The Purple Revolution (politics)

What am I after?

The most important question you can ask of someone's politics, is what are they after? Like, when Trump is on stage saying the stuff he says, or Bernie is up there saying the stuff he says, what do they each want? Well... We break down the reasoning for how we interact with the world into groups of ideas called philosophies.

Continuing with Trump and Bernie as examples, despite their political differences they both seem to be national Utilitarians, philosophically speaking. A utilitarian is someone who wants to maximize happiness for the greatest amount of people possible. The national in the phrase National Utilitarian, means that their real goal is to maximize happiness for everyone in the country they live in specifically. Trump and Bernie aren't worried if somebody in Guatemala is happy, only that people in America are happy.

So what does that make me? Well I too am a Utilitarian, but with a few caveats I'll get into. I'm a global utilitarian, meaning I want to maximize the most amount of good for everyone in the world, rather than just the people living in the USA. Now, I'd argue that what's good for the world is good for Americans. We as humans want to see other humans happy, so if we make the world happy than we as Americans will be happier ourselves. The whole image of the USA as the leader of the free world is central to American identity. Us defeating Nazi Tyranny in Europe is probably one of the single greatest accomplishments of this country, and I'd say that every time the suffering of another group of people falls on deaf ears, we lose a bit of our humanity and thus our happiness. The caveats are that I don't like infringing on people's freedoms to make them happy. If you want to be unhappy, that's your choice, and I won't get in the way of that.

So that's me. When I talk about why racism is bad, and why poverty and war is bad, It'll all be from the perspective of Utilitarianism. The idea that I want to get as many people happy as possible.