I suppose what changed for me this election cycle was the loss of the illusion that Dems, broadly speaking, were on 'our side', in my naive little brain. The R's were the bad guys, a nice consistent evil. Now it turns out that a huge % of the D's are just as bad, if not worse.

Watching the liberals go mask off - I used to call myself a liberal, or leftist, not knowing much I'd use those terms interchangably. Generic good little soldier, mid-thirties Bernie voter in 2016, voted Hillary like I should. R's bad!

I know a guy who got a promo and bought a sports car; he turned into a rabid Pete guy. Seething, constant sneering contempt for anyone making less than him. The Pete cult in general, utterly disgusting, utterly dismaying - the Log Cabin Republicans.

I watched the Warren cult metastisize around older millenial and GenX academics who wanted a gold star from Warren, and/or were just Hillary dead-enders. Laughably awful, manipulated. I have more sympathy for these, they mostly meant well and their thing turned out to be a lie.

I don't understand the KHive stuff. Klob is an abuser, an objectively awful human being, and people were all YAY KLOB even though she's a known abuser. That was before the Biden people began making excuses for his abuse.

I used to be a lolbertarian so I had sympathy for the Yang Gang and still do. Whatever, it's all good there.

But the most consistent thing was constant leftward and downward punching on Bernie and his people - turns out most of these Dems who were 'on my side' were sneering classists, who clearly aren't friends with any pizza delivery guys or UPS drivers, much less military dudes

Most of the people who, for most of my life I thought (ha!) were on 'our side' against a common enemy turned out to be genuinely awful, evil people with genuinely awful, evil policies. Just more of a mask or more lies to seem 'better than the Republicans'.

This is mostly a product of 2020 having a truly contested primary with a wide variety of candidates, which allowed us to get a percentage breakdown of basically who was fucking awful, what demographic was awful, and what their awful worldview was.

It's easy to think it's all good and VOTE BLUE WHATEVER when it's just Bernie vs Hilary vs Trump; sure, Bernie lost but we're mostly all in it together, vote like a good little soldier. When it's a bunch of shitlords being shitlords in 2020 you get no illusions of commonality.

Democrats, it turns out, are not the 'liberal party'; they're not even vaguely left. In fact, they hate left politics beyond the weird idpol posturing and signaling you get from your crying victim Warren cultists whining about snake emojis - all virtue signaling, no fight.

Yes, I know to the actual leftists who follow me this is not news and it's hardly shocking, but for me this cycle was a huge eye-opener.

Perhaps the worst thing of all was the generational breakdown by preference.

Finding out that the nice grandmas who don't like Republicans and are on 'your side' actually want you to die on a world on fire, and don't give a shit at all, at all at all, about your UPS driver friends, that's a mindfuck. Around 45 years old there's a break and that's stark.

Watching bluecheck pundits do their level best to maintain their positions in the DC shitshow - a shitshow I lived in for a decade and abandoned in 2010 - was just atrocious. The way they react in particular to black women criticizing them is comical and was impossible to ignore.

Now, whatever - again, these people fucking suck, and I'm only just finding out about it, but I think discovering that the 'liberal party' in America amounts to a terrifyingly right-wing, red-baiting group of monsters who don't actually want to give anyone health care is O_o

Americans under 45 are overwhelmingly Not Shitty, based on the data of the positions they support, the views they advocate for, behaviors etc. Even breaking down by cultural geography, the 'youth' (under 45 is young, lawl) are markedly less awful than their elders.

When I grew up, Republicans were constantly red-baiting. Now Democrats do it. And I'm supposed to take it seriously when BOO SCARY RUSSIA was an evil R talking point? Among other things. The 'big bad' changes, the merry-go-round continues, and these people are fucking idiots.

That has probably been the biggest issue I've had to come to terms with in this cycle: how utterly ahistorical the average citizen is. What happened even five years ago is lost in time. The idea that voting for a war that killed millions should have consequences? How weird!

Anyway, at the start of this shit I was all 'evil fascists suck', now I'm like 'turns out the evil shitty people were in the democratic party too' and it's absolutely exhausting, given that as a class traitor/space tyrant I have a ton of working class friends

Anyhoo a lot of the Dems turn out to be just absolutely awful people, made more infuriating by the fact that they preen and posture about being 'left' and being morally superior to the Republicans when they're just as bad and liars/hypocrites, to boot.

It's one thing to be all smugly superior and condescendingly academic, bragging on your gold stars and your fancy degrees, but if you haven't actually read a fucking book about politics and history it's as relevant as crying about snake emojis and playing the victim.

Anyhoo, this is my Bernie mourning thread. This cycle I discovered that Dems are far, far, faaaaar worse than I have ever imagined; they have taken their masks off and mostly they disgust me as much as the fascist confederate nazi shit.

The chuds are evil; they want a white ethnostate, same as they have for 400 years, there's nothing new with the scions of the Slave Lords of Barbados.

But it turns out that neoliberals are just as disgusting, utterly disgusting, and they lie - to themselves, first and foremost.

I think that's what bothers me the most; the reason why the neoliberal garbage infecting the Dem party, and your common boomer Dem, spends so much time punching downward and punching leftward is that they do not want to be reminded of how right-wing they are.

Basically, they attack Bernie et al because actually trying to implement the lefty values the Dems claim to represent - equal rights, health care, worker protection - would actually impact the Common Boomer Dem's bottom line - taxes would go up, Stuff Would Change, and nope!

They reserve their vileness particularly for those of us attempting to fight for these ideals they themselvess profess, because actually fighting for those ideals instead of 'welp sorry guys republicans suck no can do, blame them' reveals the lie of their real positions.

Anyway, fuck'em~