can't stop thinking about how i might still be a vaguely-socdem buzzfeed lib if my spanish teacher when i was fourteen hadn't shown us the motorcycle diaries (che guevara movie)
can't stop thinking about how i might still be a vaguely-socdem buzzfeed lib if my spanish teacher when i was fourteen hadn't shown us the motorcycle diaries (che guevara movie)
r/ fucking politics lol. That's what finally did it for me. I always leaned left but still believed in the Dems/lesser evilism out of Trump desperation in 2016.
I would go on r/politics every day. I'd read articles and comments. I had a front row seat to the #Resistance in action.
They proceeded to do nothing of value. And the "nice" and "sensible" Republicans, even the ones who could hopefully protect the integrity of the nation because they were so patriotic? They voted alongside Trump every time. Every now and then they'd make it so like Senator Collins or someone would heroically vote against something shitty but the margin would always be 50-51 so you know it was a show. Moderate Republicans literally do not exist and r/politics users should know that by reading their own sub lol.
Paying attention to politics long enough radicalizes you.
The /r/politics position on Bidenism pre-super Tuesday VS post-super tuesday was also interesting to watch lol
Yeah, /r/politics was genuinely kind of okay for a bunch of liberals for, like, a month. Then the Great Centrist Merge happened and suddenly the only acceptable opinion was full 100% uncritical support for Joe Biden. Guarantee some money changed hands somewhere.
I'm not even sure. I think it's very possible /r/politics simply bought into the propaganda that "differences are hashed out in primaries." It's like the Stalinist "dissent in the politburo makes us weak" position, except for democrats lmao
There's no way it isn't some sort of op. I have r/enoughsandersspam users tagged, and now they dominate most threads, especially ones about former primary candidates.
Also wait didn't the dems spend a bunch of money pushing articles on /r/politics in 2016 or am I tripping
Yup. I was already left leaning when it happened, but the true, final nail in the coffin was their whole treatment of Tara Reade. IIRC I saw that first surface on some leftist sub first, went around a few other leftist places, then decided to see what politics was doing about it (I had stopped regularly going there a few months back).
Wasn't in Hot, wasn't in Top for Day or Week....
Was in Controversial. Top comment something about her writing some piece that was favorable to Russia or Putin. Truly solidified to me what sort of people many of them were.
best articles are generally always in controversial for that sub. if it's not shitting on trump or praising the dnc superstars, downvotes away!
Agreed. I do still dumpster dive in there from time to time to see how they react to reality (the kente cloth stunt Dems pulled, AOC going after party leadership, anything suggesting that this election was a significant blow to them for not winning seats, etc).
So I guess I just go there for the schadenfreude, really
This was basically me. I mean, I have some vaguely leftist history preceding 2016. I spent weeks at Occupy and had been going to antiwar rallies since I was 17. I always knew our government was fucked and unresponsive to the people, but I never had a systemic analysis which explained why. So I was a radlib, I guess.
When Trump got in I was like "oh shit oh fuck" for a couple reasons. In hindsight, it is clear the right was splitting off into their own alternate reality throughout most of the Obama administration, but that alternate reality seemed like a fringe thing which could safely be ignored. After Trump, it became obvious that it couldn't be ignored. Everyone from right to left became convinced overnight that this ascending Milo Yiannopoulos / Richard Spencer / Alex Jones wing of the right might actually become the new reality. Additionally, the corruption had become more blatant and outwardly criminal than ever before.
So I joined the libs in freaking out for two years and did everything I could to support the bLuE wAvE in 2018. The hysterical media environment had turned me into a full blown Russiagate crank. 2019 came, a new Congress was seated, the Mueller Report was in our hands, and there was a pile of crimes so high impeachment should have been a no-brainer - but Pelosi wasn't having it. Support for impeachment had hit a high water mark and rallies took place in over 80 cities, and she wouldn't budge. Everything the media had been saying for the past two years basically said the Republic was hanging in the balance, and finally the Democrats had the power to do something about it, and they did nothing. Even the natsec ghouls were saying now is the time, and they did nothing. This broke me for good. They couldn't make it any clearer that they don't give a fuck, and everything they've done since then only helped prove the point.
These people had the biggest freakout I've ever seen in my life about an existential threat to Liberalism occurring around the world. This caused me to try to be the most effective and devout Liberal I could possibly be. Hell, I started reading Montesquieu, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Paine, the Federalist Papers and shit, in addition to reading the Liberal media every single day. I became more Liberal than you could possibly imagine, and from that galaxy brain plateau of Liberal enlightenment, I could only see the Liberal leadership as a bunch of slimy, self-interested pied pipers leading us to certain destruction and subjugation.
Throughout this period, I started listening to the Marxists because the Marxists not only identified all of these harmful tendencies, but had a robust system of analysis which explained exactly why these things happen.
Legit, partially me too. I posted my full story elsewhere in the thread, but the leftists in that sub that pushed back to the DNC shills relentlessly over the years tremendously helped me shake the last bits of my liberal ideology. That and reading all the insane shit Trump did and leftists showing how dems/republicans did most of the same types of shit trump was doing historically, or how they failed to do anything on the real atrocities trump was doing.
I try and return the favor now by always sourcing and arguing how shitty the dem arguments are for the random lurkers reading. Repeat factual things enough and people will begin to learn and hopefully go down the same paths we did.