Election Time
the left, the right, and the alt-center
Hat tip to my alpha-leak reticent friend Rasteen Karami, with whom being in conversation with led to him coining tongue-in-cheek alt-centrism. Serial entrepreneur, investor, and writer James Altucher similarly self-describes. The typical moderates and centrists are the worst of both worlds. They have illiberal foreign policy and domestic policy (civilly and economically). The alt-centrist is the best of both worlds. They pull from the farthest on the right, and the farthest on the left, no simp shit.
With the 2020 US Election already unfolding, and the official election day next week, I want to tell you all from my digital soap box that on this monumental and momentous occasion I am not interested in voting for Republican incumbent President Donald Trump, Democratic nominee Vice President Joe Biden, or Libertarian nominee Prof. Jo Jorgensen. They have all disappointed me in their own ways (Trump on Ethiopia, Biden on everything, Jorgensen on messaging), but as of now I still plan to vote on local CA measures that directly effect my way of life.
I go out of my way to read articles and books, and hear audiobooks and podcasts, from the farthest right and the farthest left. The milquetoast middle are a cure for insomnia that I neither need nor want. I pride myself in putting the intellectual diversity of my Twitter feed against anyone else’s on this third rock from the Sun. My feed is the anti-echochamber. For example, I read and listen to Nathan Robinson, Benjamin Studebaker, Micheal Anton, and Curtis Yarvin.
Nathan Robinson, editor of Current Affairs, is a socialist, anarchist, and left-wing pundit. Benjamin Studebaker is a Phd. in Politics and International Studies from Cambridge University, and writes for Current Affairs. Michael Anton is a West-Coast Straussian Conservative who has lived away from the West-Coast for awhile, writes, and has worked under the Bush II and Trump administrations. The Claremont Institute and the affiliated American Mind and Claremont Review of Books are his longest lasting institutional connections, but he also is a professor at Hillsdale College’s DC branch. Curtis Yarvin is a computer programmer, writer, founder, and investor who appeared on my Philosophy of Art & Science. To put it pico de gallo mildly, he’s right of the overton window to a degree that is not immediately intelligible (and is tactically esoteric), but rather takes several dosages of clear pills that he pushes as a pusher par excellence. Excuse the French, he says their revolution was a mistake.
Robinson says left-wingers should bite their tongue and vote Biden, so that they can spend 4-8 years criticizing him and drawing him left. He admits that Biden will do damage to left-wing causes, but believes the rhetoric and aesthetics of leftism are better to have than the threat of the authoritarian rhetoric and aesthetics of Trump. Studebaker says left-wingers should not vote for Biden. He doesn’t say vote for Trump, but he doesn’t say don’t vote for Trump. His argument is that punishing centrists like Biden will lead to failures of conservative Republicans, which will swing the pendulum into a favorable situation for a left-winger running as a Democrat to win the presidency.
Anton says right-wingers should bite their tongue and vote for Trump, because this may be the last chance for conservative Republicans to win before the US becomes a one-party country like the microcosms CA and NY. He thinks Never Trumpers are sacrificing current victories on issues such as immigration and slashing the administrative state. Yarvin doesn’t tell anyone to vote. He hopes Biden wins. He argues voting right-wing futilely delays the inevitable trend of left-wing victories at all levels of government. He wants to accelerate left-wing victories, and hopes for a right-wing coup d'é·tat à la Singapore, Egypt, or the Eastern European post-Soviet sovereign nation-states. The more peaceful the better.