So, I feel like this is something important to discuss. Kyle Kulinski today discussed this guy on his youtube channel, but I have a much deeper ideological teardown of this guy I wanna go over. Basically, the dude is another kind of guy who wants to "make america great again", while offering an alternative vision to Trump 2024. Why do I use the MAGA language? Because the dude seems to have the same energy. Go back to some idea of the past in which things were simple, black is black, white is white, right is right, and wrong is wrong. Conservatives live for the cave, they like things simple. And this dude's entire campaign seems to be about promoting a cultural alternative to "wokeism" and restoring America to its roots.
Now, as we discussed in the earlier article, if we look at this through say, Understanding the Times, we can see that conservatism and wokeism are two different ideologies and visions for the country, and the right loves to attack wokeism while promoting their own stuff. They see a vision of America in which things are run awry and all of these crazy progressives are trying to change things, and we need to go back to our roots. What are our roots, according to this guy? Well, in the video Kyle covers, it's stuff like religion, patriotism, and hard work. You know, the usual.
And that really got me thinking, that stuff basically is the essence of plato's cave, and the nonsense that I escaped, and why I named my blog what I did. Basically, conservatives like things simple. They like up to be up, down to be down, and they like life to be simplified to them where some dude just tells them what it is, and they obey. They are often christian, believing in that version of god and religion and whatever authoritarian trappings that has related to things like purpose, morality, etc. They believe in patriotism, basically treating their obsession with "America" as a religion in itself. And of course, they have a work fetish. Work is what defines their life, it is their purpose, it is their calling. They love people to tell them what to think, they live for the illusions, and a world without their religion, obnoxiously religious sense of patriotism, and work scares them. As they see it, without these things, society would fall apart. literally. They think all crime and social dysfunction in the world is due to sinfulness, and if people just kept their head down, obeyed god and the state, and worked hard, that they would live a good life.
It's really sad when you think about it. Again, this guy sees himself as the head of a cultural movement, he's fighting his own culture war here in running his presidential campaign. And he seems to be calling for some sort of conservative revival and rediscovering our cultural roots or whatever.
Now, here's my issue with this. It's perfectly fine, if YOU want to delude yourself with this nonsense. if you wanna believe in an authoritarian concept of god who told you what the world is, and gave you a place in it in the form of your job, go for it, but I dont believe that nonsense. And we all know that these conservatives are ultimately authoritarian. Not only do they need to believe in this nonsense, they gotta force that stuff on you as well.
I admit, the left got off on the wrong foot with wokeism. As I've stated many times on this blog, while they sometimes have okay ideas, they dont speak for me, and my own ethos has a much different ideological bend to it.
I guess, you can say I'm a culture warrior too in this sense. I also fight for my own idea of America's soul, but my vision of the future is one of liberty, and also of increased well being. I combine libertarianism with progressivism. I support ideas like human centered capitalism, based on humanist principles. The idea that economy exists for people, not people for the economy. The idea that work is a means to an end, just a way to get the stuff we need, not an end in itself, or this massive calling that the right and their protestant work ethic nonsense makes it out to be. The idea that there is no purpose but that which we make for ourselves. And I believe every person's relationship with god is personal. They should be able to decide whatever they want, but they have no justification in governing others. The only purpose of government is to prevent harm to others, to improve well being, and to otherwise leave people alone and preserve their liberty.
Yes, I guess that you can say, for all I rip on the culture wars, I'm a culture warrior myself, but my vision is both distinct from the left and the right. The right goes all in with the cave, but the left makes their own cave based on stuff like marxism, and postmodernism, and dont get me wrong, these ideas are nice and have some intellectual validity, but the left does try to make a religion out of this stuff too. And that's my issue both with leftists and with SJWs. At the end of the say, SJWs want to rope me into their little performative virtue signalling nonsense at the expense of my priorities. And the left, well, let's be honest, any time actual marxists get an iota of power it seems to end terribly. Yes they have some valid criticisms against capitalism, but looking at marxist governments, they just ended up creating their own state religion too.
What makes my brand of politics different? I both want to ensure your needs are taken care of, but also to leave you alone. I oppose all kinds of authoritarianism, both left and right, and I try to resolve a lot of common dichotomies that normally plague our society like left vs right, collectivism vs individualism. My ideology breaks these traditional scales. I hit both buttons at once, I want to eat my cake and have it too. I want a system collectivist and left wing enough to ensure everyone is taken care of, but capitalist and libertarian enough to ensure that people maintain their freedom. If anything, my idea actually expands freedom, since right libertarianism or propertarianism leads to wage slavery, and only my ideas give people true freedom and autonomy within the capitalist system. Often times leftists promote their own version of freedom from capitalism and authoritarianism, but at the same time, their ideas are just another cave sometimes.
And yeah. I guess that's where I wanted to go with this. It's not left or right, but forward. Ugh, I wish Yang didn't ruin that quote with his forward party. But yeah, he didn't come up with it, so it's cool I guess (been a UBI slogan since 2014 or earlier). And I guess forward is kinda left given how authoritarian the right is, but not crazy left.
And yeah. We need a whole new ethos for the 21st century. The traditional left-right dichotomy isn't working. We need to get out of whatever culture wars we're stuck in. And we need to move toward having a human centered economy, and human centered society. And yeah, that's where my head is at with 2024. Unfortunately the only candidate who might remotely deliver that is Marianne Willamson and lets face it, she has no chance.
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