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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I don't think that's the case in politics as ideology informs what the goals are of any political process.
Mitch wants to Kill the Poor.
Warren wants to save the poor.
What is the goal if not for ideology?
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
That's a values system, ideology also includes prescriptions about how things should be done, what policies are best, and those stances tend to endure even when empirical evidence is in disagreement with them. Ie pro-market vs pro-state planning arguments. From my perspective, those things are immaterial; "it doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice."
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 15th 2019 at 3:20:18 PM
Cap might be on to something, actually: Part of the issue with the current political structure is that it encourages pandering to the largest vocal minority. How many people hate you doesn't necessarily matter that much if you have an enthusiastic enough support group.
In my opinion, what would be a better system is one that encourages centrism. A candidate who is everybody's 2nd or 3rd favorite would probably be the best candidate. Better to be mediocre than polarizing.
Leviticus 19:34
Which is an argument in favor of doing something like Germany's post war government where it's explicitly non-values agnostic (which is different from being non-ideological), and doesn't permit parties that are opposed to democracy to participate in the political process.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 15th 2019 at 3:25:13 PM
I'm talking about how anti-democratic groups are explicitly banned from participating the political process (as discussed in that "marketplace of ideas" video you posted in the General Politics thread), whereas in the US it's theoretically permissible for democracy to be abolished by democratic mandate, and there's no proscription against bigotry and the like.
By non-values agnostic, I'm talking about how Germany has a political system that is not values-agnostic in the way the US political system is.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 15th 2019 at 3:44:09 PM
Frankly I think that sort of "minor" criminal record just makes O'Rourke even more appealing to his base. It makes him seem "down to Earth" and "relatable" in a way a lot of other politicians can only dream of. Throw in the fact that he was apparently a (white hat) hacker and he's basically a Loveable Rogue. And to be perfectly honest, I'd rather have someone who's honest about his mistakes than someone who pretends they don't exist, or whose villainy was all technically perfectly legal.
That said, I agree that O'Rourke needs to have more than charm if he wants my vote. However, it's a long time until the Primaries so I'm willing to keep an open mind while simultaneously focusing my attention on better candidates.
Edited by Clarste on Mar 15th 2019 at 2:03:45 AM
Beto is the most obvious career politician of them all. He's chosen the safest policies possible within his party and has done his best to create this image of purity because he knows what wins over the uninterested voter.
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"I'm going to voice my confusion, once again, about the fact that "career politician" is somehow a negative. Like, no shit, they're all career politicians and this point. Because they've chosen to do this as a job, which tends to take up so much time you can't do much else. That's what having a career is. Some of them did something before deciding to take up politics, but they are ALL OF THEM CAREER POLITICIANS.
It's a stupid criticism that encourages people to think of politics in the negative.
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Is it? Liberal democracy for its entire history has depended on a significant degree of informal gate-keeping (and some formal gatekeeping) by experts/elites in the form of bureaucrats, media distributors, and representatives themselves to filter out unacceptable notions from public discourse.
As much we (as a society) wanted to believe that the dismantling of political gatekeeping spurred on by the Internet and social media would lead to more enlightened and rational discourse between all members of the body politic, that hasn't been borne out in practice, and I fear that without restoring or finding substitutes for those guardrails (and perhaps formalizing them) it will not be possible for open societies to survive the 21st century.
This of course must be balanced against guarantees of individual freedom to the extent that it is feasible.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 15th 2019 at 4:09:02 AM
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You need both, for perspective. It IS helpful to have someone responsible decisions which affect, say, the health care system, who actually was a doctor or a nurse at one point. The question is, how many "Career politicians" are there actually in US politics? I only have the numbers for the EU, but for all the shit-talk about it, only 10% of elected politicians in the EU are actually career politicians.
I know that the recent swing of new Democrats in the house contained a LOT of people who were not career politicians.
The problem is always who is doing the gate keeping. And Germany is a great example to illustrate that particular problem too, if you have a Verfassungsschutz (the people who are responsible for safeguarding the democracy) which has a history of botching up investigations into right wing organisation while also spending decades investigating left-wing layers because they dare to fight for human rights issues.
Edited by Swanpride on Mar 15th 2019 at 1:17:12 AM
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Yes, hence that comment about balancing the need for some degree of gatekeeping against individual liberties; it's a tradeoff, and will never be perfect. There are implicit safeguards against an authoritarian takeover present in the American political system (though some of them like the 2nd amendment were rather poorly considered in retrospect), and those have worked well enough even after Trump, but none that are particularly effective against the bigotry and white supremacist ideology that are deeply entrenched in the country's culture and history.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 15th 2019 at 4:28:01 AM
Right, and this is crucial for objective things.
But the problem is that vast swathes of politics are subjective, ergo desiring a politician to avoid ideology is tantamount to wanting a someone who believes in nothing. Might as well elect Google if we just want pure information without the guidance of values judgements.
Which makes me suspect that when you say "non-ideological" you actually mean (consciously or no) "someone who echoes my very ideological assumptions about the world and society", y'know the same thing everyone says when they support something that's "non-ideological" in politics.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangA Missouri lawmaker is trying to pass a bill to make AR-15 ownership mandatory: https://www.kmov.com/news/missouri-lawmaker-introduces-bill-that-would-require-ar--ownership/article_e02841c6-4735-11e9-9a7f-eb0c0ffb8b3c.html
But what if I wanted a different rifle like an AK?
Edited by CookingCat on Mar 15th 2019 at 2:33:20 AM
The problem with the idea of a non-ideological political leader is that...well, what does a non-ideological political leader look like to you? What do they actually try to accomplish in politics specifically?
You can't really have a non-ideological politician, because ideology is what determines the metrics by which a politician is judged. You can't fix problems without ideology, because ideology is what defines what problems are.
Edited by Protagonist506 on Mar 15th 2019 at 2:39:57 AM
Leviticus 19:34B-but... what about individual liberty...?
i'm tired, my friendThe underlying frameworks are a massive part of politics, you can't just handwave them away. Politics is the question of how resources should be distributed and how society should be organized, that's intrinsically subjective.
Obviously objectivity has a crucial place but to treat it as anything other than a means to an end is a mistake. Empiricism simply cannot substitute subjective values (i.e ideology), a non-ideological politician is both impossible and inherently undesirable.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangThe notion that all races should be treated equally or even that all races are people are based on pretty subjective notions. You can say that black and white people are objectively very similar biologically (that's a fact), but it's entirely ideological to say that they have equal value because of that.
Leviticus 19:34

Unfortunately, that kind of mindset, as you said, is not a winning strategy in politics.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 15th 2019 at 3:05:51 PM