But yes, I mostly agree. Most of the people I know who would identify as libertarian, suddenly become much more comfortable with government action when the government is wanting to do something they like, or is even run by their person. Once "the other side" gets in control, they seem to rediscover their libertarian principles. Seeing this was a good reminder to me that we should look at actions, not words, when deciding who to vote for.
Truth is that people say they believe a lot of things but don't act as if those beliefs are true. I think people like labels more than beliefs.
A common one is how common it is to say that all politicians are corrupt. I know people that say that like it's a catch phrase and then when we talk post voting they vote in incumbents. ¯\ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
It was an absolute shitshow. Actually, a shitshow would have been cleaner.
Immediately AT&T rolls out gigabit internet, but not everywhere. I was in one of the small towns with gig and the previous renter had AT&T. AT&T literally cut the lines into the apartment instead of disconnecting them, causing me to have a $50 install fee (the technician was clearly also annoyed).
Then Google, AT&T, and Comcast got into a big fight and it got political. Politicians would talk about how Google coming in was preventing competition (I shit you not) and attacking the little guys. Then a judge ruled that Google couldn't operate on telephone polls because Google would "cause danger to employees" and "be a union violation" (not the unions saying these things, it was AT&T. Obviously this made people think the unions were blocking things and continued to get mad at unions)[0]. So basically one of a Comcast and AT&T technician had to be there while Google would place in fiber and you know how it goes.
It was a literal circus and the whole while it was politicized and misinformation was spreading like wildfire. Big Tech screwing over the little guys. Big Tech coming after the public utilities (never happened). Unions making everything impossible. Something about Big Tech and liberals/trans/gays taking over at some point. Like the on the ground conversations that would happen were mindbogglingly dumb. It actually was hard to figure out what was actually going on because every person and news article would have a unique story to tell. But the weirdest thing to me is about how nearly everyone I knew was a self-proclaimed Libertarian who hated government yet was licking their boots ad propping them up because they didn't want those gay/liberal/furry/godless/<insert random insult> techies rolling in decreasing competition and destroying the free market. That's when I truly started to believe that there's no such thing as a Libertarian (or any other cleanly encapsulated idea, but Libertarians are in your face), it's just a label. Because I watched anti-government free market devotees bend over backwards to protect monopolies and not even have a clue of the cognitive dissonance. It also made me really pay attention to how this happens more often than we care to think (including how we ourselves do it).
[0] https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2017/11/22/judge-rule...