Hello, internet! My name is Emerican Johnson, and I am freshly shorn.
I had a haircut today and my beard was a casualty, so...
That's gone now, and my ears look much larger now, so...
I feel ashamed and embarrassed and I've lost hipster cred.
I've been sick for like two weeks, so I was sick in my last video, and I'm kind of sick now also, as well.
So bear with me as I...
...sweat and my microphone keeps falling off my ear.
Hello, liberals! This video is a message and a greeting specifically for you.
I used to be a liberal, just like you and before that,
I used to be a right-wing libertarian for almost 30 years until
I became a liberal and then, from being a liberal, I then moved on to what I would consider to be true leftism.
So yeah, I've come full circle.
Well, not full circle. I guess 180.
I don't know how circles work...
I believe that liberals are...
...by and large...
...good people.
Okay? If you're watching this and you consider yourself to be a liberal,
if you were somebody who supported Hillary or Bernie during the last election,
if you're somebody who opposes Donald Trump today,
and you call yourself a progressive or a liberal, you're probably a good person and you probably
believe a lot of things that are not accurate, just like I used to believe, about capitalism and about...
...the United States of American way of doing things and our government and our society.
You probably believe things that you've been told your entire life, taken for granted...
...that might not be true, and...
this is really difficult to discuss and it's really difficult to...
...acknowledge and it took me a long time to wrap my head around it but...
The problems that you have as a liberal with society...
...are baked into the system that we have.
Okay, so when you talk about inequality,
when you talk about wealth disparity,
when you talk about racism,
when you talk about the gender gap,
and homophobia...
and all of the things that that make people in the United States of America suffer,
and so many people in the United States of America suffer,
and people in other countries, in other parts of the world suffer.
Because of the systems that the United States of America were really founded on.
So there are plenty of problems with the United States of America, with Western society, with capitalism.
That's not news to anyone even if you're a...
Die-hard Democrat liberal, you know that there are problems in this world, okay? So I'm not telling anything you there,
but here's what might be new for you, okay? And here's what really pushed me to the true left.
It's not so much seeing the problems.
Okay? The problems, like I said, they've always been there, they've always been evident.
But what pushed me to the left was the hope that it gives me.
What pushed me to the left was realizing that there is another path that humans can take,
that could eliminate the suffering and the disparity and the inequality.
There is a way for us to live where we can truly come together, work together, support each other
and embrace what I believe is the true nature of humanity.
I do believe that humans in our hearts are
altruistic,
socially oriented,
communally oriented
people, who like to work together and we like to build things together...
and a capitalist or a right-wing libertarian would tell you that the only reason that
humans have accomplished anything in history is because we are greedy and we want something for ourselves
and we build skyscrapers and we build corporations to elevate ourselves
so that people can have more money and so the people can have more power...
and I just don't buy that concept, because I am a creator myself
and there are lots of things that I've created and wish to create that have nothing to do with getting more money.
If life is better for other people in my community,
my life is gonna be better as well.
If those people that are sleeping on the street have homes to live in,
there's gonna be less crime, there's gonna be less disease.
There are gonna be less problems in my community.
If gay people can get married, if black people can get a fair chance at...
...succeeding in life,
my life is going to be better!
I truly believe that, y'know? We're all gonna be better off if we work together and...
...strive together for something greater.
There's so much more to talk about and that's why I started this YouTube channel.
I cannot convince you to
choose the left in one video, but if anything I've said in this video has piqued your interest
or if you're interested in learning more about this new perspective...
I encourage you to click the Subscribe button and walk with me for a few days, for a few weeks...
to watch some videos as I start to produce them and...
ask questions, y'know? Like, leave some comments, y'know? We could talk about this.
and if there's anything that you want me to discuss or if there's anything that you're...
curious about, my political journey or my perspective or anything like that, let me know.
I want to make this sort of an interactive thing. I want to build a community here.
Whether you agree with me or not,
I want my ideas to be challenged, and I hope that I can challenge some of yours.
So, that's all I'm going to say for this video. I just wanted to introduce myself to you, the liberals at home and...
invite you to come with me and have some more discussion about this, because it's something that's really important to me
and I think that if you give it a chance, it could be very important to you as well.
I'm gonna leave it at that. I don't want this to be another 27 minute video, like my first one.
Once again, I am Emerican Johnson, this is Non-Compete. You can check out my blog at non-compete.com and read some articles
related to some of what we talked about today.
I'm gonna have to figure out a way to get my microphone to better adhere to my enormous ears...
And I'm gonna start growing my beard back out now, so thanks for watching.
