Discussing who is at fault for the current state of affairs

 So, this is beating a dead horse, but idk, I felt like writing this. But given America is falling into a state of fascism, I did want to give my analysis of how we got here, and whose fault it is. From a left wing perspective, mind you. obviously, the real culprit is donald trump and the republican party, but given it was the left's job to you know, stop this before it got this bad, I did want to discuss who is to blame, since liberals, leftists, and everyone in between (myself included) love to point fingers, and I've been criticized as contributing to the problem before by democratic loyalists as well. So honestly, I kind of wanted to discuss this.

Now, there are two election cycles I want to focus on, 2016 and 2024. I view these election cycles a bit differently, but also see common threads between both. 

2016

So....the 2016 election cycle is where this started. We were coming off of 8 years of Obama, and people were unhappy with the status quo. We just listened to Barack Obama and republicans argue over who creates jobs better for the past 8 years, and honestly, by this point, I stopped caring. If you want my honest opinion, democrats, because redistributing income to the bottom leads to a larger multiplier effect, while the wealthy hoarding it doesnt really create jobs, it makes rich people richer (trickle down is a scam). Still, I would say that by this point, I was kind of tired of hearing about "job creation" and believed we needed some level of income and wealth redistribution. As I see it, the economy is gonna economy, but what matters is government policy to make peoples' lives better. The right is the party of markets and doing nothing which doesnt work, and the left is historically the party of improving the lives of people through government action. We can argue government under democratic leadership is inefficient, but that's why I sought new and bold solutions to economic problems. Because the status quo wasn't working, and we needed a change from the status quo. 

 And what did the democrats propose? The status quo. In 2016, we had two paths: the firebrand progressive policies and ethos of Bernie Sanders, who condemned the millionaires and billionaires and called for large scale government action to fix the policies of the day, or the same meek and timid liberal positions that the democrats have embraced since 1992, embodied by Hillary Clinton. 

And the democrats clearly went with Clinton. I get it, Clinton was the default option, but it wasn't like the dems made it a fair fight between her and Sanders. They clearly had a preference, as did the media, and the organizations that had power lined up behind Clinton. Meanwhile, progressives realizing that "hey what we're doing isn't working" went with Sanders. And then when the clash happened, there was bad blood between the two factions. I personally was turned off by Clinton and ended up voting third party, which got the ire of the democrats, claiming I had to 'vote blue no matter who" and that it was "my fault" if Trump won. I insisted at the time, and still to this day, that it isn't voters who are responsible for democrats winning, it's democrats responsible for turning out voters. 

And, that's the thing. Despite whatever legitimate warnings Clinton had about Trump and the GOP, the dems misread the room. The democrats went all in with identity politics in the primary to undermine sanders, which pissed off straight white male progressive voters. I mean, these guys arent traditional conservative demographics, but because of the failures of the GOP, they were looking to join up with the democratic party and infuse new energy into it. But we just weren't welcome. We were told we were too college educated and too interested in books and theory. That we were racist and sexist. That we were privileged and that our concerns didn't matter. SJWs antagonized us, and despite them being an irrelevant faction through most of the obama era, they just had a habit of alienating people and pissing them off. I saw a convo today about when did the democrats lose gamers. While some would say gaming was always somewhat right wing coded, the real answer: gamergate. Ya know, that time around 2014 when all hell broke loose because some lady slept with a reviewer for good game reviews and the next thing we know SJWs are invading our spaces and telling us how we should behave? Yeah, then. And gaming become harder right than it ever was since then. Because the reaction that those guys had to that stuff pissed them off and drove them there. You can say that's "reactionary", but hey, you piss people off, and they're not gonna support you.

And that's what happened on the whole. Today, we wonder how the dems lost a generation of young white men. It's not really surprising. Treat them like the enemy and guess what, they'll become the enemy. Many of them arent even uniformly left wing. Despite their reactionary social views, a lot of young white men, even trumpers, have opinions i can sometimes sympathize with. They feel the same despair I do about the economy and one of them I talk to even asked lately "what's the point in wage slaving if you cant even afford a house?" Really. People look at the modern economy and just feel despair. They want change. They're chomping at the bit for it. And while a lot of them are becoming increasingly brainwashed against the left, which is their ultimate salvation IMO, the fact is, this happened because the democrats drove these people away.

And in 2016, they drove me away too. And before people jump on me, there are a few things I want to point out in this extended analysis of who is at fault. In 2016, it was hard to know trump would be this big of a threat. It is easy to be hyperbolic in politics. Previously we had 8 years of "OMG OBAMA IS A COMMUNIST." And I ate that crap up until I realized he was so moderate that conservative me was agreeing with him over my own party at the time. And as far Trump's pathological behavior, well, it seemed to be an act at the time, and even my parents were thinking that. I knew trump wasn't gonna be the answer to our problems, and while dems scream that a vote not for them is a vote for trump, no i didn't vote for trump. I remained neutral and refused to back either faction because they both sucked. Should I have voted democrat? Well, part of the reason I write this is because I have to wonder, would it have made a difference? Could we have avoided this outcome if I had? Obviously, my own vote means nothing, as there were tens of thousands of us that threw the election, it wasn't just one single person, but say it could have made a difference. Could we have simply avoided the trump era by not voting for him?

 Well, at the time, I feared that a third term of the democrats would ruin them and rejuvenate the GOP anyway. And I think it would have. By 2020, the dem approval rating would be....as low as it is now, if not lower, allowing for the GOP to come in and actually win over people. I dont know what a 2020 GOP would look like, whether it would be Trump, or something more moderate, or something worse in this scenario. All I know is that it would enable the GOP to get back into office and mess things up anyway. I do have a sense of fatalism. And if anything, I thought if the dems lost in 2016, then they could learn from that, come back in 2020, and do things RIGHT. I also knew that America could withstand 4 years of trump. As it turned out, he really WAS a mental case and the worst case scenario of dems' hyperbolic rhetoric, but despite that, American contained him. Defectors like John McCain held the line in the first 2 years, stopping the overthrow of Obamacare. Retaking the house in 2018 isolated him and stopped his worst impulses. He had generals and advisers around him who were able to blunt his worst impulses. And even his Jan 6th insurrection was stopped by all the right people in all the right places. 

 But, there were two factors I didn't account for: 1) the stupidity of the american people and 2) the refusal of the democrats to learn any lessons. On the first, i figured if trump got in, they would have buyers remorse and turn on him. And you know what? I do have family members who voted for him in 2016 who no longer support him. Once they saw what a nutcase he was they were out. And it looked like going into 2020, the polling data showed that Biden would win in a landslide. As boring and mediocre as Biden was, he seemed to be winning by a landslide. Until election night, when much like in 2016 and 2024, Trump overperformed and I was sweating bullets wondering if biden would actually win. He did, but man, I wasn't sure there for a while. And that was scary. That should've been a lay up, but people actually LIKED the guy. So that was miscalculation 1. Giving the American people too much credit and assuming they would be more rational than they were. Miscalculation 2 was on the democrats learning from 2016. 

Here's the thing. I am an ex republican. I came to the democratic party as a new voter for them in 2012, and wasnt as acquainted with their intermal politics. So I approached democratic politics like a republican did. Ie, vote for values, and when you got some "DINO" (aka RINO on the GOP side) who doesnt support the stuff you do, you vote them out and replace them. I mean, i approached the democrats "what's the matter with kansas" style, when in reality, we were dealing with "listen liberal." The democratic culture is different on the left. While on the right, the party feared the voters and moved right to meet their increasingly batcrap insane views, on the left, the party bullied the voters into submission. And instead of learning from 2016, they turned around, blamed the voters for not voting hard enough for them, and started leaning into stuff like james comey and russia russia russia.  As such, by 2020, they learned nothing, repeated the clinton strategy with Biden, and won the election.

And I think winning in 2020 went to their head. They felt vindicated like they didnt have to appeal to progressives, and that they could just continue going on forever. Meanwhile I knew that Biden was gonna be highly unpopular since he wasnt gonna do much and the dems were setting themselves up for failure in 2024. And ESPECIALLY after 2020, I kind of knew the dems were in trouble. Because they BARELY beat trump despite all that happened. 

So...really, coming back to the question of who is to blame....well...let's face it. It's the dems. The dems were the ones that alienated core demographic groups that during the Obama era were leaning toward them, and decided to pursue new groups that never worked out for them. And even if the dems won in 2016, I do think the same downward spiral was inevitable. Because they simply didn't have what the people wanted that would've allowed them to win. You can blame voters, but honestly, if you kinda piss off millions of voters and make them abandon you where they either dont turn out, vote third party, or go trump, that's a you problem, and even my own behavior is a symptom of this bad strategy.

Should the voters be blamed at all? Honestly, not at this stage, no. I can see why some would vote for trump, and I can see why some wouldnt vote at all or go third party. The larger failure here is the dems throwing away what should have been an easy to win election. Really, the dems went into 2016 with a clear statistical advantage, and the GOP was DOA until trump came along. It really took the strength of trump being a populist unlike every other republican running, versus clinton being such a horrid and tone deaf candidate, to truly throw the race to republican here. In a sense, the democrats created a monster here, when they should've slayed it. 

2024

So what of 2024? Well, first and foremost, yes, the dems are at fault here. Again, they got arrogant after 2020, believing that biden winning meant they were popular, but then inflation happened and they failed to do much to make americans' lives better, so support for them crumbled. Democrats internally didnt get it. The economy was the best in 50 years by conventional standards. But the problem was that the conventional standards werent working any more. They havent been for some time. What it means for the economy to be good needs to change. Because right now, despite the numbers, people still feel like they werent doing well. Thats what happens when all the wealth continues to go to the top and over half the country is living paycheck to paycheck. And now people were getting nostalgic for the first trump term, when Trump was riding on the coattails of Obama. They dont wanna go to mcdonalds and wonder why they're spending $16 on a burger. Ya know? 2024 is a lot like 2016, just on the other side of the phillips curve. In 2016, it was the lack of jobs and lingering low wages. In 2024, it was high inflation and the feeling like the economy still wasnt good. And again, the young men of today seem to have the same attitude as i do, not understanding what's the point of wage slaving if you dont get anywhere. I got turned off from the concept of work through my own sociological analysis of the economy. And the next generation of young men seem to have a similar core outlook, it just manifests in this alt right perspective instead. Idk how young men of today square "the economy sucks" with "i guess i should vote republican", but i do get it enough where i understand that the solution is definitely not voting for the democrats. I mean, the dems are worthless. They dont offer solutions. Period. And while the republicans also dont offer solutions, i feel like when one fails, most normies just gravitate toward the other one. 

Still, I will say this. In 2024, I was more receptive to voting democrats than i was in 2016. Why? because of trump. I KNEW trump was bad news. And whatever he was in term 1, he'd be worse. He was starting to figure out how to break democracy, and I knew if he came back into power, he would have a plan in place. it's like hitler. The beer hall putsch was stopped, but what good is that if we give him the keys to the kingdom directly?

And then there was project 2025. Yeah yeah, i know dems fearmongered about this like crazy, but yeah, it was a real document that outlined their plans and had a crazy vision attached to it. And while trump did his best to distance himself from it on the campaign trail, it was their vision in office, and it's what they're implementing now. 

And honestly, I knew this was gonna be bad. So even I was like "yeah, biden sucks, but let's support him anyway." Biden wasnt even all against my goals, even if he was far more icnrementalist than me. I would've partially achieved several of my goals under Biden in theory, but I admit, it was mostly just incremental half measures, and mostly on the lower priorities. Still, I was fair and recognized he was doing some stuff. Was it enough? No. But clearly i couldnt blame him when congress and the courts werent on his side either. 

Still, the dems did let their butts hang out in 2024 as well. They did their anti democratic crap in the primary to manufacture consent around Biden. They were hostile toward anyone who called out the obvious. They covered up the fact that he aged so much he was no longer up for the job. And when Harris stepped in, she didn't offer a meaningfully different vision, pushing an "opportunity economy" and circlejerking about hard work while not really offering many policies of value. Again, this brand of centrist democratic policies is the problem. No one actually likes this stuff, but the dems kept pushing it.

Anyway, if I had to blame anyone for 2024, it's once again, primarily the dems. They were hopelessly out of touch with the public and once again them trying to force themselves onto an unwilling public backfired on them. They were out of touch and high on their own supply and in their own reality denying bubble. They built this up around themselves since 2016, and it came back to bite them. They never learned the lessons and repeated the failures.

In this regard, they cant even blame me either. I moderated and supported them, simply because it was the best strategic choice at the time. But despite that, they lost the public as a whole. 

Now, what about leftists who did defect? Eh, I can't help but to have a little ire for them honestly. Most of them defected over palestine. To be fair, most of these guys would never vote dem anyway and were looking for an excuse, their ideology was just so radical they could never find common ground with the dems (part of me cant blame them....i'm ideologically kind of like that as well by this point). But at the same time, I feel like the left themselves lost the plot.

On the gaza issue, the democrats had a large coalition of voters to bring together. They got jews who are pro israel, muslims who are anti israel. And the palestine movement was just toxic AF. As a former conservative, these guys make me cringe, HARD. Much like with SJWs, they're exactly the wrong kind of leftie. They just go in, screech at people, shame them for not agreeing with them, and end up just alienating people. I mean, at this point, i can't even say im pro israel. Originally after october 7th I was, but then bibi went full eren yeager mode on the palestinians and i kinda soured on him since. Now I see him as a genocidal war monger the same as them. Still, the public wasn't there yet, and honestly, the debate is complicated but these guys were just all FREE PALESTINE FREE PALESTINE WAR CRIMINAL and being obnoxious and self righteous jerks and alienating people. And honestly, the far left was just toxic. And honestly, the idea of going single issue on THAT was stupid. Trump WAS a fascist, he WAS a danger to society, and the left should've seen it by then. And I know uniting with the dems given their...shortcomings is painful, but idk...I really do think this is one situation where they should've swallowed their pride. It was obvious trump 2024 wasnt gonna be trump 2016 again and term 2 was looking to be much more radical than term 1. And Biden wasnt even like TOTALLY misaligned with the left's goals, he was just too moderate and gutless. Like, if you are a more new deal lib type or that kind of socialist where a green new deal is up your alley, biden was at least some of what you wanted. Sure, maybe he was only 15% of the way there, and kind of a joke, but trump is -100%. Not only does he not further those goals but the movements he represents are fundamentally opposed to them. 

Idk, I just think that in some ways that the dems' shortcomings shouldve been overlooked a bit. Still, I will say that easily 90% of the blame goes with the party here. While they did struggle to bring together their coalition and there was only so much they could realistically do, the fact is, they got bit in the butt because they never learned from 2016 and lived in their own alternative reality out of touch with the country.

And going forward into 2025, they're STILL doing it. And that's scary. They're often learning the wrong lessons from 2024, and doing the same mistakes and wondering why no one likes them. It's because they suck. We need bold democrats with bold visions. I mean look at zohran mamdani. We need that, but everywhere. We need our bernies, our AOCs, our andrew yangs, etc. I dont even fully agree with the demsocialist movement. I mean i think they're too jobist for my tastes as well. But at least they're proposing change and are getting warm in identifying the problems with america and have made honest attempts to solve them. So...they're the least of the evils. 

But yeah, the dems just wont learn en masse. Some of them are slowly learning, like gavin newsom with his on point trumpesque attacks on the republicans, and cory booker with his strom thurmond record breaking filibuster,  but the party leadership seems clueless in how to handle the guy. I really fear in 2028 that either we wont have fair elections, or that the dems won't learn a thing and will, at best, barely win, do the same thing, and set us up for further failure in 2032. 

And that's the thing that we really need to be talked about. It's been said that the reason people are so comfortable losing american democracy in the first place is because we never really had it. The system is controlled by two corrupt parties. Both do the will of the donor class. And the democrats are the controlled opposition paid to lose. No one likes them, and they will just keep losing to the GOP, who does the actual will of the donors, giving more power to the billionaire class and screwing the rest of us. And yeah, maybe thats why trump won in the first place. People wanted change and trump was the only "change" the donors were willing to accept. They fought the left so hard we couldnt win despite obviously having popular support, and in doing so, showed to us that american democracy was a sham all along. It was always what the wealthy wanted, and the two parties are perfectly content ignoring us. And when the dems were like vote for us or else, it was more "either accept the same crappy status quo or things get worse" and now things are getting worse, and no one cares because they sucked anyway. If anything, some seem happy just to see it all burn down. 

We are not in a good place. And the more I analyze the system, the more I'm just going to have to let the voters off the hook here. Yeah, they shouldve been smarter at times, but to be fair, the dems didnt exactly make a good case for themselves, and alienated people en masse. And honestly, it seems like american democracy is just the billionaires paying with plastic army men with the two factions both being controlled by them, and the wealthy getting their interests served regardless of outcome. And as such, the cycle continues. Nothing ever gets better, voter apathy makes it worse, eventually things get pulled back a little by the dems, but then voter apathy strikes again because what the american people actually want isnt being addressed.

It really is the 1930s all over again. It can only end two ways, FDR or hitler, and because the dems refuse to be FDR, we're getting hitler instead this time. This is how the germans lost democracy in the 1930s, and we're repeating the lessons 90 years later. Weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.

Except it's not lazy people or whatever that leads to the hard times. It's political corruption and special interests not allowing the system to work properly. Theyre the real weak men who create hard times. Hopefully these hard times create some strong progressive men who can pull us back from the brink, but tbqh, I'm not even sure if this is salvageable. It took WWII to dismantle fascism last time. The times are gonna need to get a whole lot worse if trump's fascism becomes entrenched in the US government. And that's the thing, maybe we're just toast. Maybe they win and it's just over. This is life now. I don't know. I feel awfully defeatist. We havent really fully lost democracy yet. Thankfully our system is more robust than germany's in the 1930s, but it's going that way. And i really dont know if theres any coming back from this or not. I hope there is, but I'm not really sure.

I wish I could be more optimistic but that's where we're at.  

Discussing Trump's new national security directive

 So, trump just put forward a new national security directive that could have a chilling effect on free speech. Basically, he's using recent violent actions like the Charlie Kirk shooting as well as that guy who went postal at an ICE facility recently as an excuse to crack down on the left: ALL of the left. 

Trump can't just make speech illegal, but he can direct law enforcement personnel to keep close tabs on anyone who expresses left wing thought. This includes people with anti christian, anti capitalist, or "anti american" sentiment. It also includes feminists, racial advocates, and anyone who doesn't support "traditional American values." Basically, he's claiming that anyone with any left wing inclinations at all has a marker for potential terrorism and should be watched more closely for unscrupulous behavior. Which is ridiculous. 

Look, I don't deny some radical left terrorists exist, but they're not very large in number. If anything, RIGHT wing terrorism is a far greater problem than left wing terrorism. Ya know, the proud boys? The KKK and neo nazi types? The anti government extremists who form their own militias? Those are the real threats. of course, they're trump's allies, so will they face increased scrutiny? No, and if January 6th is any indication, he'll pardon them if they do do violent acts like..ya know...try to do an insurrection against our government? but that's trump for you. The "radical left" is the real problem while the radical right are allies to the administration. 

As far as actual left wing radicals go, I want nothing to do with them. I "punch left" against the anti liberal democracy left regularly on this blog. I don't support their ideas, I don't support their radicalism, and never have. I've always advocated for peaceful reform within the system, not violence outside of it and against it. But, with Trump, it doesn't matter. If you aren't basically a right winger who supports christianity, capitalism, traditional values, and their form of rah rah american nationalism, you're an extremist according to this administration. 

Guys, this is how fascism works. They claim emergencies to take away your civil liberties in the name of national security. The emergencies aren't even real in nature, they're just made up BS. And I know trump has gone so far to say that the left merely accusing them of "fascism" is itself inflammatory, but my take on that is if you dont wanna be accused of fascism, dont do fascist things. Seriously, I'm not one to just jump to "this person is literally hitler." I think that unless you can make a good argument, that going full godwin's law is in bad taste and if anything weakens your argument. But when youre cracking down on free speech itself, especially to this degree, I can't think of what this is if not fascist. This is an attempt to erode speech and scare people into censorship. Sure, it doesnt outright make holding left wing values illegal, but Trump also doesnt have the ability to implement that. So this is the best he can do. As I said, chilling effect. 

F this guy. I can only hope that democracy can hold together until 2028.  

Discussing religion and how it relates to the work ethic and the move toward less work

 So...I tend to often oversimplify the relationship between work and religion. In my mind, one of the largest obstacles to getting rid of work as a concept, IS religion. This is largely due to the modern political divide, and the ideological forces that have shaped politics in my life time. The right has a worldview based in religion, more specifically, evangelical christianity, and such a mindset tends to glorify work. Protestant traditions like this are often linked with the protestant work ethic, and given how my own understanding of the world has evolved over the years, I saw work as very endemic to the christian worldview, as an institution established  by god, and part of this "fallen" world that we live in.

But then I lost my faith, my ideological worldview was shredded, and my understanding of work changed. Shifting from Christianity to atheism/humanism shifted my entire ethical base. it shifted my understanding of why the world is as it is, and caused me to basically rediscover things as I went along. And when I analyzed work, this is what I saw. There is no inherent purpose to work, a lot of this purpose comes from religion and christianity, it's the right who always goes on about the so called dignity of work and insists on imposing work onto people, and belief in work has quasi religious qualities. Given how my economic understanding evolved post christianity, I've come to see religion as a bit of a blinder. A lens that distorts the world. Plato's cave, the matrix. i would agree with marx that it's the opium of the masses, a coping mechanism designed to channel their frustrations with the world and the current state of things and to focus not on improving this world here and now, but in focusing on the next. But if this is your one life, your one and only life, why the everloving fudge should you spend most of it working? Even if you live multiple lives, as I would believe now, as my current spiritual views do include reincarnation, why waste ANY lives just working them away if it is unnecessary? It makes no sense, and as such, the work ethic never sat well with me. 

I also believe, given the emphasis of christian culture and ideology within the republican party, that the democrats should oppose them from a secular perspective. But liberals...are a lot more like conservatives than i gave them credit for. They're basically conservative lites, speaking to many of the same values the right does on religion and work ethic, just a lot more moderate. Meanwhile, I want a cleaner break from these forces. And for me, if the republican party is the party of religion, the democrats should represent secularism. And if the republican party is the party of trickle down economics and job creation, the democrats should be the party of safety nets and "handouts". Rather than avoiding conflict with the right and its value system, I encourage direct confrontration. As such, my views evolved in such a way where I feel more able and willing to take on the right directly, and to reject their values outright and replace them with my own.

Of course, and this is a lesson I've learned the hard way over the past decade since then, the left is a lot different than I thought it was. I mean, when you're on the right, you buy into a caricature, and I kind of took the caricature seriously and was like "yes, i'm unironically for this" on most issues. 

But...let's face it, the left also tends to have a lot of religious people, which give it a more conservative outlook than I would like, and it tends to value the work ethic too. For a while, I linked the work ethic to religion. Take HRC in 2016. She was christian, a methodist, and a lot of her moderation specifically seemed to be because she was a christian. And why would I want a conservative lite if I could just vote conservative? I think that's the core reason she lost, by the way. And Biden, he also valued the work ethic in his own way. His own approach was, admittedly, more liberal. Rather than being shaped by conservative values and religion, his own approach seemed to come from his upbringing in the 1950s where his dad, himself, a union worker, believed that work had dignity. He was fed FDR's gospel of jobs more directly and that's why he had that mindset. of course, i always thought liberals who believed in jobs having dignity was weird. I mean, i thought it was stupid. Why should we wanna spend our lives working for rich people? Even if the state created the jobs, is that any better? Do we NEED these jobs? How is this different than what the communists did with their centralized planning and state controlled means of production? If anything, job creation via the state basically is closer to communism in practice than my own ideas. And that's not a mistake. I've always adopted the class consciousness approach from marx, but I never went in with the solutions of communism, including jobs for their own sake, it seems stupid and inefficient. But yes, this is a secularized version of the work ethic.

Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt as well as others I've read like Elizabeth Anderson have noted that the religion topic isn't as clear cut as I thought it was. The original work ethic wasn't just pro work, it was anti consumption. Because calvinist christians were ascetics who hated the idea of enjoying life, and who wanted us to work to create a surplus, and then give it to charity. Secular people took this ethic and used it to justify the wealth and conspicuous consumption of the rich and the poverty of the poor. They perverted the ethic, but the ethic still endured. 

Pre FDR, to some extent, the link between religion and work ethic/gospel of consumption/growth was somewhat turned on its head. Christians feared the gospel of consumption because they feared consumerism would turn people from god. They also believed that fewer working hours meant more time to dedicate to spiritual pursuits. So they actually wanted shorter hours and not a lot of consumption to make the US more godly. Now, i wouldnt subscribe to that per se, I certainly use my free time to enrich myself intellectually and spiritually, including deep research into topics of interest, and my own ethic is more of the aristocrats of the previous ages, that the labor of many allows the few to pursue lives that better humanity by giving them the free time to explore things and create and innovate and think. Of course, I have that 1920s mindset that shorter working hours should uplift us ALL to do that. Like, I dont think that under the right conditions, that the loss of work would lead to social disintegration, and if it does, it's a self fulfilling prophecy because the work fetishists have dulled peoples' minds to anything but work to such an extent that people literally dont know what they would do without it. Life without work WOULD cause a mass existential crisis and a radical reorientation of values, and many people fear the results of that. Having basically LIVED that over the course of my life, I have faith that people should come out on the other side fine, but to be fair, humanity has done little but to continue to disappoint on the intellectual front since my own awakening, and perhaps many would choose other, more harmful paths. Still, given my own experiences, I would insist on encouraging that mass awakening. I do think society needs an existential crisis, and it needs to turn away from work and its current values. Of course, for me, this comes from a post christian secular desire to awaken people and to teach people what I know. 

But yeah, for a while, christians actually supported fewer hours so they could dedicate more time to god, while secularists were the taylorists, the scientific managers of the earth 20th century who focused on efficiency. For them, it was easy to be in favor of the religion of work. More work means more stuff, time is money, everyone should spend all of their time working to maximize the stuff and the money society as a whole has. They basically internalized economics and that capitalist work ethic mindset that originally came from protestantism, but here it developed this scientific pro progress bend. 

And...let's go back to my own position on this. On the debate between the fewer hours movement, and the pro growth pro consumption pro work people, I'm ACTUALLY a moderate by say, 1920s standards. You can see this with my own plan to reduce working hours. I laid out what society would look like if we channelled all increased productivity into working less, and then I channeled what it would look like if we worked 40 hours forever. Both extremes come with their own set of challenges. If we dont grow at all and remain at the same GDP per capita, we remain in a time warp. It's kinda like how communist countries still look like roughly the time where their revolutions happened, where cuba and north korea seem perpetually stuck in the 1950s, while capitalist countries regularly modernize. Some change is good, some growth is good, and I fear if we dont grow at all, we'll be left behind and no longer be the envy of the world. You dont want to not grow at all. And if we did it from the 1930s or 1950s onward, sure, we might work like 8-15 hours a week, but we'd be...perpetually living in the 1930s or 1950s. Is that really a good thing? No. As such, neither would I want the next century to look exactly like the 2020s forever. 

At the same time, say we maximized growth and worked 40 hours forever. Would we be better off than we are now? On paper yes, in practice no. Yes, the world will look a lot more modern. We'd have new gizmos. Technological advancements, medical advancements, new products and services, etc. Even from a time perspective, more stuff TO DO. But....life would also look a lot like now despite that. We'd still have 40 hour weeks, we'd still be tied to our jobs, in fear of losing them, poverty would still exist, economically, the core structure would look the same warts and all. 

As such, I'm not really a fan of taking either perspective to the extremes. And that's the problem with philosophy and ideologues. people tend to take things to extremes. They get their principles and rather than understanding that shades of grey and nuance exist, they just insist on one extreme or the other. But keep in mind if option A is 10 hours a week with $80k GDP per capita, and option B is 40 hours a week with $320k GDP per capita, i'd probably settle for some form of option C where we get like, 25 hours a week with $200k GDP per capita. Growth is good, but it's not the end all of everything. Leisure is good, but consumption can enhance leisure. It's a balance, and the goal is to find the proper balance.

Less work hours means more time for leisure. More stuff means more fulfilling leisure. Let's face it, I'm not some christian ascetic who hates enjoying life. I'm a hedonist at heart and consumerism does enhance life. But at the same time, more consumption requires more labor. So there's a tradeoff. More hours of labor means more stuff, but less time to enjoy it. Fewer hours means less stuff, but more time to enjoy what you have. What should the tradeoff be? I don't think there is one single one size fits all answer. Some people are fine with relatively little but with tons of time and freedom. Some want higher standards of living but with fewer hours. 

 Our society imposes this one size fits all answer on people with the 40 hour week. Of course, the 40 hour week people are actually the scientific managers and the productivity at all costs people. Even for the wealthy, they acknowledged some leisure was good a century ago because people needed time to consume their products. We cant just work forever to produce stuff that no one wants or needs or doesnt have time to enjoy. But to be fair, they only supported leisure to improve their profitability. They dont value it for its own sake. 

With me, I ideally give people a choice. A basic income ensures a floor that everyone can live on, ending poverty and freeing them from the tyrannies of capitalism, while people choose to work as much or as little as they want. Still, I do support a gradual reduction of working hours. I support only taking 25-50% of productivity or so to do so, which would make us more like a western european country GDP per capita wise. Had we done this over the past century, we'd have a GDP per capita closer to the UK, France, or Germany, which is still pretty high. And we'd probably work 25-30 hours a week. Projecting that into the future, again, we might have a GDP per capita around $160-240k, and work 20-30 hours a week. Let's say $200k with 25 hours. Sounds like a nice tradeoff. Plenty of room for consumption and consumerism, but also for leisure. And freedom for all. 

Again, it's actually a moderate position, it's not either of the extremes. I recognize the value in a consumerist society while recognizing it goes way too far. I recognize the value of work life balance, without abandoning all growth in favor of it. I just want work participation to be voluntary, and I want the balance to be better than it is now. My answer isnt one way or the other, it's both, it's a moderate, hybrid position. It should be the sane position of the productivity and growth at all costs people didn't dominate the discussion for so long. 

But yeah, I do have to acknowledge that religion plays a more muddled role than I thought it did. My views are as they are because I'm reacting to the modern right, which is driven by extreme protestantism and pretty much went ride or die on the concept of work and job creation since the 1980s. As such, my vision for the left is secular and tends to reject those values somewhat, becoming the boogeyman they claim to fear: some liberal secularist who wants to destroy work ethic and redistribute the wealth. But...in the past, liberals were work fetishists too, and they have maintained that perspective, they havent changed, the right just developed a different and more radical way to do it that kind of exposed the charade for what it always was in my view. And religious people used to actually oppose this kind of capitalism, since they'd rather spend more time with their families and in church, while thinking a consumerist lifestyle was evil. I just wanted to acknowledge those traditions on this blog given my current worldview is what it is. 

Discussing Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt's "Work without end" and how it relates to my own ideology

 So, I read another Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt book and MAN, this guy really makes me HATE FDR. i know in his "free time' book he discussed how FDR kinda railroaded the progressive movement toward less work and doomed us to a life of sisyphusian grind, but he only dedicated like a chapter of that book to that, here he has a whole book with all the gory details. 

Anyway, this book actually helps me kind of understand where I am on the pecking order of things ideologically, and how my exact ideology, despite being really new in my mind, is also really old. I mean, I kinda rediscovered an idea that was actually pretty commonplace a century ago until FDR killed it. 

So, let's start in the 1920s. prior to the great depression and the new deal, there were two major camps regarding the rapid rise of technology improving living standards. One group wanted to use technology to reduce working hours. if anything after WWI, people were quite pessimistic about growth and capitalism. Capitalism had grown so efficient that it started throwing people out of work. This would lead to recessions and depressions, and the way to solve them back then wasn't by "creating more jobs", but by "sharing the work." So we would actively reduce working hours to drive people back to work and despite shorter hours, wages would often go up due to increased worker bargaining power. 

 But, there was another camp. One that kind of viewed the first group, which I kinda identify with, as "defeatists", and who believed in using consumerism to increase demand, which would then lead to more jobs, more productivity, more work. Basically, "work without end", as the book is called. The commonplace ideology we have today where we just insist that human needs are infinite, we need to keep working forever, and anyone who doesnt believe in this committed some massive fallacy against economics, as if economics should be authoritative on life in general, and not just on growth and productivity.

Guess which one won out? here I am, thinking with my own blueprints for a post work future that I'm coming up with new ideas and discovering these very obvious truths, when in reality, people used to believe in this stuff a century ago. hell, it's that camp that caused keynes to write his essay about how in 2030 we'd all be working 15 hour weeks and have so much free time we wouldnt know what to do with it. Which is part of the problem, as I'll get to later, I feel like part of the reason we never arrived at such a future is because people literally cant imagine a world without work after it has been beaten into us all of our lives, so people think it would be boring. Trust me, it's not. You'll eventually have so much stuff to do that you cant get to it all and the idea of work and drudgery as most currently experience it seems as backwards and barbaric as chattel slavery does. 

But yeah, for a while, there were these two camps. The first, like myself, saw work as a burden, and something to be eliminated, while the others wanted to make work central to one's life. Again, guess which idea won out? My ideas seem alien to me, like relics of a long lost now defunct era no one takes seriously, and anyone who seriously questions the cult of work should have their head examined. 

Anyway, the book then looks at why the movement toward fewer hours failed. A lot of it is complicated, a lot of political maneuvering by FDR and him literally F-ing over the factions that supported the movement toward a 30 hour work week, industrialists opposing 30 hours, and just, the conditions of the depression basically requiring traditional keynesianism to jumpstart the economy.

I could go on and on about the conflict theory explanations, but we all know that song and dance, FDR sold out, he backstabbed the movements that supported fewer hours, first adopting their language and then going in with JOBS JOBS JOBS, and economists and industrialists obviously wanted to do the whole infinite growth without end. if we see the state as being first and foremost in favor of the interests of the wealthy, it makes no sense the "gospel of consumption" as it was called won out. 

But to be fair there were some more functionalist explanations I do wanna address. So...the great depression itself caused a very severe reduction in living standards. THe book didnt address this part directly but accounting for GDP per capita, the 1920s had GDP per capita closer to the 1950s than the 1930s. The depression literally halved standards by my estimates. And people feared that "work sharing" would just doom everyone to poverty. Growth was needed to truly recover from the depression, and not just work sharing, although in my view, we should have both.

I mean, that's the thing, despite rejecting the gospel of work and infinite growth, I'm not ANTI growth either. I kinda support a compromise, recognizing that these guys do sometimes have a point, we shouldnt remain at like 1920s/1950s or 1930s standards of living forever, and we SHOULD grow. I just dont see infinite growth as helpful either, as the jobs system perpetuates poverty in a systemic way itself, and also, the existential angst of working forever so some line goes up just doesnt sit well with me. But growth is nice. And I'm not necessarily against it. But, in the 1930s, it was framed as one or the other and the gospel of consumption people basically said that reducing hours doomed america to poverty and growth was needed to actually make america prosperous. Again, they're not necessarily wrong. THe interests of the state also aligned with the growth paradigm. More growth means more tax revenue. If we use consumption to stimulate the economy, it creates jobs, which produces more wealth, and thus, more revenue. So even if we stimulate the economy, we're also growing it making the initial expenditures small by future standards. Again, standard keynesianism. And...it's not a bad idea. I ain't opposed to keynesian economics. It's surely better than the more neoliberal economics that came after that shaped my own perspective. But it's not...all that I really support, given the fact that in this debate between growth and working less I'm actually, all things considered, a moderate, not actually advocating for just one or the other, but a combination of both. 

But yeah. Then FDR later just tied his legacy toward jobs jobs jobs and creating work for its own sake. And he just flat up backstabbed people like hugo black and william connery in the process. He did a lot of stuff that they wanted, but in doing so, created the monster that is the modern economic system. It was with FDR that we went all in with jobs jobs jobs forever, never reducing working hours, growing forever, and using the federal reserve system to regulate the economy. And don't get me wrong, it's because of that paradigm that I now have my current views. I mean, contrasted with reaganism which is always just "let's give more tax cuts to billionaires so they create more jobs" and that pretty much falling flat on its face in the light of evidence, the keynesian model is why I can say liberalism is better than conservatism.

But...I never really got along with liberals either. Like, here's the thing. I'll admit the thing that most people in our work centric society won't admit, I REALLY dont want to work. I dont like the idea of working. yes, I'm "lazy", I want to be a "parasite." I mean, let's face it. If things HAD to be this way, if we all had to work just to survive and scarcity was the consequence of everyone not pulling their weight, that would be one thing. But it isn't like that. In the aftermath of the 2008 recession, as I watched Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spar over what philosophy did better at creating more jobs, I asked...why do we need more jobs? Jobs exist to make things, do we really want to just create work out of thin air just to give people a paycheck? And that's when it really clicked with me that yeah...this sysyem makes no sense.

But we sure do have this cult of jobs that slavishly depends on them. To some extent, i thought it was merely because liberalism was captured by conservatism to use the same rhetoric as them, and how they had to play the game of talking of "creating jobs" in order to win over conservative leaning moderate voters. Ya know? But it always seemed weird to me for Obama to be trying to "create work." If the left wanted to differentiate itself from the right, it should lean more into social programs and less into work. Let work be the realm of conservatives and their fundamentalist approach to economics. What made the left great was using the power of the federal government to provide aid directly to the people through stuff like unemployment and social security. 

But as things evolved from there, I kinda realized, yeah, liberals have a work fetish too, and even more so depending on the exact implementation, they either sound like conservatives or socialists.  Conservatives want the free market to create the work, and socialists want the government to do so. And it didnt click. We had a GDP per capita on the level of my entire family's income at the time, we could theoretically divide up the entire wealth of the country that way and it would give everyone a lifestyle on par with my whole family's. Of course doing so would destroy the economy, and I would be more moderate than that, but again, that's where UBI comes in. We take 15-20% of that GDP per capita, and we redistribute it to everyone equally, and then no one is poor, income inequality goes down, and society is far more fair and just. 

But but, no, we can't do that because it's 1) communism (never mind communism is closer to the whole work creation nonsense in practice and that's a core problem I have with it), 2) would destroy the incentive structure (it wouldnt), 3) would upset the natural order of things (religious nonsense), or 4) a myriad of other reasons I've debunked over and over by now. As I always say, the strongest arguments against a UBI and my ideas arent practical, but moral, and that's why I spend so much time debating the morality of it. 

Same with this work reduction stuff. And that's kind of where the book ended up ending. The final quote of the book really stands out to me: 

automation threatens to render possible the reversal of the relation
between free time and working time: the possibility of
working time becoming marginal and free time becoming full
time. The result would be a radical transvaluation of values,
and a mode of existence incompatible wilth the traditional culture.
Advanced industrial society is in permanent mobilization
against this possibility.

I mean, that really does seem to be what it comes down to, after I spent years studying this issue, deepening my understanding of it, etc. People who support the status quo fear what change would bring. We would need to change our values to adapt to a society where work is less central to our lives and it scares people. it scares the wealthy who fear losing their power and privilege in society as people fail to buy their stuff. It scares weirdo communitarians who believe people need to be united around common purposes to encourage social cohesion. It scares religious whackjobs who insist that we must be repressed, lest we fall into sin. It scares workers who have adopted the slave ethic and can't imagine a society without work.

But, as a secular, left wing VALUES voter, someone who wages my own "culture war" from a humanist perspective, and wishes to drive the current political ideology into the dustbin of history, I'm okay with that? my ideas were built out of a rejection of the modern GOP and its values, since, since the 1930s, the republicans have since been the party obsessed with job creation and work for its own sake, while liberals just merely reflect their own version of those values. But it's kind of weird that liberals used to be very much into those ideas too, and still are.

In a sense, my own liberalism has never been FDR's liberalism. Nor did I ever try to be it. After all, the focus on technocrats and government job creation seemed to be what turned people off from the new deal over the long term. People became more individualistic, lost that civic ideal, wanted to be left alone, and honestly, a lot of the warts of old liberalism led to its downfall. It became percieved as being inefficient, being authoritarian, creating jobs for their own sake, and honestly, not all of these characteristics are always wrong. I do think that that iteration of liberalism failed due to its own internal contradictions, that it was inefficient, that it didnt work, and that it no longer mobilized people. People ultimately care for their own interests. FDR was beloved during the depression because despite his flaws and my own ideological disagreements with him, he came off as very pro worker, and in a world based on needing to work to survive, government created jobs were better with no jobs. But after a generation, the flaws started setting in. Johnson and FDR never truly solved poverty, government did stuff but it never seemed to work for the people, and Reagan was able to say HERE, TAX CUT, and the people went wild, especially after stagflation and the relative normalcy that followed. Once in a generation, an economic crisis breaks the current system and leads to realignments based on reform. It isnt always the best ideas that win, but if a political movement does a GOOD ENOUGH job at returning thigns to normal and restoring confidence in the system again, people will glorify them, at least until the next crisis. FDR was that guy in the 1930s. In the 1980s, Reagan was that guy. In the modern era, things are in flux. Democrats suck, being a watered down shell of their former selves that makes even the new dealers look comparatively amazing, and the republicans are succeeding via the placebo effect in my view, and just all the timing issues with who wins where. Trump has no real solutions, but if he can make people FEEL good, then that's all that matters. And thats where democrats fail. Yes, Joe Biden was the best conventional, post FDR style leader we could ask for in the 2020s in terms of "job creation", the economy had low unemployment, inflation spiked but he got it under control, but people werent happy. I blame the whole economic system based on jobs. Trump promises to "make america great again" which is just more conservative BS repackaged. but it makes people FEEL good, and that's all that matters. 

SOmetimes pretending to solve the problems creates more success than actually solving them. And that's kinda what happened with FDR. Sure, he did a lot of good things, but he also backstabbed my own camp with their own dogs in this fight, to the point that some of those people became quite bitter toward FDR. And Reagan...well he took us in the wrong direction, but it seemed to be good at the time so people glorify him regardless. ANd it's the same with trump. Bernie, if he won, would be more like FDR, an imperfect jobist candidate. One who leans hard into the gospel of consumption as FDR understood it and is hostile toward the UBI movement (sorry, but at this point, the writing is on the wall, he kinda is). 

I mean, yeah. That's the thing. No one in mainstream politics really represents me. Heck, no mainstream ideology does either. I'm neither a conservative, nor a traditional liberal or leftist. Because as bob black would point out, all of these factions all believe in work. LIberals are right in that reform is better than revolution. Capitalism isnt the problem, it's just our iteration of it. Leftists are right in that liberals are sell outs. But I dont agree with either, because both are just fixated on this modern zeitgeist of work fetishism. Leftists just want "economic democracy" and job creation via the state. Liberals want a modified version of capitalism better than trickle down economics, but it still basically enslaves us. Hell, as far as im concerned, all of these ideologies enslave us. 

The fact is, my own version of liberalism/progressivism died a century ago, killed by FDR and his gospel of jobs, and all these factions fight against my own ideas. Honestly, this book was a downer. it was very informative, but it makes me realize just how deep the cultural problem of solving work and capitalism go.

Like, let's face it, yang is the closest that it gets to me, given he is the only one to question this gospel of work and to propose UBI, but he seems oddly naive about the forces that oppose his movement. Like, his take is so surface level compared to mine. He seriously thinks that people will just wake up and realize job creation isnt working and that people will take him seriously when...they won't. Because we're dealing with people who believe in the gospel of work with quasi religious zeal. And despite all of the problems with capitalism related to this gospel, they'll just insist with intense religious faith that the answer is always more jobs. It's almost like a mental disease. Except, ironically, psychology has been taken over  by these people where they view those who dont accept the gospel of work as the diseased ones. And I'm being literal there. They would think I have a literal mental disorder for not wanting to work.

Well, I am autistic probably, but let's have a serious discussion abiut THAT. Is high functioning autism really a disorder? Or is it only seen as such because it clashes with our job and work centric society? I'd argue the latter. I mean, a lot of autistic people arent really like...deranged or anything, they're just wired a little differently. But that makes living in a work centric capitalist society very disorienting and painful for us. I really would argue there's nothing wrong with me, the problem is with society here. I dont buy into society's BS, society's BS being imposed on me is the source of my problems, and no, the solution isnt for me to adopt society's values. I hate those values and find them very offensive to my being. Living according to them would lead to an inauthentic view of life, where I would feel like a slave. I often feel like one of the only sane people in an insane world here. And yeah. 

Anyway, now I know that my views used to be a whole lot more common, it's just that this cult of work won out over them. And I find that very disappointing. We could be living in utopia and now we have in this bioshock infinite esque hellhole where we all adopt this slave ethic and act like anyone who doesn't has something wrong with them. And even worse, most debates are merely over how work should be done, not challenging the very idea of doing so in and of itself.

It really is as that above quote pointed out. Modern industrial society is in self preservation mode and permanently mobilized against any movement that might change the way things are and challenges its values. And that's what I do, I just challenge its values. I refuse to adopt the work ethic, which I view as a slave ethic. And I refuse to act like there's anything normal about a sisyphusian grind without end so line on chart goes up forever. Really, I can't emphasize how messed up modern society is for me. It's like we've forgotten how to live. We just live to work. We dont work to live. And it's backwards. Everything about society is backwards.  

 

Discussing the disingenuousness of concern trolling

 Another brief one but after watching some republican blowhard on CNN go on about how he's so concerned with political violence and how we need to do something about it, I want to introduce people to concern trolling.

Concern trolling is common online debate tactic relevant to the trump administration's current pitch to crack down on free speech, they go on about how they're oh so concerned about political violence and how this is THE issue that we need to address and that we need to support some authoritarian measure to stop it from happening. It's typically used in a dishonest or disingenuous way to push an agenda that doesn't need to be passed. The goal is to get people concerned over a fake issue so that they trade their civil liberties for more security. I thought we learned from previous efforts to do this in the 2000s not to listen to this stuff, but here we are with 2020 Republicans pushing this to crack down on free speech. No one should listen to them. And we should push back. No we shouldn't give up our freedom of speech for more security. That's what fascists try to make us do. And the modern republican party is a fascist party.

So, are we tired of cancel culture yet?

 I don't think I need to reiterate what happened to Jimmy Kimmel. It's everywhere. And I'm still stuck talking on a touch screen so I wanna make it short.

Basically, his show was cancelled because he criticized trump. The FCC pressured Disney and Disney owns abc so book, show gone. And conservatives are going all cancel culture happy over it. Ya know, it's okay for corporations to cancel people or fire people for expressing wrong think, free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. Who could have seen this coming? Oh wait...

Yeah I've been critical of cancel culture for years because of this. Because if you open the door for it over topics like racism, what happens when racists who don't care about norms get in charge? Oh crap. We're seeing that now, aren't we? I hate to say that I told you so, but I told you all so. 

Free speech should be free speech. And private entities are just as dangerous to free speech as the state in some regards. If your financial well being is tied to a private institution, and that institution can fire you for expressing your free speech, you don't functionally have free speech. It exists on paper, but not in practice. 

I know I came around to supporting some level of cancel culture shortly before this happened, but I wanna reiterate, I was talking open Nazis and people openly talking about putting people in literal camps. And I'd be fine with cracking down on tankies who do that crap too. But that's the thing. I'm for censoring people advocating for literal political violence against others and only in narrow ways. I don't support that being used regularly. For me, the paradox of tolerance requires we tolerate people we don't like. It's only when they advocate for violence against others that we escalate to "cancelling". And it doesn't matter the political motivations. When you get that extreme you're dealing with horseshoe theory. All illiberal extremists end up looking similar despite ideological differences. And defenders of liberal democracy need to band together against illiberal people, regardless of ideological stripes. And that's my only motivation there.

Other than that we should not use cancel culture or any authoritarian measure to further political goals. And I'm fine with politics being a bit crass and uncivil. I grew up liking rush Limbaugh and his irreverence. When I shifted left I became a new atheist. And I didn't really care about the alt right and their offensiveness until they got as bad as they've been since 2021 or so. We shouldn't censor political opponents unless their views are so extreme they're inherently a danger to others. And that's a high bar to reach. And yeah. That's my view.

Discussing conservative cancel culture

 So, the paradox of intolerance style sjw left may have bit off more than they can chew this time. The shooter seemed motivated by how hateful the gop is, and the shooter has a trans romantic partner. The bullet casings seemed to have anti fascist messages. It does seem clear to me the shooter was some sort of social justicey style leftist or something like that. 

Honestly, the right is PISSED. And they've learned from leftists how to crack down on this sort of speech, through cancel culture. Jd Vance hosted kirk's podcast and talked about reporting people "celebrating" his murder and getting them fired from their jobs. Ya know, the same thing the left did in the name of "stopping hate".

And now we learn why I'm anti cancel culture. Because this crap doesn't stop just at stuff we don't like. One day someone might use it against us. And that day is today. 

I'm not celebrating this. I hate this. I hate the trump administration and his authoritarianism. But to some degree, we should have tolerated their views. Again it's not that, at this point, I don't disagree with the paradox of intolerance. I just draw the line differently. If you're an outright fascist encouraging violence against others, yeah, fair, cancel them. Likewise, if you're encouraging or inciting political violence against the right, yeah cancelling them is fair too.

But, like most cancel culture happy factions, trump goes too far. It seems like he's using this crisis to crack down on any left winger "celebrating" his death, with celebrating being vague af and likely including people who just post cynical stuff pointing out the irony of his death. Like the fact that he died to gun violence while muddying the waters on gun violence statistics.

And in that regard, I'm gonna just say, f Donald trump, f jd Vance, and f charlie Kirk. I don't advocate for the murder of conservative commentators. I'm not happy this happened. But this forced sympathy bs the right is trying to push is a bit too authoritarian. I don't celebrate his death, but I refuse to mourn the guy either. He was not the paragon of civil debate. He called for violence against others at times himself. He was a scumbag if you want my honest opinion. Not saying he deserved to die. Not "celebrating" it. But again, I didn't like the guy and I don't have to mourn him either. That's freedom of speech. Deal with it. And f any fascist who thinks differently. 

*Mic drop*