On Political Alignment as a “Verb”

Honestly, I need to get back into the habit of using my Medium blog, if only for unresearched thought dumps.

I was thinking about my outlier status as someone whose politics is more that of a verb than a noun or adjective. I used to “be” conservative, for example, and then I realized my observations about what the world needed versus what the conservative movements I was part of were offering did not match up. I am no longer “conservative”, or any other ideology.

I think this notion of taking on ideologies ontologically is a big factor in the polarization of the current era, and going far in the other way is just making the same error. Politics can’t just be yet another identity, another reason to draw a line between you and other people. Politics has to have utility.

As such, I am not a “leftist” (noun/adjective), but I lean left (verb), based on what I see to be a match between the solutions that those movements offer versus what I see to be the needs in the world. It means I’ll happily devote my efforts to support the advancement of those ideas into the world, but only as long as they’re helpful in solving those problems.

It also means that I’m not bound by a blood oath to forever stay in the same position no matter how much the terrain changes over time. It leaves me free from having to tow an un-nuanced ideological party line that may try to take me somewhere I don’t want to go, or leverage some kind of “cancellation” threat over me if I don’t stay in line.