Party of One

https://news.gallup.com/poll/201638/independent-political-lowest-six-years.aspx

In case you hadn't already heard, another US election is coming up -- a mid-term -- and with it a brand new opportunity if one is an American of voting age to re-think one's positions and political affiliations in hopes of settling on a slot for oneself in the great perpetual national project of making a better union, thereby forging the path forward for the country, for the world, and if there's anything left over at the end of it, for the self.  It's time to dream big and hope with abandon.  There will be plenty of time for disappointment in December.

After 20 + years as an independent, I was inspired in 2016 by the presidential campaign of Mr Bernard Sanders of Vermont to register as a Democrat in order to vote in the primaries.  He was gathering momentum at the time; and, seeing a way to do more than root from the sidelines, I switched.   So although none of the candidates I voted for in either the primary or the election of 2016 won, let it not be said that the democrats did not benefit from Bernie's campaign.  Nevertheless, it's time now to rethink my strategy, so please stand by as I contemplate my options.

Republicans are wildly successful but are objectively dishonest in a very peculiar way.  They tell you to your face they are going to steal the country away from you, which is true, but they count on you to think that's good for you.   They represent "the owners" and their minions the managers and the constabulary, and many of them are "the owners", but they aren't plentiful enough to win on their own, so they welcome the abundant warm bodies of narrow,  irrelevant, hateful or counterproductive interests-- the simple, the frightened and the gullible; wealth buffs; daddy minding order worshippers; the adamantly anachronistically religious; and the truly deplorable (the xenophobic, the misogynistic, the racially bigoted, the white-identity obsessive and otherwise nasty spirited ideologues of whatever proclivities)* -- and actively promote their agendas.  They cloak ambitions of limitless profit for themselves through global exploitation by force in Patriotism, and wrap civic meanness in The Flag.  What do "the owners" care if your health is not ensured, if abortion is illegal for your daughters where you live, if the last remaining public funds are squandered on a border wall, if your unarmed brother is shot by police in front of his kids, if you're broke when you can no longer work, if you even have a job, or if your public schools teach creation science in crumbling classrooms? For that matter what difference does it make to them whether humanity and any other life on the planet survives them?  They need your vote, not necessarily to your benefit.  They have had a tremendous amount of success with open hostility to the hoi polloi who make up the electorate including their constituency.  I admire the brazen balls that takes but it's just not for me.

Democrats are often conflated with the double dealing corporate ass kissers who run the party.  This is "sew unfahr".  The rank and file Democrats are people I have sympathy for because they vote Democratic for social justice, to advance the welfare of the least among us, to help protect workers and the planet from corporate malfeasance and to increase peace and understanding in a shrinking world.  I think the Democratic constituency represents the true soul and spirit of the American republic in their diversity, wisdom, sense of fairness, and numbers.†  Unfortunately, thanks to the professional class of technocrats who run things in the party, it's the double dealing corporate ass kissers who get elected.

Independents-- my own happy designation until recently-- used to be the home of the uncommitted and disaffiliated.  But for some reason, candidates who run as Independents rarely represent my end of the spectrum; and now, with an out and proud pedophilic, misogynistic, incel nazi running for Congress as one in Virginia, the deal is broken.

Libertarians exhibit some overlap with my views, particularly when it comes to social issues and personal freedoms, living and letting live, and skepticism about militaristic adventures, but seem overly concerned with the chimera of private property to an unhealthy degree, worship above all the myth of the free market, and are calcified in their rejection of the public good. So no.

Setting aside the disagreeable disgruntledness of so many of the Greens one encounters online, the numbers tell the story.  Their Presidential Candidates get most of the headlines, but perpetually lose and, it could be argued simply on that basis that they succeed mostly in spoiling elections.  No Greens have in fact ever held office at the Federal level in the US.  Only one Green is currently holding a state office, and due to term limits, his incumbency will end this year. The remaining elected officials, less than 200 in 19 states, serve in various local capacities.  California has the most of these, a whopping 68 according to the Green Party website.  Sixty eight should be the number of elected Greens in New Hampshire.  Given the environmental appeal of their platform and the current global emergency, Greens should be killing it in local elections across the country, or at least in the hearts and minds of those eligible or soon to be eligible to vote, but they remain irrelevant.  The platform of the Greens is badly served by its most visible candidates and by the party.  The best that can be said for them is that to date their shit is not yet together.  Judging by the attitude of most Greens toward voters for both major party candidates in the last national election, they are fine with waiting.  I am not.

Communist - Can't quite yet get over the rumors of CIA infiltration.  Pass for now.

Socialists are technically the closest to my own political beliefs.  Like the Greens they are underrepresented at all levels, but unlike the Greens they are gaining ground and have had successes at state and federal levels (up and down ticket).  Socialism-- the worldview that had been succeeding wildly across the planet for much of the middle part of the 20th century until it hit the corporately funded, PR and think tank induced skids in post-Vietnam years-  is the true opposition to the corporate, anti-people agendas of Republicans and to their pale emulators the Democratic neo-liberals, and as such they are fighting uphill battles against money and propaganda machines of the 1% and the reflexive stigma against them obediently observed by the media and by the well-trained masses.   But they are winning the old fashioned way: by reaching voters, as Bernie Sanders' strong primary challenge in the last election and continuing popularity, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's upset victory over Democratic stalwart Joe Crowley in New York have recently demonstrated.  Perhaps it's not a losing strategy to court Democratic voters with Democratic principles.

This is all great, but the problem for me, when you get right down to it, is that I am not a joiner.  Yet while I may not be suited for Socialism, there is an ideology that does fit me: Anti-socialism. The party of one-- not against Socialism, but against Affiliation with other people.  The appeal of this philosophy is immediately apparent (to me).  Self-funded.  No corporate money.  No conventions.  No nomination process.  No campaigns.

My platform (which passes because I am the only one voting on it) is to make the world the kind of place where I can basically be left alone to pursue my solitary pursuits with few interruptions.  It seems to me that given the state of constant disturbance I find myself in under the current regime, this calls for a different world; for the kind of world where people are happy, free to move to where they want or need to be, where they are taken care of when they need to be, where police don't protect and serve the people by shooting them unarmed, where there is a future to believe in, where ignorance is not celebrated, but instead deemed a challenge to be overcome by knowledge, where people quietly get along the world over and violators of the peace are dealt with justly.  Anti-socialism can and does exist in a world in which the worst human impulses of only the few who can afford to lord it are making life difficult for everyone else, but it does not thrive in such a world.  A world where no one is busy oppressing or exploiting others seems like the kind of world where an Anti-Socialist has the best chance of success.

So Anti-Socialism it is.  Because there is not now nor will there ever be a candidate affiliated as Anti-Socialist, I am free to vote for, to contribute to and even to work for candidates of any affiliation who advance my cause. Other parties' campaign strategists: take note.

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* And okay, some decent, well-meaning and sincere folks acting in what they hope are the best interests of the country and the planet.  I think they're misguided.

† This is not to say that there are no registered Democrats exhibiting even the most deplorable of the characteristics enumerated in the preceding paragraph; but I think it's fair to say that if your political agenda is deplorable (e.g., you want to build a border wall, you want to enshrine a gender test for marriage, or you want to require IDs for voting), then in 2018 you are probably not pursuing it with a great deal of success if you're a Democrat.