Think maybe we could actually get the Republicans on board with net neutrality?
There are folks on the left who aren't on board with net neutrality. I'd say the common ground between left and right is about having viable competition, which we don't have. But we kinda tried that with the 1996 telecom act and that failed.
I'd rather municipalities get in the broadband access game as a utility and be transparent about costs and utilization and provide interconnection to an ISP upstream at standard tariffed rates.
Attempts to expand broadband service run by municipalities forcefully opposed by AT&T and Comcast.
I am anti-net-neutrality for the same reasons I'm for de-funding the police: there are smarter ways than direct remote control for solving certain issues. Starlink (for example) does tenfold more for a neutral internet than any FCC ever has. A neutral internet does not require the California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act.
Smarter ways that don't work don't help. There might be smarter ways to prevent monopoly abuse than anti-trust laws (and net neutrality is idea of the same category like other competition laws), but monopolists have a lot of power to counteract those ways once they are already entrenched. They never play fair.
Google tried with Fiber. It went so well because of fair entrenched incumbents, didn't it?
As someone who has done this in these states I think you should do it, or at least try! If you can get enough customers to matter then we should definitely talk. It's harder than it sounds.
The big hold up is that Trump is against it, and very few Republican office holders are willing to go against him regardless of how far his position is from what their constituents want.
Ideally, picking the President over your own constituents on too many issues would lead to your constituents electing someone else at the next opportunity, but the Republican Senate leadership is able to block any bills from the House on those issues so that they don't even come up for a Senate vote thus saving Republican Senators from having to cast votes that would either annoy Trump or their constituents.
Maybe if you build your ISP in Kentucky, and explicitly tell anyone who complains that "thanks to Mitch McConnell keeping net neutrality from a Senate vote, it is legal" it might help.
No Republicans there will even understand the point your trying to make, or at best they will think you are foolish. After 40 years of demonization of political opponents, it's all about "with us or against us."
There's also a significant number of leftists who feel the same way about liberals, though this is a tiny chunk of them that speaks far louder than their numbers are, and who do not hold power in proportion to their loudness.
Let's stop with this false equivalency.
One party has done everything in its power to gerrymander, discredit the electoral process, and put lobbyists in power. One party has consistently appealed to racism. One party has appealed to discrediting the value of effective government.
The Road Rage Party ... has seemed an appropriate way to describe the GOP in recent years.
> in its power to gerrymander
Republicans (I doubt anyone will complain about this one)
> discredit the electoral process
Primarily Democrats (National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, concern over mail-in voting prior to 2015, renewed concern over the past month or so), with some Republican (concern over mail-in ballots over the past half-year or so)
> put lobbyists in power
Honestly not paying much attention here
> One party has consistently appealed to racism
Democrats (probably the most prominent recent thing being Biden's "you ain't black", but there's plenty more)
> One party has appealed to discrediting the value of effective government
Not sure about the "appealed to", but between impeachment with no evidence and The Squad, I have to give this one to Democrats as well.
Listen to leftists, and they will be pointing out these cases, because the Democratic leadership and power structure is consistent in support of militarism, whether or not the Democrats are in power, and leftists give them hell for it.
Can you find diversity of opinion within political parties? Of course. But pointing to diversity of opinion is a hugely different thing than the leadership of parties swapping positions I'm supposed ideals like "fiscally conservative" depending on whether or not they are doing the spending.
This isn't a uniquely Republican point of view, nor is it as prevalent among the Republican voter base as you imply.
Have you lived up north recently? Specifically the so-called "tech hubs" are filled with vile and judgemental people who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of groupthink and monoculture.
However, when it comes to rural areas, areas that don't even have leftists but may have a few liberals, my experience is that the anti-lib stance is the overriding view, along with being pro-gun, pro-God (at least in theory), and pro-fossil fuel. It's a cultural war more than a political war, in-tribe versus out-of-tribe. For Democrats, the culture war does not extend to swapping values on the national stage depending on who is in power, it only seems to be loca control of housing.
> vile and judgemental people who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of groupthink and monoculture
Just start quoting Jordan Peterson and save us the implications and dancing around your point.