I lean leftwards because I want more people to get the help, dignity and peace they need and deserve. Now I feel a wave of being told to "harden my heart" and I feel scared and isolated. I don't have it in me to become a martyr and estrange myself from most people any further, I get nervous with the leftism I see so often expressed as wanting the bad people suffer, and that anything short of revolution is not just not good enough, but worse than doing nothing. And then I have constant guilt that I'm judging people more discriminated than me for how they express things; that my fears aren't valid and expressions of privilege.
By now I'm feeling emotional burnout, I get annoyed by any respone that isn't in-depth analysis because it just feels like watching the same responses happening over and over and never going anywhere.
I live in the Netherlands, I think a US equivalent would be like Massachusetts but with more Cory Booker types.
I'm aware that I can still contribute in ways that don't involve throwing molotovs. Rather, I feel a constant impostor syndrome, where IRL I come off as "The Annoying Leftist" (recently, I told my mom that I take issue with her rich friend using Ukrainian drones to justify moving from Russia to Israel permanently), but in places like this one I feel like a "normie" by comparison, because I didn't call her friend a Nazi that deserved to be hit by a Khorramshahr missile. I feel this with many things in general: being too different for "normie culture", but then feeling too "normie" for alt culture(s).
Being polite to others in your day-to-day even when you strongly disagree can be... aggravating sometimes... and people need an outlet. I would consider most of the language here to be venting frustrations - which (in any setting) trend toward the colourful and hyperbolic for the catharsis of merely saying it, rather than expressing genuine intent.
big agree. im like Mr. Cool Breeze & Chill when dealing with reactionary sentiments, clowns, and bozos. i don't have people justifying/celebrating genocide to my face much at all, so it's not a big moral/ethical conundrum im facing. it's more casual ideological framing and i just push back a little as i can with jokes or quips... i.e. landlords are living from [others'] paycheck to paycheck, cops need more overtime to take naps in parking lots and evict poor people in the rain, private equity is a very chubby tick, etc and look for who smiles with a twinkle in their eye.
im more interested in finding pals than verbally pwning and identifying myself to enemies.
funnily enough, i said roughly same about my coworker's friend to his face, benefits of being unfireable i guess.
nah, don't mistake rhetoric for actions or actions for outcome, people can be venting or whatever, our aim (as i think more and more) is to strike at material world, because porkies are all idealistic nonces, they don't think materialism is correct and don't look there as much as into popular culture and discourse.