So, yeah. We've discussed this before, I'm probably beating a dead horse, but still discussing the Rammstein issue on forums. And it's still a joke. As time goes on not only are the allegations more or less falling apart, but the narrative is shifting significantly. Apparently the people who believed the original accuser are trying to shift this into a larger culture war arguing about how the concept of Till Lindemann wanting to have sex with fans is inherently bad and young women cant consent and blah blah blah. It's getting ridiculous. These guys literally don't seem to think that women under 30 can properly consent and that men (particularly older men) having sex with them is inherently predatory. They go on and on and on about "power imbalances" and cite weirdo radfems who seem to take things to the point that women can't consent at all in modern society because of some all powerful "patriarchy", and it's getting a bit ridiculous. While the original theories do sometimes have a point, as I always say, if you look hard enough you can see this stuff in everything to the point that it defines your worldview. And if you give these people enough time they take it to the point of absurdity, at which point everyone else needs to push back against them lest we get taken down an avenue of extremism. At some point, we have to just admit we fixed all of the problems the best that we reasonably can, and that further changes are not worth it as the cures are worse than the disease. These guys seem to, in relations to questions of gender relations and sexual consent, want to infantilize women to absurd degrees while forcing men to shoulder absurd responsibilities. One person I argued with tonight LITERALLY argued that men should literally be psychic in knowing a woman's intent before asking her for sex. Like, what the heck? It's crazy.
The fact is, I never came over to the left for THIS nonsense. I came over to oppose fundamentalist christianity and its authoritarianism, in terms of social issues, and to support rational inquiry and reason and evidence over unproven religious dogmas dictating our social policy. My social ideology always had a libertarian bend, based in John Stuart Mill's harm principle, the idea that government's only valid purpose in these affairs is to prevent harm to others. Now, to be fair, the definition of harm is subjective, and the point of what is a good tradeoff and what isn't is somewhat subjective as well, but again, at some point, you just gotta accept that any further changes are not worth the costs, and radfems are WAY past that point. We already have laws protecting young innocent people from predatory older people, they're called age of consent laws, and in the US that age is at 18. European countries sometimes have...creepily lower laws around 14-16, but to be fair, there also is a lot of nuance that often stops people who are say, 40, from praying on people in those age ranges. And there's laws and institutional safeguards against things like teachers having sex with students, and and employers having sex with employees, you know, things where there are LITERAL, TANGIBLE power imbalances. But saying a 25 year old woman can't consent to sex with a 60 year old rock star? That's ridiculous. I'll continue to insist that most of these row 0 girls, if not all of them, are freer than the majority of workers under capitalism. It's ridiculous.
As I said, sane lefties, or maybe we should just call ourselves centrists in the sense that we reject both the religious and conservative authoritarianism of the right and the SJW authoritarianism of the left, need to fight back and take the narratives away from the crazies. We should fight for a bastion of sanity between these extreme and illiberal social forces that want to overly regulate peoples' lives for no good reasons.
Now, TYT. Ana Kasperian is getting completely CRUCIFIED by the online left over her recent takes on trans issues, and her having this weird "I dont know what to call myself" any more moment. People are calling her a grifter, saying she's like dave rubin and that she's "leaving the left", and I'm going to be honest, to some extent I dont agree with her on the actual policies, but i sympathize with her plight, as that's where I'm at too. If the left is dominated by this social justice hive mind, I want nothing to do with that. That doesn't mean that I'm a right winger, it should be noted my politics have not really changed. What changed over the past decade is what being left means. We went from "we just want everyone to be free to live as they want without harming others" to "if you dont agree with us 100% of the time you're bad and we are going to ruin your life."
Ana's opinions on trans issues, are kinda cringe. I admit that. She's gone against some stated positions of mine at times. i think she's right on "inclusive language", I think the "birthing person" nonsense is...well...nonsense. But then she's talking about sympathizing with parents who might not want schools helping them transition behind their back. I kinda sorta understand where ana is coming from here, but at the same time...the reason why schools do this is because parents often wanna force their conservative ways of thinking on their kids. If a teenager gets pregnant, some schools will help them get abortions without parents knowing because if parents knew, they'd probably oppose it and ruin the kid's life. If parents know about their kids sexuality, they might retaliate against the kid as well. And with trans stuff, well, imagine being a liberal teenager who is trans and your bible thumping parents are like "no kid of mine is going to change your gender, the bible says you're a man, so you're gonna stay a man". It's toxic. And we've been dealing with this stuff for decades with stuff like people coming out as gay, or atheists, or seeking abortions, and with trans people, I very much apply the same set of logic and principles to that too, where i focus on the kid's well being over the comfort of conservative parents who wanna force their values on their kids. Ana disagrees. I don't think she's right on that issue. But I do understand where she's coming from. And I don't think she should be canceled for it.
The left needs to have SOME tolerance for disagreement. You cant expect people to agree with you 100% of the time, and TYT (Cenk) released a video recently in relation to this controversy pointing out that if you always agree with others 100% of the time, someone isn't being honest with each other. And I agree. I do think Cenk is, himself, being hypocritical about that, given he's cancelled a lot of partnerships with people (like Kyle Kulinski) over people daring to disagree with him over issues, and I know people have been leaving the TYT network over this too, at great financial cost to themselves, BUT, i do agree with the principle. People are going to disagree at times. And that's fine. And the left needs to learn to deal with it.
I myself might agree with the left socially on a ratio of like 80:20 in terms of positions I'm left vs "right" (or centrist) on. Although given the SJW stuff, maybe it's becoming more like 70:30 or 60:40 these days. But I think mostly in terms of "where do you stand on abortion? gay rights? trans rights? etc. etc. etc.", 80:20 in a broad sense is likely accurate. There are some issues I'm more conservative on, guns, immigration, some identity related issues, but if you actually put me in a room with conservatives, I wouldnt exactly be agreeing with them most of the time either.
Still, am I really having a "leaving the left" moment over this? Eh...yes and no. Yes in the sense that I'm becoming more overtly against the social justice left as time goes on and I'm more openly burning bridges with those kinds of people. But no in the sense that....I'm realizing I was never really one of them. The fact was, in 2012, the social left was much broader than it is today, and the barriers to entry were much lower. Back then, a "centrist" was someone who basically was like, "I'm against abortion personally but i support the right to choose". HRC was a centrist on most social issues. She was methodist and pro life personally but pro choice politically. On issues like homosexuality there were issues with acceptance and you used to have this weird middle ground of "I'm for civil unions but not marriage" and stuff like that. It was more of a spectrum between ACTUAL right wing opinions and left wing opinions. And at the time, I was mostly...left wing. I was not just pro choice, but i changed my entire worldview to be explicitly pro choice both personally AND legally. I was more pro gay and pro trans than most people, i recognized that sometimes the wierdo check your privilege people sometimes had a point, and for a while that used to make you EXTREMELY left wing. But now? It's like, that's just taken for granted, but if you dont just accept all of this social justice dogma and check your privilege, you're a rightoid. It gets too much, man.
I've gone through the same process on economics. The left in 2012 went from people like Andrew yang or Bernie being radicals to them being...surprisingly moderate relative to the weirdo tankies and socialists calling for communism. And I've kind of come to accept that I'm both radical and moderate, I'm left of the liberals and the centrists but right of the explicit socialists. I'm kinda sorta like a socdem but take things in a more libertarian direction due to UBI and human centered capitalism.
Ya know, when i MADE my own iteration of human centered capitalism, I considered it RADICAL at the time. Former conservative me would HATE current me. Because I basically wanna massively redistribute wealth, have universal healthcare, and encourage people not to work for a living. Now I'm considered a craplib because I dont unequivocally believe that communism is the answer to everything.
It's wild, man. I didn't sign up for this. When I left the right and became a "leftie" I did so under the impression that these guys were a strawman that didnt really exist. But now, not only do they exist, but they seem to be gatekeeping everything. It's ridiculous. Now I'M the craplib. Even though I have my own issues with actual moderates and actual craplibs.
It's just sickening, man.
But yeah. If these guys wanna dictate to everyone what left is, then I'm out. Socially, I'm just rebranding as a centrist. And on economics I will maintain my position as a yang styled human centered capitalist and indepentarian/social libertarian who is left of liberal, right of socialist, and more libertarian than social democrats. I mean, that's basically where I am. I'm basically shrodinger's leftist on that one where I'm simultaneously too far left, or too centrist, depending on who you ask, and in a position of superposition until someone forces me to take a side.
And yeah. Again, it's not that I changed much. My politics are LARGELY still consistent since about 2014ish. I might have shifted materially on a handful of positions like say guns (more libertarian), but ultimately, I haven't changed. What's changed is the political battlefield where now I'm reacting to new developments and finding out who I really am. If that makes any sense at all.
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