So, it's a bone of contention with many when political matters come up. It has ruined a many Christmas dinners through history, had people unfriend each other on Facebook, and caused a dissension in our world and especially, our country. But people are often confused even more so by my political beliefs, so in an attempt at explaining the fluid and changing maelstrom of my thoughts regarding politics, I am writing this entry in order to clarify.
I grew up in a (somewhat) mainstream liberal household, from two baby boomer parents who later disagreed on the extent that the "revolution" (i.e, the sixties) should have on both child-rearing and lifestyle. One of my parents became more "moderate" or "establishment" or whatever, the other continued to follow dissident leftist politics to a certain extent.
Being raised liberal, for better or worse, definitely influenced my thoughts as far as politics go. For example, both parents emphasized peaceful resolution to conflict, sexual and personal liberation, and rights for all people.
In fact, this was a household where I was banned from not having GI Joe toys, but the GI Joe toys would have their guns taken away from them. The biggest conservative nightmare of gun banning was taking hold with my toy collection!
However, they let me keep the Star Wars and Transformers ones. After all, both of those franchises are more fantastical and science fiction in nature, Star Wars particularly displaying a somewhat liberal bent thanks to George Lucas pontificating about "fighting the empire" and how the Rebels loosely recalled the Viet Cong side in the Vietnam War (George's words, not mine).
I would rally around "hating Republicans" and was taught (at least by one parent) that Republicans were greedy, sexist, racist, and homophobic. There were people, friends of the family, who further talked about the political theories underlying these ideas, and in studying them, I found them to be somewhat true, and also predictive about how elections would go, and how political trends would flourish.
I would say that up until the early 2000's, I was a somewhat mainstream liberal, with a dissident and mistrusting side when it came to the establishment. It helped that this point of view was in the household was the more dissident point of view regarding politics. Marxism was never taught or advised, however one of my grandfathers was definitely leaning that way, and ironically, on the other side of the family, recently I have found out that a great grandfather was involved with such movements as well.
Something happened, and I can pinpoint the first change and how it did. One of my friends bought a Noam Chomsky book and soon I followed.
I was fascinated by the ideas that Chomsky had about the United States, especially of the nature of propaganda. I would look into references that he referenced and see if it played how he said in regards to the resources he utilized. It did. I became more of a radical leftist and embarked and a contrarian point of view when it came to even the most ardent left wing mainstream Democrats.
At this point, I voted for Ralph Nader, causing a huge influx of criticism from family members who said I was "wasting my vote" and who liked the Democrat choice of the year 2000, Al Gore.
Above all, I had learned to distrust the Clinton machine from all my readings of Chomsky and also left wing periodicals who talked about the many capitalist wheelings and dealings of Clinton and Gore, and of course Tipper Gore would factor in my choice given her history (and my history as a Metal Fan and Musician). I was mocked and belittled for exercising my democratic choice, and while I acknowledge that having Bush Junior in office ruined our country, I still do not regret my vote.
Al Gore was just as beholden to many of the same corporatist interests as Bush, and who knows what kinds of policies he would enact. Of course, I believe he would've been better than Bush but real change doesn't come from the type of compromise that people wanted me to endorse.
Something happened then that shocked us all. 9/11.
The day of 9/11 I said and thought things that I now regret, and in reading this, people may be shocked and outraged by what I believed.
At the time, I believed that America had "asked for it" and "deserved" the attack, and while I felt for people who had died, I had a craven attitude towards people who made the huge deal out of it that it was. After all, in reading history, it seemed minuscule to the damage that the United States had caused around the world, and in a way we were getting our comeuppance for always entangling in other's affairs.
I had seen the hypocrisy of the United States supporting dictators around the world on one hand (even after the Cold War excuse to do so had dissipated), and on the other hand, espousing democracy on the other. I had seen that wars were big business, and that the military industrial complex was a factor in perpetuating war as well as access to natural resources for corporations. Beyond the lies, beyond the bullshit, I hated the hypocrisy.
It was a short time later that I became to be known as what is called a "9/11" truther.
I devoured articles, some legitimate, some not, about the attack in an attempt to understand it.
I had a keen interest in the JFK conspiracy theories growing up, and this one seemed to go a lot deeper even still.
I can say that at this point, my 9/11 "truthism" is still there, though it's a more convoluted and complicated idea than one single agency or group of people "making it happen". That's a good story for another time.
I kept on this path for years, distrusting the government and authority. It was around this time then that I started to get into the self-improvement movement.
This was a revelation to me, and to this day I am still struggling with many aspects of it. But one thing it did do is expose me to a lot of ideas about self sufficiency and (dare I say it) capitalism.
I had after all, for awhile, been a quasi-Marxist for a few short months in the early 2000's. I had read a few books about Fidel Castro and thought that the media and people had been unfair about his regime. I had thought that Communism was never perfected, but that South and Central American variants of Communist movements were a lot more "pure" than their European and Asian equivalents.
I still believe this, because the body counts from Communism and Marxist revolutions in the Americas pale in comparison to the rest of the world, and in fact, American culpability in repressions AGAINST such movements have caused (arguably) more bloodshed in South and Central America than leftism itself..
Reading all this self improvement literature caused a dissonance within me. I wanted to improve myself, and even start my own business. I started to have ideas of libertarianism. I could justify libertarianism (at least the kind espoused by the American Libertarian Party as well as the likes Ron and Rand Paul) with my hatred of neo-liberal economics (to some extent) and neo-conservative foreign policy. Here was a political ideology that could indulge both my new interest in capitalism and also satisfy my need to dissent from the "military industrial complex", something of which Ron Paul still talks about regularly.
In between all of this, I had started to follow the likes of people like Alex Jones, and was caught in the trap of believing in many of the things that he preached about.
I eventually fell away from Jones and his ilk, in part because of the blatant disregard for consistency that Jones started to have around 2012-2013. I had started to see him praise more neoconservative politicians that a few short years ago he would have attacked relentlessly, and the fraudulent nature of a lot of what Jones was about started to shine through. He lost much of his staff, much of the guests who used to frequent his show, and started to become more and more outrageous in a disturbing way.
At the same time, I started to watch more liberal media again, at least more alternative liberal media.
I had reconnected with many of my left wing ideals again, though I remained staunchly libertarian socially and culturally.
Ironically, around this time was also when I had read a few books by Ayn Rand, and while not agreeing with them on an economic level, I agreed with many of the ideas on a philosophical level (and do to this day).
It was then that things were starting to get more extreme among a lot of the left, and this pushed me more towards the middle. I had followed many youtube personalities involved in the controversial movement known as "Gamergate" and many of those people were accused of things or believing in thing that, watching their videos regularly, they would never have been guilty of. Both the left, and the right, were going crazy on a cultural level, and many of the real issues that are relevant were getting ignored.
It was almost as if, by the very hand of the powers that be, they can divide us culturally and continue to loot us (the people who really have the power) as a result.
At the same time, even with these debates going on, I kept one foot in the left wing media, as well as the more moderate media personalities that littered the landscape.
To me, it was important to get both sides of the story, and when people misrepresented the other side, got things wrong, straw-manned or outright oppressed people with an opposing point of view, I became enraged. This continues today. I hear a story about someone being accused of saying something, and often, media outlets and media personalities take it out of context and even get it completely wrong.
This happened when these "cultural" battles were being waged, by both the right AND the left.
So where am I now?
I am still trying to reconcile the libertarian and capitalist streaks within me with the more left wing side.
To me, Northern European systems of government (which, contrary to some media outlets, remain capitalist but with a mixed economy) remain the best "reconciliation" between these two divergent ideologies within me. I still buy into a lot of the Marxist and even Leninist critiques of Capitalism, even though I think the alternative they proposed was quite wrong and horrifying.
I have studied various non capitalist ideas of government, not just Marxist, but there is usually something missing from them as far as a lot of the ideas, or they remain impractical or contrary to the "human spirit".
I remain fully on board with libertarian ideas when it comes to culture or socially in general. I do not believe in government censorship, am pro drug decriminalization/legalization, and am even somewhat split on gun issues (at times).
So this is where I am now, how I have evolved over a very long time. I have these two strains or ideas within me, and this is where they meet.
I grew up in a (somewhat) mainstream liberal household, from two baby boomer parents who later disagreed on the extent that the "revolution" (i.e, the sixties) should have on both child-rearing and lifestyle. One of my parents became more "moderate" or "establishment" or whatever, the other continued to follow dissident leftist politics to a certain extent.
Being raised liberal, for better or worse, definitely influenced my thoughts as far as politics go. For example, both parents emphasized peaceful resolution to conflict, sexual and personal liberation, and rights for all people.
In fact, this was a household where I was banned from not having GI Joe toys, but the GI Joe toys would have their guns taken away from them. The biggest conservative nightmare of gun banning was taking hold with my toy collection!
However, they let me keep the Star Wars and Transformers ones. After all, both of those franchises are more fantastical and science fiction in nature, Star Wars particularly displaying a somewhat liberal bent thanks to George Lucas pontificating about "fighting the empire" and how the Rebels loosely recalled the Viet Cong side in the Vietnam War (George's words, not mine).
I would rally around "hating Republicans" and was taught (at least by one parent) that Republicans were greedy, sexist, racist, and homophobic. There were people, friends of the family, who further talked about the political theories underlying these ideas, and in studying them, I found them to be somewhat true, and also predictive about how elections would go, and how political trends would flourish.
I would say that up until the early 2000's, I was a somewhat mainstream liberal, with a dissident and mistrusting side when it came to the establishment. It helped that this point of view was in the household was the more dissident point of view regarding politics. Marxism was never taught or advised, however one of my grandfathers was definitely leaning that way, and ironically, on the other side of the family, recently I have found out that a great grandfather was involved with such movements as well.
Something happened, and I can pinpoint the first change and how it did. One of my friends bought a Noam Chomsky book and soon I followed.
I was fascinated by the ideas that Chomsky had about the United States, especially of the nature of propaganda. I would look into references that he referenced and see if it played how he said in regards to the resources he utilized. It did. I became more of a radical leftist and embarked and a contrarian point of view when it came to even the most ardent left wing mainstream Democrats.
At this point, I voted for Ralph Nader, causing a huge influx of criticism from family members who said I was "wasting my vote" and who liked the Democrat choice of the year 2000, Al Gore.
Above all, I had learned to distrust the Clinton machine from all my readings of Chomsky and also left wing periodicals who talked about the many capitalist wheelings and dealings of Clinton and Gore, and of course Tipper Gore would factor in my choice given her history (and my history as a Metal Fan and Musician). I was mocked and belittled for exercising my democratic choice, and while I acknowledge that having Bush Junior in office ruined our country, I still do not regret my vote.
Al Gore was just as beholden to many of the same corporatist interests as Bush, and who knows what kinds of policies he would enact. Of course, I believe he would've been better than Bush but real change doesn't come from the type of compromise that people wanted me to endorse.
Something happened then that shocked us all. 9/11.
The day of 9/11 I said and thought things that I now regret, and in reading this, people may be shocked and outraged by what I believed.
At the time, I believed that America had "asked for it" and "deserved" the attack, and while I felt for people who had died, I had a craven attitude towards people who made the huge deal out of it that it was. After all, in reading history, it seemed minuscule to the damage that the United States had caused around the world, and in a way we were getting our comeuppance for always entangling in other's affairs.
I had seen the hypocrisy of the United States supporting dictators around the world on one hand (even after the Cold War excuse to do so had dissipated), and on the other hand, espousing democracy on the other. I had seen that wars were big business, and that the military industrial complex was a factor in perpetuating war as well as access to natural resources for corporations. Beyond the lies, beyond the bullshit, I hated the hypocrisy.
It was a short time later that I became to be known as what is called a "9/11" truther.
I devoured articles, some legitimate, some not, about the attack in an attempt to understand it.
I had a keen interest in the JFK conspiracy theories growing up, and this one seemed to go a lot deeper even still.
I can say that at this point, my 9/11 "truthism" is still there, though it's a more convoluted and complicated idea than one single agency or group of people "making it happen". That's a good story for another time.
I kept on this path for years, distrusting the government and authority. It was around this time then that I started to get into the self-improvement movement.
This was a revelation to me, and to this day I am still struggling with many aspects of it. But one thing it did do is expose me to a lot of ideas about self sufficiency and (dare I say it) capitalism.
I had after all, for awhile, been a quasi-Marxist for a few short months in the early 2000's. I had read a few books about Fidel Castro and thought that the media and people had been unfair about his regime. I had thought that Communism was never perfected, but that South and Central American variants of Communist movements were a lot more "pure" than their European and Asian equivalents.
I still believe this, because the body counts from Communism and Marxist revolutions in the Americas pale in comparison to the rest of the world, and in fact, American culpability in repressions AGAINST such movements have caused (arguably) more bloodshed in South and Central America than leftism itself..
Reading all this self improvement literature caused a dissonance within me. I wanted to improve myself, and even start my own business. I started to have ideas of libertarianism. I could justify libertarianism (at least the kind espoused by the American Libertarian Party as well as the likes Ron and Rand Paul) with my hatred of neo-liberal economics (to some extent) and neo-conservative foreign policy. Here was a political ideology that could indulge both my new interest in capitalism and also satisfy my need to dissent from the "military industrial complex", something of which Ron Paul still talks about regularly.
In between all of this, I had started to follow the likes of people like Alex Jones, and was caught in the trap of believing in many of the things that he preached about.
I eventually fell away from Jones and his ilk, in part because of the blatant disregard for consistency that Jones started to have around 2012-2013. I had started to see him praise more neoconservative politicians that a few short years ago he would have attacked relentlessly, and the fraudulent nature of a lot of what Jones was about started to shine through. He lost much of his staff, much of the guests who used to frequent his show, and started to become more and more outrageous in a disturbing way.
At the same time, I started to watch more liberal media again, at least more alternative liberal media.
I had reconnected with many of my left wing ideals again, though I remained staunchly libertarian socially and culturally.
Ironically, around this time was also when I had read a few books by Ayn Rand, and while not agreeing with them on an economic level, I agreed with many of the ideas on a philosophical level (and do to this day).
It was then that things were starting to get more extreme among a lot of the left, and this pushed me more towards the middle. I had followed many youtube personalities involved in the controversial movement known as "Gamergate" and many of those people were accused of things or believing in thing that, watching their videos regularly, they would never have been guilty of. Both the left, and the right, were going crazy on a cultural level, and many of the real issues that are relevant were getting ignored.
It was almost as if, by the very hand of the powers that be, they can divide us culturally and continue to loot us (the people who really have the power) as a result.
At the same time, even with these debates going on, I kept one foot in the left wing media, as well as the more moderate media personalities that littered the landscape.
To me, it was important to get both sides of the story, and when people misrepresented the other side, got things wrong, straw-manned or outright oppressed people with an opposing point of view, I became enraged. This continues today. I hear a story about someone being accused of saying something, and often, media outlets and media personalities take it out of context and even get it completely wrong.
This happened when these "cultural" battles were being waged, by both the right AND the left.
So where am I now?
I am still trying to reconcile the libertarian and capitalist streaks within me with the more left wing side.
To me, Northern European systems of government (which, contrary to some media outlets, remain capitalist but with a mixed economy) remain the best "reconciliation" between these two divergent ideologies within me. I still buy into a lot of the Marxist and even Leninist critiques of Capitalism, even though I think the alternative they proposed was quite wrong and horrifying.
I have studied various non capitalist ideas of government, not just Marxist, but there is usually something missing from them as far as a lot of the ideas, or they remain impractical or contrary to the "human spirit".
I remain fully on board with libertarian ideas when it comes to culture or socially in general. I do not believe in government censorship, am pro drug decriminalization/legalization, and am even somewhat split on gun issues (at times).
So this is where I am now, how I have evolved over a very long time. I have these two strains or ideas within me, and this is where they meet.
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