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====== My Thoughts on Politics ======

If you ever speak to me, you'll realize that My Thoughts On Politics are actually very "anti-political". I consider myself not just a centrist, but a critic of politics in general. Now, it is important to be clear about what I mean by "politics". I do not mean the somewhat boring affairs of the government as it actually is - that is, bills being passed, judges being appointed, filibusters being delivered, etc. I think it's important for your average citizen to be informed (and reasonably opinionated) about the affairs of their leaders.

What I have a problem with are broad moral ideas about the government and what the government should do, ie, **political ideology**. For instance: Republicans, Democrats, Fascists, Communists, MAGA people, Democratic Socialists, etc. There are a number of practical critiques I have of political ideology, which I'll get into later.

===== A Note about Hypocrisy =====

People in general are increasingly trapped in a politicized framework, so they don't have the mental tools (yet) to think outside of the politics box. I myself don't have a full philosophical toolkit, so don't take any of this as the word of god. Apply it to your life and wrestle with it if it makes sense, otherwise abandon it. All I claim is that these are ideas that I truly, in good faith, believe have merit.

A good question is: "Isn't opposition to political ideology *itself* political ideology?" This is exactly the same question as "Isn't atheism a religion?". The answer to this is a definitive "Maybe". The usefulness of any word depends on the sense in which it is being used. When I say that I am a critic of "political ideology", I don't mean that I am opposed to things that are called "political ideology", I mean primarily that I am a critic of certain tendencies that I observe within what I call (and I hope you understand as) political ideology. If there are tendencies in "political ideology" that I have within myself, I may be a hypocrite, or, more likely, it might not be what I'm talking about.

I'm not afraid of being a hypocrite, at least for a while. Everyone has a period of hypocrisy before they become consistent between their actions and their beliefs. For instance, if I am unhealthy, and I realize that I should go to the gym, I have to have a brief period of time where I believe "going to the gym is important", but at the same time don't actually go to the gym. Otherwise, I would never change!

When I've gotten into arguments about this, my interlocutors rarely claim I am being hypocritical, but rather that **definitionally**, I **must** have a political ideology, for a variety of reasons. I don't find this argument very interesting because it is mostly just an argument about the definitions of words. I'm not attached to "political ideology" being what I am opposed to, if there is a better descriptor, I am all ears. Of course, to suggest such a thing, you'd have to know what I'm talking about first. :D

(This form of verbal argument is one of the worst forms of political discussion, by the way.)

===== The Big Problem with Politics =====

The biggest problem with politics is that it's political. That is, the political discussion people get into about important topics is hamstrung by the fact that, at the end of the day, all you're really talking about is what you think the government should do about something. 

If you have listened to a lot of political discourse, you'll probably notice that things can get rather far afield from the government (or, proposed governments). They get into these discussions about the problems with society, or better yet approach descriptions of collective emotional states (beauty, fear, truth, disillusionment, alienation, apathy). These are very interesting discussions, that are worth really exploring. However, pretty much all discussion of these things collapses because at the end of the day you have to "bring it home" to policies.

===== Transgenderism =====

Let's start with a hot-button topic -- transgenderism. This is an interesting thing to think about, and actually can clue you in to some deeper issues in society if you follow the rabbit hole deep enough. However, the depth that most people stop at is either:

 - there really is a condition known as transgenderism. It is a mental condition people are born with. Although there is no test for transgenderism in a person, everyone who claims to have this condition really does have this condition. There is a philosophically complicated notion of what gender is. 
 - transgender people are mentally ill. They are transgender because they were groomed by older, predatory individuals who find "transing" children to be sexually gratifying. They are also trans because of pornography which convinces them that it is more pleasurable to be a woman.

I don't like either of these perspectives. I think that when dismissing the claims of the other side, both sides make valid points. All of the arguments can be boiled down to: "I don't believe that". Both narratives are dependent on you accepting that there is some invisible physical reality from which transgenderism flows. 

Liberals make an unprovable claim. As far as I know, the science of transgenderism is shaky at best. Studies that have claimed to support the existence of the transgender condition are often riddled with procedural errors. But even if that wasn't the case, the idea that everyone who thinks they have this condition actually does have this condition is laughable, when you consider the sheer number of people that think they are transgender. 

Conservatives also make a series of unprovable claims. It is believable that these claims may be true in certain circumstances. But the idea that this is true in all circumstances is silly. One would have to believe that this "grooming" is happening on an industrial scale. Just from listening to transgender people speak, I don't think this is the case. 

The reason that there are only two schools of thought about transgenderism is because there are really only two political parties in America. Each of these political parties has their own agenda regarding transgenderism, so the narrative that they tell ends up supporting that agenda. Liberals want transgender therapy ("gender affirming care") to be freely accessible to anyone who desires it, so they tell a narrative that claims that anyone that seeks this therapy actually 100% needs it. Conservatives essentially want to do the opposite, making it impossible for people who desires transgender therapy to get it.

To be clear, there is a cyclical nature to the relationship between agenda and narrative. One could say that, more accurately, the agenda sprung forth from the narrative. This too, however, ignores the vicious cycle between agenda and narrative. In the political landscape, the agendas people lobby for and the narratives they tell tend to diverge and become extreme. Although a democrat from 20 years ago would likely have supported some transgender therapy, they probably wouldn't have agreed with the idea that there is no definition of the word "woman". 

===== Active Truth vs Passive Truth =====

So what is the truth of transgenderism? This will motivate a discussion of my epistemological framework, "Active Truth", as it compares to what I call "Passive Truth". 

"Active Truth", to me, means a variety of things, and, to be honest, I kind of end up using it as an umbrella term for a number of different analytical techniques I employ. The primary idea is this: If you are trying to find the truth in a contentious topic, it's better to fully understand *why* both sides are saying the things that they are saying than it is to choose one of the existing sides.

In politics, many people are opinionated, and are aware of the fact that there is a conflict, but they don't necessarily understand very well //why// there is a conflict. They can state their own opinions, but are often confused and bewildered by the opinions of their adversaries. I think you probably have an incomplete understanding of a topic if you can't explain why the other side says what they say.

Consider: People naturally disagree on a lot of things. Therefore, the fact that there is a group of people that agree on something is more novel than the fact that there are people that disagree. So, we must first find the essence of that coherency to fully understand the conflict. 

The best way to find what a group believes, I claim, is to listen to how average members talk about it, rather than to look to sources written about the group. The best example of this is leftism. Leftism is built on a phenomenally large pile of literature. One would assume that it would be impossible to understand what leftism is unless you were to devote yourself to the study of it, in which case you would probably be a leftist yourself. However, what I am claiming is that if you want to know what a leftist believes, you can just ask him. If he deflects your question and asks that you read some essay or literature, just ask for him to summarize the key points in the literature. He should be able to, or, if he can't, that probably means that the literature actually isn't that important to understanding his opinion. 

This is the "active" part of "active truth" -- //enhanced dialogue//. More than just talking to a person, one also needs to place the words that the person is saying into a context that makes sense apart from the paradigm in which the speaker is thinking. Additionally, one needs to, at times, do the work of rationalizing what the speaker is saying.

When you have a highly opinionated person talking to a person that might not share the same opinions, usually such discussions turn into a debate. However, the person pursuing active truth must restrain his argumentative side and "probe" the person he is talking to. It turns out that people usually really like talking about what they believe, so if you appear interested and attentive, you can get pretty far in understanding the structure of their beliefs.

(You also don't even need to have dialogues, per se. You can also just listen to what the person says aloud to others.)

The core assumptions I have when doing this are:
  * People, in general, are rational and intelligent. 
  * People, in general, are honest about the things they believe and why they believe those things.

The purpose of these assumptions is to prevent people from using the most common [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9|thought stopping clichés]] when considering conflict. Normally, when I talk to people why they think people believe things that are radically different than what they believe, the most common refrains are that they are just stupid, uneducated, or are dishonest.

While it //is// possible that an individual is stupid (ie, lacking good mental faculties, mentally deficient), in a group of people such individuals will be below average. Remember, the average IQ is 100, which means the average of any randomly selected sample of humans is also 100. Therefore, when you have a political group, it is a fair assumption that the average IQ is normal. 

("Uneducated" is a double-entendre often used by liberals. An "uneducated" person may either be a person who didn't attend college or a person who is ill-informed on a particular topic. (Studies have shown that conservatives are more likely to not have gone to college, hence the former sense of the word.) The former sense I find to be lacking value -- if the claim is that they would have believed something different had they received certain instruction, then the specific instruction they lack should be discussed, rather than a lack of general, common core education! The latter sense, however, is valid)

Finally, again, while it is possible for a person to lie about their beliefs, I don't really see any reason that they would. People lie so that they can manipulate a person into giving them something that they want. If I am having a discussion with someone about politics, what incentive would they have to lie? They //might// have unrealized hypocrisy, and they //might// have unconscious or preconscious reasons for believing something. They might also be biased because of a personal connection to the thing being discussed. But in all circumstances, people usually have a logical justification for their beliefs, which can be considered.

===== The True Nature of Transgenderism =====

Using the "Active Truth" framework that I laid out in the previous section, I have been thinking about the question of transgenderism for quite some time. I have realized many things about this group of people.

In general, when transgender people talk about why they are transgender, they describe a feeling of "gender dysphoria". "Dysphoria" is not a made up word, it is simply the opposite of "Euphoria", aka a state of bliss. Dysphoria, on the other hand, is a state of continual anguish, despair, and self-loathing. It's impossible to know for sure whether the experience of dysphoria is the same for all transgender people, but I think they are all being honest about it being deeply unpleasant, just because of the extreme lengths that they go to rid themselves of the feeling.

Would a man destroy his own testicles because he only //partially// believed something? Would he do it because he is trying to attain social status? I don't think so, at least not consciously. 

I would be more willing to believe that transgenderism was an actual medical condition if there wasn't a rapid increase in people self-reporting as transgender. It's difficult to imagine that our understanding of the condition of transgenderism goes back before the turn of the millennium, but it did. So, why is there an explosion now?

==== Media-Political Cycle ====

Let's address the obvious -- the agenda of "transgender rights" (from the left) and the agenda in reaction to that agenda (from the right) create a vicious, extremifying cycle, so that both agendas become more expansive and contentious. As the agenda grows, so too does the narrative. Furthermore, the expansion of the agenda means an increase in media attention, which also feeds back into the agenda. All of this culminates in transgenderism getting a massive explosion in public attention -- absolutely more than what it is due.

(Yes, this means that conservatives actually are one of the biggest reasons for the growth of the transgender movement!)

{{ :politics:political_media_cycle.drawio.png?400 |}}
This is my model of the feedback loop between political parties, in the case of social-justice related topics. The reverse case ("Right-wing narrative feeds the Situation which is covered by Left-wing media") might apply for something like MAGA.

In this case, the situation is "rising rates of transgenderism in the United States". The situation is covered by right-wing news, which is read mostly by right-wingers. Journalism being journalism, they pander to the audience and draw a harrowing picture of the situation, stoking fears of the consequences of the situation -- will //your// kids be trans? Will gender be eradicated?

The coverage feeds a narrative of transgenderism being a massive, existential problem, involving child exploitation and other emotionally charged ideas claims. The fervent reaction in the narrative triggers a shift in the right-wing agenda. eventually, the agenda becomes action, in the form of a bill, or possibly some violent act. For example, Florida essentially banning all transgender therapy.

This action is then covered by left-wing news sources, who report on what they describe as an attack on transgender people, and, in general, liberal democracy and self-determination. This feeds into a left-wing narrative about the aims of the right-wingers, and crucially, a reactive support for transgenderism. Anything less than full support is seen as an element of the right-wing narrative, because they are saying it too!

(For instance, right-wingers say "people might get transgender therapy when they don't really need it". Reflexively, left-wingers must say the opposite, because that very statement is part of the philosophy that led to the action they are reacting to)

The left-wing narrative of all transgenderism being completely valid in all circumstances feeds into the situation -- because now there is no reason for any person to not think of themselves as transgender, if they are a left-winger.

This narrative, in turn, informs the left-wing agenda, which produces some action -- either a bill or some violent act. For instance, the states that enshrine protections for transgender therapy into law. 

That action is covered by right-wing news, who report on it as faithfully as ever, spinning a tale of how the left-wingers are really the cause of the situation in the first place, and that they are evil people that just want to groom children, etc. Thus the cycle becomes self-sustaining, as both right-wingers and left-wingers remain completely unaware that their actions are actually what are causing the other side to react in the way that they hate so much.

At the same time, the back and forth between left-wing and right-wing coverage generates tremendous public attention towards transgenderism, advertising it for all to see. Some people will become aware of the issue, and become a part of the situation themselves. 

==== But Why? ====
If you just wanted **an** answer that you could jot down for the reason that there is this explosion in transgenderism (and inextricably an explosion in right-wing fervor), you could just take this for granted. I do genuinely believe that this is the overarching system that creates the situation.

The problem with what I've just told you is that it relies on just-so stories. They are just-so stories that pretty much everyone believes, but they still lack explanatory power. //Why// does the right react so strongly to transgenderism as opposed to, say, Death Metal? //Why// does being exposed to the narrative of transgenderism cause people to essentially become transgender? //Why// is this happening now, when transgenderism has existed for decades at this point?

{{:politics:youth-suicide-deaths-1999-2019.ct1-1_2col.jpg?400|}} {{:politics:teen-depression.png?400|}}

This is why. **Children should not be feeling this way.**

What the hell has our society come to, when **HALF** of all teens think their lives are worthless, think they don't matter, and would rather be dead? What happens to such a kid? 

(This is exactly why I can't take the right seriously when they talk about protecting children. They all talk about transgenderism, which is //a part// of the problem, but they rarely talk about this.)

Not all of these kids are suffering from //gender// dysphoria, but //every last one of them// is dysphoric. 

==== The Mythic Female and the Mortal Male ====

> I'm a stone age man, she’s a space age woman
//-[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtLil-BBshQ|Stone Age Funeral]], Mountain Witch//

"Transgender ideology", so to speak, is a form of //myth//. By "myth", I don't mean "a statement that is false", or even "an irrational belief". I instead mean "a story that is told to contextualize/explain reality". Humans use myths for understanding reality all the time. A lot of "non-practical" pop-science is, itself, a form of mythology, being an extremely simplified view of the real thing. ("We are all stardust")

Studies have shown that teens struggling with depression are much more likely to reach out for help from medical professionals than older people. While this could be interpreted as the result of a more liberal sentiment in young people, I interpret it a different way. Part of growing up is establishing a "self-concept" -- a sort of myth about the self. Adults struggling with depression may already have a self-concept that they have already developed, which helps them cope with dark feelings. Teens do not have the benefit of this self-concept, so they feel completely lost in the midst of the suffering.

Therapy, and really the diagnosis of depression in general, are themselves a form of myth. We don't really know what "a depression" is. Even now, the classic understanding of what causes depression has been challenged as we learn more about the brain. Furthermore, the line between "rational thought that makes you sad" and "mental illness" is incredibly blurry. If I live in a ghetto and am surrounded by crime and muck, and my lifespan is short and no one loves me, of course I'm going to be depressed, because my reality is depressing!

Therefore I believe that teens seek out therapy because they are searching for a myth that they can use to contextualize their own dysphoria. In the same way, teens seek out other myths. I believe that transgenderism is one of these myths that works really well because it plays on an innate mythological understanding about gender. It tells a story that every man understands at one point in his life.

As men, we are naturally entranced by women. Not just by their beauty and sexuality, but also by a certain //je ne sais quoi// that they possess. We often find ourselves admiring them and, in a sense, worshipping them. 

{{ :politics:ezgif-4-89ee8f1d9a.png?200|}}

This tendency is not unique to the modern age, of course. Take, for instance, the ancient city of Athens, named after Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Athena was also a goddess of warfare, which is interesting considering that warfare is a masculine activity. Closely related are Demeter (goddess of the harvest) and Artemis (goddess of the hunt), who also oversaw masculine activities. America, following Greco-Roman inspiration, had it's own goddess of liberty -- Columbia (as in, District of Columbia). 

Furthermore, consider that pretty much every culture has had an understanding of witchcraft, which is traditionally female act of communion with dark spirits. In Western cultures we consider witches as evil, but this is not necessarily the case in other cultures, where they are sometimes seen as venerable masters of nature. 

Men, on the other hand, lack a lot of the things that they are fascinated with in women. Men, naturally, lack beauty, for one thing. (I love the jokes about women spending hours dolling themselves up and men throwing on a t-shirt :D) Men are gruff and hardened, women are sensitive and soft. Women seem evenheaded while men kill each other in pointless disputes.

We see here an interesting contrast between self and the object of admiration. A man can behold the feminine ideal, but can never attain it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM5esXfLGTE

> Aurvandill: Tell me, how did Odin lose his eye?
> Amleth: To learn the secret magic of women.
> Aurvandill: Never seek the secrets of women, but heed them always.
> Heimir: It is women that know the mysteries of men; the Nords that spin and weave at the well of fate.

I'm not making some Freudian claim that all men secretly want to be women. I'm just pointing out the strange nature of sexuality. For example, I admire Arnold Schwarzenegger impressive physique, that is, I find it compelling. And I also admire a woman's beauty. However, I wouldn't like to be a woman, but I would like to be Arnold.

None of this is, or should be, a conscious process. Young men in the throes of puberty will follow girls around without knowing why. And the love between a man and a woman goes beyond the physical act of sex, in a way that neither party understands fully. As it ought to be. 

With this understanding of the mythological ideal of women that exists within the minds of men, we can begin to see a picture of what goes wrong in the case of transgenderism. Basically, these young men(( Yes, I am ignoring FtMs, because honestly there aren't that many of them, and there are a variety of other reasons that FtMs come about, and also I'm not a woman so I can't speak to the mind of a woman as well as I can to the mind of a man. )) get //too close to the fire//. 

Why did this happen? Perhaps this is the wrong question. Perhaps the better question is "why doesn't this happen to every man"? Consider the myth of Achilles:

> The tragic hero Achilles (the very same Achilles who later took an arrow to his foot) was prophesized to die in battle, so, his mother, wishing to trick fate, hid him on the isle of Skyros. There, he was disguised as one of the daughters of King Lycomedes. He likely would have remained on the island, had it not been for Odysseus. Odysseus knew that they couldn't win the Trojan War without Achilles, so he sailed forth to the island.

> Arriving there, he presented the daughters of Lycomedes with a variety of gifts, one of which was a sword and shield. Instantly, the disguised Achilles gravitated to the sword and shield, revealing himself. Realizing that this was his fate, he left with Odysseus to sail to Troy.

From this we learn that there is an inherent nature to a man. The Greeks believed in a concept known as //Arete//, roughly, the "full realization of potential or inherent function". Arete could apply to anything -- a chimney could have Arete if it was effective at being a chimney -- but it was more often applied to people, especially men, where it meant courage, strength, and wisdom. 

Personally, I think that there is a crisis in masculinity that young people are well aware of. There are some things that people call manly -- lifting weights, wrestling, drinking, sports, etc. A man, however, could do all of these things and yet still fail to have Arete, for these are not attributes of a person who is effective in their purpose. 

To give an example close to home, in Kansas City, as I am writing this, there is a huge amount of gun related violence. Sometimes this violence is gang related, sometimes it is just something stupid, like a car cutting off another car in traffic. This extreme violent reaction is undoubtably a masculine failure -- who wouldn't look at their own masculine form with disgust after such a thing? Yet the truth is, these young men lack Arete. They kill, which is a thing that men do from time to time, but they do it senselessly. To do violence and to die in the name of something that is true and just is what we call heroism.

Furthermore, there are no good role models in mass media. They all turn out to just be rich assholes that live a life of extravagance and degeneracy. What separates a man like that from anyone else? Money, and that's it.

In Achilles' case, he was in a conflict where Helen was kidnapped by Paris and some other assortment of the Gods(( forgive my somewhat liberal interpretation of the events, all interpretation is subject to the reader's bias )). Helen was unjustly detained, and the scales of justice had to be tipped back into place, and there was only one man that could see it through. To an extent, the Trojan War was a pointless conflict, but from Achilles' perspective it was not only his fate to do battle, but it was also just.

It's important to remember that men built, and are still building, the world. Men are engineers designing hospitals, workers building them, and doctors staffing them. This is the fulfillment of a man's Arete - the engineer designs, the builder builds, and the doctor heals. 

The greatest example of a man effective in his purpose was Jesus Christ. Jesus arrived on earth with one mission in mind - "to seek and save that which is lost". At times he used his wit by outsmarting the Jews, and at times he even used violence (casting the moneychangers out of the temple). He didn't preach a message of hate, but a message of love and peace, uplifting the poor and the weary. Finally, he died in an act of heroism, accomplishing his purpose. 

To summarize, I believe that some young men are confused about their sexuality because the concept of masculinity has been muddied so much that they no longer see themselves in it. They see things such as violence and disdain towards the weak, women, and the planet as emblematic of masculinity, and so in turn they begin to loathe their own masculinity. In truth, the best thing that a man can do to grasp his masculinity is to be driven with some purpose.

Indeed, I believe both extremes of masculinity are bad: both the obsession with and the loathing of masculinity are degenerate modes. Ironically, both are gay. I think that the problem of admiration for and distance from femininity is satisfied in marriage, in which the two become one. The woman becomes a part of the man, the man becomes a part of the woman, so, despite separate, they are one, and the tension is resolved.

Now, back to the problem at hand. The problem with chasing the ideal of femininity as a man is that while there is a curse to masculinity, there is also a curse to femininity. The curse of masculinity is beholding, but not grasping, beauty, while the curse of femininity is to not even behold beauty. Women don't realize that they are beautiful, or at least they don't realize it in the same way that men do. They are cursed to forever chase being just a little prettier. Women struggle with being content in who they are.

This is why the tension between masculine and feminine must be resolved with marriage, not physical transformation or eradication of the self. Transgender (MtFs) are constantly concerned with how well they "pass". This is ironically the nature of the feminine curse. They keep trying to be prettier and prettier, yet rarely do they attain the coveted state of "passing". It's worse for them, however, because while women have the feminine essence naturally, and therefore have the beauty that men desire, transgender people must ape it. This puts them in the unenviable position of receiving both curses at the same time -- to never be content in, and also to never attain femininity. 

===== What is the disease? =====
All of this is pointless. A conservative is like a doctor that gives cough medicine to a patient with whooping cough. He sees a facet of the problem, and is offended by it, but his own ideological bent prevents him from seeing the true nature of the problem.

The problem is what I mentioned earlier - what I call "general dysphoria". Although the stats are most dire for teens and young adults, I believe that this sickness of the spirit extends to all ages and races in this country, just in different ways. 

The most common answer to why this is happening is "cell phones". Maybe. The theory goes that if people just put down their cell phones they would be better off. I'm sure that's part of it, but again I feel like there is a deeper truth to be uncovered here. Why can't people put down their cell phones? 

(Also, why is there this gradual increase in suicide rates? At a certain point, we would expect to reach a saturation point, right? The theory is, as teens spend more time on their phones, the suicide rate increases. At a certain point there will be no more time left to spend on your phone, which implies that other facts are to blame, at least to me)

I think there are a lot of reasons for this.

{{ :politics:individuality.png?400 |}}

I believe that people have an innate desire to be a person. Roughly, to have a will and a self. This requires a careful balance of two axes: Contrast vs Sameness, and Change vs Constancy. My belief is that if you have two much of any of these four, you cease to exist as a will and a self. You are dead before death. However, if you have this balance, you have Individuality.

**Contrast vs Sameness**: This axis defines how you relate to others. **Sameness** is how closely you align to a group, while **Contrast** is your difference from people in a group. An excess of either is bad for having a Will. 

  * If you have too much Sameness, you will let your opinions and actions be defined by others, depriving you of your ability to determine who you are for yourself.
  * If you have too much Contrast, you will be so divorced from others that your opinions and actions don't matter. What good are the thoughts of a hermit? He lives and dies with them, they do nothing and effect nothing. Will only exists inasmuch as it effects the world, otherwise it is nothing.

**Change vs Constancy**: This axis defines who you are across time. **Change** means how you change with and adapt to the world, while **Constancy** is how you remain constant through time. An excess of either is bad for having a Self.

  * If you have too much Constancy, you'll never have the opportunity to evolve into something better. You'll never grow up or mature. You will be like a stone -- steady, stoic, dead. 
  * If you have too much Change, you'll have no Self. You'll be whisked along with the currents of life, sometimes here, sometimes there, but never really anywhere. When your principles are challenged, you'll have nothing to fall back on -- you'll be a pushover. You will be like water -- flowing, flexible, dead. 

I think that is is becoming increasingly difficult for people to find balance. A lot of social forces are an attempt to overcome an excess of one force. The problem is that they go too far and become an excess of the other. Also, people don't have a good model of this intuition. People think, for instance, that Change implies Contrast, but this isn't true, hence the expression is "Following the Crowd" instead of "Standing in the Crowd". 

This lack of balance manifests in a number of ways, many of which are repressed and are unable to be expressed consciously, yet perniciously effect people's lives without them realizing. An excess of Change results in feeling out of control, anxious, high strung, etc. An excess of Constancy can lead to a deep sense of ennui and repression. An excess of Sameness results in a feeling of worthlessness and low-self esteem. And an excess of contrast leads, of course, to loneliness.

==== Extra Credit: Meme Hermeneutics ====

If you like memes, you may have come to see language describing these archetypes revealing themselves in real time. 

{{ :politics:6503f646c7b3a.jpeg?400 |}}

"Soyjak" is a consistent thing to pretty much everyone that uses him. He emerged as a way to mock left-wingers, and he is still used in that role, but people realized that this character had a lot of explanatory power even outside of politics. Soyjak is an "over-socialized" individual. He exists in excess of both Change and Sameness. 

Chad is a compelling character because he represents Constancy. He is principled and calm. He represents a masculine vigor and capability for action - Arete. 

===== Politics and Individuality =====

Politics is, itself, a result of a lack of individuality. Political engagement is an attempt to gain an element of individuality that is lacking in a person's life. The problem, however, is that they end up overcorrecting, and making the problem worse.

Constancy and Change roughly correspond to two types of political regime. We might label these two extremes as "Right" and "Left"(( this isn't always true. think about Nazi Germany --  a big shake up from the system that existed before! )). 

Sameness and Contrast, on the other hand, are two types of political strategy. Political parties want conformity when they are in power, because anything other than perfect conformity is a threat to the status quo. Meanwhile, a political party that is out of power wants to destabilize the status quo which is benefitting the dominant party. 

The "pendulum" of politics is explained by this. Party "A" has power, and enforces a Sameness on people. People have an excess of Sameness and go to Party "B" to balance their Sameness with Contrast. A tipping point occurs, and Party "B" takes power. Party "B" switches from promoting Contrast to Sameness, and the cycle repeats. 

^ Issue       ^ Sameness       ^ Contrast     ^
| Free speech | dangerous      | essential    |
| Truth       | authority      | experience   |
| Creativity  | skepticism     | embraced     |
| Government  | effective      | corrupt      |
| Emotion     | restraint      | genuineness  |

Around 2016, the "switch" began to happen in earnest. The right adopted the ideal of Contrast as a destabilizing strategy. This included things akin to postmodernism ("post-truth", fake news, etc) and also a much stronger belief in free speech. Meanwhile, the left had to adapt by adopting the ideal of Sameness, representing the opposite of the Contrast ideal, including such things as fighting fake news (via fact checks, etc) and more censorship.

Everyone who understands that this happened is confused by it, and it confounds people of all political persuasions, because political ideologies paint themselves as static, constant structures of ethics and opinions, growing forth from a single seed of knowledge. People thought that conservatives and liberals would be the same forever. They never however connected the dots on what would happen //after// the liberals won. Of course liberals would become more authoritarian, otherwise they would be an ineffective political group -- only ever capable of being underdogs, and never achieving anything.

To summarize, the political axis between Left and Right once looked like this:

{{:politics:individuality_original_axis.png?400|}}

... but now, it looks like this:

{{:politics:individuality_new_axis.png?400|}}

I call this state of affairs "perpendicularity".

===== Media and Individuality =====
Media is universally isolating and individuality-stripping. It is made for a common audience, which enforces sameness. It convinces you that it is an object of consciousness when it is merely illusory. The Media-Society is growing in size and relevancy. People are tricked into the lie of Media - that it is real and relevant. 

The overall effect of this is a lack of confidence in one's own body --  a form of impotence. 

People ought to be aware of the Lie of media when they consume it, lest they be consumed. 

==== The Tyranny of Cliché ====
Valuable aspects of human experience lose their meaning and relevance when they are over-exploited. The consumption of media is a common event, therefore all media is a form of Sameness. Since individuality requires an element of Contrast, in order to assert individuality, a person must reject the media to a certain extent. Rejecting media means rejecting the things media shows.

Media tends to commodify genuine human experience. Thus, to assert individuality, people are sometimes forced to eschew genuineness and experience. This gives rise to a form of postmodernism and nihilism. These things too are a form of genuine human experience , however, and thus they are also exploited by the media, eventually leaving people with no other choice than either to fully engage in media, or go into further more dark and vile forms of expression.

People sometimes talk about "irony" and "post-irony". Well, this is the cause of it. It's rich to blame kids for this -- adults started it and are perpetuating it! Soon, I think, they'll realize the error in their ways.

Let's put this in simple terms. People sometimes wonder where punk went. The answer is that it became "lame". Why do things become "lame"? Easy, they become too commodified. I've seen so many advertisements with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krokQtkvd9M|Blitzkrieg Bop]] (aka,  "Hey, Ho, Let's Go") that the song is practically the same as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxNR3407v4Y|corporate rock]] to me. This is coming from a person who is too young to remember when punk was a thing, as it lived and died before I was even born. (Yes, punk is dead)

To a certain extent, this might be a good thing, at least for music, because it forces a continual re-invention. Media might be a form of "reaper" for ideas that have lived past their prime. The problem, however, is that the rate at which media absorbs new ideas is getting faster as media itself, as an industry, grows larger. 

Let's also consider why punk was appealing. People were sick of conformity, aka, Sameness! They were tired of living their lives in view of the media propping up a regime of Sameness. but the Sameness that was being propped up was human experience in general. People want to have a family, to get married. These things only become unappealing when they become too Samey.

Kids nowadays feel like they have no choice but to fully dive into this Media world. Any time anything new or interesting appears, it is instantly gobbled up by the Media! The world has been consumed by it. 

==== Advertising ====
I believe that advertising is, more than just annoying, literally toxic to consume too much of. I think that it is contributing to a general feeling of misanthropy and paranoia.

Advertisement is a form of deception. Sure, ads aren't allowed to use "false advertising", aka, claiming things about the product that are provably false. However, they can imply certain things. The best example, in my opinion, are Wendy's ads. In the ads, Wendy's is shown as a fun, lively, Office-like environment. However, when you actually go to Wendy's, you'll find the workers to be typical and glum.

There are two reactions to these BS ads: either you reject it or you fall for it. If you fall for the tricks of advertising, you will quickly lose all of your money. You'll see the ads and believe the underlying premise of the ad -- that all your problems will melt away if you eat certain foods, go certain places, etc. In this capitalistic world, if you don't have money, you essentially die. 

The other reaction is what most of us have developed - cynicism. We have learned over time that the ads will say anything to get us to buy their product, so we slowly tune ads out. The problem is that if everyone tunes ads out, ads become less useful. So advertisers have to be increasingly devious in their lying, and continually push deeper and deeper into our psyche. They keep pushing for more forms of genuineness and expression.

This game of cat and mouse trains our minds to be cynical to all forms of genuineness. Everything that advertisers touch becomes tainted. We become unduly skeptical of things like love, believing that pure love doesn't exist, because we see it used in a BS sense on TV. To an extent this is true, no one is perfect, love is an act of becoming, not of being. However, if you believe that love itself is flawed, then it will be flawed. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People are also becoming more and more wary of charity and good works, again because ads show them to tug on our heartstrings. So we assume that charity and good works are actually bad or ineffective.

The elephant in the room that I've not been addressing so far is this new rise of fascism. I am talking about younger men that are actual racists and sexists, etc. Is it any wonder that they are racist/sexist, when antiracism/antisexism is used in advertising? Furthermore, is it any wonder that people doubt the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine, when the talking heads say it is safe -- the same talking heads that lie to you every day?

I have joked that the best way to fight fascism is to make McDonalds make ads targeting fascists. Start advertising the "Hitler Burger" or a "Himmler Meal", and fascism will be dead in a decade.

==== The News ====
Pretty much everything that cable news reports on is irrelevant to the individual. What I mean is, they report on things that don't effect you and that you can't even really do anything to help with. People think that consuming news is noble, because it "keeps them informed". I suggest that people that consume news are actually //less// informed.

People are going to be mad at me for saying this, but I don't care: What good does reporting on school shootings do for anyone? Every time that there is a school shooting anywhere in the US, it dominates the news cycle for a few days. Why do we care so much?

I'm not trying to make the point that we shouldn't care because it could add fuel to the fire of banning guns, to be clear. If that is what you are trying to do, then just the fact that there was a school shooting, and some number of people died should be sufficient to communicate the fact that there is a problem.

Instead, what we get is round the clock coverage of the tragedy. We get testimonials about what happened. We get the gory details. We wait for the police press conference. We get helicopters circling the school as if there is going to be another shooting. The worst is the "psychoanalysis" of the "totally dark and tWisTeD psyche" of the shooter, painting him as a badass antihero.

Meanwhile, people are dying all the time for boring reasons. A drunk driver crashes into a family of six, and they all die. That's a tragedy too! There's tons of gang-related violence happening in our city, but that hardly gets reported on either, because it's part of the status quo.

The truth is that school shootings are only reported on as much as they are because it is a hot story. It's scary and violent. The fact that it is a tragedy is secondary.

Zooming in on a single killer, spending all this time examining him, will make a person incredibly myopic. Consider this: there are 300 million people in America. If each person in America was a single stitch in a circular rug, it would be roughly 34 miles in diameter. That's about the distance from my house in Lenexa, KS to where I went to college, at Eaton Hall at KU, which is about a 40 minute drive. To focus on this one killer, you would be looking at a single defective stitch in this massive rug.

If you were obsessed with this single stitch, observing all the ways in which it was frayed and decayed, instead of observing the millions and millions of other stitches, you would have a very dismal view of the rug. That would be absurd! Yet this is the kind of thinking that the news media encourages, hence why I think that the more you watch the news, the less informed you will be.

I am calling out school shootings because it's the easiest to understand, but the problem with news media goes beyond this. The essential problem that news media is trying to solve is that there is this huge amount of information in reality that no one can ever fully understand, so the news media picks out "the good parts". but picking out the "the good parts" is an incredibly flawed thing to do! Even if you are perfectly honest and free of bias, you are still creating a distorted view of reality!

Ideally, if you really wanted to understand the world as it really was, you would construct a "scale-model" of the world, where everything has the same ratio in relationship to everything else as it does in the real world. But in the model of the world that news media creates the ratios are all messed up. To give an analogy, if I wanted to understand a place, I might look at a scale model map of the place. Imagine if you got a map, and the ratios of distances between places were all wrong! I might think that China was right next to KC, but that Overland Part was on the other side of the planet! I would be horribly lost.

As media grows into every corner of our lives, people are becoming more and more convinced that the strange alternate-reality of news is the true reality. They prioritize the news reality sometimes above their own sensory experience of reality!

To give an example of how this effects younger people, there is this incredibly stupid war between young men and women online. This war is mostly caused by people reading drama of how men are evil, sex-crazed beasts, and how women are cruel sluts that think that men are worthless. The effect is that both sides start to dehumanize the other. This leads to rather perverse actions taken by either side, which I have seen with my own eyes. 

If you want to know what women are like then for God's sakes talk to women! But the war between men and women means that neither side wants to do this, because (consciously) they think that these attributes are written in stone and (subconsciously) they are afraid of being hurt. If you really think that men are sex-crazed beasts that will rape you at their first inclination, then //of course// you will be afraid to talk to men! And if you think that women will just laugh at you and text all their friends how pathetic you are, then why would you bother!!!

=== The Elephant in the Room ===

Here is the great hypocrisy in what I'm saying -- most young men and women //don't// think like that. 

The relevance of this is mostly relevant to me. I have met several people IRL that have expressed this idea that women are at odds with men, and they became rather bitter and hateful people. On the other hand, there are hundreds and hundreds of people that I have met that //have not// indicated that they have such a belief! The only reason that I am talking about these few people is, in a sense, because their worldview shocked me - just like the news!

In my defense, the reason I am talking about it is because I see it as a sign of the times, and I see politics as a process that is continually evolving into insanity. I have met many, many people that have been consumed with political fervor (I view women/men hatred as an element of political divide), and I am essentially writing this whole essay to convince people that political fervor is pointless, and to essentially deconstruct politics. 

But the point still stands - what you are reading right now is a form of news media itself. I don't shy away from this fact. You shouldn't take anything that I'm saying as gospel. Everyone insists upon the truth of their writings but not me, I insist on the lack of truth in it. I don't want to be a prophet or a leader, I only want to help people out of the holes that we are finding ourselves in.

My point is, that you shouldn't be trusting CNN or Breitbart or some blogger or even me for the truth in reality, you should be experiencing it for yourself, via this process of "Active Truth". Perhaps you find that "Active Truth" is an insufficient epistemological framework. Fine! But do you have any other method of critiquing political engagement? Do you even realize that there is a problem? What I want you to do is OBSERVE how the world actually is, and THINK CRITICALLY about it, and about yourself! I want you to love others, to bring forth "peace on earth, goodwill towards men". I want you to be a soldier of good in the smallness of who you are. I want you to be happy, and to find peace within yourself.

==== The Disembodied Ego ====

The result of the news media is that the individual feels disembodied, as though they are merely an ego. For the things they hold as true don't come to them through their eyes and ears, but rather through the screen. And, furthermore, the news media presents problems that are frankly impossible for the individual to tackle on his own. So what good is the body? The body is only an inconvenient anchor for the ego.

There is no peace, however, for the disembodied ego. Media (specifically advertising) sets some egos above others. Coca-Cola is itself an ego, for example, as a force acting upon the world apart from a body. It proclaims its own value to all who will listen, in a form that no individual can match.

(This is exactly why I consider graffiti a form of advertisement, it is one ego above another. I would appreciate graffiti a lot more if it wasn't mostly just gang signs and tags. As it is, graffiti feeds a feeling of disconnection, it is an elevation of the self above others which is the opposite of love. graffiti artists have the power to do so much more if they become loving, if their fight against advertising was about improving people's lives as opposed to being in competition with them)

There are also human egos -  which are attached rich, wealthy, strong, sexy bodies. We see them every day as insurmountably powerful. We wish we could grasp that ideal, but alas our bodies are useless piles of meat, sometimes poor, sometimes weak, sometimes awkward. (No, I don't think that putting pictures of ugly or poor people in advertising will fix this problem, because at the end of the day the ego is still there. It is a more powerful ego than our own)

In this circumstance, the individual has a toxic amount of Sameness, as their ego is at risk of being obliterated. This is the cause of radicalism in politics, which is that individuals try to reject Sameness as much as possible, embracing the other extreme of Contrast, no matter which specific political ideology happens to be attached to it. The problem with that, however, is that there is a remarkable amount of conformity in radical political groups, so there is a Sameness within the Contrast. So in trying to reject Sameness they simply find another Sameness. Despite this, the Sameness they find in radicalism is more tolerable, mostly because it is smaller.

==== The Seemingly Obvious Solution ====

The seemingly obvious solution to all of these problems is to simply stop consuming media. 

You still have a body, and you can still interact with the world, and, yes, you can even change the world. Yes, it will be in very small (practically microscopic) measures, but you'll still be enacting //some// change on the world. (which is better than the no change you would be enacting otherwise)

This is my great frustration with our society. We are so caught up in huge overarching narratives of decay that we don't notice the small ways that we can help, which, in aggregate, contributes to the problem. We see that society is so ugly, but we don't think to pick up litter. Consider that if we all picked up litter (or better yet, didn't litter), society would not be nearly as ugly. 

Politics reinforces this by turning our attention towards insurmountable problems caused by impossibly powerful forces. 

==== Anti-Media ====

Many people are able to consume media without media consuming them. Thus, you may not actually need to stop consuming media. In fact, stopping the consumption of media can replace an excess of Sameness with an excess of Contrast. For instance, normal people meet in the real world, and they talk about football. If you refuse to watch football, you may find it impossible to relate to normal people.

(Ironically, despite enforcing a regime of Sameness, consuming media also encourages isolation - the same isolation that may result from //not// consuming media. You can watch a movie all by yourself, or you can twiddle your thumbs all by yourself - at the end of the day, you're still all by yourself either way.)

So, the solution seems to be to balance your media consumption with something else. The question is, what should it be balanced with? I have pondered this question quite a bit. (It is of course easier to point out a problem than to propose a solution) I'm still developing this idea, but I think what is needed is what I call //anti-media//. 

Consider this picture:

{{ :politics:ciphers-aerial-florida-suburb.jpg?400 |}}

Pictures like this routinely make people uncomfortable, but it's difficult for them to say why, exactly. I think I cracked this case. There's something that is common in neighborhoods that isn't common in this picture. Can you spot it???

{{ :politics:gettyimages-1305769361-612x612.jpg?400 |}}

People! There are no people in these images. The first image is of a perspective that is far-out, objective, and irrelevant, mostly. It is not the viewpoint of a human. The second image is a viewpoint of a human. This first is //media//, the second is //anti-media//. 

I'm still sorting out what anti-media is, exactly. The short answer is "everything that isn't media", but that just leads to the question of "what is media?", which is one of those things with a rather blurry definition. I guess that the dichotomy is between your perspective and an outside perspective. I think that your local environment and situation is anti-media. Your family is anti-media, your neighborhood, art that you draw, photos you take, the park you walk in, ideas you have, dreams (literal), inside jokes, traditions, imperfections, are also anti-media. 

GOLDEN RULE: MEDIA IS NEVER ANTI-MEDIA. ... but sometimes it pretends to be. Your neighborhood is anti-media, a photo you take of your neighborhood is anti-media, but a movie about //a// neighborhood is media. Media will prey on your desire for anti-media and give you a media substitute, which is stupid, so don't fall for it. Practical Example #2: You know you need to spend more time with your family (anti-media). There's an ad on TV about how family is important. Don't fall for it! The ad is media, your family is anti-media.

==== Can there be Anti-Media? ====

Media has a pernicious ability to seep into everything, including a person's personal life, even if they choose not to engage with the media. For instance, even if you wanted to keep a child separated from the media, they'll still engage with media by proxy of interacting with other children.

More troublingly, if people are influenced by the media as much as I think they are, are there really any "real" people at all, or are we all just imitations of characters we see portrayed on the TV? The words we use and even the things we think and our relationship to others may be subconsciously influenced by TV. Sometimes I will talk with people and it seems like the discussion isn't with a person, but rather with an actor acting out a character. 

{{ :politics:p20974_p_v10_aq.jpg?200|}}There is a condition known as the Truman Show delusion, where the afflicted individual believes himself to be in a movie or television show, surrounded by actors and sets. I wonder if this delusion results from observing that the people around them really do seem like actors.

The ultimate question: am //I// a real person? or am //I// acting out a role that I saw on TV? I'm not the first person to ask this question. From my limited knowledge of postmodernism, I think that Baudrillard, author of //Simulacra and Simulation//, also wrestled with similar questions. I think he said that the only way to be read of simulation was to die, and I think this is a little bit of an over-reaction.

In anti-media there is a trace of media. However, in media there is a trace of anti-media. Media cannot be totally divorced from reality or individual experience, or else no-one would watch it - remember that media can never //be// anti-media, but it attempts to //imitate// anti-media. 

Perhaps, by the same token, anti-media can never be media. Even though people imitate the media, people are acting genuine in their imitation. Firstly, they don't generally realize that they are acting out a media role, thus they are a genuine incarnation of a fictional character. Secondly, they more strongly resonate with some media than others, and this is the media that we see them imitate. Thus, consuming and processing media makes it genuine, in a sense. 

A heated argument between a teenage girl and her father is a trope in television shows. Yet, the trope is based on reality, as these arguments really do happen. Thus even when a real teenage girl acts out the argument she saw on TV, she isn't doing it mindlessly, there is an underlying truth that she is reflecting. Even though the words she says may be influenced by characters on TV, she is saying them genuinely. 

This kind of goes back to Active Truth. When you talk to people, you should assume that they are being genuine and intelligent. The difference between a character in media and a person in real life is that a character in media is neither genuine nor intelligent. 

==== Politics and Media ====
Let's return to politics. There are two key points to consider.

Firstly, media created the current political landscape. This is true for several reasons. The media created the emotional landscape of America, and the political landscape of America adjusted to fit. The media created a need for a reflexively Contrastive political party, that is, the right-wingers. The media profits from the dispute between political factions, therefore shows more of it, therefore encouraging the dispute. 

Secondly, politically minded individuals are consumed by media. They are the people that I talk about when I talk about a disembodied ego. Politics is media. To be obsessed with politics is to be obsessed with media. The interesting thing is, media creates the emotional landscape. the emotional landscape creates the political landscape. the political landscape creates the media.

What I mean is, a lot of people that are concerned about politics are actually the result of media over-consumption, but politics encourages consuming more media. Thus people's actual problems are never resolved.

===== A Specific Critique of the Left =====

Firstly I have been using the term "the Left" fast and loose. A lot of people would take issue with me describing, for instance, SJWs as leftists since they aren't necessarily Marxists. The problem with this distinction is that despite these two groups being very similar, it gets difficult to explain who they are unless you use a term like "the Left", so that's why I'm using it.

You might have noticed that in this essay so far I have been leveling most of my criticism at the Left, which might seem like it's breaking my idea of being anti-political, and it might also seem like I am a right-winger. This is not true. The reason I levy most of my critique at the Left is because they have so much social influence, and a definite general philosophy that people can point to. The major political changes have been precipitated by the Left, therefore they get the brunt of my critique.

The problem I have with the Left is that they have made fascism an inevitable part of Western politics. They did this with incredibly short-sighted ideas that divided people into an "us" vs "them" mindset - naturally people will choose "us" over "them". Thus, they push us closer to the darkness of barbarianism.

"White Guilt" is a general term, of course, but I feel most people will understand what I'm talking about. There is this sense that white people are accountable for the sins of their forefathers. This encourages a sort of self-hatred among white people.

I don't believe in self-hatred - as in, I don't think it really exists. This is coming from a person that has experienced it in his life. The existence of self-hatred is paradoxical, because it's //you// who is deciding that //you// are defective. How can //you// be trusted, if //you// are defective? The paradox is resolved when you realize that people that "hate themselves" don't hate //all// of themselves, just parts of it. They might hate their actions, or their situation, or their appearance, but they don't hate the totality of their being. 

For a white person to hate his own race is different from, for instance, hating his own country (which I also find pathological). You can change nationalities, and nations can crumble, and laws can change. You can never change your race. Your race (in the left-wing conception) is your totality of being. It isn't just a skin-color, so it isn't about hating your appearance. It is rather //everything// - your culture, your attitudes. 

Some even claim it goes beyond what you learn, it is an in-built difference in brain structure. I don't think any study has done more damage to race relations than the study where they showed that babies show a preference for faces of their own race. This is an incredibly stupid study, because of course this is true. Babies also show a preference for the language of their parents - they just like things that are familiar to them, because that's where their mommy is. Yet some people still hold to this viewpoint.

"Microaggressions" is part of the inferiority of the totality of being of white people. They are unconscious behaviors that white people take that are racist or discriminatory. So, therefore, you might be racist and not even know it. In fact, some would claim you //are// racist, without even knowing, even if you try to rid yourself of all microaggressions. 

Some claim that this is a performative form of self-hatred. I disagree, but I do think that there is an inherent duplicity that people that hold these beliefs aren't even aware of. To hold this belief that one's own race is inherently bad is incredibly challenging, because somehow you have to justify to yourself that the correct course of action isn't just to kill yourself. They might do things like create a dichotomy between their self and their race. But this is a flawed thing to do, because of microaggressions - their self might be subconsciously judging black people without even realizing it!

Holding this belief is like balancing a stick on the end of your nose. Two things about balancing a stick on the end of your nose:
 - not everyone can do it, and
 - it will eventually fall over.

The first state of "falling-over" is that you kill yourself, or slip into a deep depression, which in some cases is just killing yourself, but slowly. It's true that there is a much higher rate of depression amongst leftists than there is amongst rightists, and I imagine this has something to do with it.

The second state is rejecting the idea of race-equality at all. If I am right that no one can be guilty of their race for long, then that leads us to the opposite - not "White Guilt", but "White Pride". Consider that the alternative is literally death (by suicide)! To put it another way, if I am inherently evil, then why would I beat myself up over it, instead of embracing evil? This embrace of evil is essentially modern fascism. 

Why was there such a push for ideas that inexorably lead to fascism? Wouldn't they have been aware of the conclusion of this philosophy? I think that the reason that these ideas were pushed was because progressives essentially wanted to create fascism. I don't think they consciously knew that they were trying to make fascism, but they were uncomfortable with the idea that most people agreed with what they were saying about race. Remember, progressives used to be a primarily Contrastive political group, but they were getting swallowed by the Sameness of society.

So, they created this philosophy of being maximally contrastive, an ideal so obtuse that no one could be expected to adopt it except for the most devoted progressive individual. This worked for a while, but eventually these ideas started to get mainstream support as well. To give you an example, I learn about this stuff in DEI training that I required to attend. 

Leftwingers described their opponents as fascists. These opponents originally didn't exist, but as the idea grew, detractors emerged. They kept labeling their enemies as fascists, and before long, the enemies of these ideas bought into the narrative and took on the mantle of fascism. That's right -- despite being opposed to SJW ideas, anti-SJWs bought into the narrative by becoming a progressive "Satanist", instead of an "atheist".

This is the reflexive property of //all// politics. There's something similar happening with the word "pedophile" right now, on the other side of the aisle. Right-wingers label their opponents as "pedophiles", and say that gays are secretly groomers. This is reflexively creating their own opponents, and people that are opposed to right-wing ideas begin to identify with the label of "pedophile". If this continues, all of the culture war might be boiled down to "fascists vs pedophiles". Or, more accurately, "Killing children vs Raping children".

===== Censorship and Twitter =====

The website Twitter has recently been overrun by flagrantly fascist rhetoric. Whereas once this rhetoric was contained to darker corners of the internet, it is now rampant in the Elon-era of the platform. You probably won't believe this, but I actually predicted that this would happen in the future, all the way back in around 2016 -- not Elon, per se, but rather that a right-winger would take over a popular social media website and that extremely far-right rhetoric would flower there. 

Indeed, I predicted that the Elon takeover of Twitter would be the very beginning of the end of the dominance of leftism in popular culture. I am not sure if we will see an actual fascist government with concentration camps and the Stasi, but we will certainly see very onerous ideas gain mainstream approval. 

The cause of this was not a lack of censorship on social media platforms, but rather the overabundance of it. A regime of censorship creates a society of people that are vulnerable to censored ideas. The vulnerability of the people justifies further censorship. 

An idea is like a disease. A healthy person is exposed to many diseases in their lives. Being exposed to these diseases bolsters their immune system, which makes them stronger and more resilient. As has been often noted, a child that is secluded from others in an attempt to keep them safe from disease ironically turns out to be more sickly than others, because they are vulnerable to the first disease that they encounter. Thus, a policy of seclusion creates a problem that justifies further seclusion. However no seclusion is perfect -- germs cells are small, they can get anywhere, and nowhere is perfectly clean. Thus it is not a good idea to seclude a child, even if you intend to do it forever, because no regime of seclusion is perfect, and eventually the child will get deathly ill.

In the same way, an intellectually healthy person is exposed to many bad political ideas. Instead of being tossed back and forth by bad ideas, he is able to see the flaws in the ideas. He can then share those flaws with others. This creates the basis of a society of strong, wise men who are able to think effectively about the world. In an ideal society, some amount of fascist rhetoric would still exist, but people would be so aware of these ideas that the counter to them would be obvious.

Ideas are not bad because some authority says they are. Bad ideas are bad because ultimately they just are. Wise individuals are able to make the distinction between good and bad ideas **on their own**, without relying on an outside force to do this for them.

The effect of censorship is to cloister people away from these bad ideas, which reduces their resistance to them. A society of people that have been exposed to some fascist rhetoric is much more resistant to fascism than a population of people that have never been exposed to that rhetoric. 

On the internet, censorship is carried out by moderators of platforms. The idea is somewhat good in theory, if a person is exposed to fascist rhetoric, there is a chance that they will become fascist themselves, thus the idea is to limit the influence of these people. However, what *is* fascism? Is all critique of black people fascism? Is all praise of white people fascism?

Moderators feel that they have the power to stamp out bad ideas before they even begin. Yet they often either don't know which ideas are so bad they ought to be censored, or they go "mad with power" and instead use their censorial power to bolster a regime. They might, for instance, feel that capitalism is a form of fascism, and therefore ban any praise of capitalism. This may bolster their chosen regime of socialism. Thus they transition from "protecting people" to "controlling people" -- for ends they consider to be good. 

The control that moderators feel they have, however, is much different from the control they really have. At best, moderators can only control what goes on on their platforms. Other platforms, and, indeed, real life, are outside of their purview. 

The result of internet moderation is that people with marginally right-leaning ideas are removed from the platform, but they don't simply cease to exist. Instead, they go to another platform, which will not ban them. In these platforms, extremist rhetoric festers and grows, away from open debate. They are able to hear what "normal" people say, and are able to respond to it. Yet, "normal" people can't hear what they are saying. Thus, extremist rhetoric becomes more and more powerful, and normal people become more and more vulnerable to this rhetoric.

As this process continues, these alternative platforms grow in relevancy. A small army of extremely radicalized individuals is formed, and instead of idly expressing opinions, they begin to deliberately target outsiders with propaganda campaigns, by joining platforms with the sole purpose of disruption. The problem will mean that moderators will need to be increasingly vigilant, spending increasingly more time and money to combat the incursions and the new recruits.

At a certain inevitable point, the flip will switch, and the censored ideas will become so relevant that they enter the mainstream and usher out the old regime. This is what happened with Elon. Censorship effectively ended on Twitter, and the result was as I expected. 

The genie is fully out of the bottle, and the effects will likely continue for several years. Non-far-right platforms will fall, one by one, either by having their leadership replaced, like Twitter, or simply fading into irrelevancy. Since most Americans have some online presence, there will be a rather huge influence on politics.

This is not a problem with the left per se, but rather a problem with whatever political ideology happens to be dominant. Likewise, free speech is supported by whichever ideology is subversive. At this current moment, fascism is a subversive ideology, whereas liberalism is a dominant ideology. The question is, therefore, whether this cycle will continue forever. It's very possible. However, I foresee that in the future people will be more aware of this. 

If any group of people is going to return us to a healthy society, it will likely be the group of people that eventually will usurp the right after they take power (assuming that this will happen). I think that because the ideology of the right seems to be more friendly towards censorship, even if they lack the proper authority to actually censor. 
===== The Future of Politics =====

The annoying thing about predicting the future is that it never turns out the way you think it will. I have a general prediction of what will happen to the world if this trend of politicization and media expansion continues, but there's a chance people in general will realize that what I'm saying here is true. This is my best guess.

==== Scenario 1: Swing of the Pendulum ====

The basis of this scenario is that the Contrast-Sameness force that once drove people from Rightism to Leftism is the exact same force as what is now driving people from Leftism to Rightism. It's the same social pressure, just separated by time. This implies that what we are seeing isn't anything usual, it's simply a turning of the wheel that has always turned and will always turn.

There won't be much violence in this scenario, because people will naturally drift from Leftism to Rightism, entirely voluntarily. Eventually, left-wing ideas will be seen as outdated and passe.

I think that fascists will be a growing element in society during the shift, and at some point they will dwarf other political radical groups, such as communists. It will be a parallel to the punk movement. However it won't actually take over or gain any political power. I believe that fascist ideas are unpopular to Americans by nature, and I don't think that even a mainstream shift from left to right will change that.

This can be positive. There are certainly many excesses of Leftism that can be resolved. The transitional years may actually have good leadership. However, the excesses of Leftism will eventually be replaced with the excesses of Rightism. People will find themselves constrained and stuck in place. Society will become much more wary of Change, which is, of course, a necessary element of individuality.

There will be an increase in building things, for instance, in the style of Greco-Romans. We find these structures awe-inspiring because our society has seemingly rejected this style. Yet, in this future, we will begin to see these structures as stuffy and boring, an imposing force of authority and Sameness.

In the transitional years of Rightism, it will begin to adopt environmentalism as an ideal. It may also start demanding more social programs for children, specifically. These aren't aspects of Constancy but rather of Contrast. When Rightism switches from being a Contrastive ideal to a Sameness ideal, it may retain some aspects of this.

Censorship of things that the Conservatives deem problematic will begin almost immediately. It will start with pornography and transition into combatting ideas that are deemed "infectious and dangerous", such as transgenderism and marxism.

This censorship will form the basis of the transition from leftism to rightism. It's anyone's guess whether or not leftists will learn their lesson about censorship (how it always fails) and about how political ideology will tend to create their own opposition. Unlikely!
==== Scenario 2: The Troubles ====

The basis of this scenario is that the pendulum will never swing. The viewpoints of the Right will continue to be toxic to the majority of Americans.

Violence is inevitable. As I hope I've demonstrated in this essay, people's political viewpoints are determined by their emotional state. Because there is no relief for a person's emotional state outside of political engagement, tensions between Left and Right will continue to grow.

This will not be a civil war, but rather a series of terrorist attacks and skirmishes perpetrated by the Right against the government and people associated with the Left. people need to understand that revolutions aren't fun, in general they are deeply unfair ordeals that just end up making everyone's lives worse.

This will be extremely unpopular with Americans, and Rightwingers will be seen as an enemy of everyone. The Republican party will essentially cease to exist because of how unpopular the violence is. The government will begin to make pushes to regulate things that are associated with the Right, which will be popular with your average citizen, since they already will likely despise those things. The effect of these pushes will be to regulate everything that gives a feeling of Contrast. 

Eventually, the government will create a perfect surveillance system to spot potential terrorists. Hopefully, by this point, reader, you know that what the system will detect will be signs of Contrast, and, yes, individuality. Refusal to engage with the media will be seen as suspicious, for instance. 

The Troubles will weaken America on the global stage. China will become an equal world power, but it won't matter anymore, because America will be under the same sort of speech censoring regime as China is. For hundreds of years, America will be looked at as a cautionary tale against the dangerous idea of "freedom".