It's a situation that I have been expecting for a while, but I wasn't fully ready to accept it. Specifically it's one of my LGBTQ friends who honestly believes in the democrats will protect them and their partner. I have tried to make the point that both parties are eroding any sort of civility towards all marginalized groups, but fear seems to drive them more than logical observations. They make the excuse that change doesn't happen over night and that the left continues to grow and will have meaningful affects down the road. I fundamentally just don't agree with that idea and vocalize it regularly. More and more it is ending up in a circular argument where I am painted as unrealistic and my rhetoric (leftist rhetoric) is doing more harm than good because it promotes distrust in the only system we have to work with. I try to tell them it's kind of the whole point. We gotta start somewhere if we want to see a better, more representative system, but they are so hung up on the immediate future while simultaneously saying that my idealistic feelings are shortsighted and I cant expect change in the immediate future... The double-talk is wild, I know.
I am trying my hardest to stop from engaging at this point because on the most basic level we agree on a lot of stuff, but they are just way to wrapped up in the fear mongering of the democratic party. They know that the two party system is broken, they know that something drastic needs to change, but they also think that they are powerless to do anything except choose the lesser evil. It pains me because I am watching them do the same shit past generations have done, where they give up on their ideals for the sake of preserving the current status quo that they benefit from. I am legitimately watching them imply "fuck you, got mine" under the guise of civic duty and I hate it. I want nothing more than to be able to finally say "I told you so" without being a smug asshole about it and ruining our friendship.
Thanks for reading my rant. It's probably a bit disjointed, but the frustration is boiling over and I needed to vent to the only group of people that seems to understand the hopelessness of being a disenfranchised leftist.
Completely agree on that one. I always try to not imply anything, but being a white man, sometimes things slip thru. Sorry.
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Hey, I'm sorry, but I need to hammer this in, because brainworms burrow deep and I'd like to make sure you understand yours. The issue isn't simply that you implied something you didn't mean to imply, that's true so far as it goes, but the more important part is what you implied. That's the problem. If you take away from this experience "I need to write more carefully on the internet so people don't read anything into what I've written" that's an ok lesson, but it isn't the one I'm hopeful you'll learn. My hope is that you'll come away with something more like "wow, I seem to have some internal feeling that men are morally stronger than women, I wonder where that came from and how I can go about unlearning this feeling."
I want you to deprogram the underlying misogyny, not just learn to disguise it better, you know? Still, thanks for admitting fault, that's hard to do on the internet.