Yeah, I'm gonna sound like you guys often do with immigrants. So...I was watching Vaush and he was discussing the Hasan controversy and how these former republican consultant types are joining third way and pushing anti hasan talking points.
And....as someone who is, myself, a former conservative who joined the democratic party, I got a message for those who joined. ADAPT OR GTFO! Seriously. I WAS a "moderate conservative." I know what they're about. I left the GOP in 2011-2012 over a fundamental shift in worldview. Yes, the GOP got too extreme for me even then, HOWEVER, I also realized, because of those extremists that it wasn't just the implementation of those conservative values that was problematic, it was those conservative values in general. The Tea party was just a logical progression of the GOP's political ideas for decades by that point. It was just the final culmination of what those ideas look like in practice. I left because I didn't like what I saw and realized that yeah, conservatism was bad. And as a result, I rebuild my own political ideology from the ground up. I cant say I fully agree with liberals, especially 6th party system third way liberals, or even 5th party system new deal ones. But I'm DEFINITELY in that liberal camp. It's just a different camp.
If anything, I find the third way types to be TOO conservative, and reflecting the article on centrism I recently did, too lacking of their own values. The democratic party's core problem is that it stands for nothing, and is too focused on trying to win moderate conservatives over, even though they're NOT reliable voters. And trust me, I can say that because I was one. I typically still preferred republicans, its just that if the GOP got extreme enough and democrats moderate enough, I MIGHT, MAYBE, vote democrat in some situations. I considered going for Clinton over McCain, for example, but Obama? Nah man, he was a "radical socialist", I wasnt gonna vote for him. But then they didn't need me and they won because they had a massive base of progressive college students and the like who came out en masse to vote for him. Again, during the obama era, democrats didn't NEED me. So why did they start appealing to people like where i WAS in 2016? Because they wanted to, and because thats the direction they wanted to take the party. But I shifted the other way, toward not just liberalism but a form of anti conservative progressivism. I wanted the opposite of the GOP. Not some weird centrist party trying to win over 2008 me, only to fail.
And it incenses me when these 2008 mes come over into the democrats and then tone police us and tell us we should be moderate to appeal to them. No, screw off. Either adapt to the party to some degree and its actual constituents and ideals, or go back to the GOP and clean up the mess you made.
I fully understand that given the fascist takeover of the GOP, why some would wanna flee from that and join democrats. And okay, we can form a temporary alliance to get trump out and keep the country stable for democracy. It's a tactical necessity to stop us from falling into fascism. But when this is over, I want you guys to go back and take back your own party. I dont want you to come in and ruin ours. The prospect of the democrats becomming this bastion of Bush era conservatives who still hold those ideas scares the crap out of me. That's the realignment from hell. That's the one where we lost the ideological high ground to fascists and were stuck in this pattern until the 2050s or 2060s. No. That's a nightmare.
I dont always agree with Hasan. I mean, yeah he said cringey things? Yeah, he said cringey things. I mean I bet if someone scoured this blog for oppo research or my reddit account people would find cringey things i said here/there too. Maybe not as bad as some of the hasan stuff, but still, you'd never hear the end of my worst takes ever. The point is, at the end of the day, am I closer to the progressive lane or the third way one? Definitely progressive, sorry, not sorry. And I dont care WHAT hasan said, it's likely not gonna change that trajectory overall. I aint gonna vote for a fricking republican adjcent moderate because hasan said crappy things, sorry I'm not.
No comments:
Post a Comment