I have a way of evaluating political policies based on four opposing political perspectives. Let's look at what those perspectives are:
Stability is most often associated with Conservatives. Life should have some consistency, tradition, and predictability. Social norms and family are critical to the Stability perspective
Benevolence is most often associated with Progressives. Problems with the status quo inevitably result in change, and change that is benevolent is change that helps most members of society, such as technology and social safety nets.
Freedom is most often associated with Libertarians. With all of this "stability" and "benevolence" in the world, individual free will can easily be trampled on, and Libertarians place a high emphasis on individual rights and low taxes.
Pragmatism is most often associated with Independents. All ideology aside, independents just want government to "do it's job and solve problems," and mostly only care about if any given policy will actually be effective.
Before we go on, let's appreciate each of the above perspectives as virtuous and valuable. Of course we want to have stability and tradition. Obviously taking care of everyone is a great aspiration for society to have. Individual freedom is important for human happiness. Stability, benevolence and freedom only matter to government as long as they can be expressed in effective law and policies. Let's avoid demonizing Conservatives, Progressives, Libertarians or Independents, as they all have the best intentions.
The way I evaluate a political policy is by measuring it on a Likert scale of 1 to 5 for each of the above perspectives. Let's take an example of "getting rid of daylight savings time":
Stability: this is a big change from the status quo and could have unforeseen consequences. However not having to change clocks twice a year could add some social stability. On a scale of 1 to 5, I will give an end to daylight savings time 3 stars for stability.
Progress: this change is generally very popular as no one likes shifting their sleep patterns twice a year, and is likely to result in health benefits for most people. However there is some concern that at certain times of the year it will be very dark outside when children go to school. On a scale of 1 to 5, I will give an end to daylight savings time 4 stars for progress.
Freedom: daylight savings time clock changes amount to unnecessary bureaucracy in government and business, and is eschewed in the relatively Libertarian state of Arizona. On a scale of 1 to 5, we'll give ending daylight savings time 5 stars for freedom.
Pragmatism: this will cost us very little to implement, and its effectiveness for us to not have to worry about resetting our clocks twice a year is virtually guaranteed. On a scale of 1 to 5, we'll give ending daylight savings time a 5 for Pragmatism.
Now we can add these together for a final score; 3 for stability, 4 for progress, 5 for freedom and 5 for pragmatism is a total of 17/20, or an 85% policy score. Ending daylight savings time is thus probably a very good idea.
It is important in the USA that when it comes to politics we avoid thinking "there's two sides to every story." There are always at least three sides when we consider libertarians, and now independents are becoming a force in their own right. As Americans we need to stop lazy or callous dismissal of views that conflict with our own.
As I mentioned before on this blog I am both LDS and anti-MLM, and have been since the 1990's. In fact anti-MLM has played a major role in my religious path and my religious convictions contribute to my concerns about MLM. I am concerned about trend in the anti-MLM community to be anti-religions generally and more recently be producing media openly hostile towards LDS specifically.
As an activist myself I know how easy it is to get caught up in Black and White thinking. When the rest of society thinks everything is fine but your issue is being ignored, you have to make strong statements and take sides. For example when I was with Seattle Indymedia in the early 2000's and marching in anti-war protests, most Americans thought Iraq was full of weapons of mass destruction and invading Afghanistan was a fine idea indeed. Meanwhile at Seattle Indymedia we were looking at the photographs of blown up children that the main stream media at the time was ignoring. "Saddam Hussein is the worst threat facing his own people" was the talking media point at the time, ignoring what the "smart bombs" of George W. Bush's "shock and awe" had done to the people of Baghdad. Under those kind of circumstances you have to simplify your message, "War is Bad."
However it's easy to go from "War is Bad" to "all GOP candidates are bad because the GOP likes War," to "all people who vote GOP are bad because they are burning children alive in the middle east." It is not in fact true that someone or some organization is objectively evil because we don't agree with their ideology.
And War IS Bad, there is almost no upside whatsoever, peaceful resolution of conflict is preferable every time. In that same sense MLM IS Bad, it's a hard cold fleecing of the general public. People want to compare corporations they don't like to MLM, but this dilutes how problematic MLM actually is. Many despise Wal*Mart for their problematic labor practices and adverse effect on the local economy, but the upside is that community has access to a wider selection of cheaper goods. As problematic as Wal*Mart is, it can't be said to be a hard cold fleecing.
And in my view the most obvious social problem with the LDS religion is that like Wal*Mart a major expansion of our faith in your community may have economic ramifications. With mandates against alcohol and tobacco local breweries, vineyards, gas stations and restaurants could lose vital income. More importantly the donations to The Church don't necessarily stay inside your community as much as they would with local pastors doing their own thing. However I see the trade off with this in that our local clergy is all volunteer and thus not profit-motivated behind what they preach, our consistent involvement in disaster relief around the world, our preaching of tolerance, our encouragement of making good life choices (discouraging YOLO,) and a religious doctrine which facilitates each individual personally contacting and developing a relationship with divine rather than relying on professionals to do that for them.
However the dark side to LDS expansionism that-even-I-can-not-justify is Utah cultural influence of MLM. I have never lived in Utah and also find Utah culture slightly odd. However what anti-MLM activists need to know is that leaders of The Church in Salt Lake City are openly opposed to MLM.
The problem is that Salt Lake Leadership has not called out MLM specifically by name, but have in general opposed "Affinity Fraud", to include all forms of scammery, including many things the anti-MLM community finds annoying: bad actors in the education industry, fake business gurus, all forms of ponzi and pyramid schemes, other financial scams and any form of "unwise investment": https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/official-statement/affinity-fraud
Yet MLMs are exceedingly effective and convincing both politicians and common voters that MLMs are not "Affinity Fraud." Can you imaginable how potent would it be if the leadership of The Church in Salt Lake City were to come out against Mutli-Level Marketing specifically? Pop LDS apologist Kwaku El has, and Mitt Romney almost spits in contempt when he mentions Trump's "Vitamin Network." MLM is incompatible with the prescribed LDS lifestyle in that it:
Defines happiness as fundamentally about "success" and materialism.
Is inherently dishonest.
Encourages participation in MLM instead of other important life activities like pursuing education.
Is notoriously bad for marriages.
Is financially unsound.
Salt Lake is notoriously difficult to influence by activists, but more recently they have taken an interest in lefty social issues. Dan Reynolds (lead singer of Imagine Dragons) is an LDS member who is an LBGT activist, specifically concerned with LGBT youth isolation from family members, homelessness and suicide, especially in Utah. When he organized a concert around this issue, he asked Salt Lake to support his effort, even though he expected strong opposition from them. Instead they not only fully endorsed the concert, they also mentioned they had recently approved a children's worship song that was relevant. The former LDS lead singer of Neon Trees and Reynolds sang that song at the concert:
As an LDS activist I can tell you that ever since the LDS community was chased out of the USA at gunpoint the Salt Lake leadership has reacted very poorly to outsiders making broad negative generalizations about them. The anti-MLM community making hostile videos towards The Church generally is probably the very worst thing they can do to get The Church on board with anti-MLM. This is a lost opportunity for the anti-MLM community's agenda.
The Church is often the whipping boy for organized religion generally, as a sort of best-case-scenario to argue against organized religion (as in the South Park universe for example.) Anti-MLMers including myself will point out the naivete of religious people as a vulnerability that makes them susceptible to MLMs. However, this is exactly why the anti-MLM community should not be alienating believers in organized religion, because alienating our target audience makes it much harder for us to reach them:
Games are a fun place to try out ideas that can educate us about real life. In 2008-ish, after having received all the formal education that I have publicly admitted to receiving on this blog (a whole bunch of lefty human systems training,) I joined a web browser turn-based space-trading strategy MMO called Pardus, in what was a new Universe called Artemis. In Artemis there were 3 rival galactic governments:
The Federation was something like the good guys in Star Trek.
The Empire was something like the bad guys ins Star Wars.
The Union was 3rd economic powerhouse that wasn't branded as particularly good or evil.
Of course I signed up with the Empire along with a number of my friends. Most of us ended up in a player alliance called "The Imperial Navy." This alliance was fun to be a part of as we quickly and forcefully carved out our own territory in space and became one of the most influential alliances in Artemis, crushing anyone who stood in our way. As players we started to understand how and why evil empires get up to the evil antics they do in real life.
Then a new game wide announcement was made that would change everything: Earth (in Federation space,) had a giant asteroid heading for it, and if Earth could not raise enough resources to stop it, Earth would have catastrophic consequences including a population decrease of at least 90%. The Imperial Navy quickly came to consensus, no matter what happened we could NOT allow that asteroid to be stopped.
I myself was focusing my character (Benjamatic) and his ship on becoming a very proficient pilot, so I didn't have the firepower yet to help much with this effort. However my strategy that I promoted in the Imperial Navy was perhaps the most important one we used: lie. Any time someone caught a member of the Imperial Navy sabotaging Earth space, or blowing up near by space stations, or raiding resources needed to stop the asteroid, or just flat out attacking and doing piracy directly on other spacecraft, our response was the following: deny, deny, deny. We specifically erred on the side of being polite and apologetic, "oh wow, I am sorry, that pilot is out of line, we'll reign him in immediately. We know many of our pilots are near Earth trying to help, we hope there aren't any misunderstandings going on with us being in your area of space." And we brutally sabotaged them in every way we possibly could, and they were too busy struggling to stop the asteroid to be able to investigate our claims of innocence. If they had retaliated against us for what we were doing we may not have been able to successfully sabotage them.
And we were successful. Earth's population was destroyed, crushing The Federation's economy. And we gloated, loudly, pronouncing our victory, making us the most famous Alliance in the game at the time. As players we got to have the experience of being the Evil Aliens who destroyed the Earth, and it was an amazingly fun time indeed.
But notice something else here: every time Putin amasses troops near his border or starts sending "peacekeeping forces" into another country who did not ask for those peacekeepers, it's super obvious to me what Putin is doing. I have done that myself before. Insisting on your innocence while you are most obviously guilty is confusing to the powers that be, and this hesitation is exactly what you need for your evil plot to succeed.
The Imperial Navy after the attack on Earth thrived. With the muscle we had developed and growing territories we controlled, we were poised to become the most powerful player alliance in the game. The Imperial Navy's focus was now on empire building rather than terrorizing The Federation. As such politics were involved, and soon we were not allowed to engage in hostilities without permission from Imperial Navy leadership.
But I soon realized I was starting to play this game for dozens of hours per week, and I had other things I wanted to do with my life instead. I was going to have to stop playing all together, because the game wasn't casual, it did too much to draw you in to play every day. So I had to quit.
I wondered what sort of social experiment could I do before I quit the game, something that would be fun and edifying but definitely terminate my participation. In school I had studied all sorts of social dynamics including white privilege. I decided that Benjamatic (a non-human alien) was going to become the Devil.
I started by making well publicized announcements that Humans were too incompetent to be allowed to fly spacecraft safely around other pilots, and I used the tattered and destroyed economics of the space near Earth as evidence of this incompetence. I then took my formidable ship and my deadly piloting skills and started ambushing Federation spacecraft. Every time I took out another federation ship, I made my demands again very publicly, this time listing every Federation pilot who made me kill them by not helping me pressure the federation to ground all human pilots.
I was the biggest celebrity in the game for a week or two while my suicide plot unfolded. By making controversial racist remarks against human space pilots I got a lot more attention than I deserved. However this also attracted the game's largest bounties on my head as Federation players continued to donate to raise the price on my head while I continued my racist terrorism.
Eventually I was massively outgunned by well financed warships coming after me. All my resources were wrecked and I found myself cornered in Imperial Navy space, but the Imperial Navy wouldn't let me out of that space because they full well knew what I would continue to do if they did. My character sold his ship, donated all the money to the most fearsome anti-federation Pirate player alliance he knew of, and then I shut down my account and never played the game again.
I thus discovered a reason contributing to overtly racism that they did not teach me at university or grad school: attention. "Bad press is better than no press" as they say. Now when I see someone using their whiteness as the main point behind political ideology, I realize this may be attention seeking behavior.
UPDATE 2022.03.26: Adari Davonrai's player read the above post, and was playing in Artemis by the end of my above story, also as a member of The Imperial Navy. Here's what he had to say about it:
"I was certainly there... I still play Pardus now and then,.. Some time after you left, we got the Federation side of the story. The Imperial Navy tactics didn't just confuse them and allow the meteor to hit Earth. It largely destroyed Federation unity. Several Fed alliances were working together to save Earth. When they started to realize they were failing (due to TIN interference, though they didn't know it at the time), they began to blame each other, and their coalition began to struggle. When the meteor actually hit, the coalition between Fed alliances completely fell apart, and players within those alliances started blaming other members of their own alliances... When we claimed credit, many of those on the Fed side involved either didn't believe us or just ignored it, and when they finally did accept it, that only caused more internal conflict in the Federation. It took a fewyears (real life time) for the Federation to recover from that. Some Feds even bailed and defected to the Empire or the Union.
After you left, TIN [The Imperial Navy] did well for a while. I had a brewery and a slave camp until they added severe reputation penalties for having slave camps, even outside of faction space. My character was/is also rather racist against humans, and when I still had the slave camp, the opening page text announced that we don't enslave intelligent species, thus our slaves are 100% human. I also had some fun on the RP forum with that. TIN eventually fell apart when Darth Thrawn started university and didn't have time to lead, and leadership passed through several people until one betrayed us, took the alliance funds and kicked everyone out of the alliance... Now days, the Empire is one huge alliance called Ember that is friendly with the Federation, which is part of the reason I don't have much motivation to play anymore..."
My biggest pet peeve when talking politics is people using the words "Fascist" and "Communist." The only time it is appropriate to do this is when the people you talk about self-identify as what you are calling them. This is an important distinction to make because since the term "fascist" was coined by Mussolini there have been actual real self-identified fascists. Right now there are Neo Nazis fighting for the independence of Ukraine from Russia, and Russia itself has Neo Nazis. These Neo Nazis IDENTIFY AS FASCISTS, and they love themselves some Hitler and swastikas, and they have well known established counterparts in the Americas.
It is an abuse of the English language to run around calling every government you personally feel is less than ideal "fascist" or "communist." It's fully possible to be a dictator while not being a fascist or a communist. There is no such thing as secret fascism or secret communism where someone is secretly a fascist or communist but does not reveal this to his political allies, any more than there are secret conservatives or secret progressives or secret anarchists or secret libertarians; political ideology is inherently public.
If someone does not identify as fasciast or communist, it is impossible that you somehow know so much more about fascism or communism than they do to determine they are mistaken about their own political ideology. Instead you are using the word "fascist" or "communist" for political ideologies you don't like. Compared to the actual real self-identified fascists and communists, you are very far off on how you are using these words.
George W. Bush's monkey-see-monkey-do retarded-cowboy Amscamming antics earned him a place as my least favorite president of all time. The W was certainly popular with self identified fascists in the USA. Supposedly his grandfather was something of a fascist himself. But was the W a fascist? His father who led the CIA for a while before becoming president himself was certainly not fascist as he happily stepped down from power when he lost re-election to Bill Clinton. The W by all reports was a red-blooded American and did not harbor any secret love for fascism, and happily surrendered the white house to Obama.
Trump (who did far less violence and wasted far less money than the W did) was closer to fitting the description of fascist. Trump sympathized with a small fraction of his supporters who were self-identified fascists and he even tried to overturn the the results of his failed re-election. However representing the people who voted for you and being a wannabe dictator does not make you a fascist if you don't consider yourself a fascist; Trump has made his Putin-loyalist political alliances perfectly clear, and Putin is many things but a fascist he is not.
The most "communist" president we have had in recent history is Barack Obama, and his critics love to call him a commie. This is because he passed regulation around a failing health care system. However government regulation of industry is a normal government practice regardless of what form of government you have, and thus can not be said to be explicitly communist. Near Florida, Cuba is self-proclaimed communist, with all the dystopian garnish that entails. Obama's politics did not resemble Castro's in any meaningful way.
Bernie Sanders is openly socialist, and supports a number of policies that one could argue are not compatible with healthy capitalism, but is he a communist? In Bernie's wildest wet dreams, if he got everything he wanted, he would still end up less communist than Putin, and even further less communist than Cuba, to the point where Sanders can not really be considered a communist at all, but more like a northern European capitalist, or in other words what Sanders himself calls a "democratic socialist." If you think that is the same thing as a communist, then you are ignorantly claiming Cuba and Northern Europe have the same system of governance.
People who use "communist" and "fascist" as pejoratives consider themselves wise students of history while being willfully blind to ideologies other than their own. Next time you go to use the word communist or fascist ask yourself "does the person I am applying this to consider themselves to be what I am about to call them?" If not, keep your childish name calling to yourself.
