Your average liberal, Elvis the Boykin spaniel
Jim Jordan is my Representative.
There. I said it. *WHEW.* I got that out of the way. I’ve admitted to a lot of wrongdoings in my time (like that one time I accidentally rebooted the production database and made life really difficult for my coworkers for around 5 minutes). But of the many things of which I am ashamed, having Jim Jordan as my Representative ranks right up there.
Because he’s my Representative (no matter how unwillingly), I follow him on Facebook. He provides the most insightful posts, like “Freedom!”*
Yes. His Facebook feed is a small curated compendium of his best House moments, as determined by Jim Jordan.
One of the things I’ve learned by following Jim Jordan is, neither Jim Jordan** nor his sycophants have ANY FUCKING CLUE about Democrats. I’m not even talking about what distinguishes a liberal from a leftist from a traditional Democrat. As far as they’re concerned, all democrats are exactly alike. We’re all against guns entirely, all anti-family, we all want to kill all children, and every single common-sense suggestion (whether proposed as a mandate or not, like simply the suggestion of wearing masks to protect others from your Typhoid-Mary-ass-self) is JUST ONE MORE STEP IN FASCISM***.
They love to use the terms communism, socialism, Marxism, Democrat, and fascism as if they are the same thing. Because they are fucking ignorant. I’m not even going to get into the reasons the Democratic party is none of these things (except Democrat, obviously; and some are Marxist, but how is that a big deal when all modern capitalism is based on Marx’s axiological study of capitalism? I mean, modern capitalists exploit Marx’s insights into capitalism for their own gain).
And this is part of the problem: it’s extremely difficult to counter this dedicated willful ignorance.
Yes, it’s willful ignorance. That’s a huge part of the problem. As Bob Altemeyer points out (you did follow the footnotes, right?), the people who follow authoritarians do so partly because they don’t want to think about complex problems, which require complex solutions. They want simple problems because they want simple answers. That’s a solid 30% of the population that just wishes reality were simple, even if it’s wrong. Which tracks with President Steamed Tangerine’s constant support numbers.
Anyway. If you’ve stuck with me this long, here’s the point I’d like to make (not presented as actual truth, just my take):
GOP supporters have no fucking clue about the constitution of the Democratic party.
So I’d like to break down the modern Democratic ideology, for those who either don’t understand or those who are willfully ignorant.
Let’s make one thing clear: not all Democrats agree with all these issues. I’ll call out variations in ideology when I can.
Let’s start with the most basic axiom:
We Are All In This Together
This is a simple statement, yet it distills centuries of philosophical debate into the essence of civilization. It outlines what defines civilization: individuals cooperating to help each other. That’s the purpose of civilization, isn’t it? To bind together and help each other?
It defines a morality: what helps each other is good; what helps some but harms others is bad (and finding the balance between the two is what politics is supposed to be about).
A corollary to this is, society is defined by how much it invests in common good, like health and home. With this simple axiom, a society is judged not by its reverence for wealth, but its compassion for adversity, and its advocacy and material support for individual growth.
Do all Democrats abide by this?
No. FUCK no.
I mean, this shouldn’t even be a partisan issue. Yet it is. The modern GOP is willing to turn on each other. They obviously don’t believe civilization exists for us to band together for mutual protection and strength. Their reverence for the reification of Burnt Orange declares them on the side of Exploit Everyone (which is the exact *opposite* of civilization).
And likewise, some Democrats also seem to have friction with the idea that We Are All In This Together. I can only assume they have their own reasons for that. I can also only assume those reasons are extremely fucking selfish.
In a hypothetical Democratic bestiary, these Democrats are known as Selfish Fucking Assholes Who Are Willing To Sacrifice Everyone Else For Their Own Gain.
So I guess it isn’t a strictly partisan issue.
GOP Has No Fucking Clue About Progressives
Let’s face it: Pretty much every Republican these days lumps Democrats and Progressives together. They do this because Progressives support things like socialized (universal) health care, free university education, and basic universal income.
Progressives support these things because they make sense. First, a society should be judged by how it treats the least privileged, not how it treats the most affluent (this goes back to the basic principle that a society is individuals banding together for the good of all). Also, it makes practical sense: the more educated, the healthier, the more secure a person is, the more they can create. This contributes not just in the engineering sense (though that’s part of it), but in the cultural sense.
And if you think contributing to culture is worthless, let me remind you of Star Wars, Lord Of The Rings, The Matrix, and Harry Potter.
But.
This allows the GOP to (wrongly) label Progressives as Socialists. And since they don’t distinguish between socialism, communism, Marxism, and fascism, they get to call them every Bad Word the GOP wants, without pushback.
Because as identified above, their audience only wants simple problems with simple solutions. Socialism, communism, and Marxism are all very complex philosophical frameworks, almost none of which really apply to the Progressives, let alone Democrats.
And so the GOP gets to label people like AOC “socialist,” which is a bad word for the GOP (even though they have no clue what a socialist is, and what distinguishes a democratic socialist from a national socialist, for instance). And then they stack bad math on bad math to apply a warped transitive property to call all Democrats “Marxist.” Which is a bad word for them. Because Republicans are ignorant as fuck.
I won’t get into the reason modern capitalists rely on Marx’s axiomatic analysis of capitalism rather than Adam Smith’s.
Republicans Willfully Conflate Fringe With Core
Let’s face it: if the Overton Window wasn’t slammed so far to the extreme right to the point where there is no air flow, things like universal health care, free university education, and basic fucking voting rights wouldn’t be issues.
And yet here we are. Society (and the news) amplifies everything the radical right has to say. Critical race theory is a concept taught in a very few advanced legal programs, yet somehow it’s become a flashpoint in elementary and secondary education, a hot topic for local school districts. Very few Democratic politicians advocate outright banning of guns, yet’s that’s a major campaign slogan, just flung around like a blackjack at a pillow fight.
And The Big Lie is still represented as “unsupported allegations.” Not a lie. Not an outright brazen mendacious attempt at a coup. Just “unsupported allegations.”
Somehow, the GOP is skilled at taking what should be a valid non-fringe political position (say, universal healthcare) and turning it into a bombastic strawman and associate it with the core position of the Democrats (which it is not, even if it should be), and then take their fringiest positions (the Jan 6 insurrection was a harmless protest by patriots) and turn it into their core position.
And in the end, the insurrection fringe seems more reasonable than the socialism of universal healthcare. Or more accurately, us taking care of each other.
What Republicans Don’t Understand
Let’s face it: the every-day GOP supporter is convinced the Communist Marxist Radical Socialist Democrats want to take their guns, force them into experimentation, take away their freedoms (without really defining what those freedoms are), and we’re just basically evil.
Part of this is the Fox News 24/7 cultural warfare coverage. I mean, changing policies on masks as we learn new things? Government is clueless and simultaneously lying! And so on. Because changing behavior based on evolving knowledge is complex.
Republicans are fed this bullshit narrative all day: Liberals are bad (and by liberals they mean Democrats, even though not all Democrats are Liberal). And by exclusion, that means Republican are good. But only the Republicans they deem Republican enough.
Republicans don’t understand the general Democratic party doesn’t want to take away all guns. They don’t want to give undocumented immigrants (“illegal aliens” in their parlance) money or phones or anything of value. Hell, Democrats deport asylum seekers at a rate consistent with even that recent inarticulate President.
They don’t understand they want most of the same things Democrats want.
But mostly what Republicans don’t understand is this: the extent they’ve been deceived. Misled. Lied to. Manipulated.
What Democrats Don’t Understand
Let’s face it: Republicans don’t care. You’re still a fuckin’ Marxist, and they don’t even know what Marxism means.
It’s just a bad word for them.
So What Is The Modern Democratic Ideology?
Let’s face it: There’s no one ideology.
I can say for certain the Republicans who claim the Democrats just want fascism, or communism, or socialism or even Marxism, are just willfully ignorant fucks who either don’t know the meaning of any of those words, or use them to gain willfully ignorant followers.
I’d like to believe modern Democrats share some core values:
I’d like to believe we value justice, and are angry and abhorred by systemic injustice. I’d like to believe we support Black Lives Matter for their unwavering pursuit of equal justice for all.
I’d like to believe we support economic justice. I’d like to believe we all believe every job deserves a living wage. And by living, I mean, able to afford to go out to dinner once in a while, and take in a show, and maybe even buy that game system. But most certainly I mean, have a place to live and quality delicious food on which to subsist.
I’d like to think we believe every vote should count, and every vote should be easy and convenient to cast, guaranteed.
I’d like to say we believe there should be universal regulations concerning firearms. It’s not just felons who should be excluded from owning a weapon; domestic abusers should also have their right to bear arms stripped. (Also, I’d like “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” added back to the 2nd Amendment, as it was in the Constitution.) And background checks. We should be able to agree on that. And also, who the hell needs an AR-15? Seriously? Are you that scared?
I’d like to say all that, but I can’t, because there’s not a large enough percentage of Democrats who agree on many of these points.
There’s no one set of rules Democrats agree on. It’s not even like we’re not the strawman Republicans like Jim Jordan like to present as partisan chum; we’re not a single bloc. There’s no single identity.
I do like to think that, in our own way, we’re chasing that one single ideal, that one source with many possible interpretations:
We’re All In This Together
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* Yes, that was the full and exact contents of one of his recent posts.
** I kinda like using both his names. It’s like Colin Robinson from “What We Do In The Shadows.” It’s ominous, but pedestrian at the same time. Also, they are both only ever energy vampires, and nothing more.
*** Because they are completely ignorant about fascism, which is why they are willing participants. SEE Bob Altemeyer, “The Authoritarians”
