How the Left Drove Me Right

Please read before you scream

Hello nobody!

As I’m writing this, literally nobody knows this exists. I’ve had a website for a while now, but I think the last time I posted was a year ago and idk if I’ve ever had a visitor. But there’s something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while and I think substack is a much better way to publish and create, so I’m trying it out.

Now, on to the show.

I grew up a Republican. And to be clear: I was not bred to be a Republican. From a young age I was more political than my parents and went through phases of far left and far right political views. My mom can’t even remember the first time she voted, whereas for me, it’s one of my most cherished memories. I went with my best friend to vote in the 2012 Republican primary. In Ohio, if you’ll be old enough to vote in the general election, you can vote in the primary, so I was only 17 when I voted for the first time. Anyway, all this to say, yes I was raised by conservative parents, but my love of politics (and my conservative views) were not forced on me, their love of politics (and my sister’s hatred of it) kind of came from me.

But, in the past few years, for very obvious reasons, I haven’t really wanted to associate with Republicans… However, I can’t bring myself to call myself a Democrat (though I’ve toyed with it many times) for a number of reasons that have only been exacerbated in recent months. My thoughts on this are complex and ever evolving, so I doubt I’ll be able to distill all of my feelings into one single post, but bear with me because I think what I have to say can have real value for Democrats and leftists who are willing to listen.

Let me also say that I know that the Republican party is horrible, with some members downright evil and others just plain stupid (however, we do have Mitt Romney, so…). Repeating lies about 2020, encouraging someone with so little regard for our democracy that he revved up a crowd to go stop a fair and free election, lying about a vaccine that would literally save thousands of their fellow Americans. I get it, so when I criticize Dems, that’s not to say I don’t see the evil that is the GOP, it’s just to say that with that unbelievably bad backdrop, the Democratic party should be looking really good and yet it doesn’t.

I also don’t think I’m alone in this. A recent poll found that more Americans consider themselves to be Republicans than Democrats. Let me repeat that: more Americans don’t just prefer the Republican party, more Americans consider themselves to be Republicans than Democrats. Democrats are doing such a bad job not just in Biden’s job performance, but on messaging across the board that Americans are choosing to align themselves with a party that, well, see above. I feel this same impulse and I hope that my thoughts as a conservative with a lot of liberal policy positions (like a lot, my mom calls me a socialist) can help crystallize for some Democrats what is going on.

I’ll start with a complaint that I’ve had with the Democrats for a number of years: I don’t feel welcome. As a straight, white, Christian, cisgendered male, I don’t think the Democrats want me. Or at least if they do, they don’t act like it. I mean just google “white men” to see what I’m talking about. Because of my race and my gender, I am constantly demonized or put down by the media, by politicians, by journalists, by everyone on the left. This includes many of my favorite podcasts, tv shows, and other forms of entertainment.

You do see racism on the right, I’m not blind, but it’s by the fringe elements of the party and the right doesn’t have the same cultural dominance as the left. Whereas when someone on the right makes a racist comment, it is replayed and quoted and talked about on every conceivable network, the left is constantly demeaning white people and especially white men with no thought or repercussion.

Then there are the so-called “dog whistles” that politicians and pundits use, many of which are real, but these days it feels like basically anything that can be shown to have a majority support by white Republican voters can be called a dog whistle. I’m being told that I can’t say “gypped” because it has a racist past and the term “master bedroom” is problematic because the word “master” has racist connotations, even though it first appeared in a Sear’s catalog in 1926, years after slavery had been abolished in the United States. So basically I’m being told that the history of a word or phrase matters, except when it doesn’t, in which case you must listen to the bored twitter liberals who have nothing better to do than find new reasons to be offended for other people.

Which brings me to my next point: the left is obsessed with race. And it’s not always consistent, they say race is such an integral part of us that it needs to color every interaction we have with each other, because we need to understand that people’s race colors their experience, etc. (And, just to be clear, I do buy many parts of that idea) But heaven forbid you ask someone about their heritage, you racist. And don’t try to help people of other races, you racist white savior, but stand up for those who are oppressed, but race doesn’t define a person, but we put people of color in a separate category when talking about their achievements (“Look what this black CEO accomplished” or “List of top ten Asian influencers right now” or “Latinx Films”), etc, etc, etc. It’s an endless cycle of out-woking each other and in the process, all it does is make the rest of us feel exhausted and unwelcome.

Which brings me to my next point: the use of slurs such as racist, bigot, homophobe, transphobic, TERF, xenophobe, etc, etc, etc. It feels like every day there’s a new phobia or ism that you must avoid so as not to be labeled “problematic”. And the goal posts are constantly moving. Do you know how much I’ve already had to tone myself down in this post to avoid being thought of as a bad person by people I know and love? That’s right, I’m not even worried about the twitter mob (I don’t have twitter). I am worried that people I love, who I disagree with, would hate me or at the very least look down on me if they knew where I stand on certain issues. It’s honestly no wonder the right is so angry, we’re constantly told that the very things we think are unacceptable and shouldn’t be said. We have to learn to blend in, to hide, to conceal; and you might think, good, those things aren’t right. There are certainly views that I think are unacceptable and should not be espoused by anyone. But the issue is, you haven’t actually done a good job of convincing us that you’re right, all you’ve done is shamed us into keeping our true selves bottled up.

Let me give you one example of a minor belief I hold that I cannot express in public because I would be immediately labeled as racist or naive or privileged or uneducated. I believe in the good old fashioned idea of color blindness. And I’ll leave it there, because while human beings are nuanced and I’ve thought a lot about it and there’s a lot coloring that view, you don’t care. You have been told that the idea of color blindness is racist or backwards and you’ve even got some very good reasons for why it is, for why race should color everything, but more than that, you’ve been told that that idea is not okay to hold. It’s not just that it’s different from how you think and that you think your idea is better, it’s that the idea itself should be purged from society. The idea is “problematic” and therefore has to go. Anne Applebaum has written more about this puratinistic purging in The Atlantic.

Before I let you go, let me give you just a few examples of things that have really bothered me over the past weeks/months/years that I think really illustrate why the Democratic party doesn’t feel like a good alternative to those of us in the center.

#1 The term latinx. I hate this term. I’ve hated it since I learned about it and I just have one question: how is this not the same white saviorism the left is obsessed with? It’s a term that was created by white people at elite institutions to try to be more inclusive, because latino is gendered. A worthy effort, but it was also imposed from the top down and the latino or hispanic community (both of which are terms the people in that community are comfortable with) never wanted the term, never asked for the term, and the term doesn’t even work in their language so almost none of them use it. It also takes an english understanding of gender and applies it to spanish. A table uses the feminine article in spanish, but does that mean that tables are women or feminine? No. It’s just how that language evolved. If you want more information on gender in the Spanish language, I would refer you to season 6 episode 23 of The Office.

#2 Joe Manchin. Now, just at reading that name, one of my really good friends is currently ripping out her hair. But the vitriol and hatred of Joe Manchin, and to a lesser degree Kyrsten Sinema, baffles me to no end. This is a man who easily won his election in 2018 in a state that wasn’t even competitive in 2016 and 2020. This is a man, without which, Democrats would not have the Senate and would not be able to legislate at all and instead of working with him, they just seem to be mad that he exists. And honest to goodness, it feels to me like it’s because without him, Dems would be able to scream about Republicans blocking their agenda, but instead they have to work to compromise within their own party before even getting to Republicans. And heaven forbid we compromise with moderates instead of screaming at people for not getting on board. (And I’ll be honest, I probably get more of this than your average American because of the friend I mentioned above, so this take might be slightly exaggerated, but I think it generally holds across the board)

#3 Democrats want voting rights legislation passed, and as much as I think their fears are overblown, they’re not without good reasons for wanting it passed. Republican state legislators are increasingly living in an alternate reality where Democrats are stealing elections. However, after Democrats wrote legislation by themselves, without bringing in even the most moderate Republicans, Joe Biden got up on his bully pulpit, without even having the backing of his whole party, and said:

Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?  Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor?  Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?

Effectively saying, “If you don’t support this voting rights bill (that we didn’t allow you to help write) you are on the same side as the president of the confederacy.” And I know many of you are saying, “This speech was immediately called out as in bad taste” or something to that effect, but this kind of thing happens all the time in much more subtle ways; you might be comfortable with the term “micro-aggressions” to describe what I’m talking about.

Now I don’t have a solution for you Dems. And I want to be clear that nobody has been rude to me personally, in part because I’ve learned to hide and camouflage and in part because social media is the worst thing to have ever been invented. But when I see and hear people with absolute disdain for people who I share common views, values, and beliefs, it doesn’t matter if the comment wasn’t directed at me, I feel it. I also don’t know how you change this about your party, except to say that public shame and this puratinistic imposition of your norms is not the way. The public is tired of having political correctness shoved down their throats (I think Trump, at least during the primary, was a manifestation of that) and being served a narrative that is dictated to them by liberal elites who care little for them and know even less about them.

The correct response to the polarization of the right isn’t to run to the left, it’s to run to the center. Instead of telling the left to get on board because something is better than nothing, you’re telling the rest of us to get on board and, if we don’t, that we’re stupid or bigoted for not buying what you’re selling and that strategy just don’t make no sense. A good salesman convinces her buyer that what she’s selling is exactly what they need, she doesn’t berate them for not wanting it, because guess what? Next time they’re looking to buy something, they’ll go anywhere but to that salesman that berated and belittled them.

~ DJ

P.S. If this feels angry, I just want to clarify that it’s not directed at anyone and I hold absolutely no ill will towards anyone. If you feel it’s directed at you, get over yourself and recognize that while you may be part of what I’m describing, I love and respect you, I just think you and your party are making some critical errors that are losing you votes. And unfortunately, you should be the sane party right now, so that feels unacceptable to me. I hope to be the change in the Republican party and I hope you can do the same for the Dems.

P.S. I hope that you feel welcome to comment or reply whether you agree or disagree.