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.