Thread by @jadednation70

During the Christmas gatherings I was confronted by a liberal family member about me 'becoming Republican' after having been one of the biggest lefties she's known. Soapbox time:
I was a lefty. I thought I was a member of a group that distrusted big government. That /1

distrusted big business. That distrusted big pharma. That distrusted the security state. That recognized that war is a tool of the elite. That believed in bodily autonomy. That believed in protecting children and cherishing the innocence of adolescence. That believed that trad /2

gender roles were confining, antiquated and oppressive. That stood up for the working class. That believed in rights inherent to *all people.* That empowered, not enabled, the less fortunate, the marginalized, the damaged.

Starting around 2015 I saw more opportunities /3

to find common ground with people outside the group than ever in my lifetime. Instead of embracing these opportunities, the group took to altering their positions to become less welcoming. Trump, and then Covid, turbocharged this, and it became undeniable to me that the group /4

I had thought I was in alignment with had no real ideology other than opposition. I had remained right where I'd always been on most of my ideology while the group had completely changed around me because the 'wrong people' had begun to come around to some of the ideals it had /5

long claimed to hold.
I'm not a lefty anymore. Not because I changed, but because leftism in the US was revealed as a sham. And yes, since then some of my ideals have shifted. Escaping the group meant rethinking some of the ideas that had been implanted in me after becoming a /6

card-carrying member; ideas that were dogma that I'd absorbed simply because 'this is what good lefties think,' ideas that I couldn't logically defend. And I've since realized that leftism in the USA is utterly reliant on a system that is rotten to its core & almost certainly /7

unsalvageable. Despite most lefties acknowledging this when pressed, they still remain steadfast in their belief that the only solution is to 'fix' it so ever-more reliance can be placed upon it. And 'fixing' it, despite being often couched in radical sounded rhetoric, is /8

never revolutionary - especially since Trump - and always winds up amounting to tinkering around the edges and forming cults of personality around charlatan political figures.
So yeah. I'm not a Republican. And I'm not a liberal or a lefty. And this is because I *know* where I /9

stand again, while people who are members of these groups have to check in daily to figure out what they're supposed to be believing in at any given moment.

Honestly, she didn't know what to do with any of that. I think she was ready to head back to the city & her bubble. /10fin