The most obvious answer is to leave, but my circumstances make that mentally difficult, if not materially so. Some background without revealing too much.

I come from a suburbanite labor aristocracker background in the burger reich. I'm well into adulthood and still living with my parents; not because I am unemployed or have a low paying job or poor benefits or working conditions (I still pay rent), but because so many of my spoons are drained by putting up with the ideology of my friends and family and the psychological harm it causes me. I feel too tired to put in the work for moving, and anxious about being asked to justify myself.

My friends are easily the more grating to put up with. This anecdote from a few months ago should give a baseline of the level of callousness I'm dealing with. I don't usually get shit from them like in that story, but so much of the time hanging out with them it's just this fucking cishet guy bullshit of being bigoted "as a joke", and sometimes even without that cover. Constant use of the R-slur to refer to people and things, and when I call them out on it it's just, like, your opinion, man. Constant "ironic" misogyny with "jokes" about how women belong in the kitchen or are dishwashers. They make a bunch of ironic "lol we're gay for each other" jokes (like Cumtown if it wasn't even remotely funny) while in all other contexts treating queerness as suspect. "[Thing I don't like] is gay" is extremely common.

Most of the times I've tried calling them out on it, they treat it like I'm fucking joking, and they love pretending to be woke as a bit. "You can't say [random word that kinda sorta barely sounds like a slur in a completely unrelated context] anymore!" "Did you just misgender me?! (laughter ensues)". Then, loyal blue dogs of the amerikkkan empire that they are, they dutifully decry whatever president Francisco Francorange did recently, patting themselves on the back for how noble and enlightened they are. Did I mention this is my friend group after cutting out the trumpanzees?

Then, there's my family. My parents are very naive about politics and history, and one of them has the overconfidence that can only be had by a boomer white cishet man "history buff" (never seen him with a book in his hands in my life) fed by a constant stream of "alternative" "progressive" news media. When I started cutting off the magats, my parents were incredibly surprised that I would make such a big deal about politics when they've only been friendly to me. I only managed to pull it off because the split was instigated by the blue magats. I dread to imagine how they'd react if I started reducing contact with my remaining friends, or even them. Extended family is even worse about this.

Besides being emotionally exhausting to put up with, it also keeps me much more trapped in big tech surveillance. My parents -- boomers who can't even be fucking asked to remember how to close unused apps on their phones no matter how many times I show them -- see no issue whatsoever with the tech surveillance gizmos they so happily let into their lives. Ring doorbell at the front door being an always watching eye that can be used by the cops? "Maybe the cops can be bad sometimes, but they're still good overall and I'm not concerned." Do they really need the goddamned Alexa to set timers and check the weather? (no, but they are not open to examining why it's bad). Pretty much the main reason I'm still on Discord is because it's where my friends spend their time. I estimate that staying in this situation is a bigger threat to my opsec than all the correlatable personal data I revealed in this post.

The trickiest part to navigate about this is that they're seemingly not even acting maliciously or cruelly to me, but hold so many dehumanizing views of others that I'll be made out to be the problem if I point it out and respond with any seriousness. I don't even hate being around them all the time, but I can only see spending time with them and pursuing hobbies with them as a social trap that will emotionally harm me more than whatever benefit I'd get from socializing. It increasingly feels like I'm swallowing a poison pill simply by spending time with them.

I was born and raised into a petty fuckwit strata that I had to sacrifice much of my humanity and personality to fit into (and not entirely unsuccessfully). Before I knew better, I had even wanted to. But this social circle has been so invalidating about so many things I value and feel over my life, and not even intentionally most of the time. Usually, it even comes from a place of (to them) kindness. But it is all so antithetical to what I value that I don't even have the drive to explore new interests, friendships, or aspects of myself, let alone any sort of political action.

If I sound bitter and resentful, that's because I am. My desire to genuinely love myself and others is withered like a tree doused with agent orange. I've also pushed down my (frankly pretty rabid) desire to lash out to the point that I waver between rolling over and recklessly burning every bridge.

This environment, with people who love their version of me but can't bother to want to understand me, is creating a chilling effect that's demobilizing me long before even considering state violence. I feel like I signed a Faustian bargain as a child that I was too ignorant to understand and, now that I want out, am magically prevented from breaking.

It's like I'm a fly caught in some liberal neurotypical psychic web. How the fuck do I navigate this shit?

The Kentucky senator returns to public life tomorrow morning. His flesh is rotting, but he is noticeably more alert and cogent. He's also taken to wearing black robes despite not being a Supreme Court justice. When asked how he feels about the recent death of his colleague Lindsey Graham, he states "It was worth the price", declining requests for further comment.

Read Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism and take a shot every time he uses the word "hence".

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/49567674

Thank you @InevitableSwing@hexbear.net for helping me get a high enough resolution to work with.

Thank you @InevitableSwing@hexbear.net for helping me get a high enough resolution to work with.

"We need to suppress the spread of radical Eye-slam on college campuses!"

Bonus burgers if the second syllable is pronounced like "slam" instead of "slom".

Lieological Weapons!

Saw this mentioned in a comment on another instance and had to share it here. Incoherent politics with banger posts on a web 1.0 as fuck website. Needs to be seen to be believed.

Some highlights:

Many voters don’t give a fire truck about the refugees, deported to a place where they have no job, no home, and many don’t even speak Creole. They care when there is no strawberry yogurt, and, poor babies, they have to settle for raspberry yogurt, because factory managers have trouble hiring enough workers.

If the [fentanyl] buyer fights back and manages to capture the enemy officer’s gun as a prize of war, and uses it to settle the matter out of court, you openly hate the buyer so much you want the buyer to die of a sodium pentothal overdose. You never gave a fire truck about the buyer. You only want to feel proud, powerful and superior as you kill yourself with cigarettes and booze.

It took a bloody war, started over other issues, to emancipate the slaves in some States, because too many crazy people kept voting wrong. What will it take to open the borders, legalize all drugs, abolish public school and school taxes, and eliminate zoning restrictions, to name just a few of the many steps toward liberty and justice for all?

If you don’t have time to read the candidates’ campaign websites, don’t bother voting, either. You would probably vote wrong and vote away other people’s freedoms. Be careful not to underestimate the hostility incited by such voters. Get money out of politics by reading all the campaign websites, which cost almost nothing to produce.

Lieological Weapons!

Lieological Weapons!