So...this is a train of thought I've been having since the Platner story broke. As I said, I don't see why I should care about whether a political candidate engages in adultery. I don't care that Bill Clinton got a blow job. I don't even care about some of Donald Trump's lighter indiscretions like cheating on his wives and remarrying the people he cheated on his wives with, what have you. I don't care about Graham Platner's discretions either. And yet, some are making these out to be huge issues. Like OH MY GOD I COULD NEVER VOTE FOR SOMEONE LIKE THAT, IT SPEAKS BADLY TO THEIR CHARACTER! And I just dont get that mindset. How does someone's sexual indiscretions in that regard impact their ability to do the job. And how does it speak to their character. Is the idea "if they cheat on their wives, they'll cheat on the American people"? Is that what you're worried about.
But then I thought, wait, in a way, these guys DO often cheat on the American people. They cheat on the American people when they take corporate pac money. They cheat on the American people when they promise one thing, and flip flop on it and deliver another unnecessarily. In a way, this is political adultery. And it's extremely common, regardless of whether candidates cheat on their spouses.
In a way, my own metrics for screening political candidates attempt to detect for this. if you guys notice, I have the following metrics in my core metric for judging candidates. I have one called dedication to progressive causes, in which I measure their consistency over time on issues, and whether I trust them to actually try to deliver. Like, take Bernie. He has the most unimpeachable political character I've ever seen. 45 years in office and the dude almost never wavers from his convictions. There's a reason many of us are so ride or die on that guy. He's politically LOYAL AF. Compare this to say, a Hillary Clinton. A "pragmatic progressive", the type to promise one thing but deliver another. Take Kamala Harris, aka, Kamala Chameleon as I sometimes call her (she comes and goes....she comes and gooooeeesssss!) Promises one thing in 2020, delivers something else when she runs in 2024. A shapeshifter. Literally a political chameleon who will abandon all convictions and political positions to appease the party and her donors. She's literally the reason I invented the term "Fauxgressive", because it was obvious she was doing this in 2020, positioning herself as Bernie lite, only to end up sheepdogging us back into the democratic party establishment where good ideas go to die.
The second attempt for me to detect honesty and consistency is by judging their underlying worldview. People might wonder why i care so much about ideological worldview. It's because worldviews are literally the ideas behind the ideas. They're the underlying philosophical justifications that get us to the ideas. I would suspect someone who has the same overall worldview as me to actually share my convictions and be as genuine in those convictions as me. But someone who DOESNT share my worldview? Well, they can't be trusted to stick to the same convictions as me. Even if they're genuine, they might come to the same conclusions as me from a different set of philosophical principles, which could lead to an abandonment of support in practice as they find different compromises acceptable, or support different versions of the policy than me.
No one matches me completely. Even high ranking candidates like Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang. Yang is especially weak on convictions at times, and Bernie, as firm as he is in his, sometimes we just differ. But you know what? I'll go for the candidate that I deem to be closest to my views. And ultimately, I DO care about a candidate's political convictions and loyalty.
And here's where we run into a no win situation with the centrists. I'm simultaneously told that if I care about all that ideological stuff and stuff like consistency and political convictions, that I'm a purity tester and I need to lower my standards. As if....expecting a candidate to actually represent me is a bad thing. At the same time, if I don't care about whether the same guys cheated on their life, I'm told that I'm like "MAGA" in that I'll vote for a candidate even if they lack good moral character.
In reality, it's just...bad faith argumentation. I don't care about the character issues that dont affect how they govern in practice. Literal real world adultery is like that. But political adultery? Ie, taking money from some corporate pac or lobbying group opposed to my policy interests? Yeah, I DO care about that. Not having the best track record or consistency on representing issues I care about? I DO care about that. Because that's ultimately what politics is about. Exercising power to achieve some vision. The problem with centrists...they fundamentally dont care about the same things I do, and then they try to shift my attention to these other things i dont care about. And then they shame me for not caring about the stupid crap they care about, whether its identity politics, or some sex scandal, what have you.
And, idk, I get it, some leftists can be overtly obnoxious about it. Sometimes they're TOO rigid where no candidate ever matches them, or they go all in with ERMAHGERD ISRAEL for some reason when that's just...one issue out of hundreds and i dont care about it more than I have to. I get that, there are times where people should be critical of some voters weird ### priorities. But if an issue is important to you and directly affects your life, no one should ever give you crap about you prioritizing those issues. Ultimately, candidates do have to earn your votes. And if they don't, that's mostly on them, 90% of the time.
So...be purity testy...within reason. Take those 5-10 issues you care about most and hold the candidates accountable to them. Dont sweat the small stuff, but yeah. Focus on issues, focus on policies. Those are the meat and potatoes of politics. A sex scandal is that weird piece of parsley off to the side that people care about for some reason but no one actually eats. Hold candidates to account. Expect them to have answers for how their views changed over time. And stop caring about the stupid spectacles bad faith actors WANT you to focus on.
Seriously, the reason this is an issue is because centrists dont want YOU to vote for graham platner. They want you to be offended by this scandal and to go off and vote for someone else like Janet Mills and Susan Collins. Ya know, someone who represents CORPORATE interests, and not YOUR interests. So dont buy this crap. it's literally political theater. Or to make a reference to the name of the blog, it's the shadow puppet theater, they WANT you to focus on, not the fact that there are puppet masters behind those puppets attempting to persuade you to stay in the cave.
And yeah, that's my view on this matter.
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