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qimerra wrote

Hi, I'm new here! Just wanted to get this off my chest. As my politics get more radical I feel increasingly alienated and lonely. My friends are liberals, and even the most sympathetic of them are too complacent or overworked to care about leftist causes. I feel I can't fully open up to them anymore without them getting fed up with me. I'd join political groups and make some like-minded friends, but as a perpetual traveler it's hard to do. To most people around me I'm too intense, too angry, and too sensitive. I'm sure a lot of you can relate.

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Fossidarity wrote

Welcome to Raddle!

I think many people here feel like you do.

I personally feel alienated and lonely despite of my politics, my politics made me join new groups and meet new people but I still feel a huge disconnect between how I really feel and how I express myself to other people.

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existential1 wrote

This is 100% normal...unfortunately. Thankfully there's online communities and most major cities will have some group that exists. Even if your politics aren't 100% aligned with the anarchists/anarcho-somthings in your area, it's nice to have people to talk to about things past surface-level platitudes.

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Pop wrote

Your people are out there,

In my experience, just make your politics good (ie always critique yourself and grow, always as honestly as you can) and you'll find them with time

but it might mean a significant amount of waiting in the meanwhile

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existential1 wrote (edited )

What was your first, "Progressives are the problem too" realization?

EDIT: Forgot to answer for myself. For me it was learning about how American corporations skirted the embargo in WWII. That caused me to go on a research spiral of all the messed up things corporations have gotten away with, which at the time had me looking hard at Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. The fact that the US called them terrorists when oil companies literally made their traditional way of life unlivable, leaving them few options to insurrection/piracy. Then the fact that politicians (liberals included) and the MSM are fully on the advertising payroll of these same companies.

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qimerra wrote (edited )

No one moment, but Trump's victory started me on a gradual awakening. In my liberal bubble the general opinion was "Trump happened because people are stupid and ignorant," full stop, so I started listening to leftist commentators who were talking about corruption in the entire establishment and painted a more compelling picture of what was going on than "it was just bigotry". When I went freelance I used my spare time to read, and got through Capital vol. 1. I started noticing the lack of class analysis in liberal feminism. My former coworkers' smug intellectual elitism, faith in progress and love for capitalism, and belief in obvious myths like "capitalism rewards hard work". My friends calling me a pessimist when I started worrying about climate change, telling me that technology would solve everything. Realized anarchism wasn't what I thought it was and that it actually closely resembled my values. Still got a lot of reading and learning to do. :)

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existential1 wrote

Congrats for not accepting what you're bubble is talking about and doing research for yourself. That there is how people get free.

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fairilu wrote

DADT repeal

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existential1 wrote

What about that process did it for you?

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fairilu wrote

Watching people who had spent the past eight years decrying Bush's (America's) wars celebrating the military now that Obama was openly letting the gays fight them was a total "You people are disingenuous, opportunistic fucks" moment.

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existential1 wrote

Gotcha. Not that I agree with either of them on many of their views (or actions on the part of the latter), but Cornell West and Tavis Smiley used to get blasted by black twitter and a lot of centrist liberals for criticizing Obama's drone policy. So I totally see what you mean.

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Sunset_Peach wrote

I think it was pretty quick after I realized "Oh, there's a name for that stuff I don't like: capitalism!" and then someone was like "liberals are capitalists too" and I was like insert surprised pikachu face here

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existential1 wrote

Nice. That meme has really had quite a long run. Not meta to talk about memes, but my fav of this genre of "Oh" or "Suprise" or "Realization" memes is the Weebey (from the Wire) one.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Had some MDMA on Wednesday with someone I'm very close to. It was wonderful.

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EatTheRich wrote

MDMA turned my life around, but only once (the frist time I did it, every other time has been nothing new or changing so I don't plan on doing any more). It was a ton of therapy in one night. It literally cured my depression, so now my suicide will be an aggressive action in the name of liberation rather than a faint whimper in the corner of darkness.

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urg3t0ki11r151ng wrote

Reading Karl Marx's Capital in Manga form and loving it.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Life is like a hurricane Here in Duckburg Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes It's a duck-blur! Might solve a mystery Or rewrite history!

DuckTales! Woo-oo!

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I think about this theme song quite often, somehow.

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ziq wrote

I was thinking about it earlier so I started watching the new show.

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