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 78:
February 19th, 2024
For context, I am a 43 year old dude who grew up in a very blue state, and then moved to another very blue state when I was 22. Both of these states share a border with Canada.
I was never a partisan, nor did I have any real allegiance to a particular political stance, but looking back it’s clear that I was consistently left of center on most issues. That just felt normal to me, as someone who dedicated all my time and attention to art and skateboarding. I was surrounded by people with a similar mindset, I suppose. I saw cultural boundary pushing as something good, maybe almost noble even. By boundary pushing I am most specifically referring to American subcultures and their related philosophies, but also I just liked it when people stirred the Overton window pot. I went to a private art college in the early 2000s, and I can remember making pieces that bagged on President Dubya. Seems quaint now.
At the tail end of, and after, school I worked for an alternative weekly newspaper, whose editor was a nationally syndicated gay sex advice columnist. It had writers who openly identified as Marxists on staff. I didn’t really care about that stuff at the time, as I was focused on design related concerns. I lived in a part of town that was pretty flamboyant, but I liked being around unique weirdos (I still do).
I historically voted Democrat, not as a result of being particularly passionate about their policies, but because it just felt normal to me. I didn’t spend much time thinking about, or hating on, Republicans, but often dunked on them in the name of humor. This was pretty much the lane I lived in for years.
In 2015 I was cutting through the alley from my place to my car, as I’d been doing most days for years, and it involved taking a walkway around an apartment building. On this day a young woman came out of the building, she had just moved in, and asked me why I was cutting through. I told her, and pointed to the house I lived in and then to my car, both were visible. She told me I was no longer welcome to do this, as I passed her window and it made her uncomfortable. I thought she was just joking, but when I laughed she became upset and started yelling. This was the first time I ever heard the term ‘cis-het white man’. She said she would call the cops and I said please do. The era of identity politics had found me. This is when something clicked inside.
I began to see America in a different light. I became much more inquisitive about the nature of our shared national reality, and the direction it was heading. At the same time, looking back from now, I still acted as I always had, for the most part. I understood things from a more liberal place, and was pretty inexperienced with detailed conservative takes, but generally found their moral righteousness off putting. That part is important, as I still find it off putting, only now that righteousness is much more inflated and is overwhelmingly coming from the modern left. I am not really into societal destruction cloaked in false empathy.
In 2020, a virus of unknown origin and potency first landed in America in the metro area I lived in. It affected my income and my day to day life immensely. Within a pretty short span of time, and fueled by an incident that happened in the state I grew up in, I watched the neighborhood I had lived in for fifteen years become CHAZ. Its core was a public park a couple blocks away from my apartment that I had served on the board of for the past 7 or 8 years. Everything around me was turning to shit, in rapid real time. Nobody around me seemed to think this was a bad thing. Before long, it was time to say goodbye.
The current hyper fixation the modern left has on race and sex and immutable characteristics in general is retarded to me. Retarded and absurd and short sighted. (Incidentally, I never stopped saying retarded, and am happy it’s making a comeback; it’s exactly the right word for much of what’s happening these days). In what feels like no time at all, otherwise healthy individuals actually started to internalize and believe such nonsense as being fat is healthy and that a dude can be a chick, and vice versa. They even teach children this shit.
For a while I was looking for understanding wherever I could find it, and began tuning in to conservative media sources, to see what their takes were. I had unreasonable expectations though I think, as it didn’t take long to see that most of the right was generally just reactionaries that had no desire to understand things, but defaulted to dismissing and belittling anything that challenged their position out of hand. Many just struck me as normie dorks that colored within the lines in every facet of their lives. At least publicly. I feel there’s a fair amount of projection coming from their camps. But at least they came off as in closer proximity to reality than the average leftist. Before long, I realized both sides were not what I was looking for at all.
After roaming around for a bit, I find myself in a big red state, which was a haven during the peak of Covid mass delusion. Now it feels more like a place of pleasant neutrality, all things considered, and especially in contrast to the ongoing blue state psychosis and self harm.
We now have this unbelievably polarized country, heading nowhere good, and fast. An upcoming Presidential election with octogenarian grudge match rematch vibes is literally our shared reality. We have a modern left that has moved so far left it is now eating its tail, and a right that is probably best described as ‘not the left’.
I have no plans to vote this year. I don’t feel politically homeless so much as I feel politically adrift in space. Watching the earth appear smaller and smaller as I drift away.
Many Americans currently seem to care more about foreign conflicts and allegiances than they do about our own future and our own best interests.
I hope I’m wrong about a lot of things.
Sincerely,
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.
Politically Adrift In Space