Politically Homeless - Fearful of the Future
Politically Homeless - Fearful of the Future
Real people, real letters, real problems, no solutions.
Politics these days have become so divided and divisive that it’s become the norm to view the other side of the aisle as “the enemy”. People are being told to “pick a side” and that there’s no room for middle ground. We here at Phetasy believe that there are a lot more people in the middle than politicians and the media would have us believe.
We’re collecting stories from the ever growing number of people who are finding themselves Politically Homeless and posting them here on Substack. If you have moved from conservative to liberal, or liberal to conservative, if you feel you’ve stayed in the same place and your party has swerved drastically away from you, if you had a moment that awakened you to the insanity and hypocrisy on both sides, if you keep your mouth shut anytime a political topic comes up because you’re afraid your opinion will cause you to lose friends or your job, you’re not as alone as you might think.
Our goal is to shine a light on people’s earnest, individual experiences and show them they’re not alone.
Some letters have been edited for clarity and brevity. If you’re politically homeless and would like to share your story, please email us at iampoliticallyhomeless@gmail.com. All submissions will remain anonymous.
Letter 33:
September 20, 2020
Hi,
I’m 23 years old, and I am feeling more and more politically homeless as the days go on. I’m a registered Republican and I am increasingly turned off by the “woke” Left. However, I’m also turned off by the increasingly ignorant rhetoric of the Right. I don’t like identifying as “conservative” or Republican, and I tend to lean more towards Libertarianism, but not full-on Libertarianism.
It saddens me that Libertarians have no chance in the two party system. I hate the politicization of the Supreme Court. People are rooting for a “conservative” Court, or for stacking the Court so Democrats have more justices... and it just goes against everything the Founders intended.
I go to law school with what seems like a majority of “woke” recently-graduated college students. They’ve befriended me on Facebook and constantly post misleading, or flat-out false news articles about BLM, systemic racism, Trump, etc. I cannot stand Donald Trump but I think I’ve made up my mind to vote for him because the alternative looks like absolute chaos and anarchy. It frightens me that my classmates and others who I interact with on a daily basis see no fault at all in the Left. They are totally bought in to the “woke” ideology and you can’t have a discussion with them. Even when provided with facts contrary to their position, they either don’t respond at all or pin me as an ignorant person.
I’m fearful of the future and the seeming propaganda that has been set forth in our mainstream media on both sides. I need some sort of reassurance that most people see through these things. I need reassurance that a majority of America is still sane. It’s becoming unbearable.
Regards,
Politically Homeless
Some letters have been edited for clarity and brevity. If you'd like to share your story, email us at iampoliticallyhomeless@gmail.com. All submissions will remain anonymous.
I think it shows what an individual thinker you are, that despite your young age and (possibly) complete saturation in woke ideology (through university, etc..) you still stand by your beliefs and values and don't succumb to group think. This is probably much harder for young people, especially due to social media and the 'with us/against us' way of thinking, where your moral character is increasingly based on group identity and whether or not you subscribe to the latest cause or outrage. Many of us older ones are also finding this polarisation bewildering. I'm in my fifties now and have always been pretty left/liberal. But the goalpost has drastically shifted and I see a lot of my friends on the left (who are my age) also buying into the whole woke ideology and labelling those who disagree as 'bigoted' or something-phobic. Political discourse has increasingly become more and more divisive and toxic, and even the media cannot be trusted to be impartial. I find it really positive that there are young people, like yourself, who are questioning what's going on and looking at both sides and thinking critically, rather than just accepting every new trendy idea, and just following the herd! It takes guts to resist all that! I also feel that the old labels of 'left' or 'right' 'labour' or 'conservative' are becoming obsolete. Many of us are somewhere in the middle, with a mixture of left/right/libertarian viewpoints.
I wish people were more familiar with history. If they were, they'd now that propaganda is the role of the media. The first newspapers were political. Horace Greely, one of the most famous newspaper publishers, was a devout utopian socialist and probably a communist. (However, he later contributed to the bale of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who was imprisoned for two years without ever being charged. Northerner feared if they brought him to trial, the courts would find that secession was constitutionally legal.) Thomas Jefferson sent out anti-Federalist pamphlets and Hamilton sent out anti-Jefferson pamphlets. There are still newspapers that have Democrat or Republican in their names, although many have dropped them due to mergers.
In this case, I don't think the writer is "politically homeless." They know were they stand. It's seem more a case of young angst.