Dear bullshitters:
Everyone has an ideology. This is because, in its broadest definition, ideology simply refers to the set of beliefs that determines the values that guide the actions of an individual or group. Just like everyone has an accent, everyone has an ideology.
Additionally, while it is true that there is a usage of the term "ideology" that refers to impracticality, it is also true that every ideology is in constant contact with reality. Everyone has beliefs, and everyone is also forced to operate in the real world. Since there is no alternative world in which to operate, or different levels of interaction with reality available, everyone deals with the conflict between experiential reality and ideological abstraction equally. People might have different appraisals of the effect of certain actions, or even differences in preferred outcomes of their actions, but no one can escape taking action based on their beliefs.
Furthermore, most of the prominent people who operate in the "digital left," at least in its independent form, are small business owners who must purchase their health insurance on the individual market. As such, they will be directly impacted by this bill a lot more than, say, people who work at the Los Angles Times, the New York Times, or Time Magazine. This difficulty is actually one of the reasons why it is difficult for independent online media to compete with the well-funded "blogs" emerging from larger, more established news outlets.
Yet further, while you are able to improperly use graduate school sounding words like "ideology" to impress a bunch of people who never actually went to graduate school, please keep in mind that "the digital left" has a higher average level of education than any prominent group involved in multi-issue American political activism. The sheer amount they write every day for years on end (for many people, this means more than a million words every year), all without the assistance of an editor, should have functioned as an indicator for you of the deep literacy of this group. As such, many in this group will only see questionable usage of words like "ideology" as further examples of bullshit being spun by an arrogant status quo primarily looking to maintain its own power rather than solve major problems. This includes bullshit like the notion that the left is actually the main, or even really any, threat to this bill.
Finally, as someone on the digital left who is not even advocating for the digital left to defeat this bill, I think you could learn a thing or two from Ed Kilgore. Ed is a Third Way Democrat who actually understands what the word ideology means, and also understands the ideological differences at play. Rather than just regurgitating bullshit about some people having ideology and some not having it, he frames the actual debate. It is, in the end, the only prominent, policy-based debate that has actually taken place on this bill, and it is long overdue.
Love,
Chris Bowers
Successful candidate for state-level political office, consultant to numerous people in public service, small business owner, partner of a legislative campaign in which over 40,000 people participated (and which only failed because the "grown-ups" lied), but still, despite all this, a total DFH giggling from the backseat.
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