Why the democratic enthusiasm gap exists

 So...as we saw in my previous article, elections are won by enthusiasm. However, I'd argue that republicans are somewhat less likely to bottom out on enthusiasm and tend to perform relatively strongly regardless, while democrats tend to either perform strongly or bomb. The reasons for this should be obvious if you pay attention to this blog for any length of time, but it's worth building an argument here given the DNC autopsy got me going in this direction.

Basically....it comes down to this. Republicans believe in their own branding, and are super enthusiastic about their party and its goals. The christian nationalists are truly religious psychos who want to see christianity imposed on everyone. The small government people actively want the end of social programs and tax cuts, believing that they'll make more money. On foreign policy, republicans vascillate between not wanting to be involved in war at all (the paleocon position) while simultaneously flipping to X country is the biggest existential threat and we need to blow them up to keep ourselves safe. We saw that recently with iran. Even as trump's policies raise gas prices and cause cascading inflation, the republican base will still insist it's all joe biden's fault, or that Trump is playing 5D chess or something. Admittedly, the GOP is straight up delusional, but the general gist of being a conservative is this. They have goals, the party tangibly works toward those goals, and the base is willing to vote for and fight for those goals. And because the GOP delivers on them, the party will fall on their sword for them. Some of it is delusion. As I said, I woke up, realized what they were selling was crazy, and abandoned them as a party, but those on the inside really believe in that vision of the country, and as we saw with thomas massie, they'll show up to throw out anyone who is seen as standing in the way.

Democrats? it's like we hate ourselves. We have no goals. We're constantly told we can't have goals or "purity test", that we're a "big tent", that we gotta compromise. We lecture voters about how the republicans show up no matter what, and we should too, but without the party being willing to put in the work to do it. They argue with voters and lecture them about what their priorities should be, and try to corral them into voting blue no matter who. And when voters clearly arent interested in what they're selling, they act like passive aggressive little craps going on about how we voted against our interests and dont know what's good for ourselves, and that if only we voted for them this wouldn't be happening.

Admittedly, then the dems lose, the cycle resets, and the republicans are on the clock before the public turns against them and elects democrats again, but they only elect democrats in opposition of republicans. No one really believes in the democrats, their branding, or what they're doing, because they barely have a branding, or goals. For as much as the right claims we want XYZ, and how fired up the republican base is on campaigning against XYZ, when you ask the dems if they want XYZ, they're like 'oh god no, I dont want any of that." I mean, they dont have clear goals and clear priorities. They're rudderless. As such, the second they take power and are forced to govern, not only do they lose independents who flip between the parties, but they tend to lose their own base, including young voters who are typically enthusiastic to vote for them the first time, only to be disappointed they dont govern properly in office. So dems stay home, republicans stay relatively fired up at all times, and republicans end up voting more consistently while dems have wild swings on enthusiasm.

I aint saying republicans dont have enthusiasm issues themselves. 2006/2008? Yeah. Lack of enthusiasm. 2012, lack of enthusiasm. Of course, in those cycles, they campaigned like democrats do, with the party held together by weak opposition to an opposing candidate who is seen as an existential threat, while completely unenthused by their own candidates, because those candidates dont represent their values. Of course, republicans recovered from this relatively quickly. In response to the republican failures of neoconservatism, the tea party was created and injected insane energy into the GOP. The dems just....never had their own tea party. And every time we try to, the establishment seems to fight it harder than they fight the other side. Which really makes you think whose side they're actually on.  This has been the problem with the dems for the past decade, and is the primary lesson any "autopsy" needs to walk away with. Harris lost because she lost millions of voters who voted for Biden. Biden won around 81 million people. harris had 75 million. Where did 6 million people go? Well, some voted for Trump, but a lot of them just stayed home and didnt bother showing up. 

The real question is, how do you get those people to show up for the dems time and time again? Dems think they can lecture us while projecting weird fantasies of conservatives showing up no matter how crappy their candidates are, ignoring that those voters actually are into that crap. Like, just because a candidate seems terrible to us, those guys have such a radically different value system that things that are repulsive to us...are things they like. They love that cruel, crass, orange jack###. LOVE him. Are so enthused by him that they make stores selling his merch, that his supporters by and put on everything. They turn their personal brand into a political statement. Meanwhile we libs think we're better for NOT having that level of enthusiasm when in reality half of us would rather not vote for our milquetoast, crappy candidates at all. 

The fact is, we do politics wrong on a fundamental level. politics is a battle of ideas. We want to win, because we have a vision we want to see implemented. The biggest problem with the dems is a lack of a coherent vision or set of policies that attempt to implement it. They stand for nothing, chastise you if you actually do have those principles, and then insist you vote for substanceless candidates you'd almost kinda wish would lose to the GOP just to teach these idiots the lesson you've been trying to teach them for a decade now. Because after a while of dealing with the centrists, you're literally that spiteful toward them that you stop caring, because neither of them make your life better, and you kinda stop caring who wins. Which is why I hate them so much.

Really, do I really need to put it this plainly? I only vote democrat to stop the encroachment of literal fascism at this point. The standard democrat is so bland and substanceless, and the aggressive bullying campaign to try to force me to vote for them so offputting, that I'd almost rather NOT vote for these guys, just to teach them a lesson. That's where I was in 2016 and 2020. I'm only a bit more sympathetic toward them because I do realize that we need to beat the fascists.

BUT...as I stated in the previous article, if we cant seal the deal, flip the script, and run a change candidate who does realign the parties in a positive way, the republicans are just gonna win again. 2030 is likely to be a red wave. 2032 is a tossup, although historically I'd favor the incumbent there. And we're likely to be back in the same situation by 2032 if we really drop the ball, or 2036 if we dont. If we wanna avoid that fate, the alternative is a transformational FDR style candidate with a strong vision that becomes so popular people will crawl over broken glass to vote for the guy. of course, that actually means the kinds of transformational change the party has been trying to avoid for a good decade now. That said, it's not looking good. But yeah, that's what we really need.  

Summing up every election cycle since 2004 in a nutshell

 So....the DNC autopsy had this section where it started with 2008, and it went through every election cycle and summed it up. I'm gonna do so from my own perspective, and I'll outline why I think things swung a certain way and why it turned out as it did. Im going back to 2004 because it's the first cycle I'd say I was politically aware for, and I still think it's relevant. 

2004- Red Wave

Bush rode a high after 9/11 where the GOP was able to win elections it otherwise would have lost. While the party took power in 2000 and by conventional knowledge I'd expect 2002 to be blue and 2004 to be up for debate, 2002 was deep red because the country unified around Bush. This started to fade by 2004 somewhat, as democrats turned against the Iraq War, but generally speaking, Bush was able to hold his coalition together enough to seal a win.

I dont think Kerry was a compelling candidate either. I mean, he kinda just seemed like another third way centrist and republican enthusiasm just seemed...higher. I was a republican at the time, and while I couldnt vote, I would've done so in Bush's favor, both based on Christian moral values (see: abortion, gay marriage), but also the war in Iraq, as I was inclined to believe democrats just hated America and were unpatriotic at the time. Still, it was a narrow win, showing the dem coalition had some support. But yeah, I would argue there was an enthusiasm gap there in favor of republicans.

2006- Blue Wave

 The democrats won big in 2006 as the country turned hard on Bush and the republicans. The war in iraq dragged on, there were no WMDs and with troop surges and fear of a draft, a lot of Americans wanted out of the war. On the domestic front, Bush dropping the ball on Katrina, and rising gas prices also contributed to poor conservative performance. This is the first election I could vote in and I did a split ticket. Some Rs, some Ds. I tended to view myself as a republican still, but I was moderating somewhat quickly, realizing that the Bush years werent all they were cracked up to be. 

2008- Blue wave

Bush's troubles got even worse. Iraq was massively unpopular. The national debt was a growing concern. The Great Depression devastated him. By this point, I feel like we were experiencing a full on national rejection of Bush's neoconservatism. Obama offered a left wing vision of "hope and change", but his campaign felt vapid AF. Still, didnt stop a lot of super enthusiastic college students from voting for him. Really, the enthusiasm for Obama made him seem very overrated for me. Still, conservative circles felt like a funeral at the time, so...yeah. Like the writing was on the wall, we were screwed, no one really liked McCain. He represented Bush's brand of conservatism that was unpopular. You start seeing faint outlines of what the tea party would become as people wanted a return to a more pure form of conservatism, and I was a bit of a ron paul stan in this era. Ultimately, we fell in line behind McCain on the right, as we were convinced Obama was a massive threat who had to be stopped and he was some raging communist, but ultimately, the enthusiasm for "hope and change" won. Again, I cite an enthusiasm gap here. I really do believe elections are won or lost on enthusiasm.

2010- Red Wave

 Obama's enthusiasm waned as he got into office though. Progressives were unhappy he governed like a moderate. That massive army of college students stayed home. Conservatives were fired up over the national debt, Obamacare, and Obama "ruining" the country in vague ways, and the right distanced itself from neoconservatism and embraced something closer to the libertarian conservatism that I was supportive of at the time. The Ron Paul movement might have failed in a way, but it also gave rise to the tea party, which took the aggressive approach of attacking the democrats on all fronts and stopping progress at all costs. This lack of progress frustrated democrats, and the republicans were still fired up. Again, enthusiasm gap.

2012- Blue Wave

Im speaking for myself, but I feel like people got what they voted for in 2010...and they didnt like it. The agenda was too extreme, and people seeing it in action were like NO, NOT LIKE THIS. For some, it might have been just a disagreement in strategy, for me, I kinda just realized that conservative ideas were actually bad and abandoned the GOP. A lot led to my own decision here. Deconversion from Christianity, the great recession, Bush's foreign policy, and of course, just seeing conservative ideals put into practice. 

Romney was also a weak candidate. He wasnt extreme enough for the tea party, so enthusiasm was low there, and he wasn't resonating during the great recession. As it turns out, trying to slash social programs to give rich people tax cuts in order to "create jobs" isn't popular, and Romney came off as an out of touch rich person who was fronting an extreme tea party agenda behind him. It didn't resonate, and people rallied around Obama and the democrats. 

This election cycle is what defined my own politics more than any other. I shifted left during this cycle, and the politics of it still shape my politics today. Between my secular humanism and anti fundamentalist christianity mindset, to the anti trickle down narratives that culminated in UBI centric human centered capitalism for me. Nowadays, we dont think much about 2012, but I feel like I was at that proper age range where its lessons just...resonated. 

2014 - Red Wave

However, Obama ended up being a lame duck. While he originally came off as the adult in the room and tried compromise with the GOP it very much didn't work. And while that reasonableness gap made me support Obama in 2012, by 2014 it was getting old. by this point, I was entirely polarized against the GOP, and I was really wanting the democrats to fight back. But they didn't. Here in PA, we went blue to get rid of our tea party governor tom corbett, but it seems like nationally, the dems did poorly. It seemed like it was a combination of gerrymandering from the 2011 redistricting combined with low enthusiasm TBQH. And for me, my solution was this: we need to create a blue wave so big it BTFOs the republicans. The democrats need to FIGHT, not just sit back and compromise and play nice. Really, dems arent enthused, and Obama was just this lightning rod that made the remains of what seemed like a dying GOP very polarized against him. But yeah. it did seem like eventually, the GOP coalition would die. The dems just gotta be more assertive, and given the lagging impacts of the recession, they needed to offer change.

2016 - Red Wave

As I stated, this didnt have to be a red wave. I think that the continuation of 2014 dynamics is what killed us. Clinton was very demotivational. No one really liked her. it seemed like she ran on this idea that it was her turn, and her entire campaign was designed to bully people into voting for her. Seriously, I have never seen such an out of touch campaign. Holy crap, as demonstrated in the previous article, she THREW it away! And then trump, he tapped into a lot of latent populist anger in the country over the economy, and that really swung it for him. Yes yes, racism, christian nationalism, and all that crap mattered too. but the dems would face that regardless, the GOP is just a party of voltorbs. A bunch of really pissed off people on the brink of a mass chain reaction of self destructs. But they are(were) a minority, and the dems should easily defeat these people if they embraced a more populist strategy. They didn't. And this is where the root of our current problems lies. This was a realigning cycle. And we got the crap realignment.

2018- Blue Wave

While trump's base remained very loyal to him, the rest of the country quickly turned against the buffoon. Dems went into full TDS mode (IMO), acting like he was 2nd term trump in his first term, and that just served to radicalize the trumpers more IMO as they realized no matter what they did WE'D act like a bunch of angry voltorbs too, and they just took the lesson I was hoping we'd learn and ran with it. Still, the dems were very fired up and independents swung against the trump coalition hard, leading to a comfortable win for the dems.

2020- Blue Wave

While the first mid term after a new president seems to swing hard against said president, the reelection tends to favor the president more weakly. Both bases are fired up, and typically, the status quo is maintained. Still, Trump BARELY won in 2016, and it seemed like a fluke, and Trump massively F-ed up COVID. So people swung against him for Biden. Still, the dems did seem to have some lagging enthusiasm as Biden was just more Hillary, and the win wasnt as strong or decisive as it should have been. While dems had high vote totals, they seemed to vote more against trump than for Biden IMO, and Trump STILL maintained a strong showing, showing that his 2016 base of support wasnt a fluke. And of course, when they lost, Trump screamed it was rigged and his supporters threw a temper tantrum at the capitol. It seems like Trump's biggest legacy up to this point was division. People were polarized either for or against him. But what happens after the dems retake the white house? Well, if it's true that the dems are only winning because of opposition to trump, and not enthusiasm for democrats, you can expect that enthusiasm to dissolve and the republicans to start winning again.

 2022- Red Trickle

And sadly, this is basically what happened. The 2021 local elections were really bad for democrats, and 2022 looked like it was gonna be an apocalpytic red wave. Enthusiasm for democrats was very low, and republicans were still fired up. However, the republicans made one mistake: overturning roe v wade. The second this happened, the polls shifted more toward democrats, and while the republicans still took the house, the democrats minimized the damage and it was a pretty good night for them. So this was a bit of a stay of execution for the democratic party, where they got to walk away with a soft "win." 

2024- Red Wave

However, that surge of adrenaline that spared the democrats in 2022 wore off by 2024. The democrats reached very low enthusiasm levels, while the GOP was fired up. Biden was NEVER gonna win. He was ALWAYS behind. And post debate, the bottom REALLY fell out where the dems were forced to pressure him to drop out and replaced him with Harris. Harris did bring some enthusiasm back in the into the party, but quickly lost it as she ran another centrist tone deaf campaign. While the election was close, Donald Trump prevailed, and the democrats once again suffered from an enthusiasm gap that proved fatal to them.

Future election predictions

2026- Blue wave

2026 is shaping up to be a blue wave as independent voters turn against Trump in a big way, and democratic enthusiasm has recovered as Trump is once again a target of ire by the party. I would expect democrats to win big and republicans to lose big. See: 2006, 2018.

2028- Blue wave

I expect 2028 to be a lot like 2020 or 2008 in that there's high energy for democrats, especially to remove a highly unpopular administration. However, the exact nature of the campaign remains to be seen. Will this simply be another oppositional campaign with little substance behind it, or will the democrats run someone transformational? Where we go from there depends on these answers.

2030- Red wave

With the democrats presumably having a trifecta, they have 2 years to get things done before they lose power. The republicans will likely be fired up against the democrats, and democratic enthusiasm will likely start to wane. If the dems simply run another oppositional campaign and govern from the center again, I expect the dem enthusiasm to drop a lot. If the dems run a more popular agenda, I expect the results to be better for them. Still, I'd give an edge to the republicans. See: 2010, 2022. 

2032- Blue wave

Second term reelections tend to be purpleish in my experience, but I generally favor the incumbent (see: 2004, 2012). 2020 and 2024 flipped because of extreme circumstances in 2020, and both 2016 and 2020 being close elections themselves, meaning Trump/Biden had nowhere to go but down, and couldn't clear the hurdle needed to comfortably win a reelection. Still, Id expect 2028 to be a much more decisive dem election than 2020. And I do think that lingering republican skepticism post trump, the loss of support as the GOP enters a post trump era, and the dems having enough of a buffer to guard against mild to moderate enthusiasm loss will lead to a situation where the democrat narrowly wins here. 

2034- Red wave

I expect a 2006/2014 style red wave here as the president's party experiences a widespread loss of support and enthusiasm while the GOP is fired up against them to happen here.

2036- Red wave

Unless the democrats REALLY knock it out of the park with a highly transformational candidate (see: 1940, 1988), I would expect them to lose to a republican in 2036. At which point, the 8 year cycle reverses itself. 

Past that: 2038- blue wave, 2040- red wave, 2042- blue wave, 2044- blue wave, 2046- red wave, 2048- blue wave, 2050- red wave, 2052- red wave. 

It's possible something anomalous can throw off the cycle, but yeah, politics is pretty cyclical and I would generally expect that overall cycle to continue to happen into the future for the most part.

Conclusions

So what can we conclude?

1) With exceptions, American politics is driven by 8 year cycles in which the public generally votes against the current incumbents. 

2) Underlying the cycle, elections are won or lost by enthusiasm. It's easier for opposition parties to run on high enthusiasm as they can just attack the existing governing party, while incumbent parties need to govern. Most americans seem to vote against current people hoping the other party will be better.

3) This cycle can be disrupted in times of significant division, and where the president's party's enthusiasm really bombs (or was never high to begin with due to a narrow initial win). 

4) Republicans seem to have more consistent enthusiasm. I would credit this due to them having a vision they believe in that they're willing to fight for, as well as an existential fear that the other side fundamentally opposes those values. Democrats, on the other hand, tend to struggle more with enthusiasm, due to the fact that they lack a cohesive brand that cultivates the same level of brand loyalty, and they seem to rely more on sheer opposition to the other side rather than support for their own side. This gives republicans an edge.

5) (Historical observation), during times of party realignments that clearly favor one party, the cycle can be lengthened. The Reagan revolution caused the cycle to last 12 years before Bill Clinton was elected. Franklin Roosevelt led to 20 year period of democratic dominance. Lincoln led to a 16 year period of dominance. Eventually, the ruling coalition will lose enthusiasm, but it can sometimes take much longer during realignment periods, causing the ruling party to control the narrative of politics. Part of the reason the republicans do so well is because we're still in the aftermath of the reagan revolution, with no clear realignment since.

6) While Trump is arguably a realigning figure, this time period represents deepening polarization without a clear ideological winner. The Trump coalition is high enthusiasm for what it is, but it's also small and he tends to lose independents quickly. However, democrats lack the same kind of brand loyalty on their side causing them to bottom out more quickly/easily. If this is a realignment and not a messy dealignment period leading to a more transformational realignment, this situation resembles most closely the Jacksonian democrats vs the whigs, where jackson's coalition had high enthusiasm around a rambunctious populist, while the whigs were a substanceless oppositional party who eventually imploded into irrelevance. 

7) The fate of the 7th party system depends on the democrats. If they are able to wrestle back control of the narrative from the republicans, they can enact generational change that can change the dynamics to make future politics more favorable to them. If they faiil to do so, Trump will be the transformational figure by default, dooming us to another generation of strong republicans and weak democrats. I do not know what direction the country will go in but right now we are on the more negative of these two timelines.

And yeah, that's generally how I view politics, and what my theory of elections is. While politics is cyclical, the republicans are the dominant party and the democrats the more submissive party. Some call this the sun and moon party hypothesis. If you wanna be kinky about it, you could call it the dom and sub hypothesis. Either way, unless the dems sieze the moment and take control of the system from the republicans through a generationally transformative candidate, the democrats are doomed to another generation as the moon and the republicans are all but guaranteed to be the sun party.

And yeah, that's the real lesson dems need to learn AND FAST, because I've been saying variations of this since 2016 and they still havent fricking got the message. 

Briefly discussing the democratic autopsy

 So apparently that autopsy I thought was an autopsy from a few months back wasnt the real autopsy, that was released today after pressure from the democratic party. It's a dumpster fire, but not in the way you'd expect. See the dems weren't hiding it because there were damning lessons in it they didn't want to learn, they were hiding it because it reads like an incomplete work that some intern put together. Seriously, who wrote this?! Fire this person, please. It kinda reminds me of my incomplete book drafts. Actually, that's an insult to my drafts, my drafts are better than this. There's no sources, many sections are missing, and it reads like a college paper a professor had to whip out the red pen and correct, and yeah there's literally red disclaimers everywhere saying there's no citations for data and that this doesn't represent the views of the DNC.

As for the content itself, eh...a lot of it was long and dry for my tastes, it is 200 pages, and it lacks summaries and conclusions because, well, again, it's very obviously incomplete. However, this also hurts readability since my eyes glaze over trying to read this mess, and i cant even go to the summary and be like "oh ok." To be fair as a writer, I kinda get the thought process. My drafts do the same thing, but again, I plan on FIXING that later. This is very obviously incomplete. 

From what I've gathered, they seem to take away SOME decent lessons, like less focus on social issues, more on economics, as well as the idea that they need to try to appeal to voters everywhere rather than doing whatever minmaxing crap they've been doing. So it's not entirely worthless IMO. 

Still...the fact that this became an issue really should highlight an issue the dems have. The reason the dems were pressured to release this is because wide swaths of their voters dont trust them. They thought that they were quashing it because the dems are arrogant and often dont WANT TO learn the right lessons. So rather than take away damning lessons to be learned, people thought they were just deflecting and ignoring the fact that they sucked and need to change. 

Which is...admittedly, the dems biggest issue. The fact is, they don't seem open minded or WILLING to learn from their mistakes. They seem like the kind of party who will ignore all lessons and just keep repeating the same strategy while blaming the voters for not turning up for them. If information came out that was unflattering, it seems very well within their character to ignore it and say "let's move on, shall we? no point dwelling on the past" while the base is like NO, YOU NEED TO LEARN THIS LESSON! 

I mean, if there's anything that should be gleaned from this whole mess, it's THAT. The dems are slow to learn, never actually learn the right lessons, and seem to ignore what people tell them. Hell, and this was a problem with the autopsy itself, dems are so washington brained that they cant stfu about their strategy for more than 5 seconds when talking to voters. When voters tell them what they want, they say "no you see you stupid person, you don't get it" and then go on about their grand plan of how we need to be a big tent, run to the center, and how we can't do the things the voters are asking for because they gotta appeal to completely different voters who might not even vote for them anyway. It's very arrogant and very out of touch. 

And yeah, they do have an issue with minmaxing demographics. They seem to not care at all about white male voters for instance while they'll hugbox themselves to death going on about black voters from safe red states that will NEVER, EVER go blue this election cycle.

With that said, the autopsy seems to emphasize a strategy that attempts to win all voters everywhere, but I still have reservations. yeah, they need to stop ignoring voters who ARE open to voting for them, but in our electoral college system, you need to split states into groups and focus accordingly. Look at my election predictions. I have safe blue and safe red. Likely blue and likely red.  Lean blue and lean red. And then the tossups. This translates to around 7 categories of states. Safes are...safe. You arent gonna lose them, you arent gonna flip them. On the other hand, tossups are your big states to focus on. In 2024, there were 7 of them. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, going from left to right vaguely. Lean blues like Virginia, Minnesota, and New Hampshire were in some danger of flipping, but they generally didn't. The dems had to keep an eye on them, but ultimately, they need less attention than the swings. You dont wanna neglect them, as that's what Clinton did in 2016, but you also dont wanna focus too heavily on them unless you already got a safeish electoral margin (kinda like clinton did in 2016, assuming the blue wall held). On the other hand, and this is a 2016 thing, I'd advise again spending too much time in say, lean R states. it's good to go after them, but you shouldnt abandon your core constituents to win them over. And of course, likely states are tougher to flip than leans, but more on the table than safe/solid states. 

So...when you look at an election prediction, you gotta look at the polling in the various states and focus your attention on your best and easiest path to 270 and expand from there. If you're like Clinton in 2016, you wanna focus on defense. You have the advantage, you wanna not lose states (like she did), and yeah, compete mostly in lean D and tossups. 

 Really, the thing that pissed everyone off about 2016 was that she had a map made in heaven, it took a lot of work to actually lose it, and she lost. She lost most swing states, outside of new hampshire and nevada, and then trump was able to poach states from her back yard because she was too busy F-ing up her political strategy by going down to like, Georgia and Arizona. 2016 was lost my hubris, and I honestly think that the core problems of the democratic party are apparent today.

But yeah, dems have a habit of trying to appeal to people in places they'll never win. Like, again, for all the talk of "OMG THE BLACK VOTE!" Which states will almost never flip to the dems here? South Carolina, where Clyburn is from. Mississippi, Alabama, etc. At this point I'll concede Georgia. 2016, i wouldnt. It was still very likely R back then, but yeah. It's like the dems are obsessed with winning the south when...as you can tell by this map, that's the bible belt, and we shouldnt compromise our message elsewhere trying to flip states we'll never flip. 

At the same time, take pennsylvania, which is very blue here but clinton lost anyway. She had this strategy of "for every working class voter we lose, we'll pick up two moderate republican", so she went all in with pittburgh and philly suburbs, neglecting all of those little islands of blue in between, and rural voters in general. The autopsy points that out. 

But enough with 2016, let's focus on how this applied to 2024.

 So this is the final map on election day. I could post other maps that are a lot redder of where things were under Biden, but this is where things generally were under Harris. 226 relatively safe dem electoral votes (although under Biden many of those "lean dem" states were on the verge of flipping red, with VA actually being red when Biden flipped out). Again, if you're losing and at risk of losing your next line of states after the swing states, you're kinda screwed and you do gotta play some defense to keep them blue. But you also need the actual swing states. Quickest path: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. The old 2016 rust belt strategy still applied. And those, along with nevada, were the most likely to flip. If the dems could maintain the rust belt and arguably nevada, which was very doable in theory, Harris would've won 276-262. 

From there, you wanna focus on the more lean R swing states in the sun belt. North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona. Not NECESSARY to win, but within reach enough to be "on the table". So yeah, similar map to 2016 more or less as far as the fundamentals go. I'd expect 2028 to be the same, although 2032 and onward are likely to have some reapportionments that favor republicans (lots of growth in texas and florida). But still, for now, they need to focus on defending their home turf and winning back the rust belt. We can focus on where to go post 2030, I feel like the dems were trying too hard to flip the map as if it were 2032 going as far back as 2016 and it seemed to just be an ill advised strategy. It's not working. And yeah. 

Like...really. That's a key problem the dems have had since 2016. They are trying too hard to prepare for a future 10-20 years down the line instead of winning elections now, and their core strategy has been, IMO, incongruent with what actual voters want. And rather than listen to those voters, they lecture them and talk about winning the south like...that's the big thing they need to do.

They ignore voters like me in the rust belt, who actually are giving them advice for winning the states that are part of their most obvious path to victory, to focus on states that they currently DONT need. 

Yes, post 2030, the rust belt alone is not gonna be sufficient to win elections:

 

 

However, if they kept trying to keep Ohio and Iowa, which were states that went for Obama twice, and used to be a lot more competitive pre Trump, it's very well possible we STILL wouldn't have needed to compete down south. Once again, the "neglect the rust belt in favor of the sun belt" strategy has always been a poor one in my own estimation. perhaps they were gonna lose those states anyway and they knew it, but still, at 261, you dont need a whole lot to continue winning here, the dems, if anything, had an advantage, going back to the Obama era, if they chose to maintain and strengthen that coalition, and didnt give trump such an obvious in to electoral relevance:

Really, this is a pretty reasonable Obama era style map. The whole strategy the dems decided to pursue, to abandon parts of the rust belt to focus on suburbanites and to win the south, has ALWAYS been ill advised. We dont NEED the south. We never did. We just needed to maintain a stronghold along the blue wall and nevada. And the blue wall used to include ohio and iowa too. Remember: Obama won BOTH OF THOSE, TWICE. This is just an Obama map except we lost florida.

Now, again, we've unfortunately been getting the "cursed realignment" in the 7th party system where Trump is gaining ground in a lot of previously blue obama era states like FLorida, and Ohio, and Iowa, which are now all likely to safe R, and we ARE being forced to compete in the sun belt more.

Still...I do think we have one trip up our sleeve, and yes, it is a sun belt state, and that's georgia:

 See, here's the thing. The sun belt is eventually going to flip more D anyway over time, mostly due to demographic changes. We could have easily maintained the Obama strategy well to 2028, and afterward, tried to make more of a pass down south, where demographic shifts brings the voters to us. I honestly dont think that we have to go down there and bring ourselves to them. I think they would eventually come to us, by 2032, 2036, 2040, etc. Georgia in particular has been shifting left at a fast pace where it's soon gonna vote to the left of Pennsylvania. In 2024, it was one of the few states that went further left despite the rest of the country moving hard right. I dont think the sun belt strategy has been working well otherwise. Texas is a tease, although in theory it's moving left as well. Like, in 2026, James Talarico might actually win here. But in 2024...it went R+13, the same as Ohio and Iowa, ya know, states we lost ground in. Arizona isn't as stubborn as texas, it has mark kelly there, and Biden won it in 2020, but it does require a centrist strategy that tends to flip more up north IMO. North Carolina might be more D friendly in the future too. It's been stubbornly red in recent elections, but Obama won it in 2008 and it looks like we will probably win the senate this year. 

So yeah, post 2030, we can appeal to the sun belt somewhat, but I still believe we need to keep the rust belt happy. They're still very relevant deciding states and I think they'll remain easier for democrats to flip than southern states. At this point, yeah, do both, but I still favor a rust belt strategy, and IMO, what wins the rust belt is economic populism and appealing to a broad base of people, not minmaxing. The dems try TOO HARD to win the south that they lose the north. They need to maintain their focus up north, while making passes at the south as the demographics force them to both expand down there, but also, as those same demographics...bring them to us.

The dems have this idea that we need to run to the center to win elections. Even when data supports that assertion, the difference between a leftie and centrist candidate is only like 3 points as we can see in Michigan this cycle. The fundamentals of the states dont change a ton between moderate and progressive candidates. What is gonna win elections is likely more based on enthusiasm and whether that cycle leans right or left, than the individual candidate. And I think a progressive candidate could bring out people more consistently, and fire people up more. So yeah. I do think we need to be a bit more economically progressive/populist, run a rust belt first strategy (while looking to expand into the sun belt as feasible without tainting our brand), and yeah. 

I mean, the fact that trump was able to outplay us by THIS much is as much a democratic failure than it is a republican success. You think that trump of all people was looking at data like this? I doubt it. I think in 2016 he just ran an impassioned campaign based on populism and it resonated. Bernie literally could've had that energy had the dems not quashed it. And yeah, Im gonna keep going back to 2016, but I dont think you can understand 2024, without understanding 2016.  People want something to vote for, they want someone to make their lives better. This shouldnt be rocket science, and the fact that the biggest scandal of this autopsy is that they attempted to cover up an incompetent report, and people thought the cover up was more malicious, points at the real problem with the democrats. They ignore what their own voters want and keep pushing this same crappy strategy on us that just doesn't work. They need to listen to people more and actually change based on voter feedback. They come off as arrogant, tell people what they want, dont listen to people, argue with them instead, and alienate voters. And that's why they lose elections.

Anyway, that's kinda my own third autopsy on this, but I wanted to get that out there as it's important to discuss.  

Let's discuss how bonkers the senate map is shaping up to be (Election Update 5/20/26)

 *sigh*, I shouldnt do another election update since not a ton has changed since my last one, but I wanna really contrast something here.

At the start of this cycle, I was very cynical about the dems' chances of retaking the senate. This was the baseline map I posted over a year ago in early 2025, showing how hostile the terrain is for democrats:

At the time, this seemed pretty reasonable. And this was basically, the "status quo" map: a map where every seat goes exactly as it currently exists. And I don't find this to be that unreasonable, given this was the 2020 map more or less from when Biden won the election narrowly. So for me, this was truly a relatively neutral map. I mean, we get georgia and michigan, NC and ME go narrowly republican, and from there we're expected to snipe increasingly hard states that in 2024, basically went R+13. So we would need a D+14 shift to swing states like Texas, Iowa, florida, or alaska blue. Even more so, I thought MONTANA would be the easiest nut to crack, given john tester won there in 2018, and we already had a precedent. 

 Going into 2026, I thought that we at best could maybe win Maine and North Carolina. I thought that we'd get a result similar to like, a D+6 (really, 4-8) shift from 2024. I mean, that's reasonable. 2018 seemed to be the high water mark. But man...this map...this fricking map...it astounds me. This is where the race is TODAY, based on the best polling I could muster:

 What...the actual...fudge? okay, so...it looks like we're losing Michigan, that isn't good. Polling there is really off of where I'd expect things to be. And it isn't all just Abdul El Sayed running, McMorrow loses too, and Stevens is like...tied last I looked. So that's abnormal. But then it looks like Cooper will dominate NC to the point it's a very strong likely D. Maine is the same with Graham Platner, ya know, the reddit communist with the totenkopf tattoo. I got Texas going for Talarico, especially with the Trump endorsement all but sealing Paxton as the nominee. Alaska has Peltola who has won house races up there, and AK is a single district state, so...yeah, that's a thing. I looked more into nebraska and the democrat there is a Dan Osborn stan and she only ran to deny the republicans from running a "democrat" of their own from splitting the vote, so I expect an Osborn vs Ricketts matchup there, where Osborn would win by five. Iowa is slightly in favor of dems. Like, wtf is happening? This shouldn't even be possible. Like really, we talked about the blue wall in 2016, the blue leaning states trump flipped were D+2-7 roughly. Lean/Likely D. Again, a lot of these states are R+13, and I'd still expect them to be R+6-10 or so in a relatively neutral environment. And yet democrats are WINNING there? These are literally like party realignment tier numbers. 

The generic congressional vote is currently D+7, I'd literally expect something akin to D+12 for this map to be possible, although by then michigan and georgia would be safe states and Ohio would flip too. But keep in mind, my models are simplistic when doing those kinds of flips. They just apply a national uniform shift to the country. That ignores some nuance. But again, my model strategy is to get "close enough", even if not exact in that regard. My models lack the sophistication to pull off more detailed results barring me entering data myself, which I did, to create that map. 

To be fair, even if dems are currently favored to run the senate, I don't necessarily trust the data. It's just too good to be true. And honestly, even with these polls, Iowa, Texas, and Alaska go blue narrowly. If the GOP overperforms expectations by say, 2-3, and I'd expect them to do so, they still win the senate. 

 This here looks a bit more reasonable and in line with expectations, even if disappointing. I mean, I do think Michigan will go bluer than that. I really dunno what's up with michigan. It isnt just el sayed being too far left. All the dems are struggling there. But yeah. I would not be surprised if this looks a bit closer to the results we get though, mainly because the polling numbers look so completely off the wall optimistic for democrats I literally struggle to believe them. I want to believe, but yeah....based on where these states generally perform...I just....don't. 

I have had some debates about this before online. One person, for example, also realized that for the senate numbers to be right, we'd need some D+14 outcome relative to 2024 for them to actually be real and had some crazy prediction of like 245 dem seats. I thought that was insane. my model at the time was 235 and that was considered optimistic. Given chatgpt chewing me down, I could have very well expected 230 or even possibly less, like 227-229 or something. But their rationale was that if the senate numbers are indeed right, yeah that's where the house should go, and they weren't entirely wrong there. 

With an updated model, I'm currently at 233-202, with a 9.7% shift from 2024. If you upped it about 4 more points, yeah we'd be at like 240 or something. So, it is a possible outcome, I just, once again, think that's too bonkersly optimistic. If anything, I think dems are polling too optimistically, I mean, again, these numbers are just too fricking good. I aint saying they cant happen. I know I balked at the likes of NJ, IL, and NY underperforming and being in technical swing state range in 2024 when I saw Biden's maps...and all of that actually happened. NJ in particular was INSANELY close given it should've been like D+16 in 2024. So....this CAN happen. I mean, my own sense of reality shouldnt dictate discussion, the data should, and most of the time I try to push the data one way or another and give my own take, I feel like the opposite often happens. With that said, maybe dems will do everything the polls say and then go D+2.5 the other way. Which would get us...the same map, just bluer (Ohio needs 2.6 to flip and Michigan needs 3). 

Idk, we'll have to see, but something just seems off about this. It does seem too good to be true. We'll see though...

Fs in the chat, boys, Fs in the chat

 So....my prediction ended up being accurate and Thomas Massie lost his primary. Fs in the chat, boys. Fs in the chat. 

I dont like Massie. But he is like, the most sane republican in the house right now. He's partially responsible for the release of the epstein files, he's opposed Trump's war in Iran. The thing is, the dude is a principled libertarian in an age where the rest of the party sold their soul to donald trump. And because he opposed trump, and apparently Israel, based on various comments I've seen tonight (apparently his race was the most expensive primary ever, and Israel's various PACs funded his opponent), well, he got BTFOed. It's sad, really. First of all, once again, I dont like foreign powers having this much influence over our politics. Second of all, it's a shame how brainwashed the republican base is in favor of Trump.

I mean, I've seen comments from republicans online tonight and we literally got people saying him pushing to release the epstein files wasnt a good thing. And when I call them out saying things like "imagine dying on the hill of protecting a pedophile", I get responses like "well it was how he went about it." Uh....how about releasing the epstein files is a good thing period? Also, as far as massie very publicly defying Trump, yeah, based on MTG's experiences, there's...probably a lot of bad blood behind the scenes so Massie probably felt a need to be as vocal as possible about it. People are also acting like him pointing out that Israel funded his opponent when he lost is "why he lost." Like, wtf are these people on? Are we really going to act like opposing unnecessary wars and releasing the files on the pedophile cabal our president was involved in is a bad thing? Dude's the only republican with a conscience left, and the dude just lost to another dittohead. Like....that's how cooked the GOP is. The sad thing is, this IS the republicans now. It's a literal cult. A cult around their golden president with his own golden statue of himself. And I'm not making that up. He literally made a golden statue of himself at Mar A Lago. 

Freaking insane.  

Discussing GMS's experiences at a Christian homeless shelter

 The binging continues and now I'm reacting to this video. I must say, while I've subbed to this guy for a while, I never really watched him. At first he seemed kinda pretentious, primarily because he was recommended to me by a liberal christian who thought this is how nonbelievers should act (while I tend to have a harder edge than he does toward Christianity), but I will say I find these videos relatable. Thankfully for me, the ties I had to religion by the time I left were never that extreme, and by the time I left, I was quite distanced from my Christian school, my old pastor left my church, the new pastor wasnt super popular with my family (too business/money oriented), and my parents were the only christian influences really trying to keep me in the faith, and while there was friction there, we largely resolved our differences. So outside of kinda not trying to kinda downplay my secularism among my christian friends on social media, I never really had too much trouble trying to live a lie. And even among those friends, when confronted among a more boisterous one years later who wanted to directly confront me, I didn't hide it, and I was willing to go at it with him. We largely dont talk, and I did burn some bridges there, but worth it. I aint living a lie. But it is interesting to see stories from those who, due to social relations, jobs, etc., have to put up the charade. Not gonna lie, I dont think I could do it. I mean, I did burn a lot of bridges in my day over political shifts, deconversions, and dont really regret any of it. Sometimes I lament the lost friendships, but ultimately I realize that it's the other peoples' problems, not mine. 

But anyway, there were a few more direct points I wanna add here. Like the whole despite working in a homeless shelter, these guys really have anti poor attitudes thing. And again, this comes down to worldview. Keep in mind, for these guys, being poor is a MORAL failure. And they take it upon themselves to believe that they need to minister to them by teaching them Jesus and the protestant work ethic to make them not poor. Even more so, these guys just use poverty as an excuse to minister to people. That's why many of them dont wanna solve the issues of capitalism. In a way, their ministry efforts rely on manipulating people at their low points. Another video talked about how the destruction of local culture made their third world efforts more successful, their old worldviews were broken so they came in and replaced them. They do the same with the homeless. They prey on the weak, they prey on the vulnerable. They are religious zealots who believe in imposing their worldview on these people. They care more about this than actually solving their basic needs. 

If anything, looking at how this lines up with this capitalist superstructure as GMS puts it in another video, and how this overlaps with my own studies, well, it seems like these guys dont WANNA solve issues. They dont want a world where peoples' basic needs are met, because they would lose their power over people. Not just the job creators, but the christians too. They'd rather there be a world full of desperate people for them to minister to, than a world full of people whose needs are met who have no need for their BS. While I dont think many christians actively realize this, because again, the worldview doesnt make this super obvious to them, it's only after you leave and study this stuff that you realize how messed up it is and realize how tied to racism, colonialism, and imperialism that it is, that you make these connections. But yeah. The christian worldview relies on charity over state action, uses charity to impose their nonsense onto people, and uses the desperation the current system causes as an excuse to minister to people. It actually makes me sick to realize this. But yeah. That's how you get people in a christian homeless shelter being anti bernie sanders, for example, and having "anti poor" attitudes. 

On the infiltration front, admitting they dont believe in creationism was a huge tell. The biblical worldview collapses without an active belief in creationism. Seriously, this whole belief system is a HUGE house of cards. Pull the wrong one out and it collapses. If you believe in an old earth, the whole narrative stops making sense, and the religion implodes. While there are christians who believe in that stuff while not accepting the creation story as literal, I honestly don't find them to be very coherent myself. I'll actually agree with the fundies that it's either all true or none of it is, and because not all of it is true, well, none of it is, and we shouldnt accept any of it. Seriously, it might seem scary leaving at first, but once you're out, you realize how messed up that whole worldview was. it's actually liberating.

Speaking of which, another topic I wanted to talk about on this was purpose. A lot of Christians struggle with purpose post faith. I know I did, and still do. For me, it's more at this point seeing this capitalist superstructure as evil and oppressive post faith. Dont get me wrong, Im not fully opposed to capitalism. My views are well documented. But what justifies it? Freedom. And how do we get freedom? UBI. The coercion to work is an evil of capitalism that never sat well with me post leaving and I never really adjusted to the system after leaving, especially because i know its current logic is supported...quite explicitly...by christianity.

Still, in the name of intellectually honest, I will say this. I can't not believe what I believe. I mean, I cant delude myself. And I dont wanna delude myself. I fully recognize where I stand on the issue, and I realize my views do go against the system as it exists. It is what it is. Like what, am I supposed to aspire to be a de facto wage slave, working a job I hate for the rest of my life? I mean, come on...

Anyway...I will tell an interesting story, and this is one that has contributed to my belief in spirituality. One time when I was depressed, a few years after deconversion, I kind of had a bit of an existential freakout. It was triggered over a situation related to me leaving. I revisited the situation, and much like later on, I found a piece of evidence that forced me to reevaluate the situation. I ended up reaching the same conclusion I started at, which was atheism, but at one point, I did literally pray about not knowing how to live without purpose in this world. 

 A few months later...I was on vacation, and on a park bench was a copy of the book the myth if sisyphus by albert camus. I was aware of absurdism before this from a philosophy class I took. I even read the myth of sisyphus short story version which planted the seeds for my eventually rejection of the work ethic. So, if anything, reading this book just strengthened my resolve against the protestant work ethic and delusional forms of belief of purpose. I accept reality as it is, I accept it's purposeless, but unlike sisyphus, I dont come to terms and grow to love the grind. Rather, I realize that this system is crap and my soul screams for change. So...yeah.

Idk. I just wanted to discuss my angst, and how it has contributed to my existing worldview. As I said, I really aint well adjusted all things considered in terms of accepting the whole idea of loving work, capitalism, and purpose. The system seems evil to me, probably because it is. Dont get me wrong, once again, unlike leftists, i dont believe this requires abolition of it. It just requires a few tweaks, like a UBI and other proposals I support. I support a more voluntary capitalism: one that allows those who actually do believe that nonsense to work all they want, while allowing those of us who dont to not work all we want. 

Anyway on that experience...I kinda wondered at the time, if God was answering my prayer with that book, as it just seemed so convenient that someone dropped a book on a random bench and i just happened to pick it up and it seemed extremely related to what I prayed. But it would take several more years and more weird crap like that for me to finally be like "okay, yeah, something is definitely out there and listening to me", but yeah it did plant a seed that gee, maybe something IS out there. 

I just told that one because it related to the purpose without god question. And I guess I will say what GMS said in the video. This stuff was made up and put in our heads in a way to be a disease to be cured. We're told we want purpose that can only be filled by work...to make us wanna work. They put a mental illness in us to then cure us. It's how these belief systems work. Meanwhile, rejecting the belief system in the long term is healthy and IMO a sign of being more well adjusted in accepting reality, even if our society is structured around these belief systems in harmful ways (hence why I never really adjusted to our society's expectations that we adopt those values). Like, basically, these belief systems are abusive. Straight up. They mess with your head and it can take years to undo that. And sometimes you just cant fully undo it because, well, guess what, we have a society wide problem with this stuff.

This is why, in response to the whole people fearing what people would do if they didnt have to work any more, my response is we need a mass existential crisis. I want everyone to go through that, as it's a necessary part of deprogramming us from these harmful beliefs. Rather than keeps pushing people back into the belief system because people feel mental distress when it starts to fall apart, my solution to the crisis isn't to resolve it by giving people purpose through a job, as that's just reinforcing illusory and deluisional nonsense that keeps us chained to harmful social institutions we should do away with, but to actually let people go through the process of "waking up." 

Again, our society is like the matrix, and as with the matrix, sometimes people cant stand to be unplugged. They desire the mental safety that IS the matrix over the cold hard reality that's uncomfortable. They become like cypher where they think ignorance is bliss and if only i can forget and go back in, i can just live a normal life. But again, if we want true freedom and true liberation...well...that involves accepting reality, even if uncomfortable. Is it better to be a pig satisfied or socrates unsatisfied? That's up to you to decide.

Well, that's my reaction to this. THis went on a lot longer than I thought it would, but it was an interesting discussion. But yeah. Religion F-s you up, and it takes years to process all this stuff. Hell, here I am 14 years later and I'm STILL processing this stuff and realizing just how depraved the worldview and its related superstructure is. Like I'm STILL making realizations for how deep this rabbit hole goes. And its depressing, but well, it's reality. And it's better to confront it than to stick your head under a rock in my opinion. Anyway, that's all i gotta say for now.  

The Kentucky 4th district primary situation is wild

 So, tomorrow is Kentucky's primary day. It's actually Pennsylvania's day tomorrow, but I'll be blunt, there's nothing really interesting going on there. You'd think kentucky would be boring AF but I wanna put a spotlight on Kentucky's 4th congressional district real quick. Now, for the general, its probably going safe R. I mean it's not in my model AT ALL, which means it's safe. BUT....this is Thomas Massie's district. Why is this relevant? Because Thomas Massie is one of the few republicans with a conscience. He's more a libertarian than a traditional republican, and he's probably one of the only republicans left in the GOP who I respect. I dont LIKE the guy, but I respect him, for putting his country above his party, and at least having relatively based social views. He also voted to release the epstein files, which got him on Trump's craplist. Which is why the dude's being primaried. He's faced intense hatred from MAGA over this and a lot of MAGA voters are voting for a candidate more in line with them instead. So they're throwing the guy out and we're probably getting someone worse in response. Yeah....it don't look good for Massie, it looks like his average has him down 5.5% in my estimation based on the above? That puts him at around a 91-92% chance of losing his primary. *sigh* This is why we cant have nice things...

But seriously, I have mixed views on this. On the one hand, I HATE the fact that the one dude with a conscience on the republican side is being punished for expressing it. But that's what trump and maga does. They act like a cult and they support dear leader no matter how insane he is. 

On the other hand, I feel like democrats can and should learn from this. Democrats always have this attitude that no matter how crappy and unrepresentative republicans are of their values, that their voters will crawl over broken glass to vote for them. But no...here's the reality. These guys are INTO THAT CRAP. MAGA IS THEIR VALUES! When someone DOESNT toe the line of MAGA, the voters will PUNISH them for it. And this ins't new behavior. We did this to Arlen Specter back in 2010 as well. Dems might try to gaslight me on it, but I was there. We did it. I was a republican voter at the time. It was my last election cycle as a republican, but yeah. We did that.

And this is the energy I wish to bring to do nothing candidates. We progressives, we gotta throw out worthless centrists who spit in our faces and tell us we cant have nice things. We gotta PUNISH them for it. This is how. We primary them and we show up and vote. If we werent dealing with straight up illiberal fascists, I'd even say dont vote for them in the general, vote green or something. But seriously guys....we gotta...not do that as long as democracy and our rights are under attack. I hate to say it but vote blue no matter who...at least until we're past the current threat. 

But as far as primaries go? Go for broke. Throw them out! Do everything in your power to get rid of these guys. Do to them what the GOP did to arlen specter in 2010, and what they're doing to Thomas Massie right now. 

As for Massie himself....I will say though, he didnt deserve this. He was one of the few principled republicans left in congress, and he'll be sorely missed. 

Discussing the idea that secularism strengthens western values, and the idea that Christianity is made worse without them

 A common theme I've made in the last few posts is the premise that if you take the Christianity out of western values, you strengthen them, but if you take the western values out of Christianity, it sends you back to the dark ages. Here I want to explain how and why this works.

As I see it, secularism strengthens western values because it subjects them to a process of strict scrutiny in which theyre expected to justify themselves under their merits. With a free thinking system that requires evidence and rationality rather than tradition or dogma to justify things, we are able to put these ideas under a microscope and subject them to a process that cuts the bad stuff while keeping the good stuff. After all, the good ideas can be justified through reason. Bad ideas can't or shouldnt. Take my goals of morality, which functionally recreate "natural rights theory." Natural rights theory was justified by god creating this stuff, but here, I just look at what the functional goals of morality are, and I came up with things like, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I even introduced a fourth goal, the reduction of suffering, which is strangely missing from the original version. It kinda makes sense given christians are okay with suffering existing if it coerces people toward their moral conclusions, but I'm not personally okay with that. Meanwhile, I also cut the right to property as when I subject it to scrutiny, I find it causes a lot of problems that stop us from actually fixing capitalism. While I recognize some level of property rights existing is good, I dont see them as a goal of morality, or act like the morality is ironclad on them. It's not, and such ideas only seem to exist to justify negative narratives like colonialism and the wealthy having insane wealth. So by scrutinizing these ideas, I end up recreating stronger justifications for the rights that should exist, I end up creating new ones, and end up doing away with dyfunctional ones. 

Same with democracy itself. Most rights in our constitution can be justified through reason. Most structures have valid purposes where we can say if we didnt do this, this would happen. And of course, even then I dispute stuff. I think the idea that we need say the electoral college because we cant trust the masses is dumb, is it really better to trust some weird system of oligarchs instead? Is it really better to let land vote over people? I've proposed tons of reforms to the constition over the years, keeping the good parts, while improving on what doesnt work. A reasoned perspective does that.

So basically, any idea worth its salt can be justified in secularism and made stronger. Only bad ideas that dont hold up to scrutiny really dont get supported in my system there.

On the other hand, what if we took the western values out of christianity? Well, it would be a total disaster. Because what is christianity if not for western values? its a bronze age religion justified in myth and authoritarianism. It's just "this is how things are, god said so, now believe or we'll burn you at the stake", and trust me, we've burned a lot of people at the state over the years. Without western values to temper christianity, it becomes illiberal. It mixes religion and state. It imposes itself on all under the force of government. It punishes people for thinking differently. It basically becomes a force of evil in the world.

When people ascribe christianity to western values, I feel like its because for some period of time, people justified things in religious authoritarianism. Like a lot of these ideas invoked "god" because these ideas emerged out of a broader christian tradition and that was just how they did things. But such justifications were always shoddy and awkward. And there are a lot of warts in the ideology (like the work ethic, and an ironclad right to property) that dont make sense and are quite harmful as a result of the historical forces that contributed to them. But again, that's why a more reasoned, secular response is needed now. Because by reducing our dependence on that christian framework, once again, we make those systems better. The good stuff is kept because it's good and serves a purpose, and the bad stuff is phased out.

As such, I see no reason why we need to act like we how some intellectual debt to christianity. Western values arent necessarily christian. THe best parts are quite at odds with christianity, and the worst parts are...the most explicitly christian. Again, you take christianity out of western values and you make western values better. You take western values out of christianity and you get barbarism. It's quite clear what's putting in the work making society better and what isn't. 

Does humanism or atheism inevitably lead to my beliefs?

 So...I love to frame my opinions in humanism and atheism. Even if I'm not an atheist any more, my political perspective effectively involves me acting as if I am. And I tend to invoke humanism in my own perspective. But does humanism necessitate believing what I believe?

Eh...I'd say no. One could make a lot of different decisions in building up their worldview.

So let's start with philosophy and theology, pretty basic, yeah. I guess my position is the position most humanists take. Biology, yeah. Although many atheists dont study the actual history of humanity super deeply. And they can go in different directions from there. Especially going into morality.

Like, for me, morality is a response to a darwinistic world. It's a survival strategy. But it's very well possible to go in other directions. Fascists love to invoke darwinism to argue life should be a survival of the fittest struggle, I watched a video where some guy was talking about reading Mein Kampf recently and that's where Hitler went, for example. A lot of racists will use theories about the biological differences between races to argue for racial hierarchies. A lot of fascists, even today, are secular. Look at European politics. Western germany's brand of conservatism is that of Fredrich Merz and the Christian Union party. And that's the better of the conservative parties. The east germans are less religious and their opinions on "god said so" are replaced with just rank racism and a desire to return to authoritarianism a la the USSR. So you can be secular and still have crap opinions. And really really bad ones.

Ayn Rand was an atheist. She went in this direction of extreme selfishness and hyper capitalist perspectives. At the same time, the Marxist Leninists also were also atheists, and argued religion was the opium of the masses and counter revolutionary or whatever. They basically built up their own weird state religion around communism with all of these doctrines they were encouraged to believe based on the threat of raw force if you didn't.

So...no....you dont need to go in the same moral or political direction as me at all. my own manifestations of morality and politics arise from my own historical context, where I reject the christian right's explicit brand of politics, and in response i get...secular liberalism. I admit, it's better this way, but it's not inevitable.

Even among western liberal perspectives,  the exact manifestation could've changed. Had I been more economically successful and came from a different economic class, maybe I would have adopted more meritocratic attitudes instead and been more of a centrist liberal. After all, my political journey was basically....conservative, moderate conservative, libertarian, moderate, and then I just kept going left. My economics was driven specifically by the conditions of the great recession, which coincided with my own shift away from christianity and conservatism. It's very well possible under different circumstances, one could have gone a bit less left.

If I went left, had I not been convinced basic income could work, I might have just become a standard social democrat and more aligned with bernie's politics. My anti work politics feel natural to me as a rejection of the system as it exists, but again, it really did take me fricking dropping out of the labor market and realizing our fixation on work IS THE PROBLEM. Had I been more inclined to believe work was an inevitability, I might've just fit a more bernie sanders style mold. 

The fact is, I dont have a monopoly on truth. my own politics arose as a response to my specific life path. A different life, in a different location, and things would've manifested differently. Atheists have gone in weird fascist or social darwinistic directions, they've become hardline libertarians. They've become communists. Among liberals, they become either centrist libs, or progressive libs, and my own brand of HCC is specific to me. 

Dont get me wrong. At the end of the day my rejection of the christian worldview defined the start of my shift to the left in a real way, but that was basically a result of the political environment of the times, and my own real world lived in environment. You can theoretically go whatever way you want. Hell, some people even love to act like "cultural christianity" is a good thing. I think I've heard even fricking Richard Dawkins of all people refer to themselves as "cultural christians" and acting like western values owes a debt to christianity. Which...to me...I find a bit ridiculous. As I said recently, you take christianity out of western values and you make the western values better. You take the western values out of christianity and you get dangerous regressive extremism.  The right and their version of "western values" are basically just....literally the worst aspects of those values. It's just extremist religion and work ethic. Thats all they really care about. All the pretense of freedom and democracy, they're willing to throw it away to defend the religion and work nonsense. But....yeah. Some atheists still...do that. I find it baffling, because its like "bro, you broke one form of social conditioning, why do you accept another?" But yeah.

I just wanted to write about this since it's been on my mind recently., especially with me going back over fundamentalist religion again listening to GMS vids.  

Pushing back (somewhat) against "party unity" narratives...

 So, David Pakman had Cory Booker on his program today, and I have some things to say about this. It's been a few hours since I watched this, but my opinion remains relatively consistent on it so I can do this from memory somewhat.

 So, the impression i got was this idea that democrats need to be united in a big tent and blah blah blah. The dems ALWAYS say this every election, and it kinda comes off as cringe. The fact is, the democrats ultimately need to offer a populist brand of politics to win back the masses, and they dont do it. Booker has a point about money in politics, but I dont think he really understands the extent to which we need change. I mean, he's always been a bit of a corporatist, and his idea that Elizabeth Warren is somehow the left flank of the democrats shows how out of touch he is (what about the Bernie people? The Yang people?).

And then he talks about how we need to be like FDR again. Yeah, but again...who is most like FDR? it was Bernie. Bernie's 2016/2020 platform was literally straight out of FDR's second bill of rights. And then you got me and Yang with our own directions, and yeah. We need change. I dont think that Booker realizes how much change is actually needed. We need systemic analysis of problems, and then solutions that directly solve those problems. The problem is the democratic party likes to offer a bland flavorless version of politics of "a better world isnt possible, but you better vote for me or else", and then they go all surprised pikachu face when they fail to win over people. I agree, going into 2028 and beyond, and even in 2026, we need actual change. And we need politics and policies that deliver it. Centrist dems arent up for the task. They're literally bought out by corporate money to keep the party stuck in this weird hugbox of uselessness. And that's why they have the charisma of peeling wallpaper. Because no one fricking likes them.  We're all expected to put up with them, but no one actually likes them. They suck. Because they dont offer us anything.

We are at a point where in 2028, I fear this will be the dems' last, best chance to flip the tables, and if they fail to do so, we're just screwed. And yes yes, people should vote democrat to avoid being screwed. Even Im getting a bit of the "blue no matter who" in this era given how terrible the GOP is. Really, the more I reflect on how messed up and evil the GOP really is, they gotta be stopped, period. They are literally at risk of destroying our democracy. I'm legit scared of the GOP in their current state. They're that psycho.

 So yeah, we cant afford to protest vote for the forseeable future, but...that doesnt mean they dont deserve honest criticism or feedback. And my feedback is...exactly what it always was. Get off their butts and move heaven and earth to solve the problems of this country. You do that, you can flip the country to support you and your ideas for the next 40 years or so. You fail to do that, and the future belongs to THEM. That's literally where we're at. 

Addressing the idea that "American Christianity is cruel on purpose"

 Yep, another GMS video. 

This one isnt a surprise. We've discussed most of this with David Noebel's book "understanding the times." Fundamentalist christians don't believe that a goal of morality is to reduce suffering, if anything, suffering is a useful tool to bring people to God, which is he discussed the need to force people into submission. Yeah, they're a bunch of religious authoritarians who want to coerce people to submit to their worldview.

They also dont believe in mental illness. They show that christian dude interacting with homeless people and accusing them of being possessed by demons. No, they're just mentally ill, which is why many of them are homeless in the place. Yeah. This is what happens when you believe people just need Jesus.

On Christian charity. Yeah, charity is often used as an excuse to preach the gospel at homeless people in compromised positions. It's also used to impose the protestant work ethic on them. Keep in mind, due to the above authoritarian nature and beliefs about suffering, they believe it's okay for the poor to suffer in a lot of cases as their habits and sinful nature are responsible for their suffering in the first place. Again, suffering is okay as it can be used as a form of behavioral modification to force people to submit to their worldview. 

This is one of the reasons I see fundamentalist christianity, and conservatism as literally evil. One of the most basic moral litmus tests for me is that the reduction of suffering is generally a good thing. We can argue fringe cases and specifics at times, but all in all, I generally do believe in a form of utilitarian, consequentialist morality. Not saying we cant have some deontology, but that deontology is only valid insofar as it gets positive results. For the record I would say my own approach to morality is closest to "rule utilitarianism", and I tend to favor it over raw utilitarianism because a legal framework of laws and rights is generally the best way to get utilitarian results, even if utilitarianism sometimes fails in individual situations. But again, that's where the debate is for me. If you dont even accept the basic premise that reducing suffering is a bad thing and you're fine with cruelty to impose some authoritarian system on people, well, that's LITERALLY EVIL. Sorry, not sorry. 

As for the exhortation at the end about liberal christians and atheists uniting and how hitchens style new atheists are just as imperialist as christians (I think he made that specific claim in another video, but he's been making various jabs at new atheist types)...eh....this is where I have some issues.

Christianity is a worldview. Liberal christians still adopt problematic aspects of said worldview. They might tone down the harmful stuff, but take economics. A lot of them would still implicitly agree with the idea that people should be coerced to work to get their basic needs met. They still implicitly prop up that system. They still have weird holdovers like fixations on "virtue" and stuff like that. They still have implicitly authoritarian views at times. I admit, christianity is a spectrum, it's not always as simple as A or B, there is nuance there, but yeah.

Here's the thing. I think that GMS is confusing atheists who argue the intellectual and moral superiority of the secular worldview with people who want STATE ATHEISM. We can agree, state atheism, a la, say, the USSR is bad. But I dont think people disagree with the idea that we should have religious pluralism on the whole, and that people should be allowed to practice their own beliefs, even if they suck, are irrational, etc. Sure, we can step in when they do tangible harm to others, and we should have a strict separation of church and state, but again, it's public morality vs private morality. publicly, yes, religious pluralism is the way, combined with a lemon test style application of separation of church and state. i certainly dont want atheists imposing their views on others in the ways fundie christians do. But at the same time, that doesnt mean we should necessarily entertain the weird views that "moderate" or "liberal" religious people often have. If they wanna practice that stuff in their own lives, no complaint from me, but yeah, I do think it's fine to critique that stuff. 

Sure, we might have to ally with moderately religious people to win elections, gain power, that's fine. Coalitions bring together diverse interests and as long as we agree on the religious pluralism and public/private morality aspects I laid out, sure, welcome aboard. But that doesnt mean I dont have distaste for religious views that still have holdover elements from these harmful traditions. I still wish people would straight up abandon organized religion. Maybe not all spirituality, as I said I have anecdotal reasons to accept some private spirituality myself. But I think the humanist worldview is still the way to go. Logic and reason should be the arbiters of truth, not dogmas, authorities, traditions, etc. And if moderate religious people want to put their stuff into law, well, they're gonna get as much resistance from me as a fundie would. Sorry, not sorry. Because moderate christians still have weird holdovers in their worldviews that dont manifest in as harmful of ways as extreme ones do, but they still have those elements there, and they can be activated at times. And I just aint entertaining that crap. Sorry, not sorry. 

Responding to the idea that TP USA (and the evangelical movement at large) is "basically the klan"

 So...I've been binging GMS videos lately. Very, VERY good channel. Very good work done. Very thought provoking as we can see from recent articles I've posted. And here's another I wanna do based on this video. 

So...my own response is more focused on the broader evangelical movement, rather than just TP USA, as TP USA stems from that movement. I'm not gonna lie. The origins of the evangelical Christian movement are racist. There's a metric crapton of history I've learned since leaving about this and the link and origins of modern evangelical conservatism stemming from literal racism is pretty much common knowledge by this point. 

I also dont deny that a lot of evangelicals even today are blatantly racist. Let's face it, they are. 

BUT....I do wanna push back somewhat based on my own experiences. When I went to Christian school in the 2000s, I honestly had no idea about ANY of this. And quite frankly, these ideas were not taught to us this way. Quite frankly, the history I was taught seems a bit whitewashed, if you'll excuse the term, and revisionist, but the goals, as they were explained to me, was more about other social liberalism, and not about race. Their big issues were with engel v vitale, which established a precedent that enforced a stricter separation of church and state in government run institutions like schools, and with precedents like Roe v. Wade.

Maybe, back in the day, abortion wasnt the big issue. I dont deny that, but being born in the 1980s and not really exposed to this stuff until the 2000s (even my own home church was significantly more liberal and would probably fall more on the moderate/liberal side of the aisle, although this was never explicitly stated), this is how it was taught to me. Again, maybe it's revisionist, but yeah.

Everyone in my school would vehemently deny being racist. If anything, racism was a secular position, stemming from darwinism and pseudoscience related to that. We were taught hitler was an atheist and a socialist, that the communists were atheists, and atheism was the source of much evil in the modern world. Rather, humans were made in the image of god, and skin color doesnt matter. We had black students in my school, latino students, asian students, etc. It was pretty well integrated, even if majority white. 

I will admit, there were undercurrents of more latent racism, as was common with these politics. My own family at the time was pretty anti immigration and had...relatively trumpy views. Even they didn't accept like hardcore biological racism, it was more a cultural thing. And that's how it was viewed in school too. Like there would be the talk of black fathers mentioned in the video. There really is the idea that a lot of minorities dont really practice christian morals and their lives would be better if they did. That Johnson welfare policies enabled this stuff by giving people money to live sinful lifestyles in the name of compassion, blah blah blah. They were obviously big on the protestant work ethic, the nuclear family, and while these are very white coded things, they were framed as being God's law to apply to all humans.

They made active attempts to evangelize to tribes in the third world. They seemed to focus on them because they believed that for the end times to happen, they had to make Jesus known to the whole world. Like, yeah, there were evangelistic efforts made to like secular europe too, but they already know jesus and are harder to persuade. They seemed interested in preaching to the third world, even when dangerous. Like ya know rambo 4 and the missionaries? Yeah, that was my school's evangelism in a nutshell. of course people should reach out to people in their own lives as well, like we should preach to everyone, but yeah, I literally had classmates whose families did missionary work overseas. And they seemed more successful than GMS's video on this seems to indicate, of course they probably showed only the successes and none of the failures.

With all of this said, I don't deny the movement's origins in racism, or even that a lot of people still believe it. But it is dog whistle politics, and not everyone hears that dog whistle. Especially us younger generations. I just really want to emphasize this. Like there is a bit of nuance in these communities that I feel like these videos miss. The conservative movement is racist, but it also has non racists in it too, or people who have latent racist views more akin to archie bunker or carlos mencia, rather than like, hard line grand wizard of KKK stuff. Ya know? It's kinda why I underestimated the threat when trump became popular. I was like, come on, sure they have some racist and xenophobic views but they arent like that far gone...right?....right?

....Fudge. 

But seriously, I honestly thought the white supremacist stuff was like a tiny minority of the community. Even when studying the white nationalist movements in college in that class on terrorism I took, I still thought, okay, but this is just a couple percent of the population, right?

It's honestly taken me well into the trump era, to kinda realize the problem is as bad and pervasive as the left acts like it is. I guess charlottesville was the first inkling, and I started noticing it a bit more than more as rhetoric escalated during trump's first term, but I didn't realize these guys were THIS psycho and dangerous until like January 6th. I mean, I knew that they wanted to implement abortion restrictions and deport illegal immigrants, but I thought the institutional core of the GOP wasnt this extreme, and that even if there are some crazy people out there, not all of them, or even most of them are this bad. And I honestly thought, in the 2010s, they were losing power, and that if Trump won in 2016, he would basically just end up destroying the GOP so bad it would be the end of their generational coalition. There's still hope the second term can do that, but yeah, we're basically at the gates of hell right now and in danger of descending into fascism before americans reach a tipping point to reject and abandon this stuff for good. 

So yeah. I just wanted to say that. Especially as my 20th reunion for high school is coming up. I dont plan on going, but I did think about how things would go if I did. And I do wanna acknowledge that I dont honestly think that anyone from my class are bad people. Even if I think that many of them are horribly misguided, I understand that they mean well. And I do wanna make that clear. You can be brainwashed AF and still be somewhat of a good person. It's only when these ideas are imposed on others that I really have a problem with them. People keep that stuff in their own communities of voluntary participants and it's just...whatever. I just dont want that stuff to be the blueprint for governance in this country. And that's why I come out swinging so hard against that stuff.  

A warning to the identitarian left

 So...after getting done discussing GMS's video about how evangelical Christianity is a deeply racist movement rooted in white supremacy and getting a metric crapton of thoughts out on that, I ended up watching this crap take from Francesca Fiorentini and Emma Vigeland. Basically, it's a half hour long take of them crapping on Ana Kasperian for having relatively moderate and reasonable views on race, while they dunk on her for failing to internalize the proper leftist doctrines. It's annoying, offputting, and alienating to the majority of the broader public.

Which...brings me to another chapter in this current saga of discussing racism and what we need to do with it. Look. White supremacy is not the primary problem. It's a side problem. The core problem of society is the capitalist/imperialist project that reduces the world to wage slaves and sometimes literal slaves. And this affects ALL people and ALL races. As I see it, the vast majority of us have common interests, even if the exact manifestations are different depending on things like location, race, etc., 

Racism was created to establish a form of social hierarchy that keeps these masses fighting amongst themselves. It was created to stop whites and blacks from coming together, and realizing the common problems and common enemies they shared. While it is a problem, rank identitarianism hyper emphasizes it to a point that it's counterproductive. It's basically just the mirror image of the right's racism. The right has racism to justify the existing social hierarchy by turning whites against blacks, giving the white working class the impression of illusory superiority. It gives them someone to look down on themselves, and someone for them to kick around themselves. However, identitarian movements are cynically used by the elites to attempt to get the racial minorities so obsessed with their stuff, that it makes an actual working class movement impossible. That's the true tragedy of 2016. I was a white guy who wanted universal healthcare, I was told to check my privilege and blah blah blah. It's a toxic system. And then they accuse of of being racist because we dont accept their little doctrines. And their little doctrines are doctrines. it's just more religion in a sense. The racism of the past is the original sin, all whites are guilty, they need to feel bad about it, they need to admit to being part of the problem, and only them when they find redemption. The thing is, this is literally brainwashing. They're doing this to you to get power over you. it's like a trojan horse computer virus. You let it in and then it takes control of your mind's firmware. It follows a similar heuristic pattern as Christianity, which is why, as an ex Christian, I'm so able to detect it. It's like "wait, this is a lot like that other thing..." It literally is.

Heck, I'd argue that identitarianism is an adaption of the system to allow the left to keep acting like they're doing something when they're no longer doing something. The "New Left" arose in the 1960s and 1970s as an attempt to move the left away from orthodox marxism. Dont get me wrong, I myself aint a fan of orthodox marxism, but they basically abandoned class analysis for identitarian analysis. And then the democratic party psyopped the left into hyper emphasizing identity at the expense of class and the rest is history. It's a LITERAL psyop. It's intended to distract us from class politics and hyper emphasize identity and race. 

Dont get me wrong, there are some aspects of identitiarianism that are valid. Like the whole history of racism, and the fact that some racist structures still exist today. But again, these are relatively peripheral issues. The CORE issue is that capitalist-imperialist superstructure. And to beat that, you DO need class analysis. That doesnt mean we embrace the solutions of orthodox marxism. I wanna remind people, my own ideology and its offshoots came about in part because former marxists like phillippe van parijs themselves moved away from orthodox marxism and asked "what, if anything can justify capitalism?" And that idea is FREEDOM. Since then, a whole wing of left libertarianism has come about centered around UBI and the idea that it gives people more freedom, while still maintaining the positive elements of capitalism. It itself is a reform based movement that isnt intended to destroy systems as they exist, but reform them. And my own ideas are mostly just a melding of my emerging humanist worldview with THAT. 

I aint saying we entirely ignore race, but it shouldnt be the primary point of the movement, it shouldnt define the morality of the movement, and it shouldnt gatekeep who is and isn't in the movement. TO make a class based movement work, we might have to deal with people who tend to reject these far left weirdo social identitarian dogmas, and who might have relatively regressive views themselves. And yes, you need moderates, like me or Ana Kasperian on your side. 

THe problem with the "max left", as Ana or Cenk of TYT would put it, is that tends to go all in with these unpopular movements that dont unite people and keep the left ineffective and toothless. Again, if we want to win, we need a coalition of 50%+ of the country. I aint sayint we shouldnt have SOME identitiarian stuff, but that should be like, a small fraction of what we do. It cant be the main course, or it'll just fall into the same identity trap that keeps us fighting useless "culture wars" and be a tool used by the elites against the masses to keep them in line and fighting amongst themselves. 

If you push this stuff, you're actively working against a movement that could actually win over a multiracial coalition to solve problems. You're reinforcing the neoliberal corporatist wing of "the left" and giving them power, even if you call yourself a "leftist." Youre also driving people to the right, as a lot of people are so turned off by that stuff, they flip back around to being conservatives. Great if you want to keep the working classes divided, terrible if you want to see some unity around some common causes.

We need to find common ground, identitarianism splits us up into little cliques and niches. It's not helpful. it's actually quite abusive. And it's unsustainable as a coalition. Abandon it. Embrace class politics instead. That's all I'm gonna say on that matter tonight.