Anarchism

Honestly, I don't consider myself radical. I'm definitely frustrated with the world, but I'm not into tribalism -- I don't do -ist's & -ism's. I try to focus and talk about specific mechanisms, and my frustration largely derives from the world's refusal to address those real issues. The us-them tribalism is a self sabotaging distraction.

Like, here's something that will upset a lot of people: Cops and Anarchists have a lot of overlap. Neither are monolithic groups - both have bad actors that cause problems. Both have large portions who want to protect their communities. Both are willing to due so with violence. Both have a strange fixation on "bad-ass"-ery and skulls. Both have large groups of people they don't trust (the "feds" or the "criminals"), which as groups are kinda a social fictions (individuals are just individuals). Both justify their ideology by appealing to theory (legal theory or anarchist theory). Both think they're smarter than the other, but both have well read members and complete morons. Both have a tendency to ignore both the law and theory in favor of the practical.

I'm sure that's an upsetting comparison for some people, but I don't think it does us any good to fight about whether and to what extent it's true. It's far more productive to use that comparison to build bridges, make peace, and cooperate on specific mechanisms that will make the world a better place. For example police want legitimacy and a lot of anarchists don't think the current voting system gives legitimacy, both should thus want to move to ranked voting with lottery options, recall mechanisms, and randomized districting. Almost everyone wants free speech, but doesn't want money in politics. We should agree on taxing both political advertising and donations at insane rates and using those funds for publicly funded elections. Most people want the cheaper services that come from cheaper housing if not the cheaper housing itself, so it should be easy to make laws mandating a fraction of dirt cheap condos be made in proportion to new large houses -- that'd fix a big part of the the affordability crisis.

I don't really believe it's about who's in control because most the policies I just listed are things that could be implemented at the local level for essentially free and would dramatically improve the lives of people in that area, but I've not heard of anywhere even close to those policies. As far as I can tell most people will fight like cats and dogs for every scrap of power, but don't actually know what to do with it once they have it (even if they are well intentioned).