Bio

When I was in high school, I was so apolitical that my regular schedule consisted of coming home and watching Glenn Beck. I devoured that shit like the bible at a church getaway. Back then, I thought Ayn Rand was the most prominent thinker of our time - humans are naturally selfish, greedy, and all that. Effectively, accepting the greatest lie of our time - that modern society, our current sociopolitical climate, was the pinnacle of human existence. Back then, I had no work experience, no worries about bills, for all intents and purposes I was as privileged as they come. I still knew my family wasn't rich by any means. I knew that my parents struggled. But this was merely just them working towards their big break, like the one you see in the movies, work hard and the Lord will provide - Prosperity Gospel shit. I made it to college, and having finally experienced the harsh reality, and all consuming nature, of capitalism consumer culture - alongside arguments with some of the most reasonable non-socialists I have met - I started to question "Why".

"Why do we have to work to survive?"
"Why do we have no control over our own labor products?"
"Why do we get the shit end of the stick when it comes to the profit margins?"

Questions that previously weren't really in my purview as someone who de facto accepted proprietarian rights, and the myth of capitalist excellence. Questions that soon hounded me every moment.

This was right about the time social movements started to kick up. Obama's presidency was winding down, neoliberalism was in a panic trying to find the next Obama - a smooth talking centrist who appeals to both the working class and the bankers. It was then I fell in with Bernie. Now you may be asking yourself: "How does a previous Objectivist and possible Ancap decide to side with Bernie?" Frankly, even looking back on it, I can only determine that it was a fundamental shift in axioms that brought me across the isle, so to speak. I slowly became more and more demurred with the neoliberal, and even conservatist, stance on politics. Why should we assume that some are more worthy than others? If we accepted the Declaration as a binding piece of morality, then aren't all men created equal? If all men are equal, then shouldn't they be afforded equal opportunity? Or are some simply born more equal than others?

Questions continued to hound me. I found myself in a politics room, the first I ever became actually involved in politics beyond parroting my parents' and others' views during the 2016 primaries. I saw populism both fail and succeed simultaneously. I saw the crumbling of the thin veil keeping more conservatist neoliberals and conservatists fall away to reveal blatant racist and anti-worker dogma. I first saw it affect others before I even perceived it as affecting me. I became aware to the injustices of the world more acutely than I did when I was being spoonfed ideological rhetoric that kept me placated in a world bent on keeping my fellow brothers and sisters oppressed.

Fuck You, Got Mine, eh?

My first theory book, at least in terms of political theory, was What is Property? by P.J. Proudhon, and I learned the rhetorical wit necessary to engage in constructive debate. I saw both the failure of, and successes of, the Free Marketplace of Ideas. How engaging honestly with others generated a dialectic where the answer ended up lying somewhere in the middle of two theses, but also how conceding simple rhetorical devices remained the surest way to allow your opponent to pivot a positive conversation into toxic territory.

Ultimately, that's why I'm doing this. Theory allows you to read about these arguments in a manner that gives you absolute authority over your own dialectic. You can make or discard positions in vacuum - without social pressure curtailing your own mental faculties. I believe if we present theory in a fun, engaging, or at least manageable way, we can bring the orthodoxy of previous anarchist praxis to the masses, convince them that it isn't a utopian pipedream, and that it is possible to selfgovern. Because, without my engagement with theory, without the intrapersonal dialectic driving me to seek more knowledge, I'd still be that edgy ancap teen who thought that ugly people shouldn't breed.