People keep telling me I am a conservative, a reactionary, or even a fascist or a Nazi. I’m none of those things. Ever since I attained adulthood, I’ve pretty much been a man of the Left. For some stupid reason, I liked Ron Paul of the Libertarian Party in 1980. I think my leftwing pedigree solidified in my late 20’s. Of course, I throw my ideology up against the wall all the time. I’m always comparing the positions of the Democratic Party against those of the Libertarian and Republican Parties to see if the latter is better.
Almost all the time, the Democrats are better. When I go into the voting booth, I always vote for the more liberal party. If by chance the Republican might be more left than the Democrat, then of course I would vote Republican. I don’t generally vote hard Left – Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party, etc. I’m throwing my vote away and they don’t have a chance. If they ever had a chance at winning, I would have to seriously look at them.
My whole life, I’ve just been a regular liberal or Leftie. The thing is, my opinions on social issues haven’t changed. For instance, my position on gay rights is the same as it was in 1980. Hasn’t budged an inch. Back then I was gaybaited. People told me I had to be a fag because only a fag would support gay rights. Thing is, a position that was so extreme it got you gaybaited in 1980 now gets you called extreme homophobe, bigot, Nazi, etc.
That’s because every year gays keep pushing the envelope further and further to where now it’s a crazy train or a clown car. I feel like I got off the gay crazy train in about the mid-1990’s. IN fact, my social views would be quite at home in the Democratic Party of the mid-1990’s. Since then, the party kept moving further and further left on social issues to the point where I said I want off the crazy train. One of my mottoes is:
I signed up for liberation, not insanity.
I didn’t sign up for this crap.
So I put up with a lot of homophobic abuse back in the day just to stand up for a bunch of people who, in my opinion, are nothing but a bunch of ingrates, always call me names, and act like I’m the enemy.
Frankly, I feel much the same way about Blacks. I generally vote for the pro-Black position. The group that best represents my politics other than The Squad is the Congressional Black Caucus. I’ve been supporting Blacks my whole life. Lot of gratitude I get! They mostly just call me racist and spit at me!
I’m often tempted to start opposing the agendas of both gays and Blacks because they are such damned ingrates. But humanism means I have to support their basic rights because they are human beings and I could just as easily have been born Black or gotten wired up gay. That this did not happen is a matter of fate. So even if these idiots keep hating me and spitting at me, I’ll still keep supporting them anyway. Funny, a bigot supporting the people they supposedly hate. Why would any bigot do such a thing?
Thing is though, that for a very long time, I absolutely despise conservatism. I mean from Edward Burke in the wake of the French Revolution to Russell Kirk to William Buckley to Ronald Reagan to Bush to Trump: I despise that entire philosophy. I just hate it and in a way, I hate them.
Now, I put up with rightwingers and Republicans on here because I don’t want fights, but with Trump, they finally went too far and I threw all the Trump supporters out of my life. They’d finally reached a bridge too far even for me. Also, my social conservatism makes it so that pretty much only conservatives or even reactionaries hang out here. Liberals and Leftists come here from time to time, but they always act outraged pretty quickly, make a big fuss, and storm off or get their asses banned.
As you can see, the Alt Left doesn’t have much going for it. People associate the Cultural Left with the Left. So if they hate the Cultural Left as I do, they automatically in every case simply go rightwing and vote Republican. You either support the Cultural Left crazy train or you hate it and vote Republican. That’s your chance. For some time now, I’ve been trying to make the point that you can be a liberal or Leftist and still oppose Cultural Left insanity and idiocy. But no one seems to believe it. I often feel like I’m alone.
The Alt Left groups on Facebook were interesting, but the leaders kept turning into conservatives and the groups kept getting filled up with conservatives. It seemed to be an integral part of the game. I kept rejecting me and they kept calling me way too far Left, which I guess I am. I’m a Tankie after all, eh?
And the more Alt Left people focused their rage on the Cultural Left instead of the US Right, the more conservative they became. So it didn’t seem to be a healthy preoccupation. I still feel that way. And the Republicans are always worse than the Cultural Left. Now that’s pretty bad because I really, really hate the Cultural Left. But I’ll vote for these tools over a Republican any day of the week.
I know all about conservatism in the Western sense as noted above that began with Burke.
On the other hand, it goes back further than that where it was simply the Ancien Regime. Before that, it was called feudalism.
The truth is there wasn’t even much of a Left anywhere in the West until the French Revolution. That was the beginning of it all!
The idea of a Left before the French Revolution other than peasant rebellions doesn’t make much sense unless you want to include the Khmeilnicky Rebellion, the peasant uprisings in the Inca Empire, on and on, which could probably be called Left rebellions.
The thing about these peasant rebellions was that they tended to be bloody. The rich had treated the poor so horribly that by the time of the rebellion, the poor had lost all mercy for them. Typically the peasants would rise up and either massacre all of the rich or kill as many as they could get their hands on. They were almost genocidal.
This is why criticism of Communism as uniquely evil and bloody makes little sense. Anti-Communist morons think that this sort of thing started with Karl Marx and the Russian Revolution. But really all the Communist revolutions of the 20th Century were was just a modern re-enactment of the peasant rebellion of ages. All or most Communist revolutions were just 20th Century peasant rebellions. That they were bloody should not surprise a soul, as this is the nature of peasant rebellions.
If the rich don’t want to get massacred, how about treating those under them with a modicum of humanity and basic respect? But nope, that’s too far for the ruling classes of many countries, though in the Global South, in many places, the Left has either taken power or a social contract of some sort has taken place where the ruling party has leftwing credentials in the name, philosophy, or orientation, no matter how they govern.
For instance, the Congress Party of India wrote into the Indian Constitution that India was a socialist country. That they don’t exact practice socialism is no matter. It’s the thought that counts!
Anyway, I kept getting called conservative, so I researched all the types of conservatism I could find around the world, and I hated almost all of them. I don’t much mind the Russian conservatism of Putin although I would not consider myself an adherent of Russian conservatism. Instead my views line up more with the KPRF (the Communist Party of the Russian Federation) who are “loyal opposition” to Putin. If you don’t know what “loyal opposition” means, look it up. Don’t have time to explain.
I know the basic outlines of Western or modern conservatism and their general view of life, humanity, and the world is, and I simply despise that whole way of looking at the world. It’s crap! My way of looking at the world has much more in common with liberalism and the Left than that. In fact, when I go to liberal or Left sites like Daily Kos, etc., the feeling I get is,
These are my people.
That we don’t agree on more than a few things is no matter. I’m against them on cultural insanity, but I’m liberal-Left on most everything else.
These are my people! Yes, they’ve gone a bit insane in some ways, but they’re my people nonetheless!
You know how you love family members even if they act pretty lousy or stupid? Well, it’s like that. The liberal-Left is my family. They’re insufferable at times like so many of our family members, but they’re family nonetheless, and blood comes first, even before friends. You follow?
I felt uncomfortable with a guy that had gay vibes in an elevator today. I thought to myself, “Wow, an old gay guy.”
I felt fine with Blacks and am close to an old Black woman I worked with today. An odd thing is I can turn a little Black or assimilate to them. Can’t do that with gays.
I oppose Black and gay agendas. They were never oppressed in my time. The Black as the man and the gay or trans ex-White guy as the woman seems like the agenda today. Just look at the magazine covers.