On Politics

Thanks, Mom, for catching a typo!

This is a statement of my current political position and worldview. I am absolutely not going to hit all the bases as there is too much to say; I am mostly interested at this point in trying to hit as many relevant points as possible. It is somewhat of a brain dump^[1]. I often won’t argue for certain points in the interest of space. This was written fairly quickly, I’m sure I’m missing points or have poorly explained things, and I will be updating it as I see fit (such as adding links). I can only assume there will be fallout, but it must be said.

Invariants

In computer programming, we call these invariants. That is, these are foundation beliefs that I have built over time, learned the hard way ^[1] that I find useful and correct. You probably cannot argue with me about these, and my points later assume that these hold true.

• I am unaffiliated. This means exactly what it says: I’m not Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, etc. It means I have yet to find a party that both matches my political beliefs and is ingenuous.
• I automatically assume anyone who employs identity politics is in the lower end of the intelligence bell curve. This is born from experience. That is: politicizing along labels or identities is the mark of an intellectually feeble-minded person who is unable to form a defensible intellectual argument for their worldview.
• Most of the political terms people use are meaningless: they mean exactly what the speaker (or the listener) wants them to mean. Most people do not understand the actual terms being used. Fascism is the term that really opened my eyes up to this.
• I was professionally trained in the United States Army as a psychological operations specialist, and have real-world experience (both on combat and non-combat deployments) and continuing education in this area. I still have my field manuals on the topic, and stay current.
  • Corollary: since my first combat deployment, I have a pretty dim view of modern media. I postulate that they are not interested in the truth but an agenda, not in informing the populace but in selling advertising space. Some individual journalists may believe they are doing honest work, but they are pawns in service of a larger information warfare operation.
• I have a low view of the people who enter politics, and there has never been a politician who I’ve aligned with. This includes Ron Paul when I was a Libertarian, and has continued to the present day. There is not a politician who I’ve liked and few who I’ve respected.
• I entered 2024 believing strongly in the idea of the American Republic. I believed strongly in the social contract that says we could hold opposing ideas while building towards a better future.
• I have spent a significant amount of time working towards “arete,” the Greek term for moral excellence. You cannot do this and consider yourself evil. I have spent considerable effort trying to be the best version of myself that I can be.
• Just because someone tells you something doesn’t make it true. A common tactic in PSYOP is to act as though the statements you’re saying are true, and make your target audience debate you on these terms. If the foundation of the argument is in your moral favor, it’s difficult to lose. To defeat this, you need to contend that the foundation of the argument isn’t the truth. If you’re arguing with someone and they are asserting some facts as the foundational truth but they aren’t true, you need to get out this means of arguing.
• Just because you read something, doesn't make it true. Reading something does not automatically require you to accept it as fact. You can, and should, read things you disagree with. Other people can also read things, and that doesn't mean they agree with the subject of the book. It probably means they wanted to see what the author thinks or understand why they think the way they do. For example, I've read Marx and I reject Communism.
• The Second Amendment is the amendment that guarantees the others. If you cannot rule an armed people, it speaks to a failure on your part. A candidate or party who would disarm the people is a party I cannot support; inevitably, the next step is the restriction of other rights without recourse. As such, I also do not support gun control.
  • Much has been written about the topic (e.g. by HPG), and I could spend an entire book laying this out. I won’t be making the argument here. I call this out to specifically state a position I hold, and to note that disarmament is the first step to totalitarianism.
• Communism and socialism are evil ideologies and philosophies that are anti-civilization.
• We live in the easiest and most peaceful period of history. The level of creature comforts and leisure time would astound our ancestors, as would our safety.

My deliberalization

When I moved to California, I had no social network and spent much of time trying to get good at software security engineering. Along the way, I ended up becoming fairly liberal.

My deliberalization can be traced to one immediate shock event and two long term deprogramming events:

1. The Emeryville looting on March 2020 was the shock event.
   1. I heard tear gas popping near my house, and assumed it was a protest.
   2. I assumed, given that I had offloaded much of my thinking to media, that the police would be the aggressors.
   3. What I found was instead looting on a grand scale. I was threatened multiple times for filming by the looters.
   4. The looters acted as animals, simple-as.
   5. Law enforcement acted as the professionals and grown-ups.
   6. Within a week I’d bought the first gun I’d owned since leaving the Army; after witnessing this, I no longer felt safe in my own neighborhood. The devastation and damage to the stores that were hit showed that law enforcement could not and would not protect me.
   7. The response by the mayor of Emeryville was to call for understanding and lenience for the looters. You cannot abide such unlawful and animalistic behavior and maintain rule of law.
2. Deleting my social media and having to inform myself the hard way further led me down the path of deliberalization.
   1. I had to stop accepting base facts that I got from social media because I wasn’t receiving the updates from my timeline.
   2. I had to read and think critically about information being presented to me.
   3. I had to be selective in what sources I pulled information from.
   4. I had to constantly ask myself, how do I know this to be true? This built a habit of forming opinions based on primary sources, not secondary or tertiary sources.
3. Keeping a journal during the COVID-19 pandemic and reflecting on the current sociopolitical environment while seeing how we got where we were solidified this process.
   1. It was patently obvious during the whole thing that the experts had no idea what was going on.
   2. I entered the pandemic trusting the experts. They were, after all, the experts, and I wanted to do the right thing as I expect many others did.
   3. The continual message was that if you don’t trust the experts, and if you don’t follow their guidance, you are an evil person.
   4. Approximately every two weeks, the experts would change their stance. For example:
      1. Vaccines will stop the spread.
      2. Vaccines will prevent you from getting sick.
      3. Everyone must be vaccinated
      4. The vaccines are safe.
      5. The vaccines won’t actually stop the spread.
      6. The vaccines won’t actually keep you from getting sick.
      7. The vaccine will just make getting sick less bad.
      8. The site handwaving freakoutery (HWFO) had a much more succinct version than what I came up with, and I am reposting it below. I don’t know which post it originally came from anymore.
   5. Repeat the previous with other aspects, from masking to social distancing, and the inevitable conclusion is that the experts were pawns of a power struggle. I wrestled with this and didn’t want to see it, but eventually it got bad enough that I had to accept it for what it was.

Observations on the Left

I am approaching these observations as someone who was left-leaning until fairly recently. The overriding cry from the left is that “democracy is at stake.” The facts show that the threat in fact comes from the Left, particularly the Democrat party, and that this party likely can and should be held as traitors to the American people. This is primarily due to the hijacking of the party by extreme Leftists. In the style of the Declaration of Independence, my grievances are:

1. Systematic campaign against culture. The elephant in the room is that I am a straight white male, and constantly demonized for crimes I didn’t commit. I don’t hate white people, just as I don’t hate anyone for their skin color. I categorically stand against attempts to demonize anyone for their skin color.
   1. There are many cases where I found myself tolerant of a Left position, while finding it personally abhorrent.
   2. As an example, I don’t care who you want to have sex with. I don’t want to know details, and I find many of the things disgusting.
   3. The Left has continuously taken the position that I am evil for holding these positions, for not being enthusiastic about their choices.
   4. I personally have invested a lot of time in trying to morally better myself, so any group that calls me evil is naturally going to end up being opposition. I will not ally myself with this group.
   5. Therefore, on this ground alone, I cannot stand with the Left and therefore the Democrat party.
2. Systematic persecution of the rank-and-file of the opposing political side.
   1. For years, the Left has demonized everyday Americans for wrong think. Cancel culture applied against people who don’t agree with the moral standards used to cancel them.
   2. A recent example is a charging a teenager with a felony for doing donuts on a pride-themed crosswalk. This is, quite frankly, outrageous.
3. Systematic campaign against a political opponent.
   1. The Russian collusion was shown to be false.
   2. The sexual assaults were adjudicated.
      1. It’s gross that this is the reality, but every candidate has a similar moral caliber. It says more about us that we keep putting these candidates forward.
      2. There are no political candidates with a clean history in this regard.
   3. The media constantly paints their political opponent as literally Hitler and fascist. None of this is accurate. Note that we did not suddenly turn into 1930’s Nazi Germany during his presidency.
      1. I can’t underscore this point enough as a data point for changing my mind: his presidency wasn’t that bad and actually made life better for a lot of Americans. Yet he is still the villain, and the same (demonstrably false) arguments against him are made.
4. A party that mocks and vilifies those who didn’t trust the 2020 election results, while being the party that did and said the exact same things in 2016 (or 2000 — anyone remember “hanging chads?”)
   1. One party leader consistently called the sitting President illegitimate.
5. A party that supports the destruction of our local cities, while acting outraged when people take their fight to the government.
   1. I don’t think either was right, but I’m far more sympathetic to J6 than any of the actual pieces of shit that rioted and looted in our cities.
      1. I am trying to avoid the use of vulgar language, but in this case I think this phrasing is the most accurate.
   2. The politicians who encouraged the rioting and looting should be held as traitors. They certainly should not be running for president and vice-president.
   3. The media lied openly about Trump’s incitement, a lie which is still being pushed to this date. Again, I do not like or care for Trump, but as an outside observer I am calling it as I see it.
      1. Again, a deliberalizing factor was when I went to go find evidence of this (going back to a focus on primary sources) and found the opposite case to be true.
   4. There is significant evidence that federal law enforcement was involved in the incitement and conduct of the events of J6.
      1. This echoes other events, such as the FBI orchestration of a “plot” against Michigan governor Whitmer.
   5. The events of pro-Hamas supporters in the capital (much less other states) this year alone was met primarily with dismissals of charges. From an objective observer, an impartial standard is being applied.
6. Systematic lawfare against their political candidate while signaling their concern that the Right will do the same. This culminated in a genuinely bullshit felony conviction against their main political opponent.
   1. Again, I have no skin in the game. I am an outside observer.
   2. This act alone is enough to ensure that I won’t vote Democrat until serious changes are made.
7. Systematic patterns of uninformed takes on Supreme Court decisions.
   1. For example, “presidential immunity” is not a blanket immunity and is subject to the United States Constitution, particularly Article II.
   2. This immunity also covers events such as President Obama’s assassination by drone of an American Citizen in a foreign country without due process.
8. An attempted assassination of a political candidate. This assessment is based on my own professional education and experience in combat operations, law enforcement, and precision marksmanship.
   1. At the point of the assassination, the social contract held.
   2. The level of vitriol against a political candidate, the number of people who don’t believe that it actually happened, tells me that the general base of the Left are
      1. Comfortable in their creature comforts such that critical thinking is eschewed in favor of what their phone tells them to think.
      2. Unable to reign in their own extremist elements, which can only lead to the breakdown of the social contract.
   3. The assassination denials are the QAnon of the far Left.
   4. I tried for as long as I could to hold off ideas that this was an attempt supported by the party. However, there are too many failures and fact patterns that do not make sense (in my professional experience) to support a “simple” case of incompetence. Right now, I'm in the camp that it was an attempt by omission, that is incitement against Trump and actively pulling Secret Service resources away.
9. Systematic refusal to acknowledge the mental decline of a sitting president.
   1. Called it in 2019/2020 - though I thought it would come to a head in 2023, not 2024, though.
10. A party that went from decrying commentary about the POTUS’ mental state as deepfakes to ousting him because his polling was too low.
11. A systematic campaign of bold lies told by the media in support of a political candidate.
    1. Simple, easily done fact checking refutes these lies, and yet they are still shouted from the rooftops.
    2. I have personally been shocked by the audacity of these campaigns based entirely on my professional education and experience in the field of psychological operations.
12. To wit, a political party who's propaganda arm masquerades as unbiased journalists.
    1. The party that continually accuses its opponents of misinformation is itself the source of unending misinformation.
    2. Their debate/interview tactics are intellectually dishonest. As one of many examples, I have seen countless interviews where the interviewer constantly shifts around, refusing to answer the actual question, or changes the goalposts mid-interview.
13. A party that continually throws its support to terrorist groups, such as Hamas, and that not only allows but actively encourages riots in support of Hamas to occur.
14. A party that openly supports racism and sexism under the guise of morality and progressivism.
15. A party that ignores the fact that their party nominated a particular candidate because the incumbent's polling was too low.
    1. As someone somewhere else said (and probably poorly stated), “The Republicans are the party where the people chose the candidate the donors rejected, and the Democrats are the party where donors rejected the candidate the people chose.”
    2. The resulting candidate dropped out in a manner unfit for office.
16. A party whose foreign affairs and military policies have jeopardized our service members:
    1. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was an unmitigated disaster.
    2. An inability to project power effectively, such as to keep open the Bab al-Mandeb and Red Sea to maintain maritime security.
    3. Continuing to spend absurd amounts of foreign aid in support of unnecessary military actions, such as to Ukraine and Israel, while our national debt soars.
    4. The plea deal with KSM and other 9/11 criminals on its own would stand as evidence enough of treason against the American people. Despite this being walked back, the fact that this could have occurred at all is a deal-breaker.
    5. We have service members continually taking fire in the Middle East, a fact that is rarely reported on.

As an unaffiliated voter and someone who, until recently, has been a conscientious objector to the culture wars, I cannot in good conscience vote for party that has such damning evidence that it is anti-Democracy. Therefore, I cannot vote for the Democrat party until such a time as serious reform occurs.

I don’t have a clear answer about how to proceed. To quote Treebeard from The Lord of the Rings, “I am on nobody’s side because nobody is on my side.” However, the number of people in my life encouraging me to vote a particular way necessitated a write up in order to save time explaining the same things repeatedly.

One outcome of all of this is that I have been re-evaluating my religious views: one such branch of religion has given us the foundations of modern society and works of great beauty. I'll close this out with a link to Compostela "Ad vesperas Sancti Iacobi" - may it inspire beauty and hope.