As someone who was in high school for 9/11 and the Iraq War, my first conscious radicalization was being anti-Iraq war. Those were rough times and I specifically remember how alienating it felt to have that position. That said, there were a few outspoken politicians, protests, movement etc.
Now, I just feel fucking gaslit. This conflict has genuinely caused me to question my own sanity. I'm constantly re-watching / reading and listening to media that discusses the role of USA and NATO in this conflict because it's just so buried. It has really broken my brain.
Another great point. We all have the tools within us to see bullshit. We are programmed from day one to trust a higher authority over our own intuition
I do too. The bush administration was my jump off point too. I remember feeling like the Dems weren't as radical as I would like, but they were at least anti war, anti imperialism. At least on the ground. Obviously that was not the case in government. I was young, and I believed meeting once a week at the same street corner to silently hold a sign with a clever saying on it was really sticking it to the man. I mean It had to be, right? We were getting coal rolled, dirty looks, middle fingers, the works. I even went to a big rally in Chicago, like my hero, Abbie Hoffman. It felt so electric!
Then life started getting more busy, and I wasn't able to attend as much. A couple years passed and I realized that all that letter writing and standing on a sidewalk didn't do anything except fill me with a false sense of accomplishment. Nothing changed. Nobody was held to account. Obama was elected, and I thought "here come the prison sentences!"
Hope? More like "nope".
I have considered myself a leftist since I was about 15, but I also took some of the bait on the trump/Mueller thing. But the more that came out, the more I realized that the whole country was a fish on the line, and corporate media was just stringing us along while they picked our pockets and made us fearful and anxious. I even got into a couple of heated political conversations with my wife during that time. Then I realized that nothing was more important than our relationship. Not being right in a theoretical argument about leftist politics, not getting her to hate all the right people, and learn all of this extremely online crap.
We all were able to predict that the Biden presidency was going to be more lame than the Mueller report, so her and I voted third party in the national, and we voted the best we could locally.
That's where it stands today. Life is too short to get too worked up over this shit. The Biden administration is objectively worse on most of the issues I care about, and there's no sign of Dems changing course. I don't even really believe in electoralism on that scale anyway.
The difference between the democratic party of 2000 and the one we have now (even though it's largely the same people) really felt like a rug pull
As someone who was in high school for 9/11 and the Iraq War, my first conscious radicalization was being anti-Iraq war. Those were rough times and I specifically remember how alienating it felt to have that position. That said, there were a few outspoken politicians, protests, movement etc.
Now, I just feel fucking gaslit. This conflict has genuinely caused me to question my own sanity. I'm constantly re-watching / reading and listening to media that discusses the role of USA and NATO in this conflict because it's just so buried. It has really broken my brain.
I hope other people understand this feeling.
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Another great point. We all have the tools within us to see bullshit. We are programmed from day one to trust a higher authority over our own intuition
I do too. The bush administration was my jump off point too. I remember feeling like the Dems weren't as radical as I would like, but they were at least anti war, anti imperialism. At least on the ground. Obviously that was not the case in government. I was young, and I believed meeting once a week at the same street corner to silently hold a sign with a clever saying on it was really sticking it to the man. I mean It had to be, right? We were getting coal rolled, dirty looks, middle fingers, the works. I even went to a big rally in Chicago, like my hero, Abbie Hoffman. It felt so electric!
Then life started getting more busy, and I wasn't able to attend as much. A couple years passed and I realized that all that letter writing and standing on a sidewalk didn't do anything except fill me with a false sense of accomplishment. Nothing changed. Nobody was held to account. Obama was elected, and I thought "here come the prison sentences!"
Hope? More like "nope".
I have considered myself a leftist since I was about 15, but I also took some of the bait on the trump/Mueller thing. But the more that came out, the more I realized that the whole country was a fish on the line, and corporate media was just stringing us along while they picked our pockets and made us fearful and anxious. I even got into a couple of heated political conversations with my wife during that time. Then I realized that nothing was more important than our relationship. Not being right in a theoretical argument about leftist politics, not getting her to hate all the right people, and learn all of this extremely online crap.
We all were able to predict that the Biden presidency was going to be more lame than the Mueller report, so her and I voted third party in the national, and we voted the best we could locally.
That's where it stands today. Life is too short to get too worked up over this shit. The Biden administration is objectively worse on most of the issues I care about, and there's no sign of Dems changing course. I don't even really believe in electoralism on that scale anyway.
The difference between the democratic party of 2000 and the one we have now (even though it's largely the same people) really felt like a rug pull