Politics is just an ongoing Rorschach test. Government rulers and media puppets paint pictures of the world, and the great majority of people respond with their own insecurities and fears by supporting psychopaths who promise to slay the monsters from their nightmares.
Elections use the insecurities and fears of some of your neighbors as an excuse to force you to to obey a ruling class.
“But without government, who would slay the monsters in my head?”
If you step back for a minute, you can see that the images you have been presented with are designed to evoke emotional responses that prevent you from thinking clearly and acting responsibly.
Once you have seen a Rorschach test for what it is, it becomes obvious that there is no correct or consistent interpretation that can lead to principled action. Politicians use ambiguous phrases and images and let people fill in the blanks with their own unmet emotional needs and underlying thought disorders.
Examples:
Hope and Change
Make America Great Again
Building a Better Future
Moving Forward
Yes We Can
We Will Overcome
etc.
Of course, these work particularly well when patients (ahem, “voters”), are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly. The result is people projecting their own issues on other people without even confronting those issues themselves.
Are you able and willing to describe your thinking processes openly? Here’s a short political philosophy quiz to see if you are masking your emotional reactions and intellectual immaturity with political party affiliations and slogans.
- Do right and wrong exist?
If you answered “no”, your position is based on moral relativism, solipsism, and selfishness.
If you answered “yes”, move to the next question.
- Do all people have the same rights?
If you answered “no”, you’re thinking about permissions, not rights.
If you answered “yes”, move to the next question.
- What is the source of those rights?
If the foundation for your position is something like “I just feel like…”, then you will be hard pressed to come to any consistent conclusions, and you have some thinking to do.
If you recognize natural law and support rights to life, liberty, and property, but are not yet a voluntaryist, then you have some thinking to do.