Today* I helped my family move my maternal grandparents back into their home in Altadena, from which they had been evacuated due to the Eaton Fire in LA for over 2 months. [*I wrote this last week.]

Despite all the logistics of moving two 94 year olds between houses, I managed to find the time to discuss national politics with my grandfather Moki.

I would say that politics has been the most contentious/taboo topic at Thanksgiving dinners since I became political as a college student over two decades ago (in less than 2 years I went from politically apathetic and socially vanilla to leading the Green Party at Stanford, and moving into a vegan activist co-op—mostly because I came to believe that problems like war, famine, and climate change would be surprisingly easy to solve, were it not for “political feasibility issues”).

Today I was pleasantly surprised to find myself agreeing with Moki on everything he said about economic policy and politics.

After today I would guess that he and I both agree on a handful of important things:

Democracy needs to be strengthened against the rising threat of misinformation and populist fascism in America.
Conservation of our natural resources, wild lands/waters, and organic ecosystems has been extremely valuable for America and we want to be doing much more of it.
Peace and non-violence is good for Americans and all beings. Hubristic foreign policy risks instability and gratuitous fear and economic contraction. Everyone is better off as old rivals become new friends.
Patience makes our country and world safer, especially in times of fast technological, political, social, and spiritual change.
Free markets are unaligned superintelligent organisms. We can still align them. We can train the ‘one track mind’ markets to respect our deepest shared values.
The 48th President will serve America and Earth better as they embrace true conservative values (moreso than the MAGA politicians of today).

Examples of how this Neo-GOParty platform will improve upon MAGAin ways that Moki will love:

Liberty thrives when we invest in free and open elections, free speech, free public education (including optional college), and separation of powers (including with churches). Fascism, while not inherently evil, tends to consolidate power, which directly contradicts and undermines our Founding Fathers’ intention with the Constitution.
Capital alignment to our deepest shared values is critical to a healthy modern civilization, since economy and trade are the engine of our joint creation. We will demonstrate that the invisible hand can yet be heeled. Pigouvian subsidies and fees, for example, can be balanced to have net neutral impact on taxes (if desired).
Precaution is the heart of conservatism. We will not assume changes and technologies are safe until proven as such. We see Pareto improvements everywhere, so we have the patience to wait for super-majoritarian support before taking radical actions.
Allies will be rewarded for their loyalty, and everyone will be treated not just with ceasefires (which are a massive improvement over hot war) but also with compassion and honesty.
Rivals like China will be offered as many good faith opportunities to cooperate as we can find. We will not expect any institution to show more graciousness than we are ready to show ourselves. We will make it obvious what our rivals can do to earn our trust, and what we are willing to do in return. We will keep good faith regardless of others’ behavior, and we will secure our camels before helping our allies and rivals secure theirs.
The DOGE hack job will evolve into a benevolent parasitic process: NeoGOParty-DOGE will be funded entirely by a fraction of the savings it executes in the federal bureaucracy, but it will respect the important work those bureaucrats are doing by not cutting any services unless those services were never requested by Congress, or Congress updates its request. Similarly, if DOGE increases revenue (eg by improving the efficiency of IRS collections) it captures 5-20% of that revenue for its own discretionary budget.
National Parks are the Crown Jewels of North America. We are lucky to have an army of rangers cultivating our most beautiful lands and waters for pennies on the dollar. NeoGOParty will reinstate all rangers purged in 2025, and double the budget for purchasing and cultivating our lands for public purposes, including paying our rangers more fairly. Think of it as a stock buyback for our public lands/waters.

Good faith concession (example)

From my reading of national news [last week when I wrote this], Biden gets half the (American President) credit for Gazan ceasefire (where we all are still looking for a more permanent peace), and Trump already gets the other half credit for Gaza ceasefire plus full credit for Ukraine ceasefire proposal. My current best guess is that MAGA legitimately wants peace, so perhaps that is not a difference with the Neo-GOParty platform. It would be really nice if both American parties in the future are fighting for dovish credit. (What some would call a “race to the top”.) We issue a friendly challenge to the 47th president: negotiate peaces that are Pareto Improvements among those that did not choose war (including Ukraine and Ukrainians, Israelis, Gazans, and Russians).

Taken together, these observations gesture at the potential for a new American (and hopefully global) political movement—showing our opportunity to counter-balance MAGA's fascist consolidation of power before it turns America into a single party state, undermines the Supreme Court, and shreds the Constitution.

For example, even though I led protests against Hoover and Bush while I was a student, I now love the idea of building a coalition with open minded GOPers, Democrats, Greens, and Libertarians. For the first time I can easily imagine supporting someone like Condi (the Philosopher Queen) to defeat the 2028 MAGA Party candidate. The name of the party that hosts this new alliance isn’t nearly as important as whose support it recruits, but my starting proposal is that we all join the Republican Party on the condition that it stops enabling MAGA fascism. This does not require booting Trump from the party, but I’m guessing Trump would quit the GOP in frustration since he wants more control over everything.

In fact, I'm starting to believe that the best thing liberals like me can do to temper the rise of American fascism is to admit that in today's political/technological/social/spiritual climate, we are classical conservatives (if we wanted to name-call, we might say the MAGAins are “CINOs”). The GOPartiers, Democrats, Greens, and Libertarians that oppose fascism all want to protect the Constitution from MAGA and Russia. Perhaps it would behoove people like me who are not used to allying with Republicans to drop our egos and make it as easy as possible for antifascist (“true”) Republicans like Moki and Condi to stand up to MAGA—forming a new alliance based on patience, open mindedness, freedom, peace, free markets, and potty-trained politicians.

Who else feels ready to put aside their differences and come party in a big tent? What would make it even easier, more fun, or more efficient? Let's have a new grand old party 🥳

#DeepTakes

peace and conflict studies

The Democratic Party should join the GOP to counter MAGA