I ticked all the boxes in high school. Ironic-but-not-really fascist, incel, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, pick a reaction, really. Now I’m happily married, father, Kinsey-1, reading theory, with growing class consciousness and looking to build solidarity with those people that a worse version of myself once dismissed as lesser or ungodly. It took leaving home, developing positive and loving male-male friendships, and being told that I was good enough and worth love irrespective of my accomplishments for me to start to develop the capacity to love others in the same way. Those who have traveled a similar path, what did it take for you?
Always been a weird malcontent, but I never took socialism seriously, thanks in large part to getting an econ degree at perhaps the most neoliberal university in the country. Listened to Chapo by chance one time and seriously vibed with their utter contempt for mainstream politics. I had previously been in a sort of “all politics is deeply idiotic but I guess liberal technocracy is a little better than the other options” type place. Got more and more open to socialism as I listened to more Chapo episodes, and eventually decided to read the Communist Manifesto and A People’s History of the United States and I was 100% sold from there on out.
