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Jasmine's avatar

Wanted to add my two cents from today’s call.

What’s so amazing is the Democratic party’s co-option of basically the entire “minority”/historically oppressed label: Domestically, Democrats are supposedly (and often are) fighting for legal protections for people of color, Black people, indigenous people, women (50% of population), and all of the LGBTQ+ communities (5-20% of the population, by most estimates). The sum total of these groups is well over 50% of the American population, so it makes it very difficult to vote “against” an encumbent (or new) Democrat as a member of one or more of these groups — even if you vehemently oppose that very Democrat’s backing of corporations & hawkish foreign policy.

Importantly, Republicans are often fighting *against* such legal protections for historically oppressed domestic minorities — but in perfect alignment with those same Democrats’ support for corporate interests and hawkish foreign policy.

I think this is the bind many voters (including myself) find ourselves in — how can we possibly defy corporate interests & foreign human rights abuses, when both parties are in perfect alignment on these issues, and we’re basically whittled down to voting on our side of the culture war?

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Frank Lee's avatar

You can start by asking yourself what path is really the most likely to improve the human condition for the most people over the long haul. Dividing people into these victim groups and attempting to top-down engineer society to benefit some groups over others is not only NOT going to result in better circumstances for the overall human condition, it is bound to fail because it is a false front in political strategy that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If the Democrats get their political power from the narrative of victim groups, then they cannot allow those victim groups to believe they are no longer victims. This is their fatal flaw.

I ran a Y2K project and told all of the workers participating in that project that they were working to successful end the need of their employment. That would be the right mindset for a committed social justice leftist... that their agitation for cause was only a temporary project with finite goals and that they would need to go do something else once achieved.

But the social justice left is a money and power-making industry today. So if you align with that, you are either an insider trying to get money and power from it, or you are supporting what is an industry that needs to perpetuate the misery, or the programming of people to believe they are miserable, in perpetuity.

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Starry Gordon's avatar

"The business of America is business," that is, trying to get money. There does not seem to be any way of changing that using largescale electoral politics. Some kinds of local action which embody different principles may accomplish something.

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Frank Lee's avatar

I know the fix. It needs to be:

- Term limits.

- Restrictions in affiliation for government officials.

- Massive increase in conflict-of-interest and self-dealing rules and limitations for politicians and government officials.

- Small government in general.

- Enhancements in economic policy that give incentives for small business over large business, because large business always benefits from increased regulation and lobbying collusion with the law and rule-makers... by destroying all upstart competition.

- Changes to campaign finance rules that measure media and tech business influence and rule that the media or tech business is no longer media or a liability-limited platform, but a political action business and thus apply campaign donation rules and restrictions to that media and tech business can apply.

- Enhanced libel and slander laws that allow fast-track damage awards for media that lies and harms people with the lies.

- Voter ID

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Jan 10, 2022
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Frank Lee's avatar

Vote out the establishment. Vote in people that are not career politicians and are real problem solvers. You know, the opposite of the 2020 election.

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Jan 10, 2022
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Starry Gordon's avatar

It's obviously not to the interest of those who have and like power to permit reduction of their power if they can help it. And, except under very unusual circumstances, they usually can. The system doesn't even have to be explicitly rigged.

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Moe Strausberg's avatar

I don't know what left means in America. I live in a secular humanist liberal democracy. I have no clue how Americans perceive democracy. we have banned religion from all public discourse and this has made both our extreme left and extreme left very upset. Bill 21 was a product of a center right government think Barrack Obama center and think of Obama never invoking celestial blessings.

Social justice is a societal responsibility of all of our society. We are not that far from NYC. We share a border with Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. Come up for a visit and try to find people ready to die to change the way we are governed. We are a real democracy and it is hard to hate your government. The Church has crumbled into dust and the corporations have fled to friendlier climes. Leaving us in charge of our new found democracy. Our citizens are doing a wonderful job of providing peace order and good government. All we demand is to be given no reason for cynicism.

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Frank Lee's avatar

It does seem to get convoluted. I think because each side projects itself onto the other for political purpose. Also, I think politics is very tribal today and people that side with left or right don't really fit in ideologically but claim allegiance with the standards of the tribe they believe they belong to. Thank politicians and media for that. They are first making, and then milking, tribal conflicts for their power and money gains.

I subscribe to the view that there is one primary continuum of ideological difference that defines the amount of government control over people's lives. Everything else is just personal opinion that, frankly, gets over-used to divide us into political tribes. For example, most people siding with the left tribe believe that the government is right to mandate vaccines to protect lives, but not right to mandate the right to life of a fetus. But some people claiming membership in the right tribe are supportive of some or all abortion rights, and also see a justification for government putting requirements on the people for the good of humanity in general.

Religion is also not a good test. There are devout followers of Christ who are very liberal (the Pope for example), and conservatives who are atheists. However, I do think the level of religious practice and believe within the culture is an important component of our worldview tilt (explained below).

It is the tolerance and desire for government control that I think defines the left or right.

At the very extreme right is anarchy. At the extreme left is totalitarianism. We all fall somewhere on that continuum.

A right-leaning worldview is one of the father (tough love, self-determination, freedom, independence, individualism, individual opportunity, responsibility, directness, objectivity and pragmatism, and consequences for behavior). A left-leaning worldview is one of the mother (caring, unconditional love, emotionalism, relativism, myth logicism, groupism, expected outcomes, cooperation, rules, saving people from themselves, collectivism).

My worldview is more of the father. I define myself as being a libertarian paternalist. I agree that we need rules but want limited government and smaller set of framework rules that people are free to pursue their own interest within. However, within that framework I want strong law enforcement to serve justice on those that go outside the framework of laws. I expect people to have a moral framework and to control themselves from going outside the rules. But if they do, I want them to be caught and punished for it.

This gets back to the problem of a secular society, and also a society that is rife with cultural diversity. A society without binding and common set of cultural beliefs and practices means there is no reliable foundation of morality other than individual interests regulated by what government lays on us. Left people tend to push secularism. They tend to push open borders and don't value traditional American values. This leads to a sort of lack of moral control of our fellow residents as anything goes because they just moralize their own interests.

This then leads to chaotic results in society... and then a demand to increase our laws and law enforcement to get back to some level of control. Then the mothering tendency of the left revolts over the perceived unfairness of it and demands that law enforcement stands down (ironically starting to advocate for anarchy, but since that is anathema to their mothering desire for government control, the father is disingenuously blamed for being immoral.)

The problem is this tug at extremes and political tribalism, when we should be debating where is the optimum position on the continuum to best ensure an overall health of the human condition. The pursuit of social perfection is the enemy of the good. No system is ever going to be perfect, so we should be constantly striving to only make it the best it can be. And the left and the right should always debate the pros and cons of their ideas... and not lock into some tribal war of left vs right extremes.

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Moe Strausberg's avatar

Empirically you seem to grasp the situation particularly well.

Quebec has gone from patriarchy to matriarchy in 50 years and that is why we call it a revolution.

Right now matriarchy is looking very very good especially for most of us males. Right now Iceland looks a much better leader than the USA.

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Frank Lee's avatar

I do question the meme that society ruled by men leads to violence, and that if ruled by women would be more cooperative and peaceful.

My view is that much of old Europe has always been more mothering in social construct and world view, and has caused both of the last two world wars that demands alpha males to fight and die in.

Maybe I am wrong, but it appears to me that the experiments in Quebec and Iceland are living on the borrowed time bought and paid for by the alpha males that came before and created the relatively peaceful and prosperous times we live in today. If I am wrong, I don't care that women rule. However, I think I am right that the collectivist, socialist direction is one that is unsustainable because human nature is set at a baseline path of evolutionary development that is much slower than the progressive's "revolutionary" desire to engineer society to their softer version. Just look at crime in the USA. The mothers said we should get rid of those alpha male police and replaces them with mothering social workers. How is that working out?

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Starry Gordon's avatar

One might see collective behavior as retrograde or reactionary rather than progressive, imagining of course that in liberalism-capitalism we are in the midst of 'progress'* and not just running off a cliff. Many of the accounts of premodern social behavior indicate that it was necessarily highly collective and that individualism was either non-existent or a rare luxury, produces for a lucky few.

I must add that given the history of the 20th and 21st century I don't see much reason to believe that women are naturally more peaceable than men.

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Frank Lee's avatar

I agree with that. I am seeing women less peaceable in some respects, because they seem more prone to uncontrolled emotional responses and a long session of resentment and need for retribution. I see this in my own life with some of my female family members and friends. I can get angry and blow off steam, confront someone about it, and then move on. However, the other gender seems to remember the confrontation for years if not decades. And it keeps coming up again and again and again.

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Starry Gordon's avatar

I was thinking more of bigdeal political leaders, like Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and of course our own special warmonger, Hillary Clinton.

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Jan 10, 2022
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Frank Lee's avatar

He/She reminds me of my lovely hippy liberal community members. Their brains are built for art and fantasy and not pragmatic critical thinking. I love to hear what they think... there are often a few pearls of wisdom mixed up in the colorful play they narrate.

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Frank Lee's avatar

Matriarchy looks good to beta males. But also leads to eventual collapse as there are not enough alpha producers and fighters... only looters and moochers looking for the soft life and constant soft embrace from a mother.

Look around. Everything that you can claim provides this new soft life was built by the fathers and the system that valued that worldview. Giving it over to the matriarchy will result in a decay of those things built and eventual collapse of the system.

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Moe Strausberg's avatar

Being am Empiricist I cannot comment on the future, for the moment we have peace order and good government and the injustice seekers keep getting angrier and angrier while our economy both public and private shows no sign of slowing down.

I was never smart enough to love sloth but we do best when we can do the things we love to do. I still remember the teachers who loved teaching. We don't need the Ted Cruzes , Donald Trumps and Mitch McConnells they can stay home and play Peter Pan.

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