It's political, so avoid reading it if you don't care for that sort of thing. If you disagree with my opinions, that's fine too. Just don't embarrass yourself over it.
One of my great personal flaws is my obsession with politics. I'm an unabashed partisan Democrat that loves to take my own party to task, but rarely does much politically besides read, opine and vote (even though that puts me ahead of most people). In 2012, I volunteered heavily for an effort to defeat a "one-man-one-woman" constitutional amendment in Minnesota, and we were awarded with a tidy victory, but I have since moved far too often to get involved more than cursorily in causes that I care about.
As a youth, I was definitely a starry-eyed Utopian liberal, but have since seen the error of those ways. A perfect society cannot be created out of inherently-imperfect individuals. Instead, politics is an eternal contest between forces that adapt to each other, and everyone aligns themselves with those forces based on incomplete or false information. Generally speaking, we have to assume that people think they're doing what they think is right at the time, not what they think is rationally-derived through application of logical principles.
As a liberal, I've come to see history as an unceasing struggle between those that would expand individual freedom with those who seek to limit it. Those limiting forces can be governmental, religious, corporate, social, or internal. These forces can change, merge, separate, and adapt to respond to socioeconomic or technological change.
In the post-Cold War world, the authoritarian forces are more diverse.
- Nationalism/Xenophobia is on the rise again, or perhaps it never left. Certainly, electoral government is the exception to history, and electoral government with a broad franchise is even rarer. One in which the franchise isn't curtailed through chicanery, intimidation, manipulation, or corruption is a unicorn.
- Hyper-Capitalism - quarterly profits at the expense of national sovereignty, a clean environment, etc. Freer markets do not lead to freer people, as massive countries like China prove every day.
- Religious fanaticism - particularly obvious on the world stage with ISIL/Daesh and Al Qaeda (both Sunni Muslim), but many other authoritarian entities use religion as an excuse for their behavior (think about the Russian vlogger convicted for "inciting religious hatred" and "disrespecting the religious" for playing Pokemon in church).
For instance, the USA has supported many authoritarian regimes over the years, while being reliant on other regimes for oil. This reliance on foreign oil was part of a deliberate decision to not pursue renewable energy sources in the 1980's. Nationalism and Xenophobia has lately been cultivated as a response to Globalism, which itself has been largely hijacked by the free-trade-at-all-costs crowd. Finally, the narrative of the USA as "God's country" is an accepted part of our history for many, going back to religious justifications of genocide and slavery in the 19th century.
These forces form the ideological centerpieces of America's current government, or at least provide cover for the naked conflicts of interest by the current President, his family, and his confederates (word choice deliberate).
I would prefer to be wrong about all the above, but it would take a lot of brilliant argumentation to convince me as such. I'm not sure about the solution, only that:
- Money should no longer equal speech.
- A decoupling of religious and secular leadership across the board.
- An de-emphasis of on "us-vs-them" outlook on the international stage.
This article sums my thoughts up much better.
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