I used to think this place was a leftist hangout because there are a lot of liberals here.
Now I know that it's actually pretty hostile to the left, because there are a lot of liberals here.
Coming to the realization that liberals are different from leftists casts almost every political topic discussed here in an unflattering light, and reveals how shallow much of the conversation actually is. And for much of my nearly 10 years of posting on this forum, I was lockstep with the liberals, thinking I was a member of the left wing because I enjoyed "progressive" politics and disliked Republicans. Now I'm starting to see how the overton window has moved so far to the right that not even liberals are aware of their position on the center-right, such that any challenge to their ideological principles from the left is simply incomprehensible, and must be the product of some Kremlin plot and not a genuine tendency in the population.
Few are even willing to entertain the thought of a political spectrum that includes people who reject capitalism and think we should try to move beyond it, rather than trying to preserve or repair it. The notion doesn't inspire curiosity or charity, it sends a signal through a very old and well-worn bit of circuitry that immediately terminates in one of a handful of superficial stock responses. From there, since nobody can even bring themselves to consider the possibility that what they have learned about concepts like socialism, communism, Marxism, and anarchism was not accurate and was never intended to be accurate, all of our efforts go into bickering back and forth about definitions and attacking strawmen.
Another segment of the forum are clearly not interested in engaging in good faith, ever, and have succumbed to the siren call of Winning On The Internet. It has taken me a long time to recognize these people and stop wasting my energy trying to communicate with them. Honestly, the internet itself is kind of a lullaby for the disaffected, where they can feel satisfied that they've contributed to whatever social or political cause they favor because they owned somebody in a thread about Venezuela. Gradually, I've been questioning the productivity of such online crusading, compared to taking direct action in real life. Probably I won't hang around here too much anymore, if I'm correct about this, because it not only frustrates and irritates me, but it steals away any motivation I might have to do something worthwhile with my principles.
For what it's worth, I am something like a libertarian socialist, an anarcho-communist, an autonomist Marxist, etc... basically an anti-capitalist who recognizes that capital can be wielded by both private and state apparatuses without making much progress either way, and that meaningful social change happens from the bottom up, not through any official parties or organizations. It bothers me that people consider state regulations on private corporations socialism, or nationalizing the railways of America as socialism, or a government stimulus package as a socialism, and think that this is what it means to be on the left (hence anyone who points out that those are all mechanisms of preserving capitalism must be smoking something potent).
I've been trying to disabuse people of the notion that "socialism is when the government controls things, and the more government control there is, the socialister it is", but it seems most are too far gone, too married to the Cold War-era propaganda that still pollutes the brains of boomers everywhere.
