Political Arcs
2019-12-31
Politically I’ve gone from end-to-end of the spectrum. My family is a bit right-leaning (only "a bit", everyone was fairly non-dogmatic as i grew up). In my teenage years I was an insufferable militant atheist. Which at that time pretty firmly placed me on the "left" end of the spectrum, but I still had a number of views that were more traditionally conservative - just by virtue of not having time to have examined them when i was a teenager. As i grew into my 20s, I drifted more and more to the left, which I saw as the side which valued science, objective truth, reason, and informed decisions. This peaked in 2016, where my role in the presidential election was to be a precinct delegate for Hillary Clinton. That experience alone could constitute its own post.
Since 2016, I’ve grown a lot. I’ve seen the political landscape turn into a lava pit, I’ve seen firsthand how people act when they think they’re right (I live in Seattle). I’ve witnessed the media pillory innocent people, I’ve seen McCarthy-esque hunts for imaginary nazis and racists, I watched the people who I thought were on the same side as me turn into hateful, racist, sexist, isolated, lonely people who seemed addicted to feeling superior to people with regular healthy lives. It became a little more obvious that maybe I was like that in the past too. Maybe we were only on the same side because of what we were against. What I was against was a way of thinking, not a specific religion, but the people I stood with were only saying the same things because it came at the expense of people they hated - not because it was true.
With the benefit of experience, it becomes clear that the things I was told as a young man were all short-term gains, at the expense of long-term losses. Institutions control the narrative by blasting us with news that doesn’t affect us, and isn’t relevant to our lives. People "join the conversation" by slinging insults and being as radical as they can. The two parties are both willing to continue each other’s stampede over people’s rights, leveraging the outrage of their half of the populace to inch their power further and further away from the people; promising their constituents that giving up a little freedom means that the government can legally use its new power like a crowbar against their opponents.
The institutions that are supposed to serve us often end up controlling us. People in power for 40 years are still in power now. It’s not an illuminati, it’s just career officials who have been in power so long that they don’t need to ask permission anymore.
Things that stay the same
It doesn’t matter which president gets elected, they always renew the Patriot Act. It doesn’t matter which congress has power, they’ll pass mass surveillance, or COPPA. And it doesn’t stop bi-partisan attempts like SOPA or PIPA.
Both sides may be cool towards marijuana now, but nobody is re-examining the CSA, or how it gives the executive branch the exclusive power to determine what is illegal, and what the sentences are for it.
Both parties are happy to start new wars every couple years and encourage foreign revolutions. Which isn’t bad unto itself - maybe you agree with them. But your representative didn’t get to vote on it.
We’ve had major recessions every 10 years for the last 50 years, but nobody has seriously examined the central bank’s role in monetary policy that leads to this. Our debt-to-GDP is now over 100% (meaning that if every american devoted an entire year’s work to the effort, we couldn’t pay off all our debt), but unlike Greece, our credit rating is still perfect.
We bemoan the loss of jobs to overseas workers, without considering that in order for that to happen, it means that these foreign workers have to accept being paid much less than the American minimum wage. Which makes sense, because earning minimum wage in the US puts you in the top 8% highest earners in the world. We do not consider why everything in the US is so dramatically more expensive that being so rich still leads to you being so comparatively poor.
Ever since the removal of the Bracero Program, south american illegal immigration has exploded, with now ~15 million illegal immigrants living in the US today. This leads to a second-class citizen problem, where they are not subject to the same laws (or protections) as Americans, yet they live alongside us and are able to work for less than us. Regardless how you feel about their actions coming here, we must all agree that it’s not a fair situation for anyone.
There’s more to be said, but this is the short list of things that almost everyone should be able to agree are problems.
The arc continues
It would be easy to say "oh, well I figured it all out, my arc is over." But in reality, your arc should never be over. Just because you crested the wave and started to see the ocean, doesn’t mean you’ve mapped the whole thing.
(i’m not totally sure i’m done writing this, it needs a better ending. But it took time to get all the thoughts and links together, so here we are)
