People have as much of a right to be worried about the end of the month as they do the end of the world. We cannot address environmental justice without also addressing economic justice, and trying to do one without the other will cause us to fail on both fronts.
as a black, poor, disabled, sapphic, non binary person I genuinely have not felt more isolation than I do when I look at my political options, the right wants me dead several times over and as I spend time on the left, I really find myself feeling like I'm on the margins of the margins of society because even other marginalized people have no issue with throwing strays at me so often
Shit like that makes me wonder whether a better future is even possible if we keep stooping to the Rights level. Maybe those old cynics are on to something with them thinking humanity will never change for the better and will only ever get worse, that it doesn't matter what system is in place whether it be capitalism, communism, whateverism that inevitably assholes will always find a way to the top and make it hell for everyone because they are selfish and greedy.
Can you explain what you mean when you say people are "throwing strays" at you? I'm not arguing or contradicting or anything, I'm just not sure I understand what this phrase means.
I honestly think that theres nothing more unifying on the left as the lefts disdain for others on the left. It's like, remember from being a kid, your libertarian uncle who'd start political arguments with everyone every thanksgiving? In my variation on that theme, I got asked the loaded question, "omg I can't stand these social justice leftish blah blah blah, how do you associate with them B?" And I just flipped the script back at him, "hating a group on the left? Pfft, you're just a trend whore. I hate 5 different groups on the left before lunchbreak." So I guess, you can be comforted knowing that you arent alone in your isolation...but no one's gonna come check on you except to argue with you. Maybe comfort was a strong choice of wording.
I seldom comment on youtube but this one... I'm brown, trans, non-assimilationist, and since you mentioned long covid, yeah I got that too. And I resonate so hard with that heartbreak. The thing you are talking about with the "disagreement ...between a few Black activists and a few trans activists..."? Being a brown trans person, I was functionally caught in the crossfire and caught bigotry from both ends. I run into it constantly. There's always some intersectional identity that is going to put me into the "other" camp, if not expose me to outright bigotry. I keep trying and I know where my people are, but let me tell you, if it's not obviously if not explicitly intersectional both in philosophy and also membership, I don't even bother because I'm just going to get my heart broken yet again.
That's why new movements like the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative are so desperately needed. We need progressive connections in places one would _least_ expect them to be.
The issue with this statement is that most of the policies the left pushes for benefit EVERYONE…but since most rural areas are HARD red, democrats don’t bother “wasting” their time there because it’s full of people who like democrat policies until they find out it’s a democrat policy…
Oh, thanks for this. My heart has been broken too many times by left-wing content creators who haven't practiced what they've preached or who've prioritized petty infighting, self-promotion, profit, or virtue-signalling over outcomes and ethics/principles. My heart was also shattered by the pandemic, because I heard way too many people (including acquaintances, neighbors, friends, and others) casually opine that people like me and some of my loved ones were just biological weaklings whose deaths would be the acceptable and inevitable cost of people exercising their natural God-given right to eat inside Bennigans. Intellectually, I knew our lives had no value to certain people, but it was something else to actually hear people say that out loud.
Right. They cared so little about people with pre-existing vulnerabilities that they're willing to unalive us casually. I still haven't gotten my head around how selfish people were. I find it harder to see the good in people, now.
Honestly, I think you hit the nail on the head. Time and time again, I'm heartbroken when people I have considered allies have called me out for "making everything about race/sexuality/gender" etc. As someone who has been on the receiving end of LGBT-phobic violence, it makes me want to give up when I'm told by people I considered allies that I need to calm down and stop making everything political. I've called out blatant transphobia by supposed friends and been asked to leave groups by fellow leftists. It makes me wonder what the point even is if people are apathetic and value a negative peace (absence of tension) over a positive peace (presence of justice).
I think you hit the nail on the head when you mention negative peace vs positive peace. All too often, people in general (but it particularly shows up on the left) are conflict averse when it comes to the people they want to be in community with, and thus are quick to tamp down that conflict rather than facing it and looking for solutions. We all want to see ourselves as good people, ad thus any complaint or accusation is hard to face, because it indicates that we have done something wrong -- which then makes us bad people (supposedly). I think it is paramount to acknowledge that we are all flawed human beings, in order to allow real discussions that lead to profound changes. I know that for me, personally, it was a hard pill to swallow to recognize that, despite my protestations to the contrary, I said and did things that were misogynistic, racist, etc. I had to listen to my black friends who told me how some of my actions made them feel demeaned, even when I had no intention of doing so -- that my intentions didn't matter when it came to the impact they felt. And that in many ways, just by virtue of being white, I participated in systems of oppression, in ways that are simply inevitable -- so the lest I could do was to try to do a whole lot more listening to the grievances of those who don't have that same privilege, because, long other things, there is a good chance that I am being given undue reverence due to being white and appearing cis/het...
@@glenn_desert_witch I've had to confront similar insecurities in myself when it's come to internalised bias. In the past, I would all too often be defensive and say things like "I'm poor" (which is true) "how can you say I'm privileged just because I'm white?" It's taken a lot of growth, listening to the experiences of black comrades (and reading one book "Difficult conversations with a black man" I believe it was) to realise that just by virtue of being white, I am engaging in a system of oppression by being a recipient of positive bias. I may be poor, but I've also had experiences with mostly older white people who've said things like "Oh you seem like such a polite young man, you don't belong in a neighbourhood like that" "You remind me of my grandson" etc. It is a privileged position to not have to think about race because I have not been racialised. I am not responsible for the systems existence, but I do have a responsibility to confront said system. Step one is acknowledging the privilege I have. Sorry for the ramble, But I appreciate your reply
I was born disabled and learned very early that there are people who were my age, being raised to just not give a shit about any need someone like me may have had. My parents taught me how to advocate for myself, and I've been trying to teach others how to advocate for themselves ever since. I very much understand the "I'm not here to educate you" attitude that comes from people in my same position, but if we stop, we perish. It's that grimly simple. My first real lesson in this was informing a teacher I was actively having a seizure and being told to get to the nurse's office on my own two feet (after collapsing right out of my desk) with no one being allowed to go with me, even if they wanted to, and no one did-- mostly, I think, because they just didn't understand what was happening to me, what a seizure even was. That chronic lack of understanding, the unwillingness to engage with something that makes a person uncomfortable has gone on unchecked, because the teacher who wouldn't let anyone go with me to the nurse's office had their tenure and would be teaching for another twenty, thirty years, long after I graduated, and the kids who, even innocently, didn't understand what was happening to me are now adults with their own kids, and unless those kids have taken the initiative to educate themselves, they've likely inherited their parents' anxiety around disabled people. We educate, we advocate, or we die. I've been wrestling with the question of where the room for heartbreak is in that equation all of my life, and the fuck of it is, we can only create that room ourselves when the people around us finally, *finally* understand our lived reality. So after we're exhausted from justifying our existence, we get to fight and dig, and scrape for that too. I was a target of the "free stuff" derision before the DNC made it cool for liberals to say the quiet part out loud (too) because of being on Medicaid, and now that I'm on SSI, it's even worse. And all of this was with life on easy setting because I was from a white, (barely) middle class family, back when the middle class still existed.
Labor Notes offers a course called "When Your Union Breaks Your Heart," because it happens in the labor movement, too, and we need to be prepared to deal with it.
Oh man, this is why I’m avoiding tumblr right now. I was a young ace at the height of the ‘ace discourse’ thing and have some weird lingering scars from that and saw how it basically exploded an emerging online community and forced it back into hiding, and once I saw some of the same rhetoric being recycled at transmasc people I noped out because I can’t get my heart broken again. Interestingly, looking at history this is the same rhetoric that was recycled from when it was applied against bi people, nb people, and though I’m not old enough to remember personally I suspect also against lesbians. Bigotry doesn’t innovate.
It's amusing to me that my big lightbulb moment of turning from organized religion also happened regarding a church elder and evolution. When at a catechism class around 8th grade, an elder who was teachering made some scoff about how "you may have heard about this thing in school called EVOLUTION! It's completely false and you shouldn't listen to it" While by that point I already felt that this whole religion thing isn't what it seems, that moment was the final confirmation to me that I absolutely did not belong there. It was like a snap for my brain and I immediately rethought everything the church had "taught" me.
Yeah, I ended up talking about this with a pollster that came to my door in OH, where all these people only show up here when they want something, and leave after they get what they want, and how it makes it SO FUCKING DIFFICULT to build coalitions for any political movement when the "best" party is constantly only wants to be here to get something and then skirt. It doesn't count if you don't stay, if you don't win, if you don't protect the community. It doesn't count if you don't show, and continue to show, that you have skin in the game.
The discussion of creationism in evangelical Christianity is quite similar to how I feel about American Judaism and Zionism as a Jewish convert who was taught those myths of Zionism in my conversion and took them on (probably breaking some peoples hearts), and then realizing I had been lied to about Zionism by my own community, getting my heart broken and becoming an anti Zionist Jew, and all this within the space of about a year and a half.
For the algorithm- but also just to share. My mom's a very supportive person, and loves me and my siblings very much, despite being the root cause of much of my trauma before she sobered up. She's almost opinion-less as a person, if that makes any sense. She adopts the opinions and ideas of the people she spends her time around, so while she was still with my father she believed what he did. My dad would probably be considered a polite and practical democratic socialist. They've divorced, which is a good thing, but her current long-term boyfriend is a Christian ex-military libertarian, and they live with his (not technically on paper yet) ex-wife, a liberal Jewish democrat (and cognitive dissonance Zionist). Before October 7th i always wondered what they could possibly have in common (I don't anymore). My mom shares their opinions now- and while she's still loving and supportive, and cares about me deeply, over Christmas we had an altercation that I think really did break my heart. I wore my kufiya to the Christmas meal over at my mom's house, the same way i wore it to my dad's, and it became a problem. To be clear- it was not a black and white iconic pattern, it's very subtle and in browns and neutrals. The pattern is almost unnoticeable from a distance, and my mom took me aside to tell me I was upsetting people (the Zionist). We started talking about why I was wearing it, and the conversation got heated- I can barely remember what was actually said, because I started shaking and my temperature started rising, which is a typical overstimulated response to confrontation and stress for me- I think it's related to my autism somewhat. But in some way, I had asked about whether or not what was happening was okay, and my mother said something about innocent civilians getting hurt- when she said that, her hands moved in my peripherals and she made "air quotes" around "innocent". It felt like the planet had stopped turning for a second and I demanded to know why she had done that. She implied that it was the Palestinian's faults for electing Hamas, and the conversation did not get better- it lasted barely another minute before me and my partner gathered our things and left. I cried while driving back to his place. I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to that house again, knowing who my mother got that idea from lives there. I still see her sometimes for meals, but I don't know when I'm going back over there in person- maybe when Palestine is free. But I don't think I'll ever look at her the same way again. She's still my mom and I of course I still love her, and I don't think I could cut her out of my life and at this point I don't need to- I am not the target of her... dismissal. But the way I look at her has completely changed since. I wish it hadn't. And I wish she'd actually listen and learn from me, instead of assuming one day I will simply become an enlightened centrist, like her and her boyfriend. Still struggling with that incident. I don't think I'll ever forget it, but I think that's the kind of heartbreak this video talks about. she deeply betrayed the idea of her I had in my head, and the idea that she might share some of my more meaningful values. I'm going to stick to my guns, and if I'm lucky, one day she might actually listen to me- and maybe her love thy neighbor will actually start to apply to all of our neighbors instead of just the ones her housemates tell her are the good guys. be well and free Palestine. 🍉
Remember when Elmo asked the internet "hows everybody doin?" And twitter proceeded to therapy unload on the poor puppet? Now im just waiting for the stories of how Elmo, and the rest of my childhood, was catagorically abused by everyone at Nickelodeon in power. Innocence was the biggest lie of them all.
@@Emileigggggh whats the bad news? Kevin Clash was a voice actor for Elmo and was accused of sexual misconduct with minors (dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired). He didn't make Elmo though. A woman, Caroly Wilcox, made Elmo and the most criminal thing I could find about her is how underrated she is. There's also Jim Henson who created the Muppets as a property but I wasn't aware of any major issue with him either. That would be bad news if it turned out Mr. Henson had some serious skeletons in his closet. I've always put him in the same boat as Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross.
@@thugpug4392 Kevin Clash was a loooot more than just one of Elmo's voice actors. First, no one is "just" a voice actor for a muppet/puppet, they also do the puppeteering which involves more coordination and extra performance skills. Second, Elmo only became a character when Clash picked up the puppet (which was not yet named Elmo and was really just a background puppet) and did the voice and schtick, which then grew into Elmo. Like, Clash absolutely created Elmo. Jerry Nelson couldn't even crack it. You can find early uses of the puppet that have completely different voices and vibes. Even the iconic Richard Hunt (RIP gay icon) got frustrated that he couldn't figure out what to do with the puppet, so he threw it at Clash who "raised him up and brought energy and life into Elmo and from that day forward we would all write for Elmo." He didn't make the physical puppet, but he created the character and there wouldn't be an Elmo as we know him were it not for Kevin Clash, who is (ALLEGEDLY BLAAAH) a guy who preys on children. They did a documentary on this like a year before the allegations dropped. I hope this isn't rude, this is a topic where my autism shines (although Sesame Street is kinda dead to me for multiple reasons at this point unfortunately, friendship ended with Sesame Street, now Arthur and Avatar the Last Airbender are my best kid's shows of all time)
My local pride organization, in a remote red state capital (that alone is enough to pinpoint exactly which group I'm talking about), fell apart due to infighting, personality differences, and a lack of actual structure and accountability. It has gutted our ability to protest against anti-trans laws in town, but more specifically the heartbreak I feel from how the situation played out has destroyed my desire to be an activist and even hurt my marriage and my work to reconnect with my Chickasaw tribe. I don't have answers for mending broken hearts, because I'm still working on mending mine and my spouse's and getting back into the community. I have similar drama and heartbreak occurring in my main hobby (I play in the SCA which is at a crossroads as to whether it stays a shitty haven for conservatives and sex pests or moves forward as an open and accepting place for people of all races, sexes, genders and religious or not backgrounds) and it's just exhausting to keep going through the same song and dance. Heartbreak is exhausting, period. And we all need rest.
I am also in a red state capital whose pride organization has imploded! 🙃 Just sending you love from a parallel universe (or maybe a few miles away). Get some rest. ❤
Through this whole thing I had Obiwan's line from the Mustifar fight in my head. "You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!" I think it is in our nature to look for a Messianic figure to lead us from darkness, and the biggest heartbreak comes from your messiah turning out to be all too human.
funny thing is he did bring balance to the force, before there was 1 sith and a LOT of Jedi, after what he did there was 2 of each. we don't want balance, balance is a liberal ideal, we want good to win.
On the subject, I semi-recently made someone I cared about feel uncomfortable around me due to jokes and remarks I would make that she would play along with. I didn't think twice about it and figured she was okay with them since she was obviously playing along. However she eventually let me have it and informed me that her joking along was her attempt to redirect the conversation into something less uncomfortable for her. The reason she was never explicit about her discomfort was because she thought I'd brush her concerns off, even though I'm always telling people to feel comfortable calling me out. I immediately apologized and expressed remorse, and that she was always welcome to speak her mind with me. However, at that point it had been the last straw for her and we haven't spoken since. On one hand, *I* was hurt by the fact that 1) I'd lost a friend, 2) she didn't trust me enough to tell me the very first time that she didn't appreciate my remarks, and 3) that I spent all this time causing discomfort and unease in someone I cared about and liked, in a way I would have never done if I realized the full extent of which my actions affected her. On the other hand, I hurt *her* as well, and our friendship might never recover as a result. I might have permanently changed the way she views men like me for the worst. I can't imagine precisely what she felt, but I can't imagine it felt good.
Stuff like this is why I'm always anxious, because people only tell you you did something wrong if it's to late to fix it. How were you supposed to better yourself if you didn't even know that you did something wrong? I hate that kind of dishonesty. It's her fault too that the friendship failed like this, she should have just communicated. That wouldn't have made your remarks ok, but at least the friendship might not have broken apart.
As they say, it takes two to tango. This is why it is possible to change hearts and minds and convert people away from bad ideologies. It is also true that some people are beyond change and just want to gain power over us and do everything they possibly can to accomplish this. I often gripe about the fact that some people are pushovers, and will not speak their mind, thus allowing me to hurt them repeatedly and ultimately having the relationship completely fall apart. Good boundaries are important on all sides. This is also why, while I am an anarchist, I also believe we must have rules and good governance -- which can be accomplished without rigid hierarchies. Just having a free-for-all without any rules makes it impossible to have good relationships.
If people are unwilling to communicate discomfort, that's also partly their fault. Maybe there was things you could have done differently, but we can't expect others to be mind readers.
oh man, i have a lot of feelings about this. my mental health is quite good right now, and the main reason for that is because i've filtered out most sources of news. there's very little i can tolerate before spiraling into despair. with being disabled in a pandemic and fucked over by institutions built to "help" me, my brain just can't take it anymore. i worry about this, as i WANT to be an advocate, i went to college and got a social service work diploma. i'm vice chair of an advisory committee for my local para-transit program. how sustainable is this? i can only wait and see, and hope the likely fallout won't be too bad. i'm a stubbornly hopeful person, but that's not a cure for mental illness.
i'm the same way, I have most "major" topics muted on twitter because i just. can't. keep. despairing. I gotta get busy livin' or bet busy dyin' and filling my head with images of atrocity was pushing me the wrong direction lol
I'm not fully disabled, but I do have an autoimmune disorder, which includes asthma. COVID taught me that the people around me were more worried about the mild discomfort of wearing masks than they were about possibly unaliving me. ...I still feel very alienated about it.
I think a big thing we can all do is try to engage with people who aren't like us. Specifically, people that you believe you don't have any problem with. For example, a lot of men have a really hard time engaging with stories about women, and they think stories about women are inherently uninteresting. They don't consciously think that, but they dismiss any lady lead projects out of hand. When Tuca and Bertie came out, there was a violent and outspoken backlash against the show that basically amounted to "women show bad, women show dumb." A lot of women and femmes loved the show, because it deals with very real things that happen to a lot of people. As the show slowly rolled out two more seasons, there was a sea change from the men and masc folks who were watching the show. The hate watchers had either fallen out, or they started to see themselves. I saw a lot of dudes who really identified with Speckle, the male lead, but also men who started to identify with Tuca and Bertie. When I started to talk with those guys, I found out a lot of them were really lonely and had no idea how to navigate relationships of any kind, and they thought that was a problem that only effected men. Seeing two girls struggle with feelings of alienation, judgement, and anxiety showed them that they weren't alone, even if those girls were just cartoon birds. It made it easier to talk about loneliness, and for us to find common ground where there wasn't common ground before.
This is a really difficult one. I dont know to what degree my thoughts will be applicable, as ive been paranoid and slow to trust for almost my entire life, and so have a tendency to go into things expecting to be betrayed, but also knowing that my existence is used as a political football for a pile of reasons (invisible disability, openly and visibly queer on multiple vectors, among other things) puts me in the position of being left with the choice to either accept constant betrayal in the effort to change things, or to just depart the world and be done with it. More than anything, the thing that I have found most helpful in keeping from causing as much harm, and trying to avoid doing so entirely when possible, is humility and self awareness. If someone says or does something that I find concerning, and it is brought to their attention, the reaction in the moment, and the long term behaviour in relation to the topic, are both extremely impactful. Another core facet is the distinction between human behaviour in the name of an ideology, and human behaviour from people who represent an ideology. This is things like recognizing that capitalists using their money and influence to pressure lawmakers to further expand their wealth and influence, are directly connected to the fundamental realities of the ideology, while a male feminist turning out to be an abuser when the cameras are off, is not directly connected. Each of these issues is a problem, and needs to be addressed, however maintaining a mindset and outlook in relation to these topics, where assessing relevance is part of the processing of revelations, can help to soften some of the hurt of betrayal from people who shouldve been allies based on their advocacy. I wish there was easy answers to this, things that would work for everyone and help us all work together for a better world, but thats not the way things are, so we are just stuck doing the best we can, with what we've got. Much love to the community here, and the person who we came together around, and best of luck!
Great video. Very timely. There's an epidemic of being heartbroken about the American dream and how it was always a lie. If it was always a lie, and thus never great, how can it be great again? And who is it that's desparate for the lie to be real?
A couple years ago i found your page and left some mean comment about your asmr voice or whatever, but i stuck around and you introduced me to bell hooks. Ive now read several of her books and have a solidly defined love ethic which enables me to have a better relationship with my wife, family, friends, and community. Im not saying any of this is because of you, but your videos helped to provide a spark and thats pretty dope, so thanks for that
Thank you. Thank you so much for this video. I didn't realise how much I needed somebody to vocalize this feeling inside of me. This profound sense of hopelessness after years and years of political struggle. I just wonder... what do I do now...
I strive with my whole being to be part of the reason that hearts mend rather than the reason that hearts break. If I have a purpose in life, it is this.
I really appreciate this. Half of my family is in rural Appalachia and it's awful, seeing how much everything is a struggle there more than it needs to be. And I'm disabled and trans and kind of gave up being involved in my union after being an office for 4.5 years, because when I was really having struggles during COVID, I couldn't get any help when I needed it. Just crickets when I reached out.
Oh man. I’ve been thrown out from irl friend groups constantly when I try to bring up the idea of solidarity and safety about being trans, or things like making Medicaid access easier, etc. I’m still in shock from a monumental loss of friendships and don’t know how to process things rn.
Every day or so I get asked in a poll questions that revolves around the treatment of incarcerated people. Asking questions like should incarcerated people have access to television, ipads, food fit for humans, health care, wages over the 52 cent an hour, which is the legal maximum, basic human rights stuff. It is shocking the amount of people out there who are the @do the crime, do the time@ mindset. The white-privileged, under-policed segment of our population has been socialized to somehow embrace the idea that all people that are incarcerated because they are a monster who has done monsterous things and have therefor given up their right to be treated like a human being. (The 14th Amendment abolished slavery EXCEPT in the event that a person becomes an inmate; at which time, in addition to having their freedom of movement taken away, their right to be treated as someone possessing civil rights has been suspended until the inmate is no longer an inmate. They become the property of the state (or the owner(s) of the private prison in which they reside). Their labour can be exploited for profit, every aspect of their life can be as if a slave in the 18th and 19th century. Their human and civil rights no longer apply nor need be considered, so long as they are an inmate. The under-policed don't really see this as a problem because they rarely run into situations where police contact is even an option let alone find themselves arrested for walking while black or sitting in a car looking......not quite right. The OVER-POLICED find themselved subjected to daily observation to make sure that 'nothing fishy is going on' hell, they gotta worry about the skipping of the arrest and trial all together and straight on to the death penalty on the street for 'jogging in the wrong neighbourhood'. To me, the dehumanization of 'the other' is so ingrained in our system that sticking a 'certain kind of person' in solitary confinement with bread and water for years at a time is A OK with them. Probably because it would NEVER happen to their white selves; and, if it isn't something 'YOU' don't have to worry about happening to you, fuck the ones that worry about it every god damn day. We would like to think we have; but, we have NOT come very far forward from the days when we whites owned black and brown people. I am both outraged and deeply hurt at the same time. Not every person is a murder or a child-hurter. We have to stop treating those who have to spend a little time in jail because they didn't pay their child supportt on time or didn't show up for court because they didn't have the means to pay a bunch of traffic tickets as if they were murders. At the very least, those of us that have the white privilege of not needing to go to prison unless we do something really wrong, the least we can do is not insist that every black or brown person who goes to prison needs to be treated like an animal in order for their prison stay to be meaningful. It's like we whites have a blood lust, a desire to dehumanize and violate in the ugliest of ways everyone whom we believe has done wrong. Do better white America! They are not the animals, we are for what we allow and or think is an appropriate way to treat an inmate. Shame on you, shame on all of us.
unrelated to the video, but I recognize your voice in a lot of the youtube videos I watch, reading quotes specifically. I really appreciate your channel and this community of youtubers you’re in.
hey appalachian here! i was born in NE tennessee and was raised in SW virginia about 30 mins from the kentucky line. its been refreshing listening to someone on this platform touch on what ive grown up listening to my whole life, coal. it really makes me feel seen hearing my area being talked about with my empathy than discontent. as a queer here, shits rough, but hearing these perspectives keep me in check
I used to live in eastern KY, it’s really awful. Right in the area where the flooding was, but I moved to Lexington in 2018-2019 and it was the best decision I’ve made. That area is dying more and more also it’s hard being a lefty in that area, people just constantly voting against their own interests, they’ve been gaslit and manipulated so much it’s very sad.
Have had heart broken; have broken hearts. 😢 This one is important, Phil. Thank you for sharing it. Will have to figure out _how_ to share it with some folks I think would benefit from seeing it. 🤔
Yeah, I've had my heart broken: I looked up to a semi-prominent leftist RUclipsr who made genuinely amazing political analysis through their videos, then it turned out they had been sexually abusive and forced people to take drugs among other things I neither remember, nor want to drudge up. I don't want people speculating on who this was btw, but the result was that I needed like a month to mentally heal from that feeling of betrayal before properly engaging in politics again. Luckily, I got over it, I was able to recognize that though their actions were terrible, their words still had meaning and I still agreed with those. I'm still not ready to give that person attention again though. Don't know if that shard of betrayal will ever make me able to deal with their stuff again.
I think you propose an elegant solution to the problem: we must detach certain aspects of behavior from others. We cannot throw away a whole person, and their entire body of work, just because they acted in a way that was reprehensible. Someone can produce amazing essays, and then act in a way that is entirely contrary to what they preach -- and both things can be true at the same time. Compare this to Christianity (not that I ever was a Christian). The Bible has lots of great lessons in it, and in general Jesus appears to be a decent fellow who taught lots of people about love and forgiveness. We also know there are thousands of years of people acting in reprehensible ways in the name of Christianity. While this makes the Bible suspect (and there is plenty of problematic stuff there that Christians have used to kill and oppress), I can also appreciate some of the Bible and Jesus' teachings, and I can see why people are drawn to those elements. Or compare how this works in romantic relationships. I recently got over some heartbreak I carried for years due to an abusive boyfriend. He really ravaged my heart, and impaired my ability to trust others. But he also impaired my ability to trust myself: why didn't I see what he was doing, why was I unable to leave when I saw what he was doing? By recognizing that he had many wonderful qualities, and that I had truly loved him because of those things, I was able to forgive myself, and truly move on to having more healthy relationships with others. I could have (and did) hardened my heart towards all potential lovers, but instead I focused on having better relationships, and picking out partners who were less likely to be as shitty, while accepting that everyone does harmful things at times, but that it doesn't mean that I was wrong about their whole being, or that everything they do must now be shrouded in that hurt and contempt. This is not to say we must accept abusive behavior, or live with people who are attempting to gain power over us at every turn -- it is important we remove ourselves from situations that continuously make us unsafe -- it simply means that we shouldn't look at a single indicator and decide that this automatically means the person will do us harm with their every move, and that we need to work together to improve things from every side.
Hot damn, Phil. This brought out so many emotions about what I'm working through in my personal life. I've moved past the possibility of having my heart broken by any politician. Gotta do my damnedest to make sure that doesn't happen for those i actually care about
@@aetherkid their best use case is if you're actively trying to organize your workplace. they're no good for contracts, but their organizing 101 is honestly world class. contact the executive board and request a trainer come out, if you're interested. if you work somewhere small, you might be able to swing a full Iww campaign, and if you work somewhere bigger, fellow wobs are great to bounce ideas off of or ask for advice otherwise, if there are other campaigns going on in your branch, the best way to use your time is like, doing tasks - translating fliers for people in a campaign, printing stuff, setting up meeting spaces and doing other paperwork. the mistake most people make is thinking the IWW is an org to meet other radicals and it really, really shouldn't be. it's a union with union bylaws and union problems. my branch was over inflated with people treating it like a social space and it was alienating any time someone tried to bring a (normie) coworker in.
@@Aencii sure. my experience is pre-covid, so I'm out of date and have no idea how covid impacted these dynamics. also, there was fuckshit happening at the national level that reflected what was going on in my beach, but I don't have enough details to speak on it. I think the iww has a couple of solid use cases - of you're trying to organize a shop, ideally a small one with a single location, it can be very helpful. the organizing 101 training is excellent and if your local has a General Organizing Committee (GOC), that's a great place to bounce ideas off of other folks in campaigns and maybe even bring coworkers if the vibe is right. do not bring coworkers to branch meetings unless they're explicitly interested in union bureaucracy. if you're not in an active campaign, use your time there to help someone who is - look for translators if they work in a place that has a lot of non-native English speakers, offer to file stuff with the national labor relations board, etc. I think a lot of people enter the iww hoping to find community and unfortunately it just isn't built for that. when I was involved, I was in a huge branch with a lot of idle members who had a lot of opinions and no skin in the game, but we wound up with factions on factions. the group tension broke when our secretary got outed as a sex pest of sorts and the factions that existed fell right along those lines. incidentally, those lines also were built around the general defense committee (GDC, which was founded as the legal defense wing of the IWW, but after being established often found itself doing antifascist work) and the incarcerated workers organizing committee (iwok, which organized folks in prison). there's a faction within the IWW that didn't (maybe still doesn't) think those auxiliaries should exist and sometimes actively sabotaged them. finally, my city is extremely not white and our branch was almost completely white. there are a lot of reasons for this and they're all bad. 0/10. part of it was people showing up looking for anarchy social club, part of it was that the white people already in it have predominantly white workplaces, but mostly it was that the branch repeatedly alienated fellow workers of color and the turnover is membership was ghastly. workers of color would show up, try to organize, get less support, get ignored, etc, and then leave. my city is full of radical communities of color and the iww is the last thing they're thinking about. tl;dr leftist-on-leftist violence in a mass org designed to radicalize workers in their own collective interests is a bad look, and the constant alienation of everyone who isn't male, cis, white, and/or ablebodied will stifle the rev.
I think they key to facing heartbreak is internal responsibility and accountability. It’s not just when someone you trusted breaks that trust and hurts you, but when the community they built backs up that harm. I was hurt when I learned a prominent member of an org I was in hurt others, I was heartbroken when the leadership helped cover it up.
the pains of being disenchanted is a HUGE part of the US right now. i go back to my analogy that we rehabilitate dogs better then we do each other. a dog gets betrayed by their human and becomes bitter towards all humans. it takes a long time to get that pup to to trust again. but we spend more time and energy in helping pups than people. IMO. __p.s. is that soundclip the playstation boot sound with the bass ramped up? 😅 as always, thanks for the video and your time.
You are right about the analogy with dogs. It is also true that many problematic dogs just languish in shelters or get put down. There are plenty of people who don't want to deal with their rehabilitation. But the analogy is also correct in the sense that we have to rehabilitate humans in the same way. Forgiving a dog for biting me doesn't mean that I accept being bitten -- the behavior must be corrected. However, punishment doesn't work to fix the behavior. In order to go for that correction, we must love the dog, figure out what triggered the episode and either remove the trigger or train the dog to respond differently to that trigger. And, here's the big kicker: we must make sure that the dog gets their basic needs met -- they must have access to proper shelter, food, and water, they must get the amount of exercise proper for their size and breed, they must get attention and affection. This is also true for humans -- when their basic needs are not met, they are much more likely to act out. I have had housing insecurity for years now, and it is absolutely the cause of interpersonal strife, for example. Now, of course, we humans have ways to rationally bypass some of those challenges, and this is a huge part of therapy, for example. But I also think it is important to extend compassion to each other, knowing full well that everyone makes mistakes, and that often they are completely blind to how those things are mistakes because they are so deeply steeped in the problem that it's just the norm for them. This doesn't mean condoning bad behavior, but if we try to understand where it comes from we can help work on solutions to the root cause, while also re-training the person to do better in spite of the situation. Basically, my approach is to work on both angles: we have to change the material conditions we are operating under, in order to allow people to be their best selves, rather than acting out because of their circumstances; and we also have to work on providing safety, love, and compassion in our interpersonal relationships so that we can improve that side of things, and prevent further pain and damage to everyone they come in contact with (including themselves).
@@glenn_desert_witch i didn't even think about kennels and kill-shelters, good call. thank you for your additional exploration and details on the analogy
As a queer and disabled person (and a member of a system at that), I feel like I'm running out of grace for abled people. I and many of my headmates have this dream of just escaping to a world with only fellow disabled people, often even just wheelchair users like us, and nobody else. But it doesn't exist. It's harrowing knowing there is nowhere we can go and have our needs met. And it's exhausting being surrounded by abled people all the time who treat able-bodied and -mindedness as the default, and who thus require explanation and justification for our existence as a multiply disabled system.
*IT IS HEARTBREAK* that radicalized me. Goddamn. I was sent to prison, taken away from my life partner...I always cared but in prison I listened, and listened, and listened, and I became a Buddhist, and just hearing tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, and I was trained to turn my awareness intentionally outward, put my mind frequently in the most vulnerable, most in pain, over and over and over, and I heard it endlessly And I came out 7 years ago and got on Twitter and heard more, and more, and saw wider and wider, and my heart broke over and over and over and over.
Years ago, I drew a lot of support from a leftish Twitter network, which kept me going through a really dark time. Then I tried to befriend an influential (compared to group size) person that shared very similar politcs, life circumstances, friends in common, and even similar interests. By all rights we seemed like an obvious good fit, but almost the moment they started paying attention to my posts, they found something stupid to kick up shit about. We literally agreed on the underlying issue, we just disagreed on how the terms should play out, and they _knew_ that. But even so, they twisted my words and soapboxed for their followers, who were all too eager to trash me and rope _their_ followers in on it. I deleted my account in a matter of days. More recently I've learned this kind of experience is absolutely not uncommon on Twitter, but I didn't know that at the time, and I was putting up with vaguely similar drama at the trans support groups I was attending that it seemed rational to draw a direct line through all of them. I haven't been to a support group or joined an LGBT-oriented group since, and it's taken a lot of work just to have the courage to post here on RUclips without fearing for a backlash. I very much had my heart broken by queer social media, and it will be a long time before I could ever trust it again.
15:41 I watched your video all the way through and wrote about what you said in my journal from this point to the end. I appreciate you for sharing this thought. I’m gonna be thinking heavy to myself about it.
I am usually not a fan of religion/religious humor but the running gag landed perfect every time. as far as heartbreak goes, sometimes its hard for me to shake the feeling that all of us on the side of progress are just too needy one way or the other, and the reason regressives are so easily able to assert their agenda is because they have the ability force people to neglect their needs to achieve a goal, even a self destructive one. to be fair building a society where all needs are met is a bigger project than any regressive could conceive of and by design will be more vulnerable to instances of heartbreak.
Turns out if you never expect anything from anyone, you never have to feel disappointment. And if you give nothing, you can avoid being a disappointment. But they're hardly living.
Thanks for another reminder of trying to be softer and more understanding. Also you briefly mentioned that in your interview with that biker. Just let shit go sometimes, you can disagree and still decide that maybe its not your time to speak. And especially if something seems stupid to you on the surface level try to get where the others are coming from. You're an important voice, not just because of the topics you speak of but as a constant reminder to be kinder to each other.
I think my favorite part of this channel is the diversity of topics. I remember you saying that was the goal after you covered the bulk of you ex-cop content. You oscillate between important and interesting/weird at the perfect tempo.
This "heartbreak" that you speak of has happened to me so many times over the years that I ended up just giving up trying. We've somehow forgotten how to collaborate and cooperate and instead are just seeking those that will follow orders without question or objection. We've been poisoned by our upbringings to favor "power" and "correctness" over community and belonging, and that has been a driving force in helping me to understand that there will be no solidarity. No community. No cooperation. There's no winning this game. We lost decades ago. All we're doing at this point is playing pretend.
@@Ironsuaba My peace of mind. My sense of having any kind of agency in my life or my world. Friends. Time. Energy. The free time I could spend doing something other than trying to change someone's point of view. The free time I could spend doing something other than getting multiple people up to speed enough to understand the underlying systemic issues that lie at the heart of the problem. Seeing something moderately good become a pile of rubble due to infighting and factionalization.
Yes, we have been poisoned by our upbringings. I grew up in a leftist home, and even I absorbed hegemonic ideas here and there, but I can clearly see the difference between me and the average leftist American who is simply steeped in all the individualism that they learned their whole lives. Especially when there is conflict, there seems to be this power play that comes into it, where someone has to be right, or win the argument. While I am trying to express that there is an issue, I am seen as an adversary, rather than someone who brings up a problem in order to solve it. They are so often blind to the fact that cooperation is about building consensus and getting buy-in, not about everyone automatically wanting to do the same thing in the same manner. I do encourage you to continue trying, though. I think it is possible to acknowledge that there are loads of shitty people, but that we can, and should continue to work towards a better world for us all --including ourselves. If we compare this "political heartbreak" to romantic heartbreak, I think we can see that there is a benefit to continuing to pursue romantic connections even when we have been in awful relationships -- and that one of the best ways to do so is to prevent ourselves from idealizing our partner, but rather go in knowing they are gonna hurt us, and work within the relationship to foster improvement in everyone involved, extending compassion to our partner when they do us wrong, while setting boundaries around what we will and will not tolerate.
I don't want to go back to computer for main account. Heartbreak sucks and I defs get a sense of community from community action and protests. Hopefully my ankles heal up good for May 1st immigrant and workers rights protest. Although haven't connected with MIRAC yet, still have been helping NAA out weekly
I get a lot of very conflicting feelings about the "I don't want to interact with a kind of people due to bad experiences with that kind" statement. I haven't fully unpacked what I feel and why I feel it yet, but my response is generally to honor that request and give people the space they need for as long as they need it.
As a disabled person who grew up disabled. I'm not heart broken. I'm straight up jaded and have come to accept that non-disabled people are at best mildly useful. But on average are a hindrance, or in opposition to me. Liberals, can talk about minimum wage. Because it has effected them at some point in their life. But don't realize that living on ssi is utter destitution enforced by highly restrictive means testing. And gaining employment is often nearly impossible. But the optics of even talking about the state of welfare in this country is so bad. That they'll refuse to talk about it. Or even speak in language meant to exclude us from the conversation. The fact is that disabled peoples rights and needs, are currently as repressed as gay rights were in the 80s.
Another great video as always. Now you got me reflecting on the times of breaking other people's hearts. The biggest challenge is admittance to your actions to both yourself and especially the broken hearts. I really got apologizes for a couple of occurrences myself. Shit balls.
I think you've touched on something important. A lot of folk are happy to rail against the machine, but also point fingers at individuals that vote differently. People voting against their own interests is deeply frustrating, and it does anger me privately, but outwardly I try and remain compassionate. They might be voting against their own interests, but that's also a reflection of systemic oppression, imo. It's not their fault schools don't teach class theory. It's not their fault that they've been fed a steady diet of fear and lies. I'm not saying we have to welcome everyone with open arms, a certain amount of gatekeeping is needed to create and keep safe spaces, but we don't need to belittle them either. Engage with compassion, and if you can't, then maybe engaging with opponents is not where the movement needs your energy spent. (All of this, of course, being context specific. Just, try and take a moment to think about your words and actions instead of instinctually meeting anger with anger and hate with hate. Maybe you still think that's best, but I think the thoughtfulness matters)
Reminds of this trope in south american music of the heartbroken communist. They used to believe in something. "Ivan era un Comunista" and "El viejo comunista" come to mind, great songs. I know this guy, who works for my uncle as kind of a right hand, but they're such good friends i think there's not much pay involved, they just kinda live together ever since my uncle fell from economic grace. He once, totally drunk in a celebration of my grandad's birthday, rolled up his sleeve and showed me a Che Guevara tatoo, "He's gonna save us all" he said, i almost teared up. For context, we suffered a CIA coup that was the longest lasting dictatorship in the history of the americas, his part never lost power to this day, and we became an extremely neoliberal one party state.
Beautifully said. Have watched 3 or 4 of our videos in a row now since earlier this night the aaalmighty algorithm lead me to your video about how being a cop screwed you up mentally, and everything you're saying resonates deeply with me. Though I am Swedish and live in Norway, so I don't have the *exact* same issues as all of you Americans do, but it's definitely mostly the same. Subscribed directly after I had watched the first one, and I think I'm gonna spend the rest of this sleepless night (that's become an early sleepless morning by now at 5.15 AM) watching more of your insightful and great videos. I'm very glad I found your channel. You are a great voice of reason in an otherwise crazy world!
I’m an Indigenous leftist. Heart broken by basically everyone. There are a lot of bigots in Indian Country & while it’s getting better, we have a ways to go, so it’s hard to have community…and that goes quadruple for non-Indigenous people. Micro and macro aggression is commonplace.
been a horror fan since my youth, seen it all, blood and guts and gore and cruelty, and no matter how experienced I get, Junji Ito still knows how to get under my skin
@@ThatDangDad He certainly has a way with panel placement and detail without hyper-focusing on the gore. Plus the sheer weirdness of his horror is also great. A world in which the villain is... spirals? Only Junji Ito could come up with that.
Spot on Commenting for the algorithm & bc, as a disabled person who still has be concerned about Covid to this day, you couldn’t be more correct. I rarely feel “seen” by ANYONE on the Covid subject, let alone someone who isn’t disabled themselves. Curious if you have someone disabled in your immediate family?? Otherwise your sense of empathy is simply….unheard of. I guess I was commenting for more than the algorithm but was too self conscious to admit it 🫣
I can't express how precisely you've targeted the issues I've been wrestling with. It is indeed a heartbreaking time to be alive. Thanks for saying these things, and please keep doing so.
I like the message and the conclusion but I'm skeptical of a core assumption of this video, that positive social media interaction is a meaningful form of solidarity and that ephemeral boundaries of "the left" form a meaningful political cohort. I'm biased because a large portion of the times I see appeals to the importance of so called "leftist unity", it's to use it as a cudgel against issues that are close to my heart. Often, issues facing people with non-traditional gender identities are discussed as the lamb to sacrifice of the altar of "leftist unity", and issues of ecology and animal liberation are treated as a distraction. Perhaps this is heartbreak, but to some extent, I think it's worth being skeptical of the idea of a practically influential subaltern consciousness arising out of a hyper-individualized media spectacle.
I appreciate the thoughtful comment although I don't think I was calling for "leftist unity" anywhere. What I was calling attention to is times that *trust* was broken. If RadFemCommie420 with 5 followers randomly makes a whack comment about someone on the margins, whatever, block and move on. I'm speaking specifically about online communities where people thought they were working together or more organized than they actually were. It's not that I saw strangers hurt each other's feelings, it's that I saw people who were supposed to be *more* than that letting each other down. There's always going to be squabbles online but if we want any coalitions to be stronger than a Twitter circle, I'm just urging more thought towards how we treat people's trust in us
@@ThatDangDad That's very fair, I didn't pick up on the context as I'm not really involved in more "activated" groups on the internet, and I appreciate you taking the time to correct my misunderstanding. I absolutely agree that we owe consideration to those we align ourselves with, be it a social media circle, an activist group, or a local municipal assembly.
I got the impression that this video was really aimed at the exact folks willing to let the less conventional parts of their community down by engaging in respectability politics, so I don't think it's worth giving folks who do that the courtesy of pretending they are serious citizens, when they are clearly armchair QBing electoral politics. As a pretty conventional person who doesn't have the bandwidth for community organizing, I think there's value in the marginalized putting their experiences out there and essayists contextualizing those experiences, if for nothing else than to move the Overton window further left so that those who only have the capacity to grapple with voting, letter writing, and protesting can do those things in a better way. If I didn't have access to this stuff I wouldn't be doing anything material to try and help, so hopefully the accretion of a bloc from a lot of individuals listening could allow for some form of leftist movement. Also, "leftist" is frustrating, but every time we name a political philosophy left of absolute theocratic dictatorship, it gets rebranded as something pejorative by the capitalists, and that makes the more milquetoast terms seem safer to use in public.
@@ashleyjohnson1129 I absolutely feel that about the rebranding, as someone who goes by "left-wing libertarian" or just "libertarian" depending on who I'm talking to, when out IRL in my rural and fairly conservative community.
The primary thing I hear from people on the right of me is that, while Communism/Socialism/Anarchism sounds good on paper, it can never happen because people are shitty to each other. I actually write a lot about the subject of building better interpersonal relationships because I think that the dominant culture instills values in us that often conflict with creating meaningful relationships with each other, and the processes that cause abuse are mirrored pretty much everywhere we look, from the personal to electoral politics. And I agree with you, heartbreak wears us down, hardens us (there is a reason why the phrase "bleeding heart liberal" exists -- people who have hardened themselves scoff at others who recognize it is important not to hurt each other, and see it as a sign of weakness), and ultimately causes us to lash out toward the very people who are trying to form more meaningful relationships with us. This deep-seated heartbreak also clashes with our analysis: when we talk about systemic issues, we are bypassing the emotional side of things. As an example (and, again, I need to start actually publishing my writings, but I have written thousands of words on the subject), abortion. When we talk about abortion in rational terms, how it is an important medical procedure, how it is about bodily autonomy, etc, we are ignoring the profound pain that the mere idea of aborting a fetus causes to most human beings. And so we end up looking like monsters in the eyes of the people who are guided by this emotional recoil -- we appear selfish at best, and inhumane at worst. I am not sure I really have solutions for it, but I do think it is important to acknowledge that these emotions are there, and that at least in our personal lives, if we want people to act differently, we need to address their hearts and minds. We simply cannot skip the hearts if we want change. BTW, this is part of the reason why I really love your channel: you always speak compassionately to everyone, even those you disagree with. Thank you for always being so deliberate in your choice of words and affect -- I know it takes a lot of effort.
This is why I dont understand why a lot of economic leftists are against religion (referring to your first paragraph). Faith can be used to instill good, collectivist values into people, getting people to think about the greater good rather than personal gain. It give a sense of community and purpose. It should be good for a leftist movement to gather all people of a community together and preach these values. I lot of lefties I know personally have had bad experiences with religion, but I think it may be a great thing for lefties to take advantage of.
@@spannule I agree, in part. I think it was a huge mistake for early leftist regimes to ban or heavily discourage religious practice. And I agree that religious practice, coming together to celebrate our connections to the Divine and each other, singing in unison, etc, can really instill a sense of collective belonging. But, and this is a huge but, historically religious institutions have been extremely powerful and terribly exploitative. They also have been plagued with sectarianism and dogmatism that has divided various religious branches, often causing outright violence and persecution. I think that the approach laid out in the United States Constitution (and many others), focused on freedom of religion and absence of interference between church and state is probably the best, here -- though we see that in practice the line between the two is crossed, and religious concepts like the idea of the sanctity of life, are exploited to control political discourse and the population. Personally, I grew up in a leftist atheist home, but came to know the Divine through personal experience in my early teens. I have a deep reverence for all living beings and the connections between all of us, and it is part of my spiritual and political practice. I also have found that there are often toxic dynamics at work within religious institutions, even the fringe ones I have been part of. When there are institutions, there is often a hierarchy, and the desire to protect the institution often clashes with protecting the people who are part of it. I think this is an important topic, and I think an ecumenical approach is the way to go. We must eradicate the focus on power within religion as well, and build bridges between different practices and philosophies so that we can instead focus on what brings us together, and how the Divine imbues us all with value as human and spiritual beings.
I’ve had my heart broken, but all talking about it did was alienate myself. If multiple state governments AND the federal government could tell such a square kool-aid drinker as myself, “sometimes these things happen,” regarding having my constitutional rights violated and law enforcement repeatedly deny me safety…well that’s something to avoid because my “heartbreak” could be “catching.” Would love to share my documentation with you.
Yeah, yeah that's what it is! heartbreak That's exactly what we're feeling right now. That's why it feels so hopeless. We've seen the people we put our trust and that should know better do and say stupid stuff, we've seen organizing efforts go under because of interpersonal (or even worse internet) drama, we've seen allies leave behind the groups they said they supported and even though as leftists we know the general problems and agree it doesn't seen that's helping with having an actual plan in how to move forwards for a better, even if still imperfect, future and things seem to get worse and worse. It's impossible to not feel heartbroken. So what now? I don't really know, but I know that it remains true that a bright future is a progressive future, that systems of oppression need to be dismantled, that intersectionality and diversity is our strength, that our economic system and form of organizing need to radically change for a more just and sustainable society. Just like with any heartbreak, I think is time to take some time for ourselves, to focus experiencing our feelings, learn form our experience and heal, make new connections and cut toxic ones and maybe do some introspection and never lose sight of what we know to be true. We get to feel heartbroken today, but we can't stay lonely forever, and we don't have to.
Hey, I'm having a rough day. Agitated and listless. I open RUclips. I see a That Dang Dad vid. I know that Phil's soothing voice will make everything ok. Thanks Phil❤
Infuse appx. 5g dried psilocybin cubensis into a pint of boiling water. Let it steep 15 min, then strain. If desired, add 1 pkg. Grape Kool-Aid, stir well and sweeten to taste. Add a few ice cubes, and enjoy! That should help you to more easily identify and remove the mental and spiritual pollutants you were force-fed. Rinse and repeat until your soul is clean and your mind is free....
My friend and i found out we are on the opposite side of the israel/Palestine conflict. I think we're both heartbroken right now. I'm hopeful we can move past it, but its hard in the moment.
Thankyou for exercising the caution with our hearts that you do. There is nothing wrong with fighting all out on the battlefields that we know are right (eg against climate change and attacks on minorities) while also being cautious and taking weeks to build opinions and not post any "hot takes" until the dust has settled on matters like when (some of) one marginalised group gets into an argument with (some of) another.
I appreciate this video as a left leaning former conservative type and rural resident. I've never seen guns as a means to exert dominance and power over the "weaker" demographics. I've always exercised the right to bear arms because its symbolic of stength and solidarity in numbers to avoid oppression from external forces, be it foreign or governmental. I drifted toward leftist politcs because I never fit in living in red country, but I've also been pushed out of leftist spaces due to reactionary behavior and lack of solidarity. For some reason the right can encompass everything from neutral to facist but the leftist spaces are cannibalistic and enraged to a point that nobody can agree long enough to bring a change. It's an idealogical diagram of a snake eating its own tail. There's anarchists and communists and socialists and neoliberals and classical liberals and "tankies" and pacifists, and there's a severe lack of balance when it comes to what I can define as book smart and street smart a constant war between over-educated and under-educated that disregards cultural cornerstones and customs in favor of strict bureaucracy . Living in a "blue state" and urban setting has actually ran me off to a point that I want to be in a red state again because all the blue policies and control seem to be horribly inefficient, expensive, and ineffective. At this point I feel betrayed by the entire power structure and just want to escape it. Maybe it's a Me problem, but I feel like it's a testament to the fact that humans are self interested and tribal, and we didn't evolve to live under convoluted hierarchies involving the wants and opinions of millions of others. We're designed to live and survive in smaller collectives that operate smoothly and don't depend on industrialized living or global connection because so many trivial cultural differences and practices come under the scrutiny of the rest of the planet depending on one's own personal experiences
Had my heart broken back in late 2015 and I honestly could have gone either way politically. I have a lot of sympathy of folks who are hurting and fall down the alt-right pipeline because there but for the grace of my friends could have gone I.
The government is not, and was never supposed to protect people who follow the rules. The government is supposed to protect the opulent minority. That’s what James Madison said. At what point did anyone say the government was supposed to protect people who follow the rules or protect, poor people or Working people? Show me one founding father who expressed that sentiment. We have a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, not a dictatorship of the proletariat.
I've broken alotta peoples hearts in the social sense. Not gonna go in to that though. I've probably done so politically too, or at least chipped off tiny pieces offa other peoples hearts. Especially when I was a capitalist realist in my reckless youth. I take trust-building in poitical circles very seriously, and I hope I've instead managed to help put hearts back together more than I've cracked them. But I can't speak for other people on whether I've done well on that front or not. Important thing is I try my best.
I gave up 8 years ago. This world is a hellhole with no escape. People are unworthy of trust - they will always fail you. There has never been a single successful movement that didnt backstab or persecute my kind.
I honestly worry about making this comment, but speaking as a Jew who likes to consider themselves pretty progressive and tries to be as educated on things as I can, I’ve felt a lot of that heartbreak myself over the last few years. I’ve lost a lot of friends who didn’t even care to ask why I’d stepped away. It’s hard not to grow resentful, and as someone from a community who’s only survival mechanism for millennia has been to turn inwards and isolate, it’s not hard to understand why.
People have as much of a right to be worried about the end of the month as they do the end of the world. We cannot address environmental justice without also addressing economic justice, and trying to do one without the other will cause us to fail on both fronts.
hear hear
as a black, poor, disabled, sapphic, non binary person I genuinely have not felt more isolation than I do when I look at my political options, the right wants me dead several times over and as I spend time on the left, I really find myself feeling like I'm on the margins of the margins of society because even other marginalized people have no issue with throwing strays at me so often
I'm sorry, you deserve better
Shit like that makes me wonder whether a better future is even possible if we keep stooping to the Rights level. Maybe those old cynics are on to something with them thinking humanity will never change for the better and will only ever get worse, that it doesn't matter what system is in place whether it be capitalism, communism, whateverism that inevitably assholes will always find a way to the top and make it hell for everyone because they are selfish and greedy.
Can you explain what you mean when you say people are "throwing strays" at you?
I'm not arguing or contradicting or anything, I'm just not sure I understand what this phrase means.
I’m learning to STFU more every day
I honestly think that theres nothing more unifying on the left as the lefts disdain for others on the left.
It's like, remember from being a kid, your libertarian uncle who'd start political arguments with everyone every thanksgiving? In my variation on that theme, I got asked the loaded question, "omg I can't stand these social justice leftish blah blah blah, how do you associate with them B?" And I just flipped the script back at him, "hating a group on the left? Pfft, you're just a trend whore. I hate 5 different groups on the left before lunchbreak."
So I guess, you can be comforted knowing that you arent alone in your isolation...but no one's gonna come check on you except to argue with you.
Maybe comfort was a strong choice of wording.
I was so close to stopping after "no lesbian yearning" because I am a yearning lesbian.
i was counting on you all to yearn for me to talk about it
@@ThatDangDad Yeah, me. I beg of you, make a video about lesbian yearning.
I seldom comment on youtube but this one...
I'm brown, trans, non-assimilationist, and since you mentioned long covid, yeah I got that too. And I resonate so hard with that heartbreak. The thing you are talking about with the "disagreement ...between a few Black activists and a few trans activists..."? Being a brown trans person, I was functionally caught in the crossfire and caught bigotry from both ends. I run into it constantly. There's always some intersectional identity that is going to put me into the "other" camp, if not expose me to outright bigotry. I keep trying and I know where my people are, but let me tell you, if it's not obviously if not explicitly intersectional both in philosophy and also membership, I don't even bother because I'm just going to get my heart broken yet again.
I'd argue a LOT of rural people have been abandoned by both parties, and had corporations ruthlessly drain them of resources.
That's why new movements like the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative are so desperately needed. We need progressive connections in places one would _least_ expect them to be.
And simultaneously rob them of their ability to identify the abuser
The issue with this statement is that most of the policies the left pushes for benefit EVERYONE…but since most rural areas are HARD red, democrats don’t bother “wasting” their time there because it’s full of people who like democrat policies until they find out it’s a democrat policy…
Oh, thanks for this.
My heart has been broken too many times by left-wing content creators who haven't practiced what they've preached or who've prioritized petty infighting, self-promotion, profit, or virtue-signalling over outcomes and ethics/principles.
My heart was also shattered by the pandemic, because I heard way too many people (including acquaintances, neighbors, friends, and others) casually opine that people like me and some of my loved ones were just biological weaklings whose deaths would be the acceptable and inevitable cost of people exercising their natural God-given right to eat inside Bennigans. Intellectually, I knew our lives had no value to certain people, but it was something else to actually hear people say that out loud.
Right. They cared so little about people with pre-existing vulnerabilities that they're willing to unalive us casually.
I still haven't gotten my head around how selfish people were.
I find it harder to see the good in people, now.
Honestly, I think you hit the nail on the head. Time and time again, I'm heartbroken when people I have considered allies have called me out for "making everything about race/sexuality/gender" etc.
As someone who has been on the receiving end of LGBT-phobic violence, it makes me want to give up when I'm told by people I considered allies that I need to calm down and stop making everything political.
I've called out blatant transphobia by supposed friends and been asked to leave groups by fellow leftists. It makes me wonder what the point even is if people are apathetic and value a negative peace (absence of tension) over a positive peace (presence of justice).
I think you hit the nail on the head when you mention negative peace vs positive peace. All too often, people in general (but it particularly shows up on the left) are conflict averse when it comes to the people they want to be in community with, and thus are quick to tamp down that conflict rather than facing it and looking for solutions. We all want to see ourselves as good people, ad thus any complaint or accusation is hard to face, because it indicates that we have done something wrong -- which then makes us bad people (supposedly).
I think it is paramount to acknowledge that we are all flawed human beings, in order to allow real discussions that lead to profound changes. I know that for me, personally, it was a hard pill to swallow to recognize that, despite my protestations to the contrary, I said and did things that were misogynistic, racist, etc. I had to listen to my black friends who told me how some of my actions made them feel demeaned, even when I had no intention of doing so -- that my intentions didn't matter when it came to the impact they felt. And that in many ways, just by virtue of being white, I participated in systems of oppression, in ways that are simply inevitable -- so the lest I could do was to try to do a whole lot more listening to the grievances of those who don't have that same privilege, because, long other things, there is a good chance that I am being given undue reverence due to being white and appearing cis/het...
@@glenn_desert_witch I've had to confront similar insecurities in myself when it's come to internalised bias.
In the past, I would all too often be defensive and say things like "I'm poor" (which is true) "how can you say I'm privileged just because I'm white?"
It's taken a lot of growth, listening to the experiences of black comrades (and reading one book "Difficult conversations with a black man" I believe it was) to realise that just by virtue of being white, I am engaging in a system of oppression by being a recipient of positive bias.
I may be poor, but I've also had experiences with mostly older white people who've said things like "Oh you seem like such a polite young man, you don't belong in a neighbourhood like that"
"You remind me of my grandson" etc.
It is a privileged position to not have to think about race because I have not been racialised.
I am not responsible for the systems existence, but I do have a responsibility to confront said system. Step one is acknowledging the privilege I have.
Sorry for the ramble,
But I appreciate your reply
Heartbreak just makes you not want to try anymore
I was born disabled and learned very early that there are people who were my age, being raised to just not give a shit about any need someone like me may have had. My parents taught me how to advocate for myself, and I've been trying to teach others how to advocate for themselves ever since. I very much understand the "I'm not here to educate you" attitude that comes from people in my same position, but if we stop, we perish. It's that grimly simple. My first real lesson in this was informing a teacher I was actively having a seizure and being told to get to the nurse's office on my own two feet (after collapsing right out of my desk) with no one being allowed to go with me, even if they wanted to, and no one did-- mostly, I think, because they just didn't understand what was happening to me, what a seizure even was. That chronic lack of understanding, the unwillingness to engage with something that makes a person uncomfortable has gone on unchecked, because the teacher who wouldn't let anyone go with me to the nurse's office had their tenure and would be teaching for another twenty, thirty years, long after I graduated, and the kids who, even innocently, didn't understand what was happening to me are now adults with their own kids, and unless those kids have taken the initiative to educate themselves, they've likely inherited their parents' anxiety around disabled people. We educate, we advocate, or we die. I've been wrestling with the question of where the room for heartbreak is in that equation all of my life, and the fuck of it is, we can only create that room ourselves when the people around us finally, *finally* understand our lived reality. So after we're exhausted from justifying our existence, we get to fight and dig, and scrape for that too. I was a target of the "free stuff" derision before the DNC made it cool for liberals to say the quiet part out loud (too) because of being on Medicaid, and now that I'm on SSI, it's even worse. And all of this was with life on easy setting because I was from a white, (barely) middle class family, back when the middle class still existed.
Labor Notes offers a course called "When Your Union Breaks Your Heart," because it happens in the labor movement, too, and we need to be prepared to deal with it.
Oh man, this is why I’m avoiding tumblr right now. I was a young ace at the height of the ‘ace discourse’ thing and have some weird lingering scars from that and saw how it basically exploded an emerging online community and forced it back into hiding, and once I saw some of the same rhetoric being recycled at transmasc people I noped out because I can’t get my heart broken again. Interestingly, looking at history this is the same rhetoric that was recycled from when it was applied against bi people, nb people, and though I’m not old enough to remember personally I suspect also against lesbians. Bigotry doesn’t innovate.
It's amusing to me that my big lightbulb moment of turning from organized religion also happened regarding a church elder and evolution.
When at a catechism class around 8th grade, an elder who was teachering made some scoff about how "you may have heard about this thing in school called EVOLUTION! It's completely false and you shouldn't listen to it"
While by that point I already felt that this whole religion thing isn't what it seems, that moment was the final confirmation to me that I absolutely did not belong there. It was like a snap for my brain and I immediately rethought everything the church had "taught" me.
Yeah, I ended up talking about this with a pollster that came to my door in OH, where all these people only show up here when they want something, and leave after they get what they want, and how it makes it SO FUCKING DIFFICULT to build coalitions for any political movement when the "best" party is constantly only wants to be here to get something and then skirt.
It doesn't count if you don't stay, if you don't win, if you don't protect the community. It doesn't count if you don't show, and continue to show, that you have skin in the game.
The discussion of creationism in evangelical Christianity is quite similar to how I feel about American Judaism and Zionism as a Jewish convert who was taught those myths of Zionism in my conversion and took them on (probably breaking some peoples hearts), and then realizing I had been lied to about Zionism by my own community, getting my heart broken and becoming an anti Zionist Jew, and all this within the space of about a year and a half.
For the algorithm- but also just to share.
My mom's a very supportive person, and loves me and my siblings very much, despite being the root cause of much of my trauma before she sobered up. She's almost opinion-less as a person, if that makes any sense. She adopts the opinions and ideas of the people she spends her time around, so while she was still with my father she believed what he did. My dad would probably be considered a polite and practical democratic socialist. They've divorced, which is a good thing, but her current long-term boyfriend is a Christian ex-military libertarian, and they live with his (not technically on paper yet) ex-wife, a liberal Jewish democrat (and cognitive dissonance Zionist). Before October 7th i always wondered what they could possibly have in common (I don't anymore).
My mom shares their opinions now- and while she's still loving and supportive, and cares about me deeply, over Christmas we had an altercation that I think really did break my heart. I wore my kufiya to the Christmas meal over at my mom's house, the same way i wore it to my dad's, and it became a problem. To be clear- it was not a black and white iconic pattern, it's very subtle and in browns and neutrals. The pattern is almost unnoticeable from a distance, and my mom took me aside to tell me I was upsetting people (the Zionist). We started talking about why I was wearing it, and the conversation got heated- I can barely remember what was actually said, because I started shaking and my temperature started rising, which is a typical overstimulated response to confrontation and stress for me- I think it's related to my autism somewhat.
But in some way, I had asked about whether or not what was happening was okay, and my mother said something about innocent civilians getting hurt- when she said that, her hands moved in my peripherals and she made "air quotes" around "innocent". It felt like the planet had stopped turning for a second and I demanded to know why she had done that. She implied that it was the Palestinian's faults for electing Hamas, and the conversation did not get better- it lasted barely another minute before me and my partner gathered our things and left. I cried while driving back to his place.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to that house again, knowing who my mother got that idea from lives there. I still see her sometimes for meals, but I don't know when I'm going back over there in person- maybe when Palestine is free. But I don't think I'll ever look at her the same way again. She's still my mom and I of course I still love her, and I don't think I could cut her out of my life and at this point I don't need to- I am not the target of her... dismissal. But the way I look at her has completely changed since. I wish it hadn't. And I wish she'd actually listen and learn from me, instead of assuming one day I will simply become an enlightened centrist, like her and her boyfriend.
Still struggling with that incident. I don't think I'll ever forget it, but I think that's the kind of heartbreak this video talks about. she deeply betrayed the idea of her I had in my head, and the idea that she might share some of my more meaningful values. I'm going to stick to my guns, and if I'm lucky, one day she might actually listen to me- and maybe her love thy neighbor will actually start to apply to all of our neighbors instead of just the ones her housemates tell her are the good guys.
be well and free Palestine. 🍉
Remember when Elmo asked the internet "hows everybody doin?" And twitter proceeded to therapy unload on the poor puppet?
Now im just waiting for the stories of how Elmo, and the rest of my childhood, was catagorically abused by everyone at Nickelodeon in power.
Innocence was the biggest lie of them all.
Oh… I have bad news for you about the guy who created Elmo………….
@@Emileigggggh 😢
@@Emileigggggh whats the bad news? Kevin Clash was a voice actor for Elmo and was accused of sexual misconduct with minors (dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired). He didn't make Elmo though. A woman, Caroly Wilcox, made Elmo and the most criminal thing I could find about her is how underrated she is. There's also Jim Henson who created the Muppets as a property but I wasn't aware of any major issue with him either. That would be bad news if it turned out Mr. Henson had some serious skeletons in his closet. I've always put him in the same boat as Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross.
PUPPET??
@@thugpug4392 Kevin Clash was a loooot more than just one of Elmo's voice actors. First, no one is "just" a voice actor for a muppet/puppet, they also do the puppeteering which involves more coordination and extra performance skills. Second, Elmo only became a character when Clash picked up the puppet (which was not yet named Elmo and was really just a background puppet) and did the voice and schtick, which then grew into Elmo. Like, Clash absolutely created Elmo. Jerry Nelson couldn't even crack it. You can find early uses of the puppet that have completely different voices and vibes. Even the iconic Richard Hunt (RIP gay icon) got frustrated that he couldn't figure out what to do with the puppet, so he threw it at Clash who "raised him up and brought energy and life into Elmo and from that day forward we would all write for Elmo." He didn't make the physical puppet, but he created the character and there wouldn't be an Elmo as we know him were it not for Kevin Clash, who is (ALLEGEDLY BLAAAH) a guy who preys on children. They did a documentary on this like a year before the allegations dropped.
I hope this isn't rude, this is a topic where my autism shines (although Sesame Street is kinda dead to me for multiple reasons at this point unfortunately, friendship ended with Sesame Street, now Arthur and Avatar the Last Airbender are my best kid's shows of all time)
My local pride organization, in a remote red state capital (that alone is enough to pinpoint exactly which group I'm talking about), fell apart due to infighting, personality differences, and a lack of actual structure and accountability. It has gutted our ability to protest against anti-trans laws in town, but more specifically the heartbreak I feel from how the situation played out has destroyed my desire to be an activist and even hurt my marriage and my work to reconnect with my Chickasaw tribe. I don't have answers for mending broken hearts, because I'm still working on mending mine and my spouse's and getting back into the community. I have similar drama and heartbreak occurring in my main hobby (I play in the SCA which is at a crossroads as to whether it stays a shitty haven for conservatives and sex pests or moves forward as an open and accepting place for people of all races, sexes, genders and religious or not backgrounds) and it's just exhausting to keep going through the same song and dance. Heartbreak is exhausting, period. And we all need rest.
yup i totally feel ya
I am also in a red state capital whose pride organization has imploded! 🙃
Just sending you love from a parallel universe (or maybe a few miles away). Get some rest. ❤
SCA = Society for Creative Anachronism ?
Through this whole thing I had Obiwan's line from the Mustifar fight in my head. "You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!" I think it is in our nature to look for a Messianic figure to lead us from darkness, and the biggest heartbreak comes from your messiah turning out to be all too human.
funny thing is he did bring balance to the force, before there was 1 sith and a LOT of Jedi, after what he did there was 2 of each. we don't want balance, balance is a liberal ideal, we want good to win.
On the subject, I semi-recently made someone I cared about feel uncomfortable around me due to jokes and remarks I would make that she would play along with. I didn't think twice about it and figured she was okay with them since she was obviously playing along. However she eventually let me have it and informed me that her joking along was her attempt to redirect the conversation into something less uncomfortable for her. The reason she was never explicit about her discomfort was because she thought I'd brush her concerns off, even though I'm always telling people to feel comfortable calling me out. I immediately apologized and expressed remorse, and that she was always welcome to speak her mind with me. However, at that point it had been the last straw for her and we haven't spoken since.
On one hand, *I* was hurt by the fact that 1) I'd lost a friend, 2) she didn't trust me enough to tell me the very first time that she didn't appreciate my remarks, and 3) that I spent all this time causing discomfort and unease in someone I cared about and liked, in a way I would have never done if I realized the full extent of which my actions affected her.
On the other hand, I hurt *her* as well, and our friendship might never recover as a result. I might have permanently changed the way she views men like me for the worst. I can't imagine precisely what she felt, but I can't imagine it felt good.
Stuff like this is why I'm always anxious, because people only tell you you did something wrong if it's to late to fix it. How were you supposed to better yourself if you didn't even know that you did something wrong? I hate that kind of dishonesty. It's her fault too that the friendship failed like this, she should have just communicated. That wouldn't have made your remarks ok, but at least the friendship might not have broken apart.
As they say, it takes two to tango.
This is why it is possible to change hearts and minds and convert people away from bad ideologies. It is also true that some people are beyond change and just want to gain power over us and do everything they possibly can to accomplish this.
I often gripe about the fact that some people are pushovers, and will not speak their mind, thus allowing me to hurt them repeatedly and ultimately having the relationship completely fall apart. Good boundaries are important on all sides.
This is also why, while I am an anarchist, I also believe we must have rules and good governance -- which can be accomplished without rigid hierarchies. Just having a free-for-all without any rules makes it impossible to have good relationships.
If people are unwilling to communicate discomfort, that's also partly their fault. Maybe there was things you could have done differently, but we can't expect others to be mind readers.
Rizzler says skibidi toilet
oh man, i have a lot of feelings about this. my mental health is quite good right now, and the main reason for that is because i've filtered out most sources of news. there's very little i can tolerate before spiraling into despair. with being disabled in a pandemic and fucked over by institutions built to "help" me, my brain just can't take it anymore. i worry about this, as i WANT to be an advocate, i went to college and got a social service work diploma. i'm vice chair of an advisory committee for my local para-transit program. how sustainable is this? i can only wait and see, and hope the likely fallout won't be too bad. i'm a stubbornly hopeful person, but that's not a cure for mental illness.
i'm the same way, I have most "major" topics muted on twitter because i just. can't. keep. despairing. I gotta get busy livin' or bet busy dyin' and filling my head with images of atrocity was pushing me the wrong direction lol
I'm not fully disabled, but I do have an autoimmune disorder, which includes asthma.
COVID taught me that the people around me were more worried about the mild discomfort of wearing masks than they were about possibly unaliving me.
...I still feel very alienated about it.
@@grmpEqweer my mom is a NURSE and she only wears a mask when she's required to. it drives me up the wall!
I think a big thing we can all do is try to engage with people who aren't like us. Specifically, people that you believe you don't have any problem with. For example, a lot of men have a really hard time engaging with stories about women, and they think stories about women are inherently uninteresting. They don't consciously think that, but they dismiss any lady lead projects out of hand. When Tuca and Bertie came out, there was a violent and outspoken backlash against the show that basically amounted to "women show bad, women show dumb." A lot of women and femmes loved the show, because it deals with very real things that happen to a lot of people. As the show slowly rolled out two more seasons, there was a sea change from the men and masc folks who were watching the show. The hate watchers had either fallen out, or they started to see themselves. I saw a lot of dudes who really identified with Speckle, the male lead, but also men who started to identify with Tuca and Bertie. When I started to talk with those guys, I found out a lot of them were really lonely and had no idea how to navigate relationships of any kind, and they thought that was a problem that only effected men. Seeing two girls struggle with feelings of alienation, judgement, and anxiety showed them that they weren't alone, even if those girls were just cartoon birds. It made it easier to talk about loneliness, and for us to find common ground where there wasn't common ground before.
This is a really difficult one. I dont know to what degree my thoughts will be applicable, as ive been paranoid and slow to trust for almost my entire life, and so have a tendency to go into things expecting to be betrayed, but also knowing that my existence is used as a political football for a pile of reasons (invisible disability, openly and visibly queer on multiple vectors, among other things) puts me in the position of being left with the choice to either accept constant betrayal in the effort to change things, or to just depart the world and be done with it.
More than anything, the thing that I have found most helpful in keeping from causing as much harm, and trying to avoid doing so entirely when possible, is humility and self awareness. If someone says or does something that I find concerning, and it is brought to their attention, the reaction in the moment, and the long term behaviour in relation to the topic, are both extremely impactful.
Another core facet is the distinction between human behaviour in the name of an ideology, and human behaviour from people who represent an ideology. This is things like recognizing that capitalists using their money and influence to pressure lawmakers to further expand their wealth and influence, are directly connected to the fundamental realities of the ideology, while a male feminist turning out to be an abuser when the cameras are off, is not directly connected. Each of these issues is a problem, and needs to be addressed, however maintaining a mindset and outlook in relation to these topics, where assessing relevance is part of the processing of revelations, can help to soften some of the hurt of betrayal from people who shouldve been allies based on their advocacy.
I wish there was easy answers to this, things that would work for everyone and help us all work together for a better world, but thats not the way things are, so we are just stuck doing the best we can, with what we've got. Much love to the community here, and the person who we came together around, and best of luck!
Great video. Very timely.
There's an epidemic of being heartbroken about the American dream and how it was always a lie.
If it was always a lie, and thus never great, how can it be great again?
And who is it that's desparate for the lie to be real?
Ohhhh. Oh wow.
"Desperate for the lie to be real."
Thanks.
This is what I'm processing too. I can't stop feeling angry for every person that suffered a loss in the name of that lie.
"So true bestie" - Aristotle
A couple years ago i found your page and left some mean comment about your asmr voice or whatever, but i stuck around and you introduced me to bell hooks. Ive now read several of her books and have a solidly defined love ethic which enables me to have a better relationship with my wife, family, friends, and community. Im not saying any of this is because of you, but your videos helped to provide a spark and thats pretty dope, so thanks for that
i also talk more clearly now!
but seriously, that's really wonderful to hear, I'm glad you're thriving out there
Thank you. Thank you so much for this video. I didn't realise how much I needed somebody to vocalize this feeling inside of me. This profound sense of hopelessness after years and years of political struggle. I just wonder... what do I do now...
I strive with my whole being to be part of the reason that hearts mend rather than the reason that hearts break. If I have a purpose in life, it is this.
I really appreciate this. Half of my family is in rural Appalachia and it's awful, seeing how much everything is a struggle there more than it needs to be. And I'm disabled and trans and kind of gave up being involved in my union after being an office for 4.5 years, because when I was really having struggles during COVID, I couldn't get any help when I needed it. Just crickets when I reached out.
Oh man. I’ve been thrown out from irl friend groups constantly when I try to bring up the idea of solidarity and safety about being trans, or things like making Medicaid access easier, etc. I’m still in shock from a monumental loss of friendships and don’t know how to process things rn.
Every day or so I get asked in a poll questions that revolves around the treatment of incarcerated people. Asking questions like should incarcerated people have access to television, ipads, food fit for humans, health care, wages over the 52 cent an hour, which is the legal maximum, basic human rights stuff. It is shocking the amount of people out there who are the @do the crime, do the time@ mindset. The white-privileged, under-policed segment of our population has been socialized to somehow embrace the idea that all people that are incarcerated because they are a monster who has done monsterous things and have therefor given up their right to be treated like a human being. (The 14th Amendment abolished slavery EXCEPT in the event that a person becomes an inmate; at which time, in addition to having their freedom of movement taken away, their right to be treated as someone possessing civil rights has been suspended until the inmate is no longer an inmate. They become the property of the state (or the owner(s) of the private prison in which they reside). Their labour can be exploited for profit, every aspect of their life can be as if a slave in the 18th and 19th century. Their human and civil rights no longer apply nor need be considered, so long as they are an inmate. The under-policed don't really see this as a problem because they rarely run into situations where police contact is even an option let alone find themselves arrested for walking while black or sitting in a car looking......not quite right. The OVER-POLICED find themselved subjected to daily observation to make sure that 'nothing fishy is going on' hell, they gotta worry about the skipping of the arrest and trial all together and straight on to the death penalty on the street for 'jogging in the wrong neighbourhood'. To me, the dehumanization of 'the other' is so ingrained in our system that sticking a 'certain kind of person' in solitary confinement with bread and water for years at a time is A OK with them. Probably because it would NEVER happen to their white selves; and, if it isn't something 'YOU' don't have to worry about happening to you, fuck the ones that worry about it every god damn day. We would like to think we have; but, we have NOT come very far forward from the days when we whites owned black and brown people. I am both outraged and deeply hurt at the same time. Not every person is a murder or a child-hurter. We have to stop treating those who have to spend a little time in jail because they didn't pay their child supportt on time or didn't show up for court because they didn't have the means to pay a bunch of traffic tickets as if they were murders. At the very least, those of us that have the white privilege of not needing to go to prison unless we do something really wrong, the least we can do is not insist that every black or brown person who goes to prison needs to be treated like an animal in order for their prison stay to be meaningful. It's like we whites have a blood lust, a desire to dehumanize and violate in the ugliest of ways everyone whom we believe has done wrong. Do better white America! They are not the animals, we are for what we allow and or think is an appropriate way to treat an inmate. Shame on you, shame on all of us.
unrelated to the video, but I recognize your voice in a lot of the youtube videos I watch, reading quotes specifically. I really appreciate your channel and this community of youtubers you’re in.
yeah i like my friends... they are pretty nice folks
It often stings so much that people will not confront anything that makes them feel that way and stay in an unhealthy mindset.
hey appalachian here! i was born in NE tennessee and was raised in SW virginia about 30 mins from the kentucky line. its been refreshing listening to someone on this platform touch on what ive grown up listening to my whole life, coal. it really makes me feel seen hearing my area being talked about with my empathy than discontent. as a queer here, shits rough, but hearing these perspectives keep me in check
I used to live in eastern KY, it’s really awful. Right in the area where the flooding was, but I moved to Lexington in 2018-2019 and it was the best decision I’ve made. That area is dying more and more also it’s hard being a lefty in that area, people just constantly voting against their own interests, they’ve been gaslit and manipulated so much it’s very sad.
Have had heart broken; have broken hearts. 😢
This one is important, Phil. Thank you for sharing it. Will have to figure out _how_ to share it with some folks I think would benefit from seeing it. 🤔
Yeah, I've had my heart broken: I looked up to a semi-prominent leftist RUclipsr who made genuinely amazing political analysis through their videos, then it turned out they had been sexually abusive and forced people to take drugs among other things I neither remember, nor want to drudge up. I don't want people speculating on who this was btw, but the result was that I needed like a month to mentally heal from that feeling of betrayal before properly engaging in politics again.
Luckily, I got over it, I was able to recognize that though their actions were terrible, their words still had meaning and I still agreed with those. I'm still not ready to give that person attention again though. Don't know if that shard of betrayal will ever make me able to deal with their stuff again.
I think you propose an elegant solution to the problem: we must detach certain aspects of behavior from others. We cannot throw away a whole person, and their entire body of work, just because they acted in a way that was reprehensible. Someone can produce amazing essays, and then act in a way that is entirely contrary to what they preach -- and both things can be true at the same time.
Compare this to Christianity (not that I ever was a Christian). The Bible has lots of great lessons in it, and in general Jesus appears to be a decent fellow who taught lots of people about love and forgiveness. We also know there are thousands of years of people acting in reprehensible ways in the name of Christianity. While this makes the Bible suspect (and there is plenty of problematic stuff there that Christians have used to kill and oppress), I can also appreciate some of the Bible and Jesus' teachings, and I can see why people are drawn to those elements.
Or compare how this works in romantic relationships. I recently got over some heartbreak I carried for years due to an abusive boyfriend. He really ravaged my heart, and impaired my ability to trust others. But he also impaired my ability to trust myself: why didn't I see what he was doing, why was I unable to leave when I saw what he was doing? By recognizing that he had many wonderful qualities, and that I had truly loved him because of those things, I was able to forgive myself, and truly move on to having more healthy relationships with others. I could have (and did) hardened my heart towards all potential lovers, but instead I focused on having better relationships, and picking out partners who were less likely to be as shitty, while accepting that everyone does harmful things at times, but that it doesn't mean that I was wrong about their whole being, or that everything they do must now be shrouded in that hurt and contempt. This is not to say we must accept abusive behavior, or live with people who are attempting to gain power over us at every turn -- it is important we remove ourselves from situations that continuously make us unsafe -- it simply means that we shouldn't look at a single indicator and decide that this automatically means the person will do us harm with their every move, and that we need to work together to improve things from every side.
Who was that?
Hot damn, Phil. This brought out so many emotions about what I'm working through in my personal life. I've moved past the possibility of having my heart broken by any politician. Gotta do my damnedest to make sure that doesn't happen for those i actually care about
the IWW is one of the single biggest sources of this kind of heartbreak in my life, both personally and among comrades.
I joined them and did my best to support them, but they do nothing in my state.
@@aetherkid their best use case is if you're actively trying to organize your workplace. they're no good for contracts, but their organizing 101 is honestly world class. contact the executive board and request a trainer come out, if you're interested.
if you work somewhere small, you might be able to swing a full Iww campaign, and if you work somewhere bigger, fellow wobs are great to bounce ideas off of or ask for advice
otherwise, if there are other campaigns going on in your branch, the best way to use your time is like, doing tasks - translating fliers for people in a campaign, printing stuff, setting up meeting spaces and doing other paperwork.
the mistake most people make is thinking the IWW is an org to meet other radicals and it really, really shouldn't be. it's a union with union bylaws and union problems. my branch was over inflated with people treating it like a social space and it was alienating any time someone tried to bring a (normie) coworker in.
Would you mind expanding on this? I'm a new-er member, and I'm curious to get other's perspectives on the dysfunction within the IWW.
@@Aencii sure. my experience is pre-covid, so I'm out of date and have no idea how covid impacted these dynamics. also, there was fuckshit happening at the national level that reflected what was going on in my beach, but I don't have enough details to speak on it.
I think the iww has a couple of solid use cases - of you're trying to organize a shop, ideally a small one with a single location, it can be very helpful. the organizing 101 training is excellent and if your local has a General Organizing Committee (GOC), that's a great place to bounce ideas off of other folks in campaigns and maybe even bring coworkers if the vibe is right. do not bring coworkers to branch meetings unless they're explicitly interested in union bureaucracy.
if you're not in an active campaign, use your time there to help someone who is - look for translators if they work in a place that has a lot of non-native English speakers, offer to file stuff with the national labor relations board, etc.
I think a lot of people enter the iww hoping to find community and unfortunately it just isn't built for that. when I was involved, I was in a huge branch with a lot of idle members who had a lot of opinions and no skin in the game, but we wound up with factions on factions. the group tension broke when our secretary got outed as a sex pest of sorts and the factions that existed fell right along those lines.
incidentally, those lines also were built around the general defense committee (GDC, which was founded as the legal defense wing of the IWW, but after being established often found itself doing antifascist work) and the incarcerated workers organizing committee (iwok, which organized folks in prison). there's a faction within the IWW that didn't (maybe still doesn't) think those auxiliaries should exist and sometimes actively sabotaged them.
finally, my city is extremely not white and our branch was almost completely white. there are a lot of reasons for this and they're all bad. 0/10. part of it was people showing up looking for anarchy social club, part of it was that the white people already in it have predominantly white workplaces, but mostly it was that the branch repeatedly alienated fellow workers of color and the turnover is membership was ghastly. workers of color would show up, try to organize, get less support, get ignored, etc, and then leave. my city is full of radical communities of color and the iww is the last thing they're thinking about.
tl;dr leftist-on-leftist violence in a mass org designed to radicalize workers in their own collective interests is a bad look, and the constant alienation of everyone who isn't male, cis, white, and/or ablebodied will stifle the rev.
I think they key to facing heartbreak is internal responsibility and accountability. It’s not just when someone you trusted breaks that trust and hurts you, but when the community they built backs up that harm. I was hurt when I learned a prominent member of an org I was in hurt others, I was heartbroken when the leadership helped cover it up.
the pains of being disenchanted is a HUGE part of the US right now.
i go back to my analogy that we rehabilitate dogs better then we do each other. a dog gets betrayed by their human and becomes bitter towards all humans. it takes a long time to get that pup to to trust again. but we spend more time and energy in helping pups than people. IMO.
__p.s.
is that soundclip the playstation boot sound with the bass ramped up? 😅
as always, thanks for the video and your time.
it's the gunshot/scoreboard sfx from CHILDREN OF THE SUN, a sleazy grime-soaked sniper puzzle game
You are right about the analogy with dogs. It is also true that many problematic dogs just languish in shelters or get put down. There are plenty of people who don't want to deal with their rehabilitation.
But the analogy is also correct in the sense that we have to rehabilitate humans in the same way. Forgiving a dog for biting me doesn't mean that I accept being bitten -- the behavior must be corrected. However, punishment doesn't work to fix the behavior. In order to go for that correction, we must love the dog, figure out what triggered the episode and either remove the trigger or train the dog to respond differently to that trigger. And, here's the big kicker: we must make sure that the dog gets their basic needs met -- they must have access to proper shelter, food, and water, they must get the amount of exercise proper for their size and breed, they must get attention and affection. This is also true for humans -- when their basic needs are not met, they are much more likely to act out. I have had housing insecurity for years now, and it is absolutely the cause of interpersonal strife, for example. Now, of course, we humans have ways to rationally bypass some of those challenges, and this is a huge part of therapy, for example. But I also think it is important to extend compassion to each other, knowing full well that everyone makes mistakes, and that often they are completely blind to how those things are mistakes because they are so deeply steeped in the problem that it's just the norm for them. This doesn't mean condoning bad behavior, but if we try to understand where it comes from we can help work on solutions to the root cause, while also re-training the person to do better in spite of the situation.
Basically, my approach is to work on both angles: we have to change the material conditions we are operating under, in order to allow people to be their best selves, rather than acting out because of their circumstances; and we also have to work on providing safety, love, and compassion in our interpersonal relationships so that we can improve that side of things, and prevent further pain and damage to everyone they come in contact with (including themselves).
@@glenn_desert_witch
i didn't even think about kennels and kill-shelters, good call.
thank you for your additional exploration and details on the analogy
As a queer and disabled person (and a member of a system at that), I feel like I'm running out of grace for abled people. I and many of my headmates have this dream of just escaping to a world with only fellow disabled people, often even just wheelchair users like us, and nobody else. But it doesn't exist. It's harrowing knowing there is nowhere we can go and have our needs met. And it's exhausting being surrounded by abled people all the time who treat able-bodied and -mindedness as the default, and who thus require explanation and justification for our existence as a multiply disabled system.
It gives me hope that someone acknowledges something that deeply effects people and talking to others about it
*IT IS HEARTBREAK* that radicalized me. Goddamn. I was sent to prison, taken away from my life partner...I always cared but in prison I listened, and listened, and listened, and I became a Buddhist, and just hearing tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, and I was trained to turn my awareness intentionally outward, put my mind frequently in the most vulnerable, most in pain, over and over and over, and I heard it endlessly
And I came out 7 years ago and got on Twitter and heard more, and more, and saw wider and wider, and my heart broke over and over and over and over.
Years ago, I drew a lot of support from a leftish Twitter network, which kept me going through a really dark time. Then I tried to befriend an influential (compared to group size) person that shared very similar politcs, life circumstances, friends in common, and even similar interests. By all rights we seemed like an obvious good fit, but almost the moment they started paying attention to my posts, they found something stupid to kick up shit about. We literally agreed on the underlying issue, we just disagreed on how the terms should play out, and they _knew_ that. But even so, they twisted my words and soapboxed for their followers, who were all too eager to trash me and rope _their_ followers in on it. I deleted my account in a matter of days.
More recently I've learned this kind of experience is absolutely not uncommon on Twitter, but I didn't know that at the time, and I was putting up with vaguely similar drama at the trans support groups I was attending that it seemed rational to draw a direct line through all of them. I haven't been to a support group or joined an LGBT-oriented group since, and it's taken a lot of work just to have the courage to post here on RUclips without fearing for a backlash. I very much had my heart broken by queer social media, and it will be a long time before I could ever trust it again.
15:41 I watched your video all the way through and wrote about what you said in my journal from this point to the end. I appreciate you for sharing this thought. I’m gonna be thinking heavy to myself about it.
I am usually not a fan of religion/religious humor but the running gag landed perfect every time. as far as heartbreak goes, sometimes its hard for me to shake the feeling that all of us on the side of progress are just too needy one way or the other, and the reason regressives are so easily able to assert their agenda is because they have the ability force people to neglect their needs to achieve a goal, even a self destructive one. to be fair building a society where all needs are met is a bigger project than any regressive could conceive of and by design will be more vulnerable to instances of heartbreak.
Turns out if you never expect anything from anyone, you never have to feel disappointment. And if you give nothing, you can avoid being a disappointment.
But they're hardly living.
Sorry i'm still listening but I really cannot recommend the anthology podcast Old Gods of Appalachia enough!! It is!!! So good!!!
Thanks for another reminder of trying to be softer and more understanding. Also you briefly mentioned that in your interview with that biker. Just let shit go sometimes, you can disagree and still decide that maybe its not your time to speak. And especially if something seems stupid to you on the surface level try to get where the others are coming from. You're an important voice, not just because of the topics you speak of but as a constant reminder to be kinder to each other.
I think my favorite part of this channel is the diversity of topics. I remember you saying that was the goal after you covered the bulk of you ex-cop content. You oscillate between important and interesting/weird at the perfect tempo.
glad you like it, because that's how my brain works, just dilly dallying between odd topics randomly lol
@@ThatDangDad The variety of topics perfectly illustrates how everything is colored by ideology, and everything is political.
This "heartbreak" that you speak of has happened to me so many times over the years that I ended up just giving up trying. We've somehow forgotten how to collaborate and cooperate and instead are just seeking those that will follow orders without question or objection.
We've been poisoned by our upbringings to favor "power" and "correctness" over community and belonging, and that has been a driving force in helping me to understand that there will be no solidarity. No community. No cooperation.
There's no winning this game. We lost decades ago. All we're doing at this point is playing pretend.
If all else fails, try out of spite. What do you have to lose?
@@Ironsuaba My peace of mind.
My sense of having any kind of agency in my life or my world.
Friends.
Time.
Energy.
The free time I could spend doing something other than trying to change someone's point of view.
The free time I could spend doing something other than getting multiple people up to speed enough to understand the underlying systemic issues that lie at the heart of the problem.
Seeing something moderately good become a pile of rubble due to infighting and factionalization.
Let This Radicalize You makes for a good read, OP. Check it out!
Yes, we have been poisoned by our upbringings. I grew up in a leftist home, and even I absorbed hegemonic ideas here and there, but I can clearly see the difference between me and the average leftist American who is simply steeped in all the individualism that they learned their whole lives. Especially when there is conflict, there seems to be this power play that comes into it, where someone has to be right, or win the argument. While I am trying to express that there is an issue, I am seen as an adversary, rather than someone who brings up a problem in order to solve it. They are so often blind to the fact that cooperation is about building consensus and getting buy-in, not about everyone automatically wanting to do the same thing in the same manner.
I do encourage you to continue trying, though. I think it is possible to acknowledge that there are loads of shitty people, but that we can, and should continue to work towards a better world for us all --including ourselves. If we compare this "political heartbreak" to romantic heartbreak, I think we can see that there is a benefit to continuing to pursue romantic connections even when we have been in awful relationships -- and that one of the best ways to do so is to prevent ourselves from idealizing our partner, but rather go in knowing they are gonna hurt us, and work within the relationship to foster improvement in everyone involved, extending compassion to our partner when they do us wrong, while setting boundaries around what we will and will not tolerate.
Nothing to add. Comment for engagement.
I don't want to go back to computer for main account. Heartbreak sucks and I defs get a sense of community from community action and protests. Hopefully my ankles heal up good for May 1st immigrant and workers rights protest. Although haven't connected with MIRAC yet, still have been helping NAA out weekly
I get a lot of very conflicting feelings about the "I don't want to interact with a kind of people due to bad experiences with that kind" statement. I haven't fully unpacked what I feel and why I feel it yet, but my response is generally to honor that request and give people the space they need for as long as they need it.
@:33 wait, I didn't realize that was on the table to talk about.
As a disabled person who grew up disabled. I'm not heart broken. I'm straight up jaded and have come to accept that non-disabled people are at best mildly useful. But on average are a hindrance, or in opposition to me. Liberals, can talk about minimum wage. Because it has effected them at some point in their life. But don't realize that living on ssi is utter destitution enforced by highly restrictive means testing. And gaining employment is often nearly impossible. But the optics of even talking about the state of welfare in this country is so bad. That they'll refuse to talk about it. Or even speak in language meant to exclude us from the conversation. The fact is that disabled peoples rights and needs, are currently as repressed as gay rights were in the 80s.
This hit really close to home, I've been in political heartbreak mode for a while
Beautiful. Thank you. ( lupus sufferer here... and immuno-compromised )
I feel like I have so many words and some emotional blockage keeping it from rushing out of me.
I was in Eastern Europe for 6 months. It surprised me how many places used coal.
Another great video as always. Now you got me reflecting on the times of breaking other people's hearts. The biggest challenge is admittance to your actions to both yourself and especially the broken hearts. I really got apologizes for a couple of occurrences myself. Shit balls.
Off the top, you-tubers Channel 5 News and Illuminaughty come to mind. Man, it really is heartbreaking. 💔
I was SO disappointed in Andrew. He was an awesome interviewer.
I think you've touched on something important. A lot of folk are happy to rail against the machine, but also point fingers at individuals that vote differently. People voting against their own interests is deeply frustrating, and it does anger me privately, but outwardly I try and remain compassionate. They might be voting against their own interests, but that's also a reflection of systemic oppression, imo. It's not their fault schools don't teach class theory. It's not their fault that they've been fed a steady diet of fear and lies. I'm not saying we have to welcome everyone with open arms, a certain amount of gatekeeping is needed to create and keep safe spaces, but we don't need to belittle them either. Engage with compassion, and if you can't, then maybe engaging with opponents is not where the movement needs your energy spent. (All of this, of course, being context specific. Just, try and take a moment to think about your words and actions instead of instinctually meeting anger with anger and hate with hate. Maybe you still think that's best, but I think the thoughtfulness matters)
Reminds of this trope in south american music of the heartbroken communist. They used to believe in something. "Ivan era un Comunista" and "El viejo comunista" come to mind, great songs.
I know this guy, who works for my uncle as kind of a right hand, but they're such good friends i think there's not much pay involved, they just kinda live together ever since my uncle fell from economic grace. He once, totally drunk in a celebration of my grandad's birthday, rolled up his sleeve and showed me a Che Guevara tatoo, "He's gonna save us all" he said, i almost teared up. For context, we suffered a CIA coup that was the longest lasting dictatorship in the history of the americas, his part never lost power to this day, and we became an extremely neoliberal one party state.
Wdym about Che's part(y?) never losing power?
Always great stuff 👍
Empathy, the beginning of understanding. Understanding, the beginning of peace. Peace, that for which we all long.
Beautifully said. Have watched 3 or 4 of our videos in a row now since earlier this night the aaalmighty algorithm lead me to your video about how being a cop screwed you up mentally, and everything you're saying resonates deeply with me. Though I am Swedish and live in Norway, so I don't have the *exact* same issues as all of you Americans do, but it's definitely mostly the same. Subscribed directly after I had watched the first one, and I think I'm gonna spend the rest of this sleepless night (that's become an early sleepless morning by now at 5.15 AM) watching more of your insightful and great videos. I'm very glad I found your channel. You are a great voice of reason in an otherwise crazy world!
I’m an Indigenous leftist. Heart broken by basically everyone. There are a lot of bigots in Indian Country & while it’s getting better, we have a ways to go, so it’s hard to have community…and that goes quadruple for non-Indigenous people. Micro and macro aggression is commonplace.
Great thoughts friend 🙂
You sir broke my heart 💔
wait, hold on, I've forgotten how james 3:1 goes
thunderclapping THX synthpad intensifies
WE SHALL RECEIVE A STRICTER JUDGMENT
no one can say they haven't been warned now!!!
Completely unrelated to the subject at hand, but you have the Uzumaki anthology? Noice.
been a horror fan since my youth, seen it all, blood and guts and gore and cruelty, and no matter how experienced I get, Junji Ito still knows how to get under my skin
@@ThatDangDad He certainly has a way with panel placement and detail without hyper-focusing on the gore. Plus the sheer weirdness of his horror is also great. A world in which the villain is... spirals? Only Junji Ito could come up with that.
its hard to have your heart broken when youve already lost all hope
Yup. It's a defensive measure. Hoping opens one to the very likely probability your hopes will be dashed.
...I don't know if I have any answers.
Thanks, Phill. 💖
I recognize that PSX era SCEA soundbyte
Tell me what's in your heart, daddy ❤️
Spot on
Commenting for the algorithm & bc, as a disabled person who still has be concerned about Covid to this day, you couldn’t be more correct. I rarely feel “seen” by ANYONE on the Covid subject, let alone someone who isn’t disabled themselves.
Curious if you have someone disabled in your immediate family?? Otherwise your sense of empathy is simply….unheard of.
I guess I was commenting for more than the algorithm but was too self conscious to admit it 🫣
I can't express how precisely you've targeted the issues I've been wrestling with. It is indeed a heartbreaking time to be alive. Thanks for saying these things, and please keep doing so.
I like the message and the conclusion but I'm skeptical of a core assumption of this video, that positive social media interaction is a meaningful form of solidarity and that ephemeral boundaries of "the left" form a meaningful political cohort. I'm biased because a large portion of the times I see appeals to the importance of so called "leftist unity", it's to use it as a cudgel against issues that are close to my heart. Often, issues facing people with non-traditional gender identities are discussed as the lamb to sacrifice of the altar of "leftist unity", and issues of ecology and animal liberation are treated as a distraction. Perhaps this is heartbreak, but to some extent, I think it's worth being skeptical of the idea of a practically influential subaltern consciousness arising out of a hyper-individualized media spectacle.
I appreciate the thoughtful comment although I don't think I was calling for "leftist unity" anywhere. What I was calling attention to is times that *trust* was broken. If RadFemCommie420 with 5 followers randomly makes a whack comment about someone on the margins, whatever, block and move on. I'm speaking specifically about online communities where people thought they were working together or more organized than they actually were.
It's not that I saw strangers hurt each other's feelings, it's that I saw people who were supposed to be *more* than that letting each other down. There's always going to be squabbles online but if we want any coalitions to be stronger than a Twitter circle, I'm just urging more thought towards how we treat people's trust in us
@@ThatDangDad That's very fair, I didn't pick up on the context as I'm not really involved in more "activated" groups on the internet, and I appreciate you taking the time to correct my misunderstanding. I absolutely agree that we owe consideration to those we align ourselves with, be it a social media circle, an activist group, or a local municipal assembly.
I got the impression that this video was really aimed at the exact folks willing to let the less conventional parts of their community down by engaging in respectability politics, so I don't think it's worth giving folks who do that the courtesy of pretending they are serious citizens, when they are clearly armchair QBing electoral politics. As a pretty conventional person who doesn't have the bandwidth for community organizing, I think there's value in the marginalized putting their experiences out there and essayists contextualizing those experiences, if for nothing else than to move the Overton window further left so that those who only have the capacity to grapple with voting, letter writing, and protesting can do those things in a better way. If I didn't have access to this stuff I wouldn't be doing anything material to try and help, so hopefully the accretion of a bloc from a lot of individuals listening could allow for some form of leftist movement.
Also, "leftist" is frustrating, but every time we name a political philosophy left of absolute theocratic dictatorship, it gets rebranded as something pejorative by the capitalists, and that makes the more milquetoast terms seem safer to use in public.
@@ashleyjohnson1129 I absolutely feel that about the rebranding, as someone who goes by "left-wing libertarian" or just "libertarian" depending on who I'm talking to, when out IRL in my rural and fairly conservative community.
The primary thing I hear from people on the right of me is that, while Communism/Socialism/Anarchism sounds good on paper, it can never happen because people are shitty to each other. I actually write a lot about the subject of building better interpersonal relationships because I think that the dominant culture instills values in us that often conflict with creating meaningful relationships with each other, and the processes that cause abuse are mirrored pretty much everywhere we look, from the personal to electoral politics. And I agree with you, heartbreak wears us down, hardens us (there is a reason why the phrase "bleeding heart liberal" exists -- people who have hardened themselves scoff at others who recognize it is important not to hurt each other, and see it as a sign of weakness), and ultimately causes us to lash out toward the very people who are trying to form more meaningful relationships with us.
This deep-seated heartbreak also clashes with our analysis: when we talk about systemic issues, we are bypassing the emotional side of things. As an example (and, again, I need to start actually publishing my writings, but I have written thousands of words on the subject), abortion. When we talk about abortion in rational terms, how it is an important medical procedure, how it is about bodily autonomy, etc, we are ignoring the profound pain that the mere idea of aborting a fetus causes to most human beings. And so we end up looking like monsters in the eyes of the people who are guided by this emotional recoil -- we appear selfish at best, and inhumane at worst. I am not sure I really have solutions for it, but I do think it is important to acknowledge that these emotions are there, and that at least in our personal lives, if we want people to act differently, we need to address their hearts and minds. We simply cannot skip the hearts if we want change.
BTW, this is part of the reason why I really love your channel: you always speak compassionately to everyone, even those you disagree with. Thank you for always being so deliberate in your choice of words and affect -- I know it takes a lot of effort.
and thank YOU for the very kind words and thoughtful... er, thoughts. :)
This is why I dont understand why a lot of economic leftists are against religion (referring to your first paragraph). Faith can be used to instill good, collectivist values into people, getting people to think about the greater good rather than personal gain. It give a sense of community and purpose. It should be good for a leftist movement to gather all people of a community together and preach these values. I lot of lefties I know personally have had bad experiences with religion, but I think it may be a great thing for lefties to take advantage of.
@@spannule I agree, in part. I think it was a huge mistake for early leftist regimes to ban or heavily discourage religious practice. And I agree that religious practice, coming together to celebrate our connections to the Divine and each other, singing in unison, etc, can really instill a sense of collective belonging.
But, and this is a huge but, historically religious institutions have been extremely powerful and terribly exploitative. They also have been plagued with sectarianism and dogmatism that has divided various religious branches, often causing outright violence and persecution.
I think that the approach laid out in the United States Constitution (and many others), focused on freedom of religion and absence of interference between church and state is probably the best, here -- though we see that in practice the line between the two is crossed, and religious concepts like the idea of the sanctity of life, are exploited to control political discourse and the population.
Personally, I grew up in a leftist atheist home, but came to know the Divine through personal experience in my early teens. I have a deep reverence for all living beings and the connections between all of us, and it is part of my spiritual and political practice. I also have found that there are often toxic dynamics at work within religious institutions, even the fringe ones I have been part of. When there are institutions, there is often a hierarchy, and the desire to protect the institution often clashes with protecting the people who are part of it.
I think this is an important topic, and I think an ecumenical approach is the way to go. We must eradicate the focus on power within religion as well, and build bridges between different practices and philosophies so that we can instead focus on what brings us together, and how the Divine imbues us all with value as human and spiritual beings.
Excited to see you in the music credit! It sounds good 💙
I’ve had my heart broken, but all talking about it did was alienate myself. If multiple state governments AND the federal government could tell such a square kool-aid drinker as myself, “sometimes these things happen,” regarding having my constitutional rights violated and law enforcement repeatedly deny me safety…well that’s something to avoid because my “heartbreak” could be “catching.” Would love to share my documentation with you.
great video, thanks for putting this out :)
Yeah, yeah that's what it is! heartbreak
That's exactly what we're feeling right now. That's why it feels so hopeless. We've seen the people we put our trust and that should know better do and say stupid stuff, we've seen organizing efforts go under because of interpersonal (or even worse internet) drama, we've seen allies leave behind the groups they said they supported and even though as leftists we know the general problems and agree it doesn't seen that's helping with having an actual plan in how to move forwards for a better, even if still imperfect, future and things seem to get worse and worse. It's impossible to not feel heartbroken.
So what now? I don't really know, but I know that it remains true that a bright future is a progressive future, that systems of oppression need to be dismantled, that intersectionality and diversity is our strength, that our economic system and form of organizing need to radically change for a more just and sustainable society. Just like with any heartbreak, I think is time to take some time for ourselves, to focus experiencing our feelings, learn form our experience and heal, make new connections and cut toxic ones and maybe do some introspection and never lose sight of what we know to be true. We get to feel heartbroken today, but we can't stay lonely forever, and we don't have to.
Hey, I'm having a rough day. Agitated and listless. I open RUclips. I see a That Dang Dad vid. I know that Phil's soothing voice will make everything ok. Thanks Phil❤
You can take the boy out of the church, but it's harder to get the church out of the boy.
Infuse appx. 5g dried psilocybin cubensis into a pint of boiling water. Let it steep 15 min, then strain. If desired, add 1 pkg. Grape Kool-Aid, stir well and sweeten to taste. Add a few ice cubes, and enjoy!
That should help you to more easily identify and remove the mental and spiritual pollutants you were force-fed.
Rinse and repeat until your soul is clean and your mind is free....
Thanks man! This was very insightful.
My friend and i found out we are on the opposite side of the israel/Palestine conflict. I think we're both heartbroken right now. I'm hopeful we can move past it, but its hard in the moment.
only love can break your heart.that's why i am a rock; i am an i-i-i-s-s-s-land.
Thankyou for exercising the caution with our hearts that you do. There is nothing wrong with fighting all out on the battlefields that we know are right (eg against climate change and attacks on minorities) while also being cautious and taking weeks to build opinions and not post any "hot takes" until the dust has settled on matters like when (some of) one marginalised group gets into an argument with (some of) another.
This might be your best video yet ❤
aw thank you!
I appreciate this video as a left leaning former conservative type and rural resident. I've never seen guns as a means to exert dominance and power over the "weaker" demographics. I've always exercised the right to bear arms because its symbolic of stength and solidarity in numbers to avoid oppression from external forces, be it foreign or governmental. I drifted toward leftist politcs because I never fit in living in red country, but I've also been pushed out of leftist spaces due to reactionary behavior and lack of solidarity. For some reason the right can encompass everything from neutral to facist but the leftist spaces are cannibalistic and enraged to a point that nobody can agree long enough to bring a change. It's an idealogical diagram of a snake eating its own tail. There's anarchists and communists and socialists and neoliberals and classical liberals and "tankies" and pacifists, and there's a severe lack of balance when it comes to what I can define as book smart and street smart a constant war between over-educated and under-educated that disregards cultural cornerstones and customs in favor of strict bureaucracy . Living in a "blue state" and urban setting has actually ran me off to a point that I want to be in a red state again because all the blue policies and control seem to be horribly inefficient, expensive, and ineffective. At this point I feel betrayed by the entire power structure and just want to escape it. Maybe it's a Me problem, but I feel like it's a testament to the fact that humans are self interested and tribal, and we didn't evolve to live under convoluted hierarchies involving the wants and opinions of millions of others. We're designed to live and survive in smaller collectives that operate smoothly and don't depend on industrialized living or global connection because so many trivial cultural differences and practices come under the scrutiny of the rest of the planet depending on one's own personal experiences
Had my heart broken back in late 2015 and I honestly could have gone either way politically. I have a lot of sympathy of folks who are hurting and fall down the alt-right pipeline because there but for the grace of my friends could have gone I.
The government is not, and was never supposed to protect people who follow the rules. The government is supposed to protect the opulent minority. That’s what James Madison said. At what point did anyone say the government was supposed to protect people who follow the rules or protect, poor people or Working people? Show me one founding father who expressed that sentiment.
We have a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, not a dictatorship of the proletariat.
If there is a god, they sure had some comedic toming with that rainstorm 😂
Fan from Louisville here! What part of town did you live in? I’m in old louisville, in the Central Park neughborhood
I've broken alotta peoples hearts in the social sense. Not gonna go in to that though.
I've probably done so politically too, or at least chipped off tiny pieces offa other peoples hearts. Especially when I was a capitalist realist in my reckless youth.
I take trust-building in poitical circles very seriously, and I hope I've instead managed to help put hearts back together more than I've cracked them. But I can't speak for other people on whether I've done well on that front or not. Important thing is I try my best.
I gave up 8 years ago. This world is a hellhole with no escape. People are unworthy of trust - they will always fail you. There has never been a single successful movement that didnt backstab or persecute my kind.
Nuts for the algo gods
I honestly worry about making this comment, but speaking as a Jew who likes to consider themselves pretty progressive and tries to be as educated on things as I can, I’ve felt a lot of that heartbreak myself over the last few years. I’ve lost a lot of friends who didn’t even care to ask why I’d stepped away. It’s hard not to grow resentful, and as someone from a community who’s only survival mechanism for millennia has been to turn inwards and isolate, it’s not hard to understand why.