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Nobody wants to talk about politics
a year ago
General
Except I do. I actually kind of enjoy it, so long as people are being respectful and making well reasoned, good faith arguments. But things in US politics have not been quite right lately, and by "lately" I mean "since about 1996" if I were to pick an inflection point.
You see, it used to be that there was a school of conservative political philosophy, and a school of liberal political philosophy. They both had their strong points and their weak points, but throughout the 70s and 80s the conservative establishment suffered some setbacks when they ended up on the wrong side of history on some major points, particularly when it came to economic policy. Fast forward to the mid 90s, and the republican party had decided to react to these failures by untethering their political platform from political philosophy, and when time Newt Gingrich had ascended to become the house speaker, he ushered in an era of "whatever the democrats are, we're the opposite".
As you can imagine, this lead to a dramatic downturn in bipartisanship, although it still, barely, existed enough to keep the government from completely collapsing (there were, of course, a number of government shutdowns, orchestrated by Newt Gingrich's obstinance). The goal became simply to deny the democrats any political or legislative wins, even if the subject in question was well aligned with the (now obsolete) conservative political philosophy.
Meanwhile in academia, this lead to a bit of a feedback loop. Since conservative political philosophy had been abandoned, the supply chain of conservative political academics dried up. This also corresponded with the republicans turning away from science in general, since they also ended up on the wrong side of issues like "is smoking bad for you?", "did evolution happen?" and "is climate change real?", and this all came together to drive a very sharp, mutual wedge between academia and republicans.
So this has lead to an entire political generation where the republican party has adhered to no other philosophy than "obstruct the other side at any costs," and leaning hard into wedge issues, tribalism, and our next guest to the party: superficial TV news sound bites.
And this is the other reason I picked 1996 as the turning point, as that year also saw the founding of Fox News, lead by the charming and totally-not-out-to-literally-destroy-america-from-within Rupert Murdoch. Fox News gave the republican party the perfect forum for delivering their performative politics. Political philosophy and nuance didn't matter, what mattered is that you could get people excited for whatever it is you were doing in a 30 second video clip. And what better message to put into those short clips than "I'm fighting for you against [other people] by opposing [whatever they're doing] because hell and damnation will rain down on earth if we let them get away with it." It didn't matter that you couldn't bring the receipts, because the receipts wouldn't fit in those 30 seconds anyway.
Now the point of me telling you all this is that I'm really quite disappointed by the demise of conservative political philosophy. I think that you could form answers to political questions near and dear to our hearts here in the furry world, in both conservative and liberal terms, that would not be significantly conflicting or hackle-raising. LGBT issues? What business does the government have regulating the private relationships between consenting adults. Abortion and contraceptive access? It's no business of the government to intervene in the fertility decisions of individuals. Legalize weed? Why is the government even regulating it in the first place?
And so on, and so on.
But that's not what we have represented today in US politics. Instead we have the democrats who still try to turn liberal political philosophy and empirical science into policy platforms (with varying levels of success, perhaps), and the republicans who only seem to want to use tribalism and division to gain power, in order to... I mean, they don't really have a political philosophy anymore to execute on, so I can't really be any more charitable than to say that they want to gain power so that they can inflict their "democrats, except the opposite of that" platform onto america, a platform full of surprisingly unpopular initiatives and policies that are inexplicably harmful not just to the rest of america, but to their own core supporters as well.
And so now this long and weird history has come together to bring us Donald Trump and his circle of weird and deranged sycophants. They've perfected the act of "I'm going to do a bad thing, and then point at the other side and accuse them of doing it while professing my own innocence", an act which is uniquely enabled by the Fox News fast paced news cycle, where nothing is challenged or fact checked; all that most regular americans get to see is just the bare accusations flying back and forth.
But what prompted me to write this journal isn't the looming menace of DT and his weirdly projectionist mudslinging. Rather it's JD Vance, whose writing I used to enjoy reading back when he was an opinion contributor at National Review (and I'm sure most of my followers will have to read that sentence 2 or 3 times to realize that it isn't a typo). He was well spoken, seemed to be reasonably well educated, and while I rarely agreed with his conclusions I felt like it was refreshing to see some sort of spark of rebirth of conservative political thought. I thought that people like him might be able to ground the republican party back in something other than naked, performative partisanship.
Sadly, we all saw him take a complete 180, going from a never-Trump detractor to his biggest kiss-up sycophant, earning himself the position of becoming the republican VP nominee. It's just so disheartening to see him make a statement after the attempted assassination of DT, starting off with the clear and lucid observation that this reprehensible act is the result of those who court division and flirt with political violence. In a former life, he would have pointed the blame directly on where it should lie: on Donald Trump and his circle. But no, instead he somehow abandons rationality and points at the democrats as the instigators.
And once again, those who tune into Rupert Murdoch's fox news will only ever see the accusation, unquestioned and parroted over and over. It doesn't matter that he can't back up his accusation, it doesn't matter that he can't show the receipts. Nobody will ever ask for them.
So look, I think that conservatism can be saved in america. I think a healthy, functioning democracy needs viewpoints rooted in multiple schools of political philosophy. I think everyone in america deserves political representation that aligns with their deeply held values. But the only way to get there is to recognize that it's time for everyone in america, whether you're left, right, red, blue, or whatever, to come together and reject those who are trying to gain office through stoking tribalism, division, threats of political violence (let's not forget the Jan 6th incident), empty accusations, and dishonest lies. I'm not saying this because I want Joe Biden to win. I'm saying this because we should all want Donald Trump to lose.
He's not your champion.
He's not anyone's champion.
You can do better.
We can all do better.
Now for an editorial note: I've turned comments off for this journal, not because I don't want to hear from you, but because I don't want to have to moderate conversations between you all. Things can get heated and I don't want to be in a position to have to be shutting anyone down. If you think I've missed the mark on this, or that I'm way off base, I'd like to invite you to drop me a message, preferably on discord or telegram because the notes system here is ass, and we can talk it out. Be civil, be logical, be sensible, and bring receipts; it'll save both of us some time.
You see, it used to be that there was a school of conservative political philosophy, and a school of liberal political philosophy. They both had their strong points and their weak points, but throughout the 70s and 80s the conservative establishment suffered some setbacks when they ended up on the wrong side of history on some major points, particularly when it came to economic policy. Fast forward to the mid 90s, and the republican party had decided to react to these failures by untethering their political platform from political philosophy, and when time Newt Gingrich had ascended to become the house speaker, he ushered in an era of "whatever the democrats are, we're the opposite".
As you can imagine, this lead to a dramatic downturn in bipartisanship, although it still, barely, existed enough to keep the government from completely collapsing (there were, of course, a number of government shutdowns, orchestrated by Newt Gingrich's obstinance). The goal became simply to deny the democrats any political or legislative wins, even if the subject in question was well aligned with the (now obsolete) conservative political philosophy.
Meanwhile in academia, this lead to a bit of a feedback loop. Since conservative political philosophy had been abandoned, the supply chain of conservative political academics dried up. This also corresponded with the republicans turning away from science in general, since they also ended up on the wrong side of issues like "is smoking bad for you?", "did evolution happen?" and "is climate change real?", and this all came together to drive a very sharp, mutual wedge between academia and republicans.
So this has lead to an entire political generation where the republican party has adhered to no other philosophy than "obstruct the other side at any costs," and leaning hard into wedge issues, tribalism, and our next guest to the party: superficial TV news sound bites.
And this is the other reason I picked 1996 as the turning point, as that year also saw the founding of Fox News, lead by the charming and totally-not-out-to-literally-destroy-america-from-within Rupert Murdoch. Fox News gave the republican party the perfect forum for delivering their performative politics. Political philosophy and nuance didn't matter, what mattered is that you could get people excited for whatever it is you were doing in a 30 second video clip. And what better message to put into those short clips than "I'm fighting for you against [other people] by opposing [whatever they're doing] because hell and damnation will rain down on earth if we let them get away with it." It didn't matter that you couldn't bring the receipts, because the receipts wouldn't fit in those 30 seconds anyway.
Now the point of me telling you all this is that I'm really quite disappointed by the demise of conservative political philosophy. I think that you could form answers to political questions near and dear to our hearts here in the furry world, in both conservative and liberal terms, that would not be significantly conflicting or hackle-raising. LGBT issues? What business does the government have regulating the private relationships between consenting adults. Abortion and contraceptive access? It's no business of the government to intervene in the fertility decisions of individuals. Legalize weed? Why is the government even regulating it in the first place?
And so on, and so on.
But that's not what we have represented today in US politics. Instead we have the democrats who still try to turn liberal political philosophy and empirical science into policy platforms (with varying levels of success, perhaps), and the republicans who only seem to want to use tribalism and division to gain power, in order to... I mean, they don't really have a political philosophy anymore to execute on, so I can't really be any more charitable than to say that they want to gain power so that they can inflict their "democrats, except the opposite of that" platform onto america, a platform full of surprisingly unpopular initiatives and policies that are inexplicably harmful not just to the rest of america, but to their own core supporters as well.
And so now this long and weird history has come together to bring us Donald Trump and his circle of weird and deranged sycophants. They've perfected the act of "I'm going to do a bad thing, and then point at the other side and accuse them of doing it while professing my own innocence", an act which is uniquely enabled by the Fox News fast paced news cycle, where nothing is challenged or fact checked; all that most regular americans get to see is just the bare accusations flying back and forth.
But what prompted me to write this journal isn't the looming menace of DT and his weirdly projectionist mudslinging. Rather it's JD Vance, whose writing I used to enjoy reading back when he was an opinion contributor at National Review (and I'm sure most of my followers will have to read that sentence 2 or 3 times to realize that it isn't a typo). He was well spoken, seemed to be reasonably well educated, and while I rarely agreed with his conclusions I felt like it was refreshing to see some sort of spark of rebirth of conservative political thought. I thought that people like him might be able to ground the republican party back in something other than naked, performative partisanship.
Sadly, we all saw him take a complete 180, going from a never-Trump detractor to his biggest kiss-up sycophant, earning himself the position of becoming the republican VP nominee. It's just so disheartening to see him make a statement after the attempted assassination of DT, starting off with the clear and lucid observation that this reprehensible act is the result of those who court division and flirt with political violence. In a former life, he would have pointed the blame directly on where it should lie: on Donald Trump and his circle. But no, instead he somehow abandons rationality and points at the democrats as the instigators.
And once again, those who tune into Rupert Murdoch's fox news will only ever see the accusation, unquestioned and parroted over and over. It doesn't matter that he can't back up his accusation, it doesn't matter that he can't show the receipts. Nobody will ever ask for them.
So look, I think that conservatism can be saved in america. I think a healthy, functioning democracy needs viewpoints rooted in multiple schools of political philosophy. I think everyone in america deserves political representation that aligns with their deeply held values. But the only way to get there is to recognize that it's time for everyone in america, whether you're left, right, red, blue, or whatever, to come together and reject those who are trying to gain office through stoking tribalism, division, threats of political violence (let's not forget the Jan 6th incident), empty accusations, and dishonest lies. I'm not saying this because I want Joe Biden to win. I'm saying this because we should all want Donald Trump to lose.
He's not your champion.
He's not anyone's champion.
You can do better.
We can all do better.
Now for an editorial note: I've turned comments off for this journal, not because I don't want to hear from you, but because I don't want to have to moderate conversations between you all. Things can get heated and I don't want to be in a position to have to be shutting anyone down. If you think I've missed the mark on this, or that I'm way off base, I'd like to invite you to drop me a message, preferably on discord or telegram because the notes system here is ass, and we can talk it out. Be civil, be logical, be sensible, and bring receipts; it'll save both of us some time.
Comment posting has been disabled by the journal owner.
