Probably my own bias, but in case it isn't, or not entirely...

I'm convinced Republicans have had it more wrong for at least my entire adult life.

In principle, I would rather not identify with any political parties. I don't like political parties. My inclination was to be an independent. My inclination was also to dislike and avoid politics generally, given the stupidity and pettiness of what I saw.

The problem is I'm an independent who ends up seeing it the Democratic way so often that I'm more Democratic than many Democrats.

I want to be realistic. I want to see what's true. I want the best solutions for the worst problems.

I don't want to be infected with groupthink.

What I see from Republicans is an endless stream of denialism. They can't seem to face the modern world. They can't seem to accept what's there.

They insist on clinging to every idea that becomes outdated for so long that it's embarrassing to almost everyone, maybe even to them.

Put that away. It's well past its prime.

You don't think gay people should have the same rights. You don't think trans people are real, or should be able to go to the bathroom without you assholes harassing them. You don't think the world is warming, and when it starts making you sweat, you don't think it's for the reason that is the reason it's happening.

What is wrong with this mindset?

And how can a political party be founded on it?

You complain constantly about national debt, and then you elect leaders who balloon it even more, and you say nothing, and you whine about it whenever the candidate is a liberal?

How is that smart? How is that even concerned about the budget?

I recognize that conservatives accuse liberals of being stupid and deluded, but believe me, I know a thing or two about delusions and stupidity. And I know a thing or two about two sides accusing each other of the same thing all the time. It's the world I grew up in at home.

I'm constantly trying to find the silver lining for conservatives. I want to find a smart, balanced, self-aware conservative. It's very difficult. In any case, when the topic is politics, it's very difficult. But even when it isn't, I find conservatism is connected with what psychological researchers say it's connected with - inflexibility of thinking, closed-mindedness, less education, more superstition, more xenophobia, more hostility. Those are not positive things. Those are not advertisements for the Republican party. It's difficult for me to find a lot of respect for those trends. A bunch of people who lack imagination band together and call it a party. Yip-dee-doo, good for you. And - no, I'm not full of admiration. Wish I were.

I'm not saying all conservatives are bad or dumb. But... what is with the Trump-worship? Could you find a *worse* poster boy? If you *really* wanted people like me to take your gang seriously, you could try to find someone more like Eisenhower. Everyone agrees he was a good president, and he was Republican. Even Reagan is miles better than this Trump fellow. What has gotten into you all?

For all your emphasis on traditionalism, you can't seem to find leaders who actually have traditional values. All you can find are leaders who have traditional stupidities. Haven't you gotten things a little mixed up? We want the bravery and heart of a Teddy Roosevelt. We don't want the ruthless corruption of a Hoover or the two-facedness of a Nixon or the racism of an Andrew Jackson.

Pull your heads out of the toilet. What made America great isn't the inaccurate feces you refuse to let go, it's the character you can't seem to recognize when it's under your nose.

All these sheepish Republicans here and there surfacing to say a few critical things about Trump, but then they get that look on their faces, turn up their noses, and say they could never vote for someone like Kamala Harris.

Why not? There's no very good reason for that. They try to give reasons, but they're hyperbolic, they're unsubstantiated, they're proven false. It's as if they desperately want to believe that she's a historically terrible option, rather than a competent woman doing the best she can.

What exactly would it take for you to respect a Democratic candidate? It isn't character. It isn't intelligence. It isn't an aptitude for solving difficult problems.

Your standards are so high that you don't have any.

Today I've seen a lot of polling analysis about whether candidates are "too conservative" or "too liberal." I understand that this is an overall impression and subjective, so we can't really expect much rationale.

But it strikes me as strange on two counts.

First of all, I spend almost no time worrying about whether a candidate is "too conservative" or "too liberal." Other criteria make my choices. So I have a bit of trouble putting myself in the shoes of strongly rejecting someone just because of where they fall on a spectrum like this.

Second, and this obviously is related to where I fall on the spectrum, I can see a vivid explanation of what "too conservative" might mean and why it's objectionable. Someone who's too conservative, kind of by definition, is resisting change. In government, if there are too many people who are too conservative, it's difficult to solve problems. No one wants to change anything. No one even wants to believe many of the new problems exist. They want to keep on doing things the same way. To me, this is self-evidently a quandary, a problem unto itself. In fact, it's a meta-problem: a problem with the problems, namely, it's the problem that people are preventing change that solves problems. Yet when I ask myself what "too liberal" means and why someone would react in a similar way, finding it self-evidently a bad thing, I... start drawing blanks.

It isn't that I can't imagine - or understand - or remember ways liberalism has been criticized. But what exactly is wrong with being not conservative, or even very not conservative, given the meta-problem I just described?

Sure, not all change is good, and not all efforts to solve problems in new ways are successful. It's even possible that trying to fix a problem makes it worse and creates other problems that weren't there before. Too true, and I have no difficulty understanding that. If you write code, that's your bread and butter. Absolutely: you go in to fix something, and it's difficult, and often things are worse after that, at least for a while, until you do enough clean-up or else revert to a stable copy (or, well, a less unstable one).

I suppose not wanting to change things comes from a sense of familiarity and even affection - liking the way things are - thinking they work well enough and that shouldn't be ruined.

But I don't know how people explain to themselves that just because they like how it is - or think they prefer how it was before - it must also be good for other people, or the country, or future generations of humans and other creatures. The one is not necessarily the other, and any normal person should know that and consider it an important distinction, a placeholder for angles known to others, a reason to be less predetermined and more fluid, keener to listen.

We all appreciate a number of advances in government that have been made over the centuries. Most of us would hate to go back a thousand years and endure what was normal then.

If we put aside nuclear threats, climate change, AI, aliens, and so on, we can imagine another thousand years of improvements. We can recognize that most of those improvements will come from liberals. Conservatives will oppose most of them. Eventually they or their descendants will appreciate the changes, but they at the time will object; they may almost need to be dragged kicking and screaming, to draw on a tired metaphor.

One twist worth noting is that I think many conservatives will have a big problem with this picture, and it isn't just that they are portrayed negatively. It's that they don't believe we have another thousand years of improvements available. They believe we've pretty much reached the end of the line, and we're doing about as well as we can do. They don't think 3024 would have to be much better than 2024. They'd mainly just prefer to see fewer liberals trying to mess things up. To them, that would be an improvement.

Now, maybe I'm getting it wrong. Maybe few if any conservatives see it that way. Maybe more of them have more futurism in them than I give them credit for.

Then again, they'd probably see the improvements visible in 3024 as the result of economic and technological growth, not the result of government self-improvement (other than, maybe, getting rid of the liberals).

What I'm getting at is: what year between 2024 and 3024, assuming it's a general millennium of improvement, is a bad one to aim for? What year's government makes you "too liberal" if that's what you believe in?

Again, conservatives may have trouble answering this question, because they may seriously doubt that much more improvement is waiting in the wings from updates to government.

But if you ask me, I think the improved 3024 system of government would be very different from today's, and would not depend on any of our current foundational government documents worldwide. I'm convinced voting and representation would work differently, and I'm not entirely convinced we'd be doing either in a recognizable way, though I do tend to believe we'd be doing both, just very differently, and better.

To me, "too liberal" sounds like "too enthusiastic about fixing problems," and that doesn't really compute (again, to me). Sure, if it ain't broke don't fix it; but anyone who thinks there's nothing to fix here, or nothing major, is living in a self-reinforced mental bubble.

So, maybe that's my bias. But it isn't as if I can't see other arguments, here. "Too liberal" can mean trying to move too fast. "Too liberal" can mean trying to move in a direction that looks shiny now but will end badly. "Too liberal" can mean showing too much of whatever personality or ideology or platform quirks are more common in liberals than conservatives.

Everyone who says "too liberal" or "too conservative" is probably thinking of a few stances in particular that they don't like, can't stand, stay up at night worrying about, etc.

If it sounds like I'm being unfair, consider that most people who consider a candidate "too liberal" will be conservative. That means they will probably be subject to the personality issue that they don't see these big problems that are worth fixing, or they see big problems, but they tell themselves these problems will be fixed another way, without government involvement, despite, often, those problems not being solved for centuries. In other words, liberals certainly make mistakes, but the ones calling them "too liberal" rather than just "barking up the wrong tree this time" are people who are too obstinately unwilling to change government practices, and probably not best qualified to give the criticism of when change is and is not appropriate. Centrists or liberals would have more experience actually changing things, and presumably could know better when a particular not-tried-here-before approach is, or is not, likely to end in success.

In short, I don't personally believe "too liberal" is a real problem. If we could bring in the improved government of 3024 today, then that would be good. And the sooner, the better. There is no "too quickly" other than logistical seasons to implement policies and get people used to the transition. If we knew the end goal, we could begin planning the tradition today, this hour, this minute. If that would save lives, improve lives, avoid ecological catastrophe, position us better to maintain peace amongst ourselves and with any extraterrestrials we might meet, then excellent. There is no such thing as the grand benefit of pretending there is no improvement or no solution when it is there; moving toward it, by whatever transition is smoothest and most practical and sustainable, is a positive thing. There is no "too liberal" in this scenario, in my view. The more the better. The less let's-change-nothing conservatism the better, though I think conservatives could be very useful with planning for a smooth transition and a new future normal, provided they accept a transition is getting underway.

Now, this is obviously only one interpretation, and, specifically, my own.

I don't think we avoid ducking down the wrong alleys in our attempts to advance society by strongly resisting all change. That isn't realism. That isn't practical. It's obstructionist.

We can only avoid the pitfalls of liberalism if conservatives aren't so damn conservative. We need the help of different kinds of minds. It's a problem when half the people sit on the sidelines sulking, claiming any change at all is immoral and stupid. That doesn't help. That isn't troubleshooting, it's being a pain in the ass.

Now, this is not a fair characterization of conservatives overall (who do have a lot to offer, and do a lot of good work). It's just an illustration of a key point I'm making. "Too liberal" isn't really the problem, and we don't minimize the dangers of change by resisting all change just because it's change.

In short, I would like to see conservatives doing a little more soul-searching, and realizing that they are part of what they're resisting.

I would like to see conservatism evolve into greater and more practical open-mindedness, while retaining the strategic strengths it's known for.

(I suspect it's a mistake to assume conservative and liberal, as we usually define them, are exact opposites and equally valid and necessary, but I also recognize that in many ways, or perhaps all ways, this may be the case. My mind is not closed to different possibilities there.)

I don't assume that a slight "lean left" bias in a media outlet *isn't* a bias. However, I don't think the political center implies a lack of bias. On the contrary, the right side of the spectrum seems to have little idea, collectively, about how to dismantle its own thought process and identify biases. The left side of the spectrum is hardly great at this, *but* they genuinely try to take it seriously.

I think creationists fighting evolution are doing the intellectual version of smoking bath salts. They're well off their rockers, or maybe they don't have rockers.

By comparison, criticizing trans people for being protective of their threatened human rights is merely pretty unfair. Yes, everyone is biased, and I've heard (what I consider) biased takes from many trans people and trans supporters. But I am a trans supporter myself; it's very important. Just because some biased things are said doesn't mean the entire perspective should be thrown out. That's especially true when we're talking about a threatened group. No one avoids some kind of boost in bias when perpetually threatened.

Does this mean that those on the alt-right are even more perpetually threatened, as they can't seem to see straight - or argue with intellectual honesty - on many issues? Maybe. But I think it's more in their culture to avoid asking themselves certain kinds of hard questions. Their worldview has seen too little competition (which doesn't mean the people weren't experiencing adversity), and now that it's being attacked from all sides, these people can't stand it. But the problem is their worldview really is backwards, however impolite it might be to say so out loud.

So no, left and right aren't equal, and the center isn't the absence of wrongness.

To me, a bit of a left lean is, more likely than not, the most accurate.

And I say that not as a moderate left kind of person, so there's give and take here. My point of view is: in two hundred years, the US Constitution should have been replaced, rewritten, or heavily modified. This isn't something I expect this year, obviously. But if we're going to fix a thing eventually, why not fix it sooner, before the problems get worse?

If I spent all my time campaigning for a US Constitution rewrite, I'd put a majority of people off, and they might not listen to the rest of what I say.

It isn't my top priority, either. But if you want my opinion on that, I'm very open to starting at the top and rewriting it. I'm also very open to getting rid of the notion of countries, if and when it's practical. I'm open to almost anything that could work - without preconceptions about whether it would work - depending on the evidence that it would indeed (or would not) work. You know? That is genuinely radical - in what I believe is a good way. But it isn't radical in a "let's set fire to the seat of government" way. It isn't radical in a "calling for violence" way. It isn't radical in a "everyone who's opposed is an idiot" way. It isn't radical in a "now or never" way.

It's just radical in that I'm fucking open-minded, and I'll think about whatever neat idea you have.

It's radical in that I'm constantly frustrated that - what I just said? - is not how I'm received myself.

People who think outside the box enough go through life observing a great stubbornness, from most, to even begin thinking. Everyone shoots down new ideas just because. Why? They're sure it can't work. Some feeling. And they have something better to do right now. Oh, if pressed, they'll present a rationalization, but that's the thing - you listen to the argument, you take it seriously, but it's just very half-assed. It's almost as if the person really *wants* to believe that thing you suggest won't work. They have no energy investment at all in reflecting beyond their knee-jerk reaction and rationalization.

That's the way of the world. That's what we get used to.

And it's radical not to be like that.

And it's wonderful not to be like that.

It occurs to me that I have not been wasting my life. Maybe not at all.

Sometimes it helps to be a tough customer (or costumer?): "I've done nothing today" could spur you.

Maybe more often, it's better to find more to notice: "I feel like I've done absolutely nothing. But what have I been doing? And why? Come to think of it I have done this, this, this, this, and this - all for reasons I still agree with. This other thing, and that, and that, feel like wastes of energy. Maybe next time I could try to remember this, this, and this."

The latter is usually much more motivating for me.

So maybe I will try to remember better how I'm *not* wasting my life, to encourage it.

There's a psychology idea I still can't put into a few clear words.

People say you may not be able to control events, but you can control how you respond to them.

The thing is, your entire perceived world is constructed in your mind, which runs autonomously, not unlike heartbeats and breathing.

You can't control what world you will *think* you're in as much as you think you can.

I can *tell* myself that tomorrow when I wake up and feel like hell, I just need enough caffeine to be normal and start my day. But tomorrow, the world I will *think* I'm in will be different. I will either not remember or not really believe this advice. I will feel it's all hopeless.

I cannot directly control that. At all. Right now, it's obvious: an acutely depressed state is to be expected (thanks to poor sleep and withdrawal effects compounding other problems) but I do know deep down, from real experience, that it can be worked around, and surprisingly quickly. Tomorrow, what I believe about it now will mean nothing. Tomorrow, I will be in a place where the despair is real. Where getting some caffeine does nothing to fix the disaster of my life—or maybe of life generally. That is how it will all *be*, possibly for hours.

Again, right now I can fully believe that all I need to do is remember to see past it. But I cannot directly control my brain state in advance.

*Maybe* we can choose (non-deterministically) how we react to things. But we can't, in advance, select the frame of mind from which we'll be reacting. We can't control the perceptions and memory activity that will construct an interpretation and a set of options.

People focus on this notion that we can opt from a metaphorical How I React menu. But we cannot ensure in advance what the menu will have on it. We can't even be sure it'll be there. Routinely we believe we can ensure both. In normal enough circumstances, the illusion holds. But with peculiar circumstances, say with a mental illness or neurodivergence or calamity, we experience that illusion breaking down into its components much more often.

Hence I know caffeine "recovers" me from the terrible depression of waking up, yet no matter how much I know this, in the moment, I often end up spending much, much too much time in that state. It is possible to "know" something at one time and, for practical purposes, "not know" it later, without having fundamentally forgotten.

Similarly, I can say right now that I dislike the idea of offing myself—that seems crazy—not at all what I want. Yet I can aver (I know this almost for a total fact) that soon, and probably within a day or a week, I'll be thinking about it very differently, and possibly as, maybe, the only bearable option. Right now, I hate the idea. But soon, apparently no matter *what* I think now, I will once again think that maybe that's the only thing that makes sense.

I can't figure out how to convey, without getting as repetitive as this is getting, how critical is this tidbit about the hidden forces implicated when understanding the world from inside a brain—as we all do. It's a thing you feel hard enough that you *know* it. Or else you maybe do not feel or know it at all.

To some extent it's what we run from when we adopt overly rigid beliefs. To get the sands shifting less, we'll confabulate superglue for the sands and call it our free (and yet, paradoxically, correct) choice. "The world I see is real because I stick to what I already believe and I fully choose how I perceive and interpret and react." Never mind that we have little idea what our neurons are doing.

What I'm trying to convey is that my optimism that I *can* and *will* be non-depressed, or let's just say energized enough to act, or organized enough, or aware enough of the next priority steps, has been proven, again and again and again, to be... a bit too optimistic.

I cannot simply decide now, or put myself into a configuration of will, such that every morning in the future I will get my caffeine or whatever remedy I need to not feel like hell and to function normally enough—without wasting hours worrying about how horrible and pointless life is, first. Nor can I simply decide to stop thinking of offing myself and never do that. I cannot seem to make such decisions in a way that holds with consistency because I cannot actually control the perceived reality, the "umwelt" as it's sometimes called, my brain will be constructing in the future.

And not just the distant future. Soon. Today. When I get home from work, what will I be in the right frame of mind to do? I don't know. I'm constantly planning on my drive home, telling myself how it'll be. It rarely works because, as it turns out, I don't fully control the perceived reality my brain will construct—the things that will seem most important, most urgent, most possible, most pleasant or unpleasant. These things shift for me quite a lot.

Because of that, I find it easy to understand other people who think, speak, or act weird. I know that we control our brains less than we think, and some people have the privilege of a brain that is more stable in this dimension, that dimension, or the other dimension. Everyone has stabilities. Everyone has instabilities. But there's variance in the population and through time.

Some people have not experienced enough instability to know that the world our brains will be constructing moments from now is not under our *direct* control very much if at all.

Sometimes drug experiences teach people this. But it's natural to go back to life and think if we aren't intoxicated, then the insight doesn't count; it's only when there's some reason we might *not* be of fully sound mind that we lack any of this control.

No. I posit that we always lack this control, but sometimes we are fortunate to spend a lot of time in relatively unturbulent waters.

I see people on their airline flights of life with relatively little turbulence (of the particular sort I'm describing), and they think their optimism is keeping the flight out of turbulence. But is that really true? They happen to be fortunate, not just optimistic, and they are taking credit for piloting by circumstances and inner weather conditions that they may influence but cannot specify.

Sometimes you have to more undeniably lose something—a capacity—and sometimes over and over—before you realize that it was never your creation in the first place.

You didn't create your mind. Your mind presents the options you choose from. It also guides the process by which you choose. Though it isn't bad advice, "I can choose how to react" tends to overlook biological magic behind the appearance of the menu and the activity of selecting.

I couldn't say this briefly, but I do think just now I have said it.

(Other thoughts: Questioning your beliefs might make you less stable, but not questioning them can lead to all manner of harms also. There seems to be little guarantee that firm belief precludes instability? But I'm speaking from perceptions here and also trying to avoid absolutes.)

On an evidentiary basis, I see no reason to take the Bible as instructions from the heavens.

On a psychosocial basis, I see many reasons to see people's faith as good-faith efforts. That is, I do not see religion as inherently malicious. Nor do I assume there is no wisdom to glean from scriptures.

But people who will try to talk me into seeing The Truth (ie, the Christian God) are as a rule not very good at arguing. They will always lose - not because I'm stubborn, but because if they were as skilled as I am, they wouldn't stick to their position.

If someone tries to convince you that there was never a moon landing, or that high-fructose corn syrup is a great health supplement, or that the earth is flat - do you anticipate that they'll win the argument with you? What about if you're especially informed on the topic, from various perspectives? But they mainly know the one, and don't seem to know how to play devil's advocate and critique what they would prefer to be true? Do you anticipate they'll surprise you and convince you?

No, because if they knew what the hell they were talking about, they wouldn't be taking this route, nor would they be at their current location.

Many Christians *think* they know what they're talking about, because they have studied their religion, and if they believe in it, which they diligently do, then it must be true, and this truth must be "showable" to others. And, sure, they *do* know about Christianity.

The trouble is that their study and their belief are not based on reliable evidence - this is even considered a feature, not a bug. They think it's a hurdle real Christians get over (and everyone *should* get over) in order to see the heart of the matter.

The problem is that the heart of the matter is not the heart of the matter. It isn't true.

It isn't an important quirk of Christianity that faith is required to "see it." No, it's a direct consequence of those not actually being the facts.

Sure, I could lie to myself. I could even lie to myself about lying to myself - so that I take this confabulation as a good thing, a great thing, a soul-saving thing, a testament to my love of the Creator who loves me, etc.

But the core facts of Christianity are not facts. It isn't some quirk or test that we can't prove them. We can't prove them because they aren't true.

Do I know this absolutely for certain? Well, before I answer that, let me ask and answer some other questions, which some may consider a detour for both delaying and dodging, but it is for neither. Do I know absolutely for certain that any groups of planets orbiting stars exist outside of the Solar System? Do I know absolutely for certain that our own Sol releases heat by nuclear fusion? Do I know absolutely for certain that my next door neighbor is not an alien?

No.

I don't.

There's little or nothing I know absolutely for certain. Usually, my handy go-to example of certainty is my name. Is my given, legal name Lyndon Goodacre? Yes it is. How certain am I of this? About as certain as I can be of anything. Yet could I somehow be mistaken? I could. That possibility I fully accept, without embarrassment or defensiveness. All kinds of strange things are possible. And, point of fact, I *have* had at least one dream in which my name was something else. In order for my name to be something else, all it would really take is for me to be dreaming. And I've definitely had dreams before in which I asked myself whether I was dreaming, and I concluded that, alas, I couldn't possibly be dreaming. Yet I was.

I'm about as convinced that the Bible's supernatural elements are fiction as I am of my name.

Sure, I wasn't there. So I'll extend extra uncertainty. But the stories - and the defenses of the stories - don't add up. The way people defend Christianity is not the way people defend the truth. It's the way people defend delusions. And this is extremely noticeable when you have enough relevant experience. 

ADHD means being cursed with less of the thing everyone agrees makes or breaks an intention: consistent application.

They talk as if this one thing you lack is just a choice equally available to everyone.

You watch as they lose respect for you. Their ethic is so founded on seeing what you lack as a simple moral, a thing chosen by the good.

If it's just a choice, those who make the effort of choosing it are to be admired - and successes will reward them - while those who do not make the effort and do not choose it are to be seen as deserving their failure.

Never mind that someone with ADHD may well be trying harder than others, even much harder, in some important senses. Who finds it easier to ride a bike, the frequent biker or the kid trying to get going for the first time, in fits and starts? Now imagine the fits and starts continue... and continue... and continue... and you can't quit... but everyone thinks you're hopeless or not trying or not worthy or whatever. And *you* think that, sometimes, because what else are you supposed to think? And your thinking it is contagious, so other people think it, and their thinking it is contagious, so you think it, and... you know, it's pretty silly.

Everyone agrees that what you lack is all it takes. And without what you lack, nothing will ever work.