The issue on here, on Lemmy, where we're speaking, is that many leftists don't care to make a strong distinction between 'flawed liberal moderates' and literal fascists. A constant refrain on here is the idea that things have been getting worse since, apparently, the inception of liberalism itself, and steadily spiraling towards fascism, so what does it matter if fascism happens today or twenty years from now? Electing non-fascists just puts off the inevitable. And, for reasons both personal and philosophical, I find that an immensely repugnant way of thinking, not to mention strategically and historically unsound. "Trump is worse than Harris - so what?" Fucking people suffer because of it, millions, including many whose lives will be ruined or ended, and for no gain to marginalized folk anywhere.
I came back from a family reunion discussing the very real threat of ICE against my relatives. I spent the past week struggling with my health insurance over recent policy changes (a dive I'll have to take again soon, since nothing was resolved, for better or worse - gotta love the run-around). I've had half-a-decade of mental health progress unraveled by six months of this administration, and all while I watch foreign affairs get worse and worse under the influence of the wannabe fascists who were elected. And then I come on here to blow off steam, and I find many people who claim to be leftists and who so 'boldly' stood against the anti-fascist coalition candidate in the name of 'solidarity' proceeding to express no solidarity with anyone who's suffering or going to suffer under this regime, either under the banner of "Things will get so bad that they'll HAVE to get better" (accelerationism) or "They're Americans mostly, so they deserve it anyway" (some weird form of campism).
I'm further left than 95% of Americans. I'm further left than 95% of Democrats. But because I have the audacity of regarding harm reduction as mandatory and not optional - a position which I take on abstract policy, but which is also strengthened by my own uncertain future under this fucking regime - I'm a turbolib, a shitlib, a moderate, a conservative, a fascist, a genocide supporter, and a Zionist.
Lemmy is the fringe, and while I definitely point to issues like Leftists choosing to abstain and let the greater evil win, I do so not because that's the biggest problem in society in general (in the broader situation, leftists could've saved us in 2024 - but so could a dozen other fucking groups that screwed the pooch in 2024, the DNC et co highest on that list second only to the actual, literal fascists), but because it's a problem that, on here, still meets with a resistance to acknowledge that it was a bad fucking move that millions of marginalized people are going to pay the price for - only a few of whom are those who fucking sat out and let fascism win in this country.
I find celebrations of that repugnant, and, for that matter, exhausting.
Aren't current affairs and the potential of being told to fuck off and die on my kitchen floor of a chronic disease exhausting enough without having to add people on my nominal left cheering the whole fucked situation on, because they bizarrely imagine the oppression of marginalized individuals as some kind of blow against the oppressors?
Fuck me. Guess this is really just a rant.
Any time someone is being entirely unreasonable, self-destructive as a leftist, and inhumanly callous to the harm of absolutism, I find it easier to assume they are either a troll or someone who is having a mental health crisis of their own and in any case, I need to walk away from them.
We're all living in hell right now just for the crime of paying attention and having a heart. It's stressful, and I have to assume some of us are going to weaken from time to time. I say let's try to give each other the grace to be utter assholes once in a while, and still smile back when someone is having a good day for once.
I wish I had your optimism. I grew up knowing too many nice, intelligent people who believe in blinkered conservative pigshit of the worst kind to think that leftists would be immune.
Many of these people are not bad people at heart. But I accept that, largely, they absolutely believe what they're saying.
Ideological insanity knows no boundaries.
That being said, I'm generally not put off by people being assholes. I've been cussed out by folks and easily not held a grudge (at least, not about that - God knows I can hold grudges on other matters). Hell, as any number of people can attest to, I have plenty of asshole moments myself. It's when the assholery comes not from attitude, but from the construction of a coherent-if-counterproductive-and-hypocritical worldview that sanctions fascism and mass-murder because "Libs bad" that I get bent out of shape.
I want to be Kerensky and say no enemies to my left. But every fucking day I'm confronted on here with the fact that that just isn't true.
Well, you know - this is the internet. Infinite keyboards make monkeys of us all. Sometimes the only sane answer is to block a fool and talk to real people until you feel sane again.
There are paid trolls here on lemmy, I know their schedule. Those aren't real people in the sense of being a normal person. They are paid to cause chaos and in fighting.
As someone who has been unreasonable and self destructive when having a breakdown about living on a dying planet surrounded by psychotic apes: I appreciate your understanding.