“In my world, we would see the end of the Democratic/Republican party, and the world would be a better place!”
I used to write for a webzine that I would call Conservative Apologist, in that the editor was a… let’s call him a nineties Republican, one who disliked Bush II and kinda liked Obama. A McCain conservative, if you know what I mean. And the previous editors were liberals that liked Obama but felt that McCain was a worthy contender for the position that BHO held. So, people that think of themselves as centrists, for good or ill. As a writer there, I was thought of as a solid conservative, whereas here at Glib Central, I would list myself as one of the more liberal members.
That website attracted commenters from across the political perspective, and you would be exposed to opinions from the staunchest reactionary to the dreamiest progressive. Not bad, as far as that goes, but you would often hear a line of thought that expressed a longing for their brand of politics to be ascendant, and the other side absolutely removed from the battlefield of modern discourse. IE that conservatism/liberalism would be no more, and the world would be perfect. Wishcasting, but of a very common sort. Now, at that site it was expressed more often from the liberal commenters rather than the conservative side, but I have heard it the other way at various times also.
This is something that has sat in my head for years now, percolating in the brain, and I feel that most people know it is foolish, but never really think of why that is. Well, here goes:
The problem with wishing for the death of conservatism or liberalism is that conservatism qua conservatism cannot die, just like liberalism qua liberalism cannot. This is because, in any given grouping of people, half will be more conservative than the other half, and, obviously, vice versa. This is a simple truism.
Think of politics as a bell curve, with one side being the conservative half, while the other is the liberal half. As you get out to the long tails on either side, there are fewer and fewer people, as the greatest number are more centrist, albeit leaning in one direction or the other.
When you add to it that the real liberal motivation is so called progress (and a similar action takes place with conservatives, albeit reactionary in nature) we will always have only two real political positions to take, and they will always be diametrically opposed to each other. The trick, if you want to win elections, is to motivate the most leftward part of the Republican base to accept your politics, or, if an R, motivate the most rightward part of the Democrat base.
This group of shiftable people are sitting in what is called The Overton window. What is that, you might ask? Well, The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. For example, you will never get a far-right voter to come over to the left on abortion, and, likewise, you will never get a far-left voter to come over on gun rights. But there is a lot of common ground on these topics for the majority of voters, and politician needs to simply adjust to the makeup of their potential voters, without alienating too many of the people who are already siding with that politician. So, to shift the people and get them to vote in your brand of politics, what you are really doing is shifting the Overton window, pulling it closer to the direction that you want politics to go. This is most likely done by the other political orientation overreaching, either on one political position, or in a general sense of changing too fast, in the case of progressives, or, conversely, reactionary’s not moving fast enough to go with popular sentiment on any one issue.
An example of this would be Virginia’s electing Glenn Youngkin as governor, due in the main from actions around youth “transitioning” in schools. People were not on board with progressives’ actions around this and pushed back hard. Another example would be the election of Scott Brown as the senator of Massachusetts to stop Obamacare. Finding examples of the opposite is a little more difficult, as they are not so abrupt, but tend to show up as the election of Democrats in formerly Republican held areas.
In the end, most conservatives want change too, just on a slower, more thoughtful timeline, while most liberals feel the need for rapid change, and that we are being held back by reactionaries.
Obama was elected to be a sign of change, to put racial strife to bed, move us away from the failures of the Bush II years. Instead, he pushed a hard progressive agenda. Trump was elected to put a stop to that. And while many centrists were horrified by him, enough people saw the ugly face of hard progressive politics during the Biden years to push back even harder and elect him once again, this time with clear majorities. And back and for we go.
In the end, where you to get rid of the other political party, what would you do with those who voted for them? They aren’t going to start voting for your brand of politics, they aren’t going away. So, in the end, you just need to accept that they are out there, and deal with that.
(As an aside, this also shows the pointlessness of having more than two major parties. Every politics is composed of coalitions, whether they are made before elections, such as in the United States, or after elections as in a parliamentary system. People may state that they want a third party, but what they really want is to have their version of what is right take over the applicable party, and then the electorate. Right now, we are seeing the DSA moving to take over the Democrats, just like MAGA took over the Republicans. No third party needed.)
There are a couple of reasons for wishing “side X” would go away. One is moral revulsion. Can’t do much about that.
The other is because there’s an unspoken assumption that one side must always rule over all other sides. I don’t know how to fix that either, but at least I know it’s not actually true. And the problems caused by ALL MUST BE RULED only get worse as the polity gets larger and more diverse.
We have a winner take all system with no real outside threat to bread any sense of unity.
I’m not advocating for a new system because I’m fairly certain our current chattering class would come up with something far worse even if the process wasn’t dominated by progs. But it kind of is what you’d expect our system to look like and what it would have probably been for most of the 20th century without the looming threat of communism.
Winner take all would be less problematic if the all wasn’t literally everything.
Wickard v. Filburn can be overturned, the bigger problem is the mindset of people who think it’s obvious and beyond dispute that FedGov is in charge of everything always.
This is my biggest problem with the “neener neener, we redistricted harder than you!” It’s literally accepting as legitimate that the purpose of the HoR is to provide power for $POLITICAL_PARTY. Silly me thought it was to, you know, represent the people in a particular district.
I find this even weirder when supposed non-interventionists take this attitude. Sure, “we’re” not supposed to fuck with Iran. But CA and NY should be able to tell TX how to live… why exactly? ‘Cause line on map? So if we draw line around Iran it’s cool now?
On the redistricting, I find the hand wringing over the recent Supreme Court decision rather amusing. The district in question was clearly unnatural and the only coherent strategy to it was to rig it so that black people could elect someone. The assumption being that blacks are this monolithic group with the same interests regardless of where they are.
It stretched horizontally across like 60% of the state. It includes rural areas along with urban.
These civil rights era exceptions to the constitution – and that’s what they are, a very special case of special pleading as to why we should ignore the plain text of our founding document – should exist into perpetuity. No one can tell us when the exception is no longer needed. The reality is that it will always be demanded because it favors one political party so overwhelmingly. The Dems will never give these things up willingly.
And how did that work out?
Well, that’s what they claim. In practice it turns out they just want to rule over you and enrich themselves. Funny how that turned out.
All politicians want to rule over you and enrich themselves. That’s why they’re politicians.
The liberals are just better at it because they understand the concept of, ‘My cousin and I against the world.’
I think the reason Democrats are more effective when in power is because much of the conservative movement is just a bunch of unprincipled hacks yelling stop. Government exists in the mind’s of most Americans to do things. A lack of doing things is seen as a lack of progress. You see people bemoaning gridlock and a lack of bills being passed all the time.
Even nominal libertarian outfits like Reason jumped on the bandwagon of accusing the GOP of not having any healthcare plan in response to the ACA. Plans that called for less government intervention existed. May not have ever passed, but that’s more a symptom rather than the actual problem.
People want to see their politicians doing something. Being active. People may not want to hear it, but the future of the GOP is something worse than MAGA and nothing that at all resembles libertarianism. It’s going to be white identitarian politics based on the same basic principles as progressivism only…for the white majority. As long as the white majority is a thing.
If there’s one thing that my time on Facebook antifa reminded me of it’s that a whole lot of leftists see things in the reverse of how we do. It wasn’t shocking, but you can lose sight of it outside your bubble. If anything they spent more time ranting about “liberals” and their supposed opposition and refusal to learn from leftists than anything to do with MAGA.
There’s plenty of catty in-fighting on the left side of the spectrum. Especially on the fringes. But it’s easier to build coalitions and pass shit when you are seen as doing something and in a world where doing less is seen as, well, a counterproductive strategy even when it’s codified in legislation.
That’s something that I will never understand. The desire for constant change, much like the desire for constant stimulation, is an infantile character trait that people should really have got over by the time they can legally drive.
I don’t vote ’cause I find that both parties want to rule. I understand all the arguments but I can’t bring myself to committing or pretending that one side is better than the others.
In the before days I voted Rep, I voted Goldwater, I voted Reagan’s first term. Then I finally understood the uselessness of voting and have used that Tuesday in November as a quiet deer hunting day.
I get the same president as everyone else without the mental anguish. Trump is not the opposite of Kamala, the Reps drink the same whisky as the Demos.
I think one side is clearly worse than the other(s) especially in recent years so I vote accordingly. I never “win” but oh well.
When you add to it that the real liberal motivation is so called progress
Many “progressives” seem to be horrified by change, whether or not it may be described as progress.
The progressive label is just a propaganda term. It’s progress. Who could be opposed to progress?!1
They literally latch onto anything in history that’s deemed good and assign credit to themselves for it. They firmly believe that if transported back in time, they’d have same principles because they are just essentially good people and their policy preferences are an outgrowth of being good. I’m not pointing out something revolutionary with that.
But yea, you can easily see just how much of progressivism is just about protecting the current status quo of government at the moment. Like, how fucking cringe is it that they are all up in arms over that stupid fucking ballroom? How dare Trump desecrate this fancy fucking house that we’ll never be in. It’s one of the dumber examples, but real none the less.
But we can look at the way they want to protect the “character” of certain neighborhoods as another example. The way they want to stop development of new land. And it goes on.
The only thing I’ve seen in common with the various groups that have called themselves progressive is the idea that humanity (and sometimes individual humans) can be perfected. With such a wondrously awesome end state, complaining about the tactics used to get there is just unhelpful pettiness.
If I wanted to see DC burned to the ground and the ashes scattered to the wind, would that make me a progressive or a reactionary?
Watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical, a liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal
You’re a wrongthinker, citizen.
How is that statement in conflict with anything antifa has been saying over the last few years?
Trump was elected to put a stop to that.
Trump is the giant flaming bag of dog shit America tossed onto Establishmentarian Washington’s front porch.
“Yeah but he’s our flaming bag of dog shit” is something that I can’t understand.
He’s not mine nor is the other party any more or less a bigger/smaller bag of dogshit.
All politicians want to rule over you and enrich themselves. That’s why they’re politicians.
Nobody ever ran for office so he could leave me the fuck alone.
My plan this year is to vote against all incumbents in the Republican primary. If some of the challengers win, I’ll probably vote on November.
I will futilely vote against the school budget raise. And as tradition demands, write in “Semi-Bright Border Collie” in 2028.
I don’t get the candidacy. No dog is going to live to be 35, and thus you’d never get a border collie elected.
Dog years. I’m sure a civil rights lawsuit can make it happen.
Speaking of, Lily put on 10 pounds over the course of this year. I will admit, she is excessively chonky. Considering how active she is, I need to get some stress off of her joints.
In (traditional) dog years, it would only have to be five.
In America we “fix” things. Creative destruction and spontaneous order are heresy.
My plan this year is to vote against all incumbents in the Republican primary. If some of the challengers win, I’ll probably vote on November.
In that Maine story, it was pointed out that Susan Collins has been in the Senate for thirty years. Time to shamble off, granny.
But there is nobody in the state of Maine who could do a better job.
“[If] conservatism/liberalism would be no more, and the world would be perfect.” <– If *people* would be no more, the world would be 'perfect.' All that humanity getting in the way!
The Left actively hates humanity and finds our species 'evil.' (Natch, the world would be 'perfect' for them, if only for those OTHER people over there! (They need to go, but they whisper that part so no one can hear 'em.)
Their Original Sin is having a Carbon Footprint. ('Such bastards folk are, for using energy to escape living in the jungle!') Must be made to feel icky about existing. People who feel bad about themselves need saviors to make 'em feel better.
Leftism is a dressed up religion, all for nudging folks' feelings so they don't feel so damn *nasty.* (With the soothsayers peddling anything to part fools from their $$.)
See also: All human history.
In unrelated (but still kinda related) news:
DOJ and ATF Announce Regulatory Reforms to Reduce Burdens on Law-Abiding Gun Owners and Businesses
From Orchid Advisors (the compliance consultants my old man uses for his FFL):
There’s more to it, but those are the highlights.
Some of this stuff would be very nice for me personally.
What. The Fuck. Is happening here? Most of that was actively being opposed by BATFE last year. What changed? Is this all Bondi getting punted?
It seems like it. There’s a lot of encouraging things going on in the last few weeks.
Many people think the midterm elections are set in stone, but if the DOJ keeps actually doing things, and Iran somehow wraps up, that could go a long way.
The congressional districts aren’t even finalized in a number of states.
Hard to say what the midterms will show. Except that for the nth year in a row, I will not have representation.
Most of that was actively being opposed by BATFE last year. What changed?
New(ly confirmed) director.
“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
― William F. Buckley
The world is now populated with emotionally stunted people, consumed by a childlike obsession with “fairness” imposed by force by Big Nanny. Only a madman would object to that.