Voting for policies

Not personalities

My purpose in this blog is to share how my life experience and education [both degree and personal reading] affect how I think, and make choices. Even though we’re built to come to moral decisions first and reason after the fact, sometimes our moral reasoning will change if we 1) like the person who’s offering the reasoning, or 2) find our curiosity is engaged enough to override our initial response. [I expect there are other things that could work too.]

Two things that can hold us tightly in our place of moral reasoning are fear and disgust: fear for the bad things that might happen, and disgust for the ‘other’ and their habits.

Disgust has been strongly in evidence during this election season and for the previous one. It’s been a handy and effective tool to keep people from thinking about anything but their revulsion. It’s become the driving force in people’s decision-making process about who to vote for and manifests as a tight-beam focus on one or two issues: abortion, and the past behavior of which DT has been accused.

Disgust is an emotion linked to Jonathan Haidt’s sanctity/degradation moral foundation. It has biological roots in the need to avoid contagion and sacralizes cleanliness and purity. But it can be hacked and directed, much as advertising hacks our desires. I’ve tried talking to women I know about polyticks, but haven’t gotten past this response. It makes reason-based conversations impossible. It’s even worse than fear. Fear can be calmed with alternative solutions to the a given problem.

What makes this even more frustrating is that I feel unheard by my friends. I do have some disgust about doctors and therapists who injure children by giving them drugs and surgery to eliminate their sex, and around men who bully women and demand to be in our spaces and compete in women’s sports. Oddly, the women I’ve spoken with about polyticks agree this is wrong, although I don’t know if they feel the disgust about it that I do. [We didn’t get that far.]

I honestly don’t understand the fear around ‘losing’ abortion. Most of my friends are past menopause so this a total non-issue for them personally. One friend said she wanted the world to be better for her nieces. [Which made no sense to me either, but she was talking fast and I couldn’t ask.]

I have a list of things that concern me. I was able to mention one of these in the political conversations I had, and it was brushed off as less important than abortion and the moral disgust my friends were feeling about DT.

If you really like this post but don’t want to subscribe, then maybe you could…

So I’m listing them here.

I’m afraid of losing the right to free speech. The elites have been going on about how difficult it is to control the population when we can say whatever we want. I don’t understand why my friends on the left don’t care about this and refuse to even look at links to elites telling us what they want.

I’m afraid of losing my right to own and carry a firearm. This push has been going on for decades. It seems clear that the only reason the US hasn’t succumbed to the suppression of free-speech going on in places like Great Britain is that we own a lot of guns here and politicians are wary of pushing us too hard.

I’m afraid of 9 million people entering this country that don’t share our values. I’m starting to be afraid of people who won’t even have a conversation about this influx. That’s not good.

I’m afraid of being beaten and robbed by some criminal that came from a country that doesn’t share my values

I’m afraid of not being safe in my home, or my neighborhood

I’m afraid of having these people vote in our elections

I’m afraid of being bled via taxes to pay for housing and food for said people. My ancestors were immigrants [one was involuntary.] They all worked their asses off to create a life for themselves. The government did not take other people’s taxes and hand them over to NGOs to pay for their housing, food, and phones. If people who think this is a good idea want to do it, then they can darn well donate their own money and stop spending mine. [And yeah, some anger and resentment there too.]

I’m afraid of being coerced into taking an injection that will make me feel worse than I already do, and that my friend who’s being forced to take the shots if she wants to be a nurse will suffer, or die, or be infertile. In online discussions about the right to do what you want with your body, people who think abortion access is a right also think that a shot is ‘apples and oranges.’

I’m afraid of not being able to get real food because some autocrat who’s eating steak and jet-setting around the world has decided it’s better for me to eat bugs and printed meat, and drink my fluoridated water. [Also, I pollute too much with my non-electric vehicles that they can’t shut off.] Several people have now pointed out that it’s insane that we have to pay more for clean food and water. I’ve been talking about this for 20 years and gotten little traction.

I’m afraid of un-elected autocrats running my country. [How this isn’t even a conversation leaves me very confused.]

This isn’t a comprehensive list. If someone on the left reads this, perhaps they could address it.

I’ve already voted. But either way, I’ll keep writing and talking, and communing with my gods. If what I have to say is helpful, then I have some meaning in my life. What we have here in the West matters. I don’t want to see it disappear.

I’ve looked for and found guidance in making my life better. Here are some newsletters that might make yours better.

Andrew Lokenauth puts advice in easy-to-understand terms in his Money Mastery and Wealth Building newsletter.

Matt Leo talks about communication and people skills that apply to the home the board room.

Tim Ebl fights back against the steamroller of health issues with how to restore what we’ve lost to 21th-century food and habits.

Unskool offers insights and alternatives to the sucking pit of our education system

Bobby Dimitrov and Healthy Farming, Healthy Food share their journey on how to build a food production system that is better for humans and better for the planet.

Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. She lives with her husband, and is Mother of Cats; three boyz. Selina has written The Young Woman’s Goodlife Guide: Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 20. Or… Learn From My Pain, and How to Train Your Cat: Using a Clicker and Leash to Keep Your Indoor Cat Happy and Healthy, the Goodlife Guide to Nutrition, and The Storytellers: a Journey of Discovery.