Lately there’s been a lot of talk about how we’re all “so divided” and we need to be in the center, and how America’s true political orientation is independent and how– BROTHER!
This was brought home — this was brought OFFICE — to me while I was at work two days ago, and Dan was listening to Joe Rogan. He often listens to podcasts while he’s working, because his work is numbers, so hearing words doesn’t disturb him. My work, unless I’m working on covers, well…. So normally I slap noise cancelling headphones on.
The headphones were out of charge, so covers it was, but after a while he told me he couldn’t listen because I kept arguing.
Look, Joe Rogan, normally, doesn’t disturb me that much. I’ll snort giggle at some of his stuff, but it rolls over me, and doesn’t take a bite…
But this… He was with Joe Manchin at some “independent” conference, and just about everything he said was distilled stupid. And everything Manchin said was self-serving pretending-to-be-stupid. And I was fit to be tied.
Now, I don’t do media critique, and Rogan is Rogan, or as someone put it a barbarian who evolved yesterday and came in search of fire and legends of other people. (Honestly, that’s half of his schtick.)
BUT this slotted into all the talk about how “we’re so divided” and “The biggest political affiliation is independent.”
Let’s dispose of that last one first: bullshit. People register as independent because the left are foaming-at-the-mouth rabid weasels who will cancel anyone they even SUSPECT of being on the other side. I was registered independent all the years that I was working for trad pub, because being found to be “one of those evil people on the right” would end my career, and baby needed shoes (and eventually college textbooks.) There are other reasons, but usually the strongest is “I’m on the right and I don’t want to be cancelled.” Very few independents are actually independent. Right now my husband is independent because he didn’t want to say GOP to the blue haired young lady registering him. (I OTOH did, and she said, “Oh, thank heavens. I wasn’t sure, coming from Colorado.” Which goes to show you.)
At any rate, is that everyone? Doubt it. You can be very embarrassed of associating with either party, without being a centrist or independent. Sometimes it’s all about which party you hate more when you vote, but you don’t want to say “I’m with them” because they’re a bunch of bozos, and you know it.
Second, even if “independent” were the biggest self-identification group, it doesn’t mean there’s a great hunger for the center or for reconciliation. Perhaps all the independents are people who want something else. Say, a true constitutionalist government, which, alas, isn’t on offer. It’s as likely as that they’re all “centrist” or that these “centrists” all agree on the same thing.
What made the program infuriating and brought out my political tourettes is that all the solutions they “offered” were bullshit that has been tried, a lot of which is responsible for turning California into a one-party rule, such as open primaries and first-past-the-post elections. Seriously. I could dissect the mechanism by which this “delivers us bound to our foes” but I don’t need to. Look over at California. Do you want that? No? Your ideas will get that. To pretend that this has never been tried is either dumb or malicious.
On the dumb side, Rogan was doing his caveman impression “Tell me about these things I never heard of!” But Manchin? Manchin is malicious. Why do I say that? Well, he pretended not to know why we stopped using coal for electricity generation. It’s apparently a deep mystery and not the green obsession of presidents he supported, like Obama. Bah. Yeah, he kind of distanced himself from the Democrats in the later Biden years, but not wanting to trans kids doesn’t make you a centrist. It makes you a moderately sane, non kinky human being, for crying in bed.
Then there is “term limits”. Term limits, in the year of our Lord 2026 when we know how deep and how evil the evil deep state is! For the love of little children and the apples they steal! No, seriously. Sure, let’s have an ever-rotating wheel of incumbents who don’t know what they’re doing so the deep state can march on unimpeded. Heck, the only reason we have presidential term limits is that evil bastard FDR whom Joe Manchin still adores.
And then came the, of course, Joe Manchin would like to be president. When Rogan asked about that, I could taste the hunger for power in the creature’s voice. (Waves arms.) GAH. I guess I hadn’t got that out of my system yet.
Do I like the two party system? Well. I’m not in love with it. On the other hand I experienced the “as many parties as want to be” system in Portugal and this is the problem: Honest human beings will divide into parties on the slightest excuse:
“I am from the party of free economy, marry whoever you want provided he/she is an adult, but no welfare.”
“I am from the party of free economy, marry whoever you want provided he/she/them are adults, but no welfare.”
“I am from the party of free economy, marry whoever you want provided he/she/them are adults, welfare for widows and orphans.”
“I am from the party of free economy, marry whoever you want provided he/she/them are adults, welfare for widows and orphans provided they’re legal residents.”
Etc. etc. You end up with fifty parties where the disagreement between them is very small. But you know who doesn’t divide that way? Socialists. Communists. I mean usually they divide from each other, though honestly, as with penguins, only they know the difference. (And no, it’s not the same as the theoretical difference. Crying out loud, I studied this in school. I know the text book definitions. BUT in practicality the only difference is the socialists going “I want that too, but slower so we don’t scare the rubes.” No? Well, ask yourself what the USSR stood for tovarish.) So in the end, the left wins. Because they’re not as worried about carefully defining anything, and they LIKE to march lockstep. (Also in their minds, when they win, it’s the other guys in the mass graves. Spoiler: it’s always them in the mass graves.)
Meanwhile the two party system has the drawback that any change — real change — is slow. Very slow. Because you have to take over one of the existing parties from within. This can be bad — we’re taking forever — but also, what? You want the DSA to take over the dems FASTER?
So do I like the two party system? As opposed to what? If the choice is cake or death, I’ll take cake, thank you, with chocolate sprinkles. But the choice is never between cake and death. It is at best between syphilis and gonorrhea, and you pick the one for which you have antibiotics handy.
And this is ultimately the issue. “Independent” isn’t a political movement because people who are “independent” are not a group. they don’t all agree on what they believe. They mostly aren’t sure which side will make them hold their nose LESS or, hear me out, they are on the right and afraid to declare it. And don’t underestimate the second group. For years, it’s been known if a public personality doesn’t ever mention politics? They’re on the right. Because only one side actually tries to punish your dissent. (Now this is known, so not speaking brings about retaliation, too. We’re almost a publish and be damned o’clock. I’m just glad I’m out of it.)
Second, “We’re all so divided.”
Yes. As opposed to? No seriously, think about it. We’ve always been divided. It’s just that while we were bound by mass media, which the left utterly controlled, people didn’t know that there were more dissidents from what appeared to be the only widespread opinion.
Even my priest at mass was lamenting, you can’t be in a hobby group without the hobby being political. Oh, yeah? And who made it so? I don’t mean the poor man, who is very young and seems to be unexamined college-left. I mean, the left has insisted that everything be political since I joined adult society, lo, over 40 years ago. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE NOW IS THAT WE’RE FIGHTING BACK.
I want to do this skit where people are having dinner while using other people as furniture, and it’s this idealized family dinner, and quiet and everyone is smiling. And then someone frees the “furniture” and a brawl breaks out and the former diners are going “Stop, stop. everything was so peaceful! How did this happen?”
It’s like “economic” (or any other kind) inequality. It’s not actually evil, unless it persists for centuries WITH THE SAME PEOPLE AT THE TOP AND BOTTOM. In which case the society is in deep trouble, as it is in much of Latin America. BUT not in as much trouble as societies in which almost everyone is equal, because the only way to do that is totalitarian, rigid control over people and the economy.
“Politics are so divisive” is nonsense. People don’t form political parties or join the political process to work on the things we all agree on. “We should wear hats on our heads, not on our left foot” is not a political position because most people agree with that, and the ones that don’t are locked up for their own good. (They keep slipping on that hat.)
Politics are supposed to be divisive. And a good brawl is how you know you’re still free. And I’m tired of the soft heads that pretend otherwise.
Let’s hope we can continue to fight back and stay free.
… keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
Good post, I was one of those Independents that leans heavily to the right in the past. Simply avoided talking politics with some people just to avoid the hassle and BS I knew would follow. After a while I got tired of it and started to become far more outspoken. But it didn’t mean I would blindly tolerate whatever some supposedly “Right wing” types did. Too many were RINOs and not to be trusted.
Didn’t mean I was going to throw away my vote on some Independent who had no chance of getting elected either. After Perot I knew that was a losing game. The people who do that simply help the other side (the serious enemies of freedom) win. The RINOs are usually just in the game for the graft, more and more the dems seem intent on totally destroying the country.
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Back in the 90s in Illinois, I knew several people in my (small, rural, childhood) social circle who were told to change their voter registration if they wanted the job/promotion.
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“…told to change their voter registration if they wanted the job/promotion.”
Small towns can be interesting that way. Like the local hardware store has a lock on the construction industry in that area, and if you want to build you be nice to #MrHardwareGuy. Then some dude starts a new hardware store on the other side of town, and things get interesting.
There’s a reason Illinois is messed up, and this is it.
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When the Marion Co. FL Dem party head visited my newly-moved, registered-that-day paternal grandparents during WWII, with the humorous remark that he wanted to see what a Republican looked like, he knew that they were the first of many coming to Ocala to work for the Army Air Force (my grandpa was a civilian flight instructor).
If they had not had that unspoken backing, the unspoken pressure might have been stronger.
It all worked out and there have always been Republicans in the county since then, but their yearly Lincoln dinner is more of a big thing than it is around here.
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I believe it.
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I would note that in theory I could be very kinky, without wanting to trans kids.
Theory and practice can be different, but the general problem of theoretically forecasting those differences is hard.
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In Canada this week the media is ‘viewing with alarm’ the Canadian public. Because while their darling #OliviaChowChowChow won the mayor’s race in Toronto (which I consider “interesting”) the #NDPee LOST in British Columbia. They lost hard. They were rejected.
The leader of the #NDPee quit in disgrace. Little bro lost, and now he is banished to the outer darkness.
Clearly the public cannot be trusted to vote for the right people, sayeth the media. “We TOLD them what to do! We told them and told them! But then they went and voted for the Enemy of Life!”
So I feel that while there are clear divisions in the political world, mostly those are in the minds of propagandists and projected on the rest of us. We, the voters, seem to go with whoever has the best haircut. Except sometimes the one with the best haircut is so appalling that the voters are angry and reject them.
I’d be depressed about this except that ALL the alternatives are much, much worse.
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Remember Canada was the training ground for 2020. What you’re seeing is distorted by fraud. My guess, is they didn’t bother in BC because leftist.
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Yes. So much yes. Every time I see someone bring up term limits on AOSHQ or in person, it drives me crazy. What we need are term limits for congressional staff and anyone in an unelected position of authority in the bureaucracies. The fact that an Anthony Fauci could kill people both during AIDS in the eighties and during COVID forty years later is utterly insane.
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THIS THIS THIS. Limit time in government jobs.
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It will amuse you — and by amuse I mean enrage — that Fauci prescribed MASKS for both.
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On the “minor differences” between the parties in “greater than two parties systems”, according to one European (on another site) the “major difference” between the socialist parties and the fascist parties is that the fascists love Putin. [Sarcastic Grin]
Mind you, I think the “loves Putin” really means “they don’t hate Putin hard enough”. [Evil Grin]
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Some of the “Love Putin” types may in fact just be people who don’t want Putin to suicide Russia.
We once used China to counterbalance Russia. I think Trump and some analysts have hoped to keep Russia in a state to counterbalance China.
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“They say I can’t be Independent because I’m not like the other Independents.” ☹️
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I don’t understand how Rogan is as popular as he is. If someone came to me 25 years ago and told me that the guy getting 7th billing on NBC’s Newsradio would become one of the most popular podcasters in the country, I’d ask them what they were smoking. And then there are people like Theon Von, for when Rogan is too…intellectual.
He lost me completely when he had Gad Saad on and he seriously guessed that there were 500 million Jews in the world.
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Socialists have always had the “no enemies on the left” until they get power. Then it’s eliminate all our allies quickly, so they can’t do what we just did. See Lenin and his so-called Bolsheviks.
Also last century, “independents” running for president gave us two of our worst presidents ever. Teddy Roosevelt and his Bullmoose party gave us the despicable racist Woodrow Wilson. Ross Perot and his hatred for the Bush family saddled us with Bill Clinton. To be fair though, third party candidates also gave us Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
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As to party affiliation, we were at the house of some of our artist Con friends, watching their moldy videotape of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when one of them said something disparaging about Republicans. My wife, never shy, said, “We’re Republicans.” That brought out the astonished exclamation from the distaff side of the couple, “But you’re such nice people!”
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Previous to the current lurching ever more leftward single party overlordship here in the Formerly Golden State, there was a significant fraction of those registered as “Independent” (specifically “No Party Preference” voters) who were disgusted with the Dems because they were not communist enough. We also had “Peace and Freedom” (really communist) and a couple other tiny parties keeping the big-L Libertarian Party company down-ballot, but you only got to vote for your party’s candidates in the primary so they didn’t get to play in the pond selecting the people who actually could get elected.
The current rules are complicated – the overlord party passed fully open primaries, but IIRC there was a court case, so now the rules as summarized by the DuckDuckGo clanker don’t let anyone not registered for the GOP vote for their choice from the Republican primary slate:
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Note this matters less here than in Free America due to the withered vestigial nature of the CA GOP, but it does prevent “primary poisoning” strategies, especially in smaller rightish districts, where other parties flood the GOP primary with votes for spoiler candidates.
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And for state candidates it’s jungle primary rules, thus a free for all.
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Here in rural northern Nevada, a lot of people register Independent because the Dems are lunatics and the Republicans keep stabbing us in the back.
I registered Libertarian in 1989, the day that Bush the First stood in a drizzle, surrounded by armed cops and machinegun-toting personal bodyguards, and told the world that Americans don’t need Scary-Looking Guns(tm) and full-capacity magazines, and can’t be trusted with them. I had worked with one of the largest county committees in the Republican Party, and had helped California’s greatest governor become one of America’s greatest presidents, but when Lee Atwater (Party chairman) laughed and said he wasn’t worried, because “gun owners have nowhere else to go,” I cut up my voter registration card and FedExed it to him, with a photocopy of my new registration form. His response? “You’ll be back by the next election.”
Never went back. Nearly 40 years, in 6 states. I will sometimes vote for WORTHY Republicans — or sometimes to block the more frootloop Dems — but for all of these years, candidates have had to WORK to get my vote, and work HARDER to get it a second time.
In 2016, I didn’t vote FOR Trump, I voted AGAINST the Hildebeast. In 2020 and 2024, Trump EARNED my votes. But at lower levels, I don’t throw away my vote by giving it to Republicans who have proven to be scumbags (and that’s about half of them, including my current governor). If I have to be led by people who can’t be trusted, it might as well be Dems, because they are the experts in the field.
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Please don’t. The democrats can and will destroy us from the legislature. I’ll vote for a scumbag GOP to put the Dem party in its grave, and communism with it.
After that, with what emerges, I can be a swing voter. I don’t think you owe the GOP your vote, no. I think you owe the Red Green Alliance your active, fiery hate though.
We are so close to a Heinlein future, but two things can stop us: Communism and Islam.
And they’re allied. In the Democrats.
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Like I said, I will vote against the more frootloop Dems (such as the Hildebeast).
WHICH Heinlein future? “Beyond This Horizon”? “Starship Troopers”? There are elements of each that I strongly favor, but I’m not sure that I would want to be completely in one or the other. I really DON’T want “Revolt in 2100” or “Farnham’s Freehold” . . .and, yes, I can hear you winding up to remind me that the Dem/Islam/envirowhacko Axis of Weevils are working hard to impose such a future.
The Democrats (like THRUSH) ( IYKYK) believe in the two-party system — the masters and the slaves, with themselves as the masters.
But at the same time, we have to beat down the tentacles of the Cthuloid RP establishment, and the only way to do that is to not keep supporting their designated candidates. Publicly support the good ones, publicly shame the bad ones (even if you end up having to vote for them).
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I meant flying cars and colonies on the moon, not worldbuilding for plot necessities.
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Kaze, RINO season is the primaries. Take as many heads as possible.
In the General election, vote for the Republican. Democrats are ALWAYS worse.
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Not always — Fetterman, for instance, over Pence.
“If God meant Man to vote, he would have given us CANDIDATES!” — Paul Schauble
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When Fetterman first ran, he was nothing like what he is now. And keeping him in power means Dems take Senate? “No judges for Trump”.
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And judges are outright killing us.
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Kindly remember Fetterman is just a principled socialist….
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But Pence is an UNprincipled jackass. One can learn, the other refuses to.
That’s the problem, the Dems DO have exceptions which prove the rule. Way too FEW of them, but every once in a while . . .if Fetterman were in a primary against either of the two fruitcakes that Nevada has now (Rosen and Masto), I would temporarily register Dem to give him my vote. Or if he were running against Pence.
I want the Republicans to know that I am likely to vote for Trump’s choice of successor — and NOT likely to vote for another McCain, Dole or Romney. Romney especially annoys me, because he and Reid together embarrassed my church.
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that any change — real change — is slow. Very slow. You get substantive societal change in two ways” Slow and (relatively) peaceful, or fast and bloody. I’ll take slow thank you very much.
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We are from sterner stuff in The West than we want to admit. It has gone out of fashion. – John Stark, who ran the gauntlet, took away his captor’s club, and won his freedom. – The “Plymouth Pilgrims” of the 85th New York who survived Andersonville Prison and returned home.
There are millions of similar if less publicized stories–maybe even about you. Be of good courage. Trust in the LORD.
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In a country where “Far Left” (Mao? Lenin?) and “Far Right” (Hitler? Mussolini?) both describe shades of Socialism, we can’t really use those terms meaningfully. Ayn Rand’s terminology comes closer, though not of course as the Libertarians have applied it. There are additional considerations, including religious affections (per Jonathan Edwards et al) which are seldom even, er, considered.
Most of us fall between the extremes, but whether that’s a square à la the “smallest political quiz,” a disk, or a sphere, what it is least of all is a line. I see the American political landscape as a cloud of points, with a few thicker and a lot of thinner areas, sort of a nebula, and gravitational physics plays a role.
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