I can’t ignore the sense of unreality that I feel as I contemplate the change in my politics. “Did I move, or has the left? Has my ideology shifted, or has theirs?”

This past year has been such a revelation. A falling of scales from the eyes, I guess.

I now recognize tools of shame and control, the authoritarian framework of many politics (not necessarily the ideology, but the application) of the contemporary left. Progressivism as a culture of conformity, the intolerance for anything outside of a narrow spectrum of opinion.

Why didn't I see it before? I think, maybe, because I was (and still am) invested in fighting for the underdog, in ensuring fairness and justice and all that good stuff. I just thought the right was the enforcer of that oppression. (They still are, but through a different mode.)

Up until now, all my focus was on opposing the right while not seeing how the left was gradually becoming more and more dictatorial and punitive, more and more invested in an extremely narrow bandwidth of thought, less and less interested in freedom of thought or expression.

I’m not sure what the next steps are for any sort of socially beneficial political project in our current US left-right paradigm.

The future looks pretty freaking bleak, and I’ve always been a you-have-an-obligation-to-choose-the-lesser-of-two-evils person (and voter). Sigh.

Most of the above words originally via @MadameKempe, who has gone on the same journey this year. I’m thankful for this godforsaken Series of Tubes, which has allowed me to synthesize thoughts with friends who have independently come to similar conclusions. Again, though: Sigh.