Politically Homeless But Still Optimistic?!
Real people, real letters, real problems, no solutions.
Politics these days are 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 5:
Hi Bridget,
Thank you for your work and your voice! I love Walk-Ins Welcome, and though I generally avoid all social media these days, I like to travel over to Twitter the day after an election. I saw your Tweet from a few days ago, and wanted to try to explain my feelings at this moment in time.
If you had asked me a year ago if I was politically homeless, I would have said absolutely not. I'm a lifelong, proud liberal. For me, Trump's win in 2016 was gutting; Biden's win in 2020 was sanity-saving. As a thirty-something, my political identity was formed by the gay marriage debates of the early 2000s, and there's been nothing so intuitive to me as who was on the right side of that issue. Generally still, if you ask me a policy question, I'll land left of center on any particular issue. But something shifted for me in the last few months. Weirdly it was after January 6, which I was really shaken by, that I started to do some self-reflecting. I asked myself, "If Trump has been able to make people on his side do these crazy things, what sorts of craziness has he wrought on my side?" Because I had been so blinded by Trump's terribleness, I was 100% blind to how far "my side" had traveled from the values that I held dear.
I had hints of these feelings before. I've always known I'm a bit more "normie" than my radical friends; I could never really get behind the super-woke slogans as they all seemed far too over-simplified for me. (I also had a mental breakdown 8 years ago, caused by OCD, which led me to CBT and exposure therapy, so I tend to be skeptical of my automatic thoughts and catastrophizing in general.) But still, because it was "my side" saying these things, and because Trump was (and is!) so-very-bad, I had the feeling that, because I couldn't get fully on board, there was something wrong with me.
It's been a disorienting few months, this awakening of sorts. (I also became a mom, which I'm sure has something to do with it!) If you had told me a year ago that a devastating day of Democratic losses would make me optimistic, I'd say you were crazy. But that's how I feel today. I feel optimistic because -- though I don't know that either side will truly read the writing on the wall about its extremes -- there's been a stinging and quick rebuke of the left's identitarian politics, as well as a victory by less-Trumpy types on the right. (And, though it may be sacrilegious to say so, if we're going to have a two-party system, I would prefer that BOTH parties remain functional.)
Strangely, though it feels lonely, this political homelessness/independence is a much more interesting, nuanced, and compassionate way to exist in the world -- and in politics. And I think that, even though we're polarized, moments like these show that the center is actually holding. And whaddaya know -- I like it in the squishy center much more than on the dogmatic extremes. It looks a lot more like real life from here.
Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for your work! It is much appreciated.
Sincerely,
Politically Homeless
P.S. Something that I think is also missing from the overall tenor of Twitter and election results in general is that each side seems to think that the current election proves them right (or wrong) once and for all. But we would all benefit from recognizing that political winds are always changing. That is the very nature of culture and politics.
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.