I'm attempting to reply to @Katana314 & @cubedsteaks but I really don't know what I'm doing. Katana, you say your post is too long for the format, and I totally get what you mean but want you to know how much I appreciate it. I'll use the spoons metaphor to say that sometimes I'm able, open, eager to engage in patient dialogue... and sometimes I'm not. Tonight I am and I've just written a reply that's TOO LONG for the input field! Here's Part One:

I'm white, 51, gay, artist. Whenever I gripe about "white America" it is from my biased perspective. My experience of "my culture" growing up was a homogenous monoethnic white Christian blob, centered on money/materialism and gatekeeping/judgment of others. That doesn't have to be everyone's experience of white America, but it was mine -- and my observation of cultural critiques tells me that I'm not the only one who saw things that way. I'm not self-hating now but I was deeply self-hating until I accepted myself as "unacceptable" to the standards of my upbringing. I took a different path and feel that I have found meaning by rejecting my upbringing. Other groups speak of "the ancestors" and such... I find little sustenance there since my ancestors were white supremacists. The generation above me are anti-gay, Fox-watching, Trump-voting... We have superficial relationships but not what I call love. In some ways this gulf is "my fault" because it has been my "decision" to reject my upbringing... but I suffered massive cognitive dissonance until I sort of "rebooted" as a clean slate. Sigh. I am running out of spoons as I type -- didn't mean to get so deeply personal. Uhhh, earlier someone objected to me calling out "white America"; I didn't reply because it didn't feel like an invitation to productive conversation. The best I might have come up with would have been sarcastic: "Gosh, I'd hate for any white Americans to see my post and decide to be awful people to spite me!" It's just... yeah. I knew when I wrote my initial post it was lacking nuance, because of the format. And I live in FUCKING JACKSONVILLE. [Pause for real tears.] I have been in the store where the recent murders took place. I received my Covid shots on the campus of the HBCU the white terrorist prowled before he went and killed elsewhere. When I was the killer's age I was at my lowest point mentally/emotionally. If I had had easy access to guns I might not be here today. Thankfully guns were not part of my family's culture. Few people I knew growing up in the 70s/80s were into guns. Some people went on hunting trips. Other than that no one wanted guns around in the suburbs other than bb-guns. When I was the killer's age I felt zero connection to community. I never fell into white supremacy (beyond the implicit bias I absorbed as standard). I was religious and deeply, desperately closeted. Any aggressive and negative thoughts I had were directed at the gay community. I was bitter that support groups existed for "them" and not for me. It could have been my support, but my homophobia was so strong it took me until almost 30 to accept myself as gay. My 20s were awful. My life continues to be isolated... The gay men I know are into money, superficial looks, partying, drugs, alcohol, and more money -- and I hate lazily invoking stereotypes but this is how I feel. I've known so many gay Republicans. It hurts. My own voting history was: GOP, NOTHING, GREEN, DEM, DEM, DEM, DEM... I'm a little proud I only voted GOP once, but it took me 3-4 presidential cycles for me to understand the US democracy game. That's another area where community might have helped, but I felt none.

If I had the spoons...
I have a friend who begins her fantasies with, "When I win the lottery..." Since I see the lottery as harmful money-worship I had a conversation with this friend about it. She uses the phrase to inspire freedom to dream, so I invented my own variation: When I'm fully funded! An artist (who rejects a consumerist model) can dream, can't he?!

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