Remember the old kids’ song, “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea”? How the lyrics start stretching out? The first thing I thought of when this happened was:
“There’s a fly on the hair/On the frog/On the bump/On the log/In the hole in the bottom of the sea…”
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Yup, that’s about how I feel.
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Yee-ah, I’m not too thrilled about sidin’ with Biden; I’d rather be implorin’ for Warren.
Now if Bernie Sanders was somehow related to the same Sanders family that started this company, he’d’ve been hailed by allll the rich old white people in MI, lol!
Oh POOP! Fred’s true surname was Schmidt; Sanders was his middle name. He probably changed it because anti-German feeling during WWI.
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OH heck with it, let’s elect a Hot Fudge Cream Puff - couldn’t be any worse than what we have now, lolololol!
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Love it! And I love Eclectic Method.
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My best friend’s daughter’s best friend’s family own The Villages.
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i really like Beau*. my husband feels that youtube is busy radicalizing me because now i watch his videos every time he posts one, lol – but i tell him, “but he’s RIGHT! just listen to him!”
it’s a vicious circle. i guess if this is what being radicalized is about, i’m in.
*[EDIT: i meant to say i really like Beauagain – if you watch his videos, you’ll understand the joke, heh]
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I think I was born radicalized, but I got wrapped up in marshmallow plastic for a while…
Good for you!
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I’ve always believed in principles like equality and justice, but for most of my life I guess I could have been defined as a liberal. Over the last few years, I’d say I’ve slowly become “radicalized,” if that’s even a thing:
I think it started with the BBS, where I got introduced to socialist ideas and found myself agreeing with them. Then Bernie ran, and I learned more. I got introduced to LeftTube via a charity fundraising stream, and learned even more… and now I’m consuming leftist political commentary on Twitch at least once or twice a week. And that’s not counting my Twitter feed… 
I still can’t define exactly where I’m at on the political spectrum, since I’m still woefully ignorant of all the different schools of thought and the political tests say different things. But yeah, I’m firmly left of center these days, and it’s the Internet’s fault. 
Welcome! We’ve got the best cookies, and candy! 
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well, i say that fully tongue in cheek, lol – i’ve always been super lefty. in college, two friends and i protested a logging convention in rural Missouri, lol – it was quite an experience. if anything, i have drifted even more left as i’ve gotten older. but you’re right: it’s only “radical” on an american politics scale. by some other countries’ standards, i would be basically center, haha.
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Same!
Beau is good, though I’m not sure I’d call him all that radical either… and yes, he’s right. I’ve been tempted to introduce my uncle to Beau’s channel as a gentle counterpoint to the right wing talking posts he keeps trying to spout. But I’m not sure how open he’d be to it, and I don’t want to push him on anything while he’s recovering from health issues. (My family tends to avoid political debates with each other, though some do speak their views on FB, and I’ve had good conversations with some centrist-to-liberal relatives.)
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yeah, i don’t think he is a radical either. i’m still trying to decide exactly where he lands, but he definitely is no fan of trump/trumpism, and he’s thoughtfully spoken and clear, and i appreciate that.
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With me, it was just from reading the history books around the house. I mean, my folks were brought up New Deal/FDR Democrats. I can’t stress enough how my older brother and I were allowed to read anything we wanted to, and if we weren’t to read it, it got hidden till we were old enough to find it and/or my folks were old enough to’ve forgotten where they hid it, LOL. So that’s how I got to read Kurt Vonnegut at 12, and about Eugene Debs, and lots of science fiction (the whole family read SF; Dad - Asimov/Clarke; Mom - A. McCaffrey/Norton/LeGuin; Bro - Heinlein, Bradbury, Zelazny; Me - Chalker, Anthony, Silverberg, anything with a Michael Whalen cover LOL!
None of the ideas being presented as “radical” are new. But society gets institutionalized, for want of a better word, and in general it then begins to frown upon change because it’s gotten so comfy (like some folks in the prison system; it’s just a matter of the style and form of the institution, I guess) and geez I DOAN WANNA GET UP OFFA THE COUCH, MA!
The only new stuff is the history you don’t know, to paraphrase Harry Truman.
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I always considered myself conservative, and I still do. But I also believe in fairness, so by current “conservative” standards I am part of an extremist terrorist cell.
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According to current Conservatives (even those here), people like Kim Campbell – who was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party, Canada’s party on the right at the time – are radical leftists.
I am not saying that people like you (or me, for that matter) haven’t moved, but it really isn’t as far as those on the right.
And unfortunately, identity politics is killing us. Not the type that the right uses that phrase for, but the type they take advantage of. The type where people can’t bring themselves to vote for a party they’ve never voted for in the past, but instead vote for one that they don’t even agree with anymore because “What’s the alternative?”
One comment that I have seen floating around is basically “America is not a center-right country. They are a center-left country with a media and political party problem.”
I would say my biggest shift came more when I was forced into relying on non-universal¹ social programs and seeing how humiliating, invasive and inhumane they are. University courses that showed me how much “RW-bias by omission” occurs in education helped on racial issues.
But my biggest shift has been around the justice system. There was a time when I believed it. If you’d told me five/six years ago ACAB or defund the police, I would have looked at you like you were a radical lefty.
Now, defunding makes sense.
It’s not just the internet. It’s the fact that everyone has cameras, too, not just rich or middle class, white people. It’s… it’s like that shot from the Trump inauguration protests that shows a bunch of photojournalists huddled around taking perspective shots of a burning trashcan (and not even that big of one) to make it look like a violent riot was happening. Prior to the Internet, most of us relied on the TV and newspapers – the same ones producing those drama shots and sanitizing the video and audio of police violence. Now, it’s easier than ever to find the voices of those who have been shut out of the mainstream conversation. Unfortunately, that works on both sides. The same services that allow me to find disability activists, or be able to hear non-white or LGBTQ voices that haven’t been hammered to fit into a white-focused system also allow – let’s call them “less resilient” – middle and upper-middle class white people to find voices that allow them to shift any responsibility for the world situation onto those less fortunate. (The poor don’t have the time and energy. The actual upper class treat it with shits and giggles or remain oblivious because they’re literally living in a world with different rules).
The irony is just how much I have shifted after climbing the financial ladder. Nor do I count myself as radicalized. Give me $10,000,000 tomorrow and I wouldn’t start handing out cash on street corners.
Honestly, I think a lot of it comes down to ego. So long as you think everything is hard work, or that you are one of a special/elite group (including such things as being “saved” or one of “God’s chosen”) then you are more likely to shift right. The more you’re willing to admit your fallibility, or that your experience isn’t universal, the more likely you are to shift leftward.
And let’s not forget that people become radicalized around the center, too. We get so locked into a Left-Right binary that we forget how hard some people fight to make sure nothing changes one way or another.
¹All Canadians my age do, of course, have experience with more universalized social programs such as Healthcare, which leads us to believe that other forms that aren’t utilized as uniformly by other people are equally simple to use and non-punitive… this is absolutely not the case.
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I guess if I had to summarize my political views over time, I went from being a social liberal to a progressive to a socialist over the last 25 years or so.
I would say it was a combination: of:
– my counter-reaction to ugly reactions from the right, to 9/11, Obama, Obamacare and the idea of Medicare for All, and gay rights. I would also count a backlash against Trumpist white supremacy, QAnon, anti-maskers etc. but I was already mostly “radicalized” before that. Seeing all that hate and stupidity makes me want myself and the world to be the exact opposite of that.
– occasional injections of hope from Bernie’s campaign, the rise of the DSA, actual real talk about Medicare For All and UBI, etc.
– being made aware of specific issues and their seriousness/prevalance by protests and resistance from the left. Occupy, the Ferguson protests, anti-ban/anti-wall protests, this year’s widespread extended protests, etc. It wasn’t until this year that I understood and agreed with the idea of defunding/abolishing the police, for instance.
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I guess Reagan radicalized me. I recall designing a bumper sticker that said “Right-wing Republicans Ruined the Republic.” Nice alliteration, but I never made one (now I’d be afraid of getting shot). And, my god, have they ever been ruining the republic since.
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My mom radicalized me. In the run up to the 1980 election, she told me about when she was young and Ronald Reagan was the governor of California.
In Berkeley, a bunch of students and activists turned a vacant lot into a “People’s Park” and that motherfucker called out the national guard on them. I was 7 years old in 1980, but I understood that he was not a good person.
https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/06/08_reagan.shtml
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