Another Dead Unicorn: About Jo Jorgensen’s Anti-Racism Tweet

For those who make their homes on the outside of mainstream politics, it was the tweet that rocked the libertarian world:

Being on the outside does not necessarily mean you are a libertarian. But that does not mean that the Libertarian Party is not worth observing. They are the most prominent third party in America today, with growing membership, and ballot access that is the envy of other alternative parties. Libertarianism may not be your brand of alternative politics, but it is alternative politics nonetheless. Their success or failure contains lessons and warnings that all other alternative parties can learn from as they seek to take on mainstream politics.

A Battle for the Soul of the Libertarian Party

There has been somewhat of a civil war brewing inside the Libertarian Party for some time. The “adults” in the party are fond of slogans like “libertarians bring together the best of the Left and the best of the Right and leave out all of the bad.” This has been criticized by many as being a mealy-mouthed, middle-of-the-road compromise when what the people want is a true alternative. Alternatively, advocates of a principle approach are written off as imposing an impractical purity test.

Would libertarianism be defined by compromise or principle? At the Party’s nominating convention, Jo Jorgensen emerged as a sort of consensus nominee. She didn’t represent the best of principled libertarianism, but neither did she represent the worst of the mealy-mouthed, virtue-signalling, mainstream wannabes.

For myself, I was hopeful. I hoped that she would do our ideas proud and at least hold the fort as a viable alternative for future election cycles. After all, 2020 was always going to be about the incumbent. It’s not really the year for alternative viewpoints to break through. (Although the coronavirus pandemic has created opportunities that remain unseized.)

For principled libertarians, that hope evaporated on July 10th with Jorgensen’s anti-racism tweet. Some have defended her words as simply restating the Party platform. Others say we mustn’t let simple phrases be co-opted by our enemies and she’s trying to wrest the words back from the Neo-Marxists who dominate the BLM movement. I say her error is unforgivable.

There is a trend in copywriting that pervades my industry (advertising) and it drives me nuts. The idea is that we should use prepackaged words and phrases that are already pregnant with meaning. If we do this, we can say more with less, we can spend less time explaining and more time slinging that sales-y info. The problem is that rather than a becoming a writer’s shortcut for explaining, it often becomes a reader’s shortcut for thinking. Readers glaze over in their minds as they encounter an unending stream of tired clichés. Do you remember the creepy lockdown ads that all used the same copy? It felt like a conspiracy theory. In reality, it was a demonstration of the kind of foothold lazy clichés enjoy in the minds of ad-writers.

For Jorgensen, if she had wanted to engage her readers in a thought-provoking approach to the problems of our day, she should have avoided clichés at all costs. Instead, she reached for the closest available word-package: “we must be actively anti-racist.” It, like all other clichés, comes comes pregnant with meaning.

Losing the Unicorn

Our mainstream politics is becoming more polarized. One phenomenon of this reality is how two groups can see the same thing and draw deeply entrenched and opposite conclusions. The same tweet from president Trump can be indisputable proof that he is a) a clown, or b) a 4-D Chess Wizard Messiah. Such is the case with the phrase deployed in Jorgensen’s tweet. It is pregnant with meanings that are deeply entrenched and opposite. The question that concerns the practical politician is not “whose meaning is right?” but “are the meanings reconcilable?”

The unicorn of American politics right now is the answer to a question: what, if anything, can be found in common with the warring factions in America? What, if anything, can we all rally around? Everyone is looking for it. It would be like discovering the One Ring To Rule Them All. The compromise contingent of the Libertarian Party (there are adjacent factions to be found in the major parties as well) keeps trying to find it somewhere in the middle ground. Jorgensen’s tweet shows us why they will never find it there.

Her tweet represents an attempt to pander to one side of the war while engaging the other. The problem with playing to both sides from the middle is that, whatever you find there, once you hold it up, the two sides will see opposite things. Dialog is impossible right now. The “conversations” that we are being encouraged to have right now are impossible. And when dialog and conversations are off the table, reason is off the table. And when reason is off the table, only force remains. If you want unite the urban left with the rural right through reason, you are embarking on a fool’s errand of herculean proportions.

This episode has killed my old hopes, but not without birthing new ones. I hope that the sober reality of our current political environment will continue to dawn on people. Political unity through reason is dead. It is better to stop trying to force unity and allow for a more peaceful coexistence, perhaps, built upon a government that is committed to leaving people the hell alone. There are ways to accomplish this, but the answers won’t be found on the current political spectrum. I hope that alternative political parties will continue to grow their influence in America and I hope that they recommit themselves to giving the people what we really want: an alternative.