This is the sentiment of the people who aren’t zealots, ideologues, or assholes that will vote against a Democrat at the next poll.
- Leave me alone. I don’t want you to create new rules for me to follow.
- Leave me alone. I don’t want you to create new fees or taxes or bills or costs for me to pay.
- Leave me alone. I don’t want you to speed up the world faster than I can adjust to it.
- Leave me alone. I don’t want you to tell me how I should live my life.
- Keep doing things for me. I want clean food and water and a place I can call my own so I can stay alive.
- Keep doing things for me. I want roads and telephones and internet so I can stay connected.
- Keep doing things for me. I want my job, social security, retirement, disability, and/or medicare so I can pay my bills.
- Keep doing things for me. I want my liberty so I can find my own way.
- Keep doing things for me. I want my freedom so I can live my own life.
This isn’t an ideology. This is just people who are fine, who want to stay fine. For them the world isn’t broken, it isn’t in need of overhaul, it isn’t a disaster waiting for a hero. But it also isn’t easy, and the biggest obstacle for them to overcome isn’t a maniacal villain twirling his mustache while he ties them to the train tracks, it is the consequences of the hero in the next town or the next state coming down on them without warning like a flash flood.
For these people, government is not a corporation that needs to be efficient and make profits, it is the keel on the boat that makes sure we all stay upright in the storm.
For these people, government is not a hall monitor or a church lady that constantly tells you where you can go, what you can do, and how to live your life, it is the physical, civil, social, and digital infrastructure upon which they build their lives.
These people vote against Democrats because the Democratic Party doesn’t understand this way of understanding government as infrastructure and keeps trying to tell them how to live their lives because they think government should be paternal and that citizens of a democratic republic are are wards of the state, instead of the owners of the state.
They will vote for Republicans because the Republican Party knows this and will convincingly lie about how much they care about setting things right so they can dismantle the infrastructure and sell us all what used to be ours at the end of gun.