to the center somewhere than further left. Maybe in the future something will convince me to give up my grand economic ambitions and I just become a bog standard social liberal again. Or maybe I might rejoin forward and align with libcons who want to abandon the welfare state for a UBI. Or maybe I'll give up UBI and be a more traditional social democrat. I really doubt I'll change THAT much any time soon, but you never know. Politics is changing, and I can very well change with it.
Through 2024 at least, expect my support of social libertarianism to remain, and maybe expect a return to left wing populism being integrated with it again. Beyond that, who knows, I don't have a crystal ball. Who knows what life will throw at us.
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