Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
That's fair and very true. But unlike conservatives, I don't want to pass laws to prohibit people from doing things unless those things are non-consensual.
I would actually like to repeal most of the laws the conservatives have passed prohibiting vice and behaviors between consenting adults. I've never understood how anyone could call me socially progressive for supporting gay marriage. Prohibiting gay people from marrying is an infringement on their rights to enjoy all the same relations straight people do. Infringing on relations between consenting adults is anything but conservative. It's officious and over-reaching.
The problem with improving things via politics is most of the people who wish to do so aren't terribly bright. They may sometimes be credentialed (some even have advanced degrees), but they're not real elite thinkers. They're tinkerers, wonks -- people who are sure they know best, filled with big ideas and often able to communicate them in a manner that makes them sound credible to the credulous (or those who wish to seem 'adjacent' to what they think is the smart set).
...And then they almost always fall prey to the law of unintended consequences.
And the reason for a lot of this is because the people who create policy on the Left are maleducated. Take the race issue of the moment. The problems in the communities have as much, if not far more, to do with class than they do with race. Trust me, having defended criminals -- the ladder of severity of sentence for kids committing identical crimes (1 being lightest, 4, harshest) is as follows:
1. Rich white kid
2. Rich black kid
3. Poor white kid
4. Poor black kid
The difference between 3 and 4 is thin enough that it's not worth discussing. But I can't say that to policy people who are reading DiAngelo. We can't have that conversation out loud. Why? Because the serious elites (the seriously monied classes who control policy through lobbying and media) don't allow it. They instead feed easily persuaded well-meaning but credulous people (some of whom you can read here) a new form of religion (anti-racism) and stuff like 1619 (some of which is true, but only tells a fraction of a much more complex tale) and use it to pit them against the Trumpkins.
It's brilliant. One can play on the intellectual insecurity and status seeking of an upper middle class person the likes of us in under five minutes. All one has to do is stroke their ego and pretend to buy into the gestalt they're pontificating about. Oh yes, I'm impressed at your level of enlightenment... go on... fascinating. Oh yes, I hate the Trumpkins too.
I needn't explain how easy it is to manipulate a Trumpkin. That's assumed.
In this cauldron of bullshit intellectualism, policy is crafted. And then its drafted by kids who work on the Hill. It's misguided from the start, and filled with tripe of whatever kind some academic institution is peddling in the moment (recall, Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of shareholder-first capitalism, and neoconservatism, were both purely academic silliness some people on the Hill decided to try for real... and look how that worked out).
So when I hear people ranting about a goofy con man president being an existential danger to "people of color," as one person argued here the other day, I worry about what sort of dumb policy will be offered to remedy Trump's "racism." How stupid will it be? How widely will it miss the economic issues that have actually caused most of the suffering in this country?
If you wonder why I liked Bernie and Yang, despite not liking policy tinkering, or interventions to improve society, it's because they were on the right track. They addressed economics and class first. Reparations, more programs aimed at disadvantaged communities selected by identity -- this is just divide and conquer control. Control of the dumb people here who buy into it, and your dumb Trumpkin cousin drinking beer on a lawn chair in the garage, with his braided beard in between his thumb and finger and his life laid our before him like a thunderhead.
Policy should only be crafted sparingly and wisely. It should never be crafted by the kind of mind that would become a Trumper, or an anti-Trumper. Laws by dupes for dupes are a lot of what's driven us into this ditch.
I'm not conservative. I'm anti-dumb.
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