I am a Social Democrat.
I turned 18 in October 1989. In Los Gatos, CA. It was an off year politically. I don't even remember what was on the ballot. Some local and state initiatives, maybe some local races for county and city positions.
At 18, I had already been an activist for several years, taking part in marches and protests for several years. Los Gatos, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Sacramento. I'd been involved in activist actions in all of them.
Also, being 18 and very intellectually full of myself, I registered in Los Gatos as a socialist. I knew in a couple of years I'd be unable to vote in the primaries for any of the 92 presidential candidates, but the collectivist priorities of the socialist ideology resonated with where my head was at the time.
My senior year in high school I would become increasingly active in progressive causes. Classes, concerts, and activism. That was 89-90 for me.
The summer after I graduated, I would work for Campaign California fundraising for environmental initiatives on the upcoming ballot. Through them, I would spend a week in the deep Northern California forests protesting with Earth First. At the camp, I got to experience direct democracy in action for the first time. I'd read about it in books, but to see it in action was a real eye opener. It's not a one person, one vote scenario. It's a process that centers on consensus. Solutions that don't satisfy every individual's wishes, but overall meets the needs of the problem being addressed and appeases the sensibilities of everyone involved... which was everybody there. It's messy. There are a lot of arguments. It's inefficient. There is crying, but for this group of several dozen people, it worked.
At this moment, I could see why republics and federations were necessary administrative constructs for populations spread out over miles and miles, and even entire continents. Direct democracy just can't work with vast populations across vast distances. It's hard enough to find consensus among 3 dozen people and is simply impossible when you have populations in the hundreds, thousands, millions, and even billions of people. Governmental authority granted by the electorate through representation and rule of law.... that was the key. I learned a massive lesson on this forest protest adventure.
In September 1990, I would start college at UC Santa Cruz. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like I stood out. It was great! I could have political discussions and not ideological pissing matches that were more about confirmation bias and ego fulfillment. Feminist, social equality, and environmental politics is everywhere. I'm learning as much through social interaction as I am in academic courses.
The first class I attended in college was "Intro to Feminism" with the amazing Bettina Aptheker. Seriously, look her up. To this day, one of the best professors I had in college. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettina_Aptheker
It was such an eye opening class. In a class of 200, I was one of 10 men. I learned to listen very quickly. That I didn't need to voice an opinion on everything all the time. Those 10 weeks drastically changed me.
Everything about being at UCSC was eye opening. On no less than half a dozen occasions, I had the great fortune to be able to sit down and discuss sociopolitical topics with Angela Davis over coffee! Damn!
Next quarter, in order to satisfy a requirement, I took "Intro to Political Theory" with Peter Euben.... who I just now learned passed earlier this year. Sigh. https://politics.ucsc.edu/news-ev…/…/news-article-euben.html
This class fundamentally changed my ideological outlook on the world. From your neighborhood all the way to the UN, the fundamental political struggle in the democratized world is balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the masses. Tipping toward the individual creates a unique set of problems. Tipping toward the masses creates another series of problems.
To put it bluntly and colloquially, favoring the individual creates too many leaders and not enough team members. Favoring the masses creates too many team members and not enough leaders. It's way more complex and nuanced than that, but that's the crux.
A policy outline and ideological balance must be found to benefit the greatest number of individuals and communities from neighborhoods to towns, to cities to counties to states to the global community. A traditional "capitalist" ideology and policy agenda favors individualism leaving the masses subject to the whims of policy makers and profit motive. The seeming opposite of capitalism, socialism and/or communism, favors the collective over the needs, rights and desires of the individual.
I gobbled up the course reading for this class and all the political theory classes I would take over the next few years. The source and nature of political power. How violence can nullify political power. How equality of opportunity and social equality do not mean "same".
I was no longer a socialist. That was just gone. Like traditional capitalism (which our country has never been), socialism and communism are interesting theoretically, but fail terribly at the goal of a healthy society that maintains the welfare of the citizenry as a whole as well as the rights and desires of the individual.
That political awakening was 28 years ago. I was still new to Santa Cruz, but in 1991, I re-registered as a Democrat, so I could participate in the 92 Presidential primaries. Not so much because the Democrats perfectly aligned with my newly developing ideological outlook, but because they were the only viable federal level political party that came close to aligning with my worldview. This is when I learned the mantra, think globally act locally.
As a young Santa Cruz resident, I wouldn't vote straight party line in city and county elections. That is where I would vote my conscience. At the state level, I leaned Democrat pretty much across the board with some occasional variance favoring third parties. Federally, blue across the board. I've never felt that my vote was wasted by voting for a federal candidate that I didn't 100% agree with. The desire for ideological purity is a plague on the electorate, and, in my opinion, a failure of the intellect.
It was also at this time where I came to learn of the concept of a social democracy. It's not capitalist. It's not socialist. It's a form of representational democracy that utilizes a market economy to fund a thoughtfully planned, executed, and regulated welfare state. The goal is to balance the needs of the many while respecting the rights and desires of the individual.
Scandinavia as a whole is most famous for their social democracies. There's even a term that applies to their particular take on the model... the Nordic Model. All 5 Scandinavian countries have similar approaches with some minor difference.
I've spent the last nearly three decades being a proponent of social democracy and studying its iterations around the world. In the US, we live in one, though there is a constant struggle against the taxation required to fund a proper welfare state and a lot of resistance to the notion of a welfare state in the first place.
Enter 2016... the year basically everyone lost their fucking minds.
As a social democrat, it was the year that drove me the craziest basically from the vast majority of the American political spectrum.
The right wing has spent a century conflating social democracy with socialism and communism... while crafting legislation to prop up the prices of corn, canola, and soy to make it profitable... and using roads and the mail service.
Enter Bernie Sanders. I like Bernie Sanders. I voted for him in the WA primaries.
However, he did one thing that I think damaged the progressive movement... his frequent and incorrect usage of the term Democratic Socialism.
Democratic Socialism was a known, and well defined term in political academics. It's the establishment of a socialist state through political rather than revolutionary means. It also entails enacting a market, planned economy. Basically, its tenets were what the Soviets wanted to accomplish, but the military and Communist party just couldn't get over their love of power and money to create a political and economic system for the people. They got stuck in the military occupation phase of the great transition.
Democratic Socialists want to achieve what the Soviets couldn't, but through the ballot box rather than revolution.
Then! Bernie starts talking about a political revolution! Gah! Dude! Shut up already! A revolution is a complete overthrow of an existing political construct, not just getting more political representation from a single party on the federal level.
NAILS ON A CHALKBOARD!
Then... then... he says, "What socialism means to me..."
He turned the notion of a very well defined socioeconomic model into a 3rd grade essay opening!
"It's socialism... but democratic."
GAH! MY HEAD HURTS!
Even worse, I like his platform. I like him! He's running on a platform of social democracy and calling it socialism to take some of the stigma out of the term.
It was driving me crazy. I studied this shit in college. I've continued studying it all my entire adult life and now I hear friends of mine calling themselves socialists... only most of them aren't. They're social democrats, but have found a sense of community and identity with a bunch of other people who are calling themselves socialists because it's now in vogue.
I'd try discussing this with friends. I was a pawn of the Hilary Industrial complex... despite my support of Sanders! I had serious reservations about his messaging despite my actual support of his platform.
My personal favorite slam against me because I would argue from a social democratic position... "Go listen to 2112 some more and dust off your copy of the Fountainhead." Because, yeah, that makes sense. If I have quibbles with the messaging of a candidate I actually support, I must be an Ayn Rand Libertarian who only listens to Rush. Granted, I listen to a lot of Rush, but I ignore the highly overrated lyrics and at times blatant Libertarian message of Rush in the 70s. I just love how they sound!
I witnessed conversations where friends of mine who escaped Poland, Russia, and Romania in the 80s, Bulgaria, and the former Yugoslavia in the 90s be told that they had no idea what they were talking about when it came to socialism. That their notions were outdated and played to old notions of the socialist monster under the bed.
ALL WHILE DESCRIBING SOCIAL DEMOCRACY!
I saw people defect to the Green Party and Jill Stein and some to the Libertarian party... so-called socialists and progressives going to the Libertarian party who, at their very core, are laissez-faire capitalists!
It was all so confusing, emotionally exhausting, and infuriating.
I unfriended a fair number of people, blocked a few, and put a whole lot of people I genuinely like on unfollow. It was just that bad.
I had become tired of Facebook political arguments with people I genuinely like and respect... arguments where we fundamentally agreed, but I couldn't get on board with Bernie's messaging about Democratic Socialism while campaigning on a social democrat platform.
Luckily, I had a small group of people I could have reasoned, rational, and frequently intense and heated discussion about the complexities and nuance of social democracy as well as the ins and outs of partisan politics on the local and federal level.
On November 6, 2016, what many of us thought was impossible happened. Donald Trump won a victory in the Electoral College becoming the 45th President of the United States.
Unlike some of my friends, I've resisted the temptation (and it is soooooooo strong) to lay blame on various demographic groups for HRC's loss in the electoral college. The fact is, she lost for a variety of reasons.
Here we are in 2018. A referendum on the current POTUS. I've already voted. In WA, it's super easy to vote and the decisions are very easy for progressives. We actually have choices among our progressive candidates on the local and state level. In 2016, I voted for Brady Walkinshaw, but am super thrilled with Pramila Jayapal. It was a win/win choice!
This year, I voted party line for candidates and from a progressive position on the state initiatives. As a social democrat, it was really the only option I saw to protect the rights and desires of the individual while maintaining broader protections for the masses.
I am a Social Democrat.
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