The problem with this labeling isn't that it's lazy so much is that it in a roundabout way is true. I've long held the belief that individual persons are smarter than are given credit for and each have diverse opinions that make it impossible to put in a box and sort neatly for consumption. People as a collective though? Yeah, they're fucking dumb as a box of rocks. It's mob mentality. The more people get together, the further the collective IQ of the group drops. That's how we get single issue voters, because persons with diverse mindsets on how things should be done get whipped into a frenzy because a pet issue like "NO BLOOD FOR OIL" or "NO BABY KILLING ON MY WATCH" or whatever, and bam, ideological lynch mobs get formed, only the victims aren't people as much as they're rational thought.
What's worse is that there's a Stockholm syndrome that starts to develop. Because politics are such serious business (and if anyone really disagrees with that, go into any political flame war on the Internet and see how "civil" things are), someone who goes into a rally espousing a whole set of beliefs that's as nuanced as they are impossible to fit into a mold leaves, out of fear of disagreeing with an angry mob over what is certainly the rigid-yet-predictable belief system of the "electable" person speaking, comes out as an automaton. It's soul-crushing to think that this happens, but it does. I've fallen prey to it before, and that's why I tend to avoid rallies and speeches and identifying myself as anything but me.
That's why this process of labeling is so frustrating. On one end, it's totally false, but as we head to the macro level of analysis, it gets true. Both are equally depressing in their own ways. It points to how broken the political system is in America, why we think of political parties as teams rather than ideological ecosystems where individual persons with varying mindsets discuss how things ought to be done within the broader scope of the party's mission statement. Of course, because every candidate seems to be the same in each party, primary season is a hypocritical mudslinging session, only with the candidates all banding together behind the winner because hey, they have to beat the evil guy coming from the other party.
So that brings it all back to me, a registered Libertarian. Yes, I registered in that party because I believe in smaller government and a freer people. I believe that government taxes too much, spends even more than they should and what it does do right, it does severely inefficiently. I believe that government has also gotten their hands too deeply into our bedrooms and into our personal space. I also think that setting quotas for minorities is a bad, bad idea. That being said, smaller government to me doesn't mean no government. As much as I don't trust the government to know what's the best way to spend my tax dollars, I trust the human race even less to do what's right without any regulation whatsoever. Just look at all these banks that were deemed "too big to fail" and got bailouts just so they could give their executives bonuses. It's insulting to believe that people who are driven by greed would somehow pull a 180 and suddenly care about anyone else if Uncle Sam left them alone. It's even more insulting to believe that these stodgy old white people who've populated the good ol' boys network since before Affirmative Action would voluntarily start interviewing minorities for jobs on their own after AA was abolished.
But because my belief system is complex, I don't fit in the box the media has prepared for me as a Libertarian. That's why I don't even identify myself by party anymore. If I say I'm "Libertarian", then people assume that I need to follow some kind of playbook. That's not the cut of my jib. When someone asks, I just tell them I believe in fiscal conservatism and social liberalism as a rule, and then if they want to talk specifics, I'll talk specifics. But I'm just tired of the labeling that dominates the conversation nowadays.
