So, I've been seeing a lot of posts recently about people who "left the left" and went down whatever rabbit hole that made them join the right, and I just wanted to discuss this briefly.
I have mixed thoughts on this subject. On the one hand, I almost feel like a lot of the breaks I've made with the left since 2020 have made me one of those people. I mean, I keep saying it, the left has changed since I joined it in 2012. But thats the thing, the more I think about it, the more I realize that i havent changed a ton. Maybe I've shifted my emphases a bit, but when I really look back, it wasn't really so much that I left anything, as much as I was never a member by current standards. if anything, it's a lot like reagan and the democratic party, "I didn't leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me." This isn't about the democrats btw, this is actually about "the left". The modern political online left. The bernie coalition, the SJWs, etc.
I have actually had just about the same ideology and worldview I've been building on since 2012. my fundamental convictions have not changed, what has changed is the conditions around me. The fact is, the left has changed. When I joined the left, on social issues it was "we just want people to do whatever they want" with SJWs being a weirdo minority everyone ignored. On foreign policy, it was just....we wanna leave Iraq. We're not the weirdo hippies the right says we are. We just think we shouldnt be involved in wars that serve no strategic purpose. On economics, they largely lived in the shadow of reagan and were desperately trying to prove "were not communists, we just support policies that would help people."
Since then, SJWs took over on social issues, commies have coopted the left on economics, and the anti war left are the same screeching hippies who screamed at my dad when he came home from vietnam. This is a left that is very toxic, very purity testy, very unreasonable, and very alienating. They turn off the normies, what can I say? I never thought I'd be siding with the Biden administration, but here we are.
And thats kind of the thing. As I keep stating lately, at the end of the day I am a liberal, I stand for liberal democratic values, and I just have more left than "third way" dem economic policy positions. Something more akin to FDR's social liberalism but updated for the 21st century. My worldview stems from secular humanism, a far more moderate ideology when applied to politics than marxism or postmodernism.
Heck, I find a lot of the old school new atheists have the same issues with the modern left. Richard Dawkins struggles to fit in. Bill Maher gets raked over hot coals constantly for his takes on his show by the left. Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have takes on the islamic world that I find make a ton of sense when I apply them to the israel situation somewhat, even if I am breaking with israel over them basically just deciding to go openly pro genocide.
The fact is, I never got away from that humanist worldview. it is my gateway to the left. My understanding of the world is through that, and that's why I feel like a stranger these days. Back in the reagan alignment, there was a huge christian vs atheist divide on the internet. it was THE main divider in the culture wars. Now that has shifted to SJWs vs the alt right, and I find myself just despising both sides. My humanist worldview often rubs SJWs the wrong way (as they rub mine the wrong way), while the left's extremeness and purity testing drives a lot of moderates and normies away.
Ya know, I saw a secular talk clip today talking about how bill clinton was frank about his wife's 2016 campaign and said that she couldn't sell...er....sex...."to a troop train." And let's face it, she couldn't. She alienated wide swaths of the country by leaning into the SJW crap, and actually kicked off the new post 2016 culture war. What a lot of people dont understand about the right is a lot of them dont really have genuinely held left wing positions. Sure, a lot do, but I do believe that there is a sizeable minority of the coalition, enough to swing elections, that primarily votes for the right based on the "own the libs" mentality. THey hate how self righteous the left is are right wing just to piss the left off. Because the left is obnoxious, and sanctimonius and it feels good not just to reject their ethical system, but to embrace the opposite out of spite. The problem is this is leading to a weird alt right pipeline where just as I left the right through a rejection of christianity and its underlying worldview and ideology, a lot of ex lefties are "leaving the left" and going alt right. And they think they're just as edgy and intellectual as i did when i left the right. It feels good to reject your previous ideology, and to parade it around like a beat up car that you hate. But....for people to do that and to join the right is...counterproductive. We dont want that. Because the right is psychotic and wrong. While my shift to the left came out of a sincere desire to have a worldview grounded in reality based on reason and evidence and letting the evidence take me where i go, a lot of these pseudo intellectual alt right ex lefties are basically embracing a psychotic ideology based on pseudoscience. They dont have the intellectual grounding that I did when I left the left. back then, "reality had a liberal bias"....and it did. And it still does. The problem is this weird postmodernist left rejects reality, they embrace a worldview that IS based more on their feelings, and people who leave and overcorrect and go to the other extreme. And we instead get people embracing conspiracy nonsense, and jordan peterson-esque pseudo intellectualism, etc. They think theyre cool, and edgy, and that they found the truth, but they just sucked themselves into an alternate reality known as BS mountain. Or another cave so to speak. It's not helpful.
I do blame the modern left for doing this. The "new atheist" left had the right idea for the most part. I aint a new atheist any more, but I will never forget the lessons learned, and their overall worldview is based. All they really wanted was to watch the world learn. They embraced logic, and science, and people like carl sagan and neil degrase tyson. And while yes they can sometimes be a little too dogmatic on the question of god and the supernatural, I cant blame them, if "god" didnt exploit a loophole in my own logic Id still be an atheist too, and feel justified in the decision (note, in the "new atheist" community, most atheists are "agnostic atheists" meaning they would theoretically change their mind if presented with the right evidence, i just ended up finding "the right evidence", even if it is highly anecdotal and personal to the point i cant deny it, but cant prove it to other). But yeah, other than that, good worldview. Theyre wrong (IMO) for the right reasons and i respect that. Id rather someone be wrong for the right reasons than right for the wrong ones.
The problem is, the modern left does not embrace that. They form their own secular religions based on marxist ideologies and its offshoots applied to identity politics. They hold doctrines sacred and rather than debate, most would rather suppress views they dont like. And a lot of people who leave the left, who dont have the experience with the right that I do, nor the intellectual training via college and the new atheist movement, seem to fall for that nonsense, and that's bad. I really wish that the modern left would shut up and go away. Some people say movements like liberalism and new atheism fail because they dont have an ethos that brings people together that drives them. I think thats BS. The problem comes when what was once progressive becomes conservative. Some people cant acknowledge they accomplished the change that they wanted to and have become conservative. I believe all people have that point. Remember what I said the other day, progressives want positive change, conservatives want the status quo, and regressives, those we call "conservative", want to go backwards.
The fact is, the left won the culture war during the obama era. The liberal, secular left, won. Gay marriage was legalized, millennials were leaving conservatism in droves, it looked like conservatism was screwed. And then SJWs came along. They had to move the goalposts, and that drove society crazy and now we got a right wing resurgeance. I dont think the problem is the underlying ideologies of liberalism or secularism, the problem was that people didnt seem satisfied with winning, so they had to change the game. They care more for the strife and the struggle, than they do just living in the moment. When your striving for social justice becomes your life goal, people cant just adapt to mission accomplished. They have to change the game to give themselves purpose again. It's like, once the rock is pushed up the hill, it needs to fall back down so they can push it again.
The stupid thing about all of this is that a core aspect of my own ideology is that i dont need a purpose, nor do i care to have one. If anything, a lack of purpose is true freedom. It means I can do whatever I want, when I want to do it, and thats okay. I dont have to be doing something else, because i dont have to have a goal to strive toward. And if I have a purpose at all, it's to destroy this concept of false purposes so we can be free. No more rocks. No more struggle for its own sake. let's just fricking lay back and enjoy life. Heck, thats what drives my anti work ideology too ironically. The core reason I am anti work is because i believe we have better things to do than to waste our lives on illusory purposes and "callings" suggesting we have to grind in and out for its own sake. Its a rejection of the protestant work ethic. I actually WANT to become conservative. Unlike the people who reject liberalism and secularism because it's not about the winning, it's about the struggle, i actually WANT to win. Because at the end of the day Im a lazy fricker who wants to be left alone. A world in which I become conservative and lose my purpose is the day I can just sit back and relax, and enjoy life.
I also dont think that life as that kind of conservative is also one without strife. When youre conservative, you strive to keep things the same. To defend, to conserve the present value system. So when I win, I will end up inevitably having to remain vigilant against those who want to change things with dangerous ideas, both with people who want WAY too much "progress" (like leftists), but who also want to take things away (like "conservatives", aka regressives).
In some ways im already there. Hence why i defend liberal values from both the right and left while advocating for minor social reforms where progress still needs to be done. On foreign policy issues, im interested in conserving the west being the dominant power on this planet, fearing what a russia or china led world would look like in comparison. On economics, hell yes, im progressive, but unlike the left, who seems too exist in the state of eternal struggle against something and keeps making up new struggles to fight, some of which that make no sense, if my reforms were met, while I might still be mildly progressive, I also would be conservative in defending my preferred changes.
If I have left the left at all, it's not that my values have changed. it is that I realized that there is much about existing secular and liberal society that needs to be protected and preserved from those who want to question such things and undo them. Such as, our constitutional rights. Democracy itself. A live and let live approach to others, etc. Im anchored to my values, one way or another. if society changes, i simply change my orientation relative to the status quo. I think this is what is meant when it is said people who become older become more conservative. Im not sure people themselves change. I suspect it's that society changes and people stay the same. Seems to be whats happening to me. 10 years ago i was viewed as more progressive because relative to the status quo, i was. Now the overton window has shifted way left that im suddenly a miqluetoast centrist in a lot of ways. Even my "new new deal" proposal is lambasted for being too moderate because "its still capitalist" or some crap by some. Heck thats a lot of what drove my schism with the modern left in the first place. Watching these people scream about andrew yang not being a literal socialist. Amazing how i went from being "left of the left" to being maybe center left at most.
But yeah. I know, I know, I've made these posts before. Its not me, it's the world. I actually didnt intend for this to go in this direction, it just kind of did as i thought it through. Anyway i think ill call it there.
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