I've been stewing on this essay for a few hours after I read it, reflecting on the nature of relationships and the volatility our last 15 years has been rife with.
Firstly, it is always sad to see a friendship fade, and we can't take everyone with us through all seasons of our lives. It's difficult to find appropriate words, since one is commenting on a private, personal event.
That being said, we live in interesting times when former friends become political enemies and we sometimes find allies in the opposing political camps for unusual reasons. Strange bedfellows indeed. Your point about the intersection of mental illness and the internet struck a chord; media caters to what confirms your bias or beliefs; conservatives or liberals, and everyone in between, is guilty of falling into those traps. The fact that this person celebrated the attempted assasination of Trump, or anyone that they find abhorrent, as appropriate and politically expedient to their ends, is chilling. As much as I deeply disliked the previous set, I can't imagine wishing them dead, and though it'd be hard to do compared to the depth of my dislike, after reading this essay, I'm inclined to pray for them.
And that last question that you asked:
"Why is it always people on the Left who seem the most judgmental, the most cruel, the least empathetic and the least compassionate?"
Big five personality testing indicates that you have a higher incidence of neuroticism, openness to experience, and lower conscientiousness in left-leaning people. I forget the reasons why, but it consistently shows up as the case for many (but not all) left leaning people. Conscientiousness is a trait found in higher degree among more conservative-leaning (but not all) people. I think the only real way to address your question is to look at it from the perspective of religiosity, rather than secular terms or a humanist lens. Beliefs are crucial, essential, to forming our identity, sense of self, and especially, for creating a stable scaffold that allows us to rest our "selves" on and filter the world through that framework. Depending on how "unstable" or "stable" our internal belief system is, when we encounter information that threatens to unseat it, that stability may determine our response to it. Some people I think believe so firmly that their beliefs are who they are and what defines them, that any dissent from it must be eradicated or purged. You're welcome to tell me to buzz off about the psychobable, but sometimes people just get so wrapped up in their ideology that any dissent, even from their "side" must be purged and purified. Often, I think, because it's the only think sustaining them and if it gets challenged, they have to attack because it is an "attack" on their very self, in a real, perceptual sense. Happens to lefties and righties, but I think the righties have a tendency to turn inward even more and just go hide out in the woods.
This resonates deeply. Originally from a blue state but now in one that’s purple, many of my family, friends, classmates and colleagues are left politically. The divisive nature of the dysfunctional political climate of the day has taken a toll in relationships poisoning our few remaining interactions not on social media. It has left me longing for a unity and a Restoration yet to be fully defined. I look for any common ground to be found and build upon it whenever possible. It’s become an obsession like that of the proverbial oasis to the desiccated man crawling through the desert. But unlike that poor soul, the occasional oasis is real. The water is real and it sustains. It gives joy and comfort to those who seek and find it rewarding only those willing and disciplined enough to give such water themselves for the benefit of others. Let’s turn it into a river, a flood, an ocean.
I lost two close friends when my politics began to shift and I began to question things during and after Covid. Thanks for sharing this. It seems like the polarization is so extreme that there is no going back.
I have experienced enough absurdity that I can no longer be anything but independent. My friends are protesting, posting on Facebook every day, calling people names, and putting up calls for violence and assassination. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Late to the party on this one but yup. Your story checks out. A small handful of lefty people have unfriended me over politics, but none of them were particularly close, so it's no big loss.
I do think it's abundantly clear now that the smartphone/social media combo was a huge mistake that humanity wasn't ready for. It's a mental health killer. We created a beast that we could not tame.
As such, I'm still on Facebook, but it's computer-only. No phone. Instagram is the only app still on my phone because it's still mostly just fun stuff. We'll see how long that lasts.
I’m actually a conservative, so I can’t say “I essentially agree with you,” and wonder why the small differences I might have with similarly disposed friends are the source of so much distress. In other words, I have substantial differences of opinion with many close friends who are at least left of center. But here is what I’ve learned - and it’s been sobering - in the course of some impassioned conversations with people I love and am close to: people are genuinely terrified of their political adversaries (Trump, Trump followers, Republicans, Trump voters, Elon Musk, etc.). People don’t scare me, so it took me a while to really grasp how deeply afraid people are. I’m afraid of dangerous ideas, not dangerous people, which probably has its own kind of distortions, but if you yourself are not gripped by these fears then it can be very hard to make sense of the behavior of people who are gripped by these fears.
Well said. I agree. I blame the media on both sides for a lot of the madness and polarization going on here. Especially on the left, media has been on red flag High Alert since 2016. Remember Bush in 2002, 2003 re terrorism, the color coded bars? They had them up and up, then back down, psy-ops, basically. I think that's what media has been doing the past decade, getting people riled and terrified. It's a real disservice to Americans.
It really is, on both sides, almost a kind of abuse. In the 50’s and 60’s Americans started to become sensitive to the way advertising has the power to generate insecurities or appetites, the purpose of which was to sell consumer products. That all seems so quaint now. It turns out that if your basic business model requires you to grab and subsequently lock in people’s attention, then you quickly race to the bottom. You feed people’s brains an endless stream of alarms which must be closely monitored to forestall doom.
It took me a long time to develop compassion for the fear people feel when they have been overtaken by these permanent fire alarms. It’s real to them.
The stories in this comments section are no coincidence. Millions of people have stories like this now. Of friends, both recent and long-time friends for decades, ending friendships at the slightest whiff of a thought crime against their beloved Democrats or equivalent left-wing establishment party.
Been through it too myself. If I don't have a lot of stories like this, it's because the loss of one particularly dear person was enough to (along with a few other catalysts) wake up and smell the coffee. I don't use the phrase "loss" by accident; I'm very much in the Obi-Wan Kenobi, "betrayed and murdered your father" camp when it comes to all this. To me, the dear person I once knew may as well be dead; many other stories I've heard about ideological indoctrination also bear this pattern, especially (for some reason) when it comes to women.
Let them burn their bridges. It's sad and it's painful, but if that's how they are then they were never good friends to begin with. It's a net positive in the long run.
Yeah. Totally agree. That's what I've come to believe as well. In the end: If she can let me go that easily then the foundation was unsound from the start.
I grew up around hard core left. I was raised that way. There was always a real nasty streak in the left. One day I was walking through a college open area. There were tables set up promoting one cause or another. I was in my 20s and had begun my rightward drift. One of the tables was manned by a hot babe. So I stopped and talked. She was a Marxist-Leninist. Her table was beside a Maoist or a Trotskyite table. They HATED each other. The vitriol was almost comical. This was in Vancouver. Which is essentially a real estate play. Her contention was no one should own houses. The State should own all homes. I said ‘Vancouverites love their homes. How are you going to talk them into that?’ She said ‘we will go to Shaughnessy’, the area of mansions, ‘haul some owners out and shoot them. Everyone else will go along.’ I asked who gets to live in the best homes? Those who contribute the most she said. And ‘who would qualify’. ‘Party members first, then trade union leaders’. ‘So. You, right?’ She agreed as a member of the Marxists she should have the best home. That would be fair. Then she and the table next sniped at each other for a bit.
She was insane and nasty. Hate filled. And she contributed to my reversal of politics. For which my parents were annoyed forever. She was also hot. So I kept talking to her. But I was 22 and horny.
When you see cancellations in person or on videos from people, the creepy thing isn't that the people unfriending you are angry; sometimes they are, but very often they're smiling. They're actually enjoying it. That should tell you everything you need to know about these people.
Mystic William is right. If the American left is not in the Mao and Stalin camp, it is not because they are different leftists. But because they are half of an incomplete puzzle. The other half is the requisite state apparatus. However bad things are, we won't get arrested for criticizing all this in your Substack comments. If the conditions were identical, however, we would be in a Gulag right now. And these people would still be smiling.
Almost the exact same thing happened to me a few days ago: a close friend of 30+ years de-friended me after deeming me a Trump supporter, or at least a "normalizer," simply because she'd seen a couple posts I'd made critical of the Biden administration and many prominent Dems' non-response or even support to the campus tentifadas in 2024. It didn't matter that I voted for Hillary, Joe, and Kamala or that I've never said, online or otherwise, one positive thing about him. I expressed my opinion to her that we need to learn to survive the administration and not deny that he won the popular vote and that America chose this--again; and that if something good manages to come out of his administration, we should accept that and not reject it ONLY because its Trump. That was enough for her to end our friendship.
So crazy. Sorry you went through that. On the flip side I hope my piece made you feel less alone. Your comment certainly comforted me (sad as I am that it happened to you). You bring up great points. Trump was elected fair and square by our agreed-upon constitutional standards. I wish Dems could look in the mirror and grasp that both in 2016 and 2024 it was their own side that failed us, not Trump doing so well. In both 16 and 24 it was Democrats' race to lose. Hillary didn't even visit many of the swing states, which is beyond arrogant. Dems have now lost Latinos and 20% of the Black vote. How is that possible? They insist on identity politics, but it's clearly a losing battle. I think at this point they are just so incredibly (emotionally) invested in the narrative that they just can't change. Too much ego. I think Trump is a disaster. And I blame Democrats for his success.
Agreed. He’s back in office despite everything, because the electorate had a binary choice, and rejected the Dems.
On Damon Linker’s stack, there are commenters trying to make the case Trump is illegitimate because “only 34 percent of the actual electorate voted for him” or something like that; in essence even though he won the popular vote, that still doesn’t mean most Americans voted for him etc etc so we don’t have to treat him as legitimate. That may be true but it doesn’t matter, and matters even less because they would never similarly delegitimize the election of Dem. They can’t or won’t face reality.
That's funny about the illegitimate claim. You know who that reminds me of? Woodrow Wilson, who, because of Theodore Roosevelt splitting the ticket, won with only 42% of the vote. But even more: Abe Lincoln. Why? Because on his second run Lincoln wasn't getting votes from the entire nation since it was divided between North and South. Ergo he got a fraction of overall American votes.
I’m trying to shed light on how divisive language affects those who wage it (like your friend here) and not just the people they cancel. Feeling like an authority on what’s right will eff them up way more than any harsh truth ever could, because they become crippled by their fear of uncertainty. It’s like refusing to leave a burning building because at least you know where the couch is.
For what it’s worth, I had a childhood friend who I stopped talking to for 2 years over politics. Eventually I came around and reconnected. So maybe she’ll come around eventually. Politically it sounds like my journey has been similar to yours, I’m glad to have come across your post.
For some people it was any kind of dissent during COVID, for others calling out gender ideology in the education system and resultant harms, now it's just saying that if more than half the people vote for Trump maybe it's not a fringe minority of people on the right that are unhappy with where the left have got to. Many of us have seen up close how groupthink and ostracism work. We know now how Nazism occurs and we know that under the right conditions we can all fall into it.
Rene Girards scapegoating idea may be helpful here- the role of the scapegoat is to dissipate the tension in the group. Because many people can't hold the tension they get locked into group dynamics. Dissenters then get scapegoating which resolves the tension and helps the group cohere. The progressive left is basically a cult in my view, which means they will be resistant to change. I consider myself on the left.
Well said. I agree. What you said about groups seems quite accurate. People change when conforming to the group and seem to lose a sense of individual autonomy. There's a MAGA cult and a progressive cult, and ironically they're not as different at the core as they may seem externally. Thanks for the note. Love 'Heterodork.'
Actually, as a writer and historian, I wonder, "Where's it all going?" Obviously such times end, or we'd still be in the last one from 1,000 years ago. But HOW do they end? I'm torn between, adults would rather die than change their minds and admit wrong, and *"Science advances one funeral at a time" -- Max Planck*; to knowing millions of people have already left, "Walked away" as Brandon Straka says (a gay, NYC Democrat) while millions others here daily left real hardcore cults...or what they feel were cults, such as being tepid Methodists in Missouri. So you could ask, "Where does it end for THIS person?" or also, "Where does it end for ALL people," i.e., the movement.
I don't know, and I'm surprised and somewhat disturbed that in all history I don't have a very clear parallel or example. Maybe you will. That question may be far more useful, though.
This was very relatable, and an important story to share to illustrate that this phenomenon is widespread. And, Coddling of the American mind was the one that flipped the switch for me: I understood that liberal women were basing their politics on cognitive distortions like I had done while I was depressed. Suddenly the connection between depression, wokeness, and gender was so clear that I couldn't unsee it.
I've been stewing on this essay for a few hours after I read it, reflecting on the nature of relationships and the volatility our last 15 years has been rife with.
Firstly, it is always sad to see a friendship fade, and we can't take everyone with us through all seasons of our lives. It's difficult to find appropriate words, since one is commenting on a private, personal event.
That being said, we live in interesting times when former friends become political enemies and we sometimes find allies in the opposing political camps for unusual reasons. Strange bedfellows indeed. Your point about the intersection of mental illness and the internet struck a chord; media caters to what confirms your bias or beliefs; conservatives or liberals, and everyone in between, is guilty of falling into those traps. The fact that this person celebrated the attempted assasination of Trump, or anyone that they find abhorrent, as appropriate and politically expedient to their ends, is chilling. As much as I deeply disliked the previous set, I can't imagine wishing them dead, and though it'd be hard to do compared to the depth of my dislike, after reading this essay, I'm inclined to pray for them.
And that last question that you asked:
"Why is it always people on the Left who seem the most judgmental, the most cruel, the least empathetic and the least compassionate?"
Big five personality testing indicates that you have a higher incidence of neuroticism, openness to experience, and lower conscientiousness in left-leaning people. I forget the reasons why, but it consistently shows up as the case for many (but not all) left leaning people. Conscientiousness is a trait found in higher degree among more conservative-leaning (but not all) people. I think the only real way to address your question is to look at it from the perspective of religiosity, rather than secular terms or a humanist lens. Beliefs are crucial, essential, to forming our identity, sense of self, and especially, for creating a stable scaffold that allows us to rest our "selves" on and filter the world through that framework. Depending on how "unstable" or "stable" our internal belief system is, when we encounter information that threatens to unseat it, that stability may determine our response to it. Some people I think believe so firmly that their beliefs are who they are and what defines them, that any dissent from it must be eradicated or purged. You're welcome to tell me to buzz off about the psychobable, but sometimes people just get so wrapped up in their ideology that any dissent, even from their "side" must be purged and purified. Often, I think, because it's the only think sustaining them and if it gets challenged, they have to attack because it is an "attack" on their very self, in a real, perceptual sense. Happens to lefties and righties, but I think the righties have a tendency to turn inward even more and just go hide out in the woods.
This resonates deeply. Originally from a blue state but now in one that’s purple, many of my family, friends, classmates and colleagues are left politically. The divisive nature of the dysfunctional political climate of the day has taken a toll in relationships poisoning our few remaining interactions not on social media. It has left me longing for a unity and a Restoration yet to be fully defined. I look for any common ground to be found and build upon it whenever possible. It’s become an obsession like that of the proverbial oasis to the desiccated man crawling through the desert. But unlike that poor soul, the occasional oasis is real. The water is real and it sustains. It gives joy and comfort to those who seek and find it rewarding only those willing and disciplined enough to give such water themselves for the benefit of others. Let’s turn it into a river, a flood, an ocean.
Beautiful, tragic and accurate.
I lost two close friends when my politics began to shift and I began to question things during and after Covid. Thanks for sharing this. It seems like the polarization is so extreme that there is no going back.
Agreed. Very sad.
I have experienced enough absurdity that I can no longer be anything but independent. My friends are protesting, posting on Facebook every day, calling people names, and putting up calls for violence and assassination. Thanks for sharing your experience.
So nuts!!!! 🥜
The great Bette Davis once said that sex was God's joke on the human race. She was wrong. It's politics.
True that.
Late to the party on this one but yup. Your story checks out. A small handful of lefty people have unfriended me over politics, but none of them were particularly close, so it's no big loss.
I do think it's abundantly clear now that the smartphone/social media combo was a huge mistake that humanity wasn't ready for. It's a mental health killer. We created a beast that we could not tame.
As such, I'm still on Facebook, but it's computer-only. No phone. Instagram is the only app still on my phone because it's still mostly just fun stuff. We'll see how long that lasts.
You are very wise.
I’m actually a conservative, so I can’t say “I essentially agree with you,” and wonder why the small differences I might have with similarly disposed friends are the source of so much distress. In other words, I have substantial differences of opinion with many close friends who are at least left of center. But here is what I’ve learned - and it’s been sobering - in the course of some impassioned conversations with people I love and am close to: people are genuinely terrified of their political adversaries (Trump, Trump followers, Republicans, Trump voters, Elon Musk, etc.). People don’t scare me, so it took me a while to really grasp how deeply afraid people are. I’m afraid of dangerous ideas, not dangerous people, which probably has its own kind of distortions, but if you yourself are not gripped by these fears then it can be very hard to make sense of the behavior of people who are gripped by these fears.
Well said. I agree. I blame the media on both sides for a lot of the madness and polarization going on here. Especially on the left, media has been on red flag High Alert since 2016. Remember Bush in 2002, 2003 re terrorism, the color coded bars? They had them up and up, then back down, psy-ops, basically. I think that's what media has been doing the past decade, getting people riled and terrified. It's a real disservice to Americans.
It really is, on both sides, almost a kind of abuse. In the 50’s and 60’s Americans started to become sensitive to the way advertising has the power to generate insecurities or appetites, the purpose of which was to sell consumer products. That all seems so quaint now. It turns out that if your basic business model requires you to grab and subsequently lock in people’s attention, then you quickly race to the bottom. You feed people’s brains an endless stream of alarms which must be closely monitored to forestall doom.
It took me a long time to develop compassion for the fear people feel when they have been overtaken by these permanent fire alarms. It’s real to them.
You're right.
The stories in this comments section are no coincidence. Millions of people have stories like this now. Of friends, both recent and long-time friends for decades, ending friendships at the slightest whiff of a thought crime against their beloved Democrats or equivalent left-wing establishment party.
Been through it too myself. If I don't have a lot of stories like this, it's because the loss of one particularly dear person was enough to (along with a few other catalysts) wake up and smell the coffee. I don't use the phrase "loss" by accident; I'm very much in the Obi-Wan Kenobi, "betrayed and murdered your father" camp when it comes to all this. To me, the dear person I once knew may as well be dead; many other stories I've heard about ideological indoctrination also bear this pattern, especially (for some reason) when it comes to women.
Let them burn their bridges. It's sad and it's painful, but if that's how they are then they were never good friends to begin with. It's a net positive in the long run.
Yeah. Totally agree. That's what I've come to believe as well. In the end: If she can let me go that easily then the foundation was unsound from the start.
Michael…the left has killed about 100 million people over the last 120 years. They were never the nice guys. Ever!
Well, yes, when you get into Mao and Stalin territory.
I grew up around hard core left. I was raised that way. There was always a real nasty streak in the left. One day I was walking through a college open area. There were tables set up promoting one cause or another. I was in my 20s and had begun my rightward drift. One of the tables was manned by a hot babe. So I stopped and talked. She was a Marxist-Leninist. Her table was beside a Maoist or a Trotskyite table. They HATED each other. The vitriol was almost comical. This was in Vancouver. Which is essentially a real estate play. Her contention was no one should own houses. The State should own all homes. I said ‘Vancouverites love their homes. How are you going to talk them into that?’ She said ‘we will go to Shaughnessy’, the area of mansions, ‘haul some owners out and shoot them. Everyone else will go along.’ I asked who gets to live in the best homes? Those who contribute the most she said. And ‘who would qualify’. ‘Party members first, then trade union leaders’. ‘So. You, right?’ She agreed as a member of the Marxists she should have the best home. That would be fair. Then she and the table next sniped at each other for a bit.
She was insane and nasty. Hate filled. And she contributed to my reversal of politics. For which my parents were annoyed forever. She was also hot. So I kept talking to her. But I was 22 and horny.
When you see cancellations in person or on videos from people, the creepy thing isn't that the people unfriending you are angry; sometimes they are, but very often they're smiling. They're actually enjoying it. That should tell you everything you need to know about these people.
Mystic William is right. If the American left is not in the Mao and Stalin camp, it is not because they are different leftists. But because they are half of an incomplete puzzle. The other half is the requisite state apparatus. However bad things are, we won't get arrested for criticizing all this in your Substack comments. If the conditions were identical, however, we would be in a Gulag right now. And these people would still be smiling.
Absolutely.
Almost the exact same thing happened to me a few days ago: a close friend of 30+ years de-friended me after deeming me a Trump supporter, or at least a "normalizer," simply because she'd seen a couple posts I'd made critical of the Biden administration and many prominent Dems' non-response or even support to the campus tentifadas in 2024. It didn't matter that I voted for Hillary, Joe, and Kamala or that I've never said, online or otherwise, one positive thing about him. I expressed my opinion to her that we need to learn to survive the administration and not deny that he won the popular vote and that America chose this--again; and that if something good manages to come out of his administration, we should accept that and not reject it ONLY because its Trump. That was enough for her to end our friendship.
So crazy. Sorry you went through that. On the flip side I hope my piece made you feel less alone. Your comment certainly comforted me (sad as I am that it happened to you). You bring up great points. Trump was elected fair and square by our agreed-upon constitutional standards. I wish Dems could look in the mirror and grasp that both in 2016 and 2024 it was their own side that failed us, not Trump doing so well. In both 16 and 24 it was Democrats' race to lose. Hillary didn't even visit many of the swing states, which is beyond arrogant. Dems have now lost Latinos and 20% of the Black vote. How is that possible? They insist on identity politics, but it's clearly a losing battle. I think at this point they are just so incredibly (emotionally) invested in the narrative that they just can't change. Too much ego. I think Trump is a disaster. And I blame Democrats for his success.
Agreed. He’s back in office despite everything, because the electorate had a binary choice, and rejected the Dems.
On Damon Linker’s stack, there are commenters trying to make the case Trump is illegitimate because “only 34 percent of the actual electorate voted for him” or something like that; in essence even though he won the popular vote, that still doesn’t mean most Americans voted for him etc etc so we don’t have to treat him as legitimate. That may be true but it doesn’t matter, and matters even less because they would never similarly delegitimize the election of Dem. They can’t or won’t face reality.
That's funny about the illegitimate claim. You know who that reminds me of? Woodrow Wilson, who, because of Theodore Roosevelt splitting the ticket, won with only 42% of the vote. But even more: Abe Lincoln. Why? Because on his second run Lincoln wasn't getting votes from the entire nation since it was divided between North and South. Ergo he got a fraction of overall American votes.
I’m trying to shed light on how divisive language affects those who wage it (like your friend here) and not just the people they cancel. Feeling like an authority on what’s right will eff them up way more than any harsh truth ever could, because they become crippled by their fear of uncertainty. It’s like refusing to leave a burning building because at least you know where the couch is.
I think you’ll like this piece.
https://open.substack.com/pub/emmakearney/p/the-heavy-burden-of-being-right-and?r=9ocx5&utm_medium=ios
Cheers! Thanks. I'll check it out.
For what it’s worth, I had a childhood friend who I stopped talking to for 2 years over politics. Eventually I came around and reconnected. So maybe she’ll come around eventually. Politically it sounds like my journey has been similar to yours, I’m glad to have come across your post.
Right on! 👍
For some people it was any kind of dissent during COVID, for others calling out gender ideology in the education system and resultant harms, now it's just saying that if more than half the people vote for Trump maybe it's not a fringe minority of people on the right that are unhappy with where the left have got to. Many of us have seen up close how groupthink and ostracism work. We know now how Nazism occurs and we know that under the right conditions we can all fall into it.
Rene Girards scapegoating idea may be helpful here- the role of the scapegoat is to dissipate the tension in the group. Because many people can't hold the tension they get locked into group dynamics. Dissenters then get scapegoating which resolves the tension and helps the group cohere. The progressive left is basically a cult in my view, which means they will be resistant to change. I consider myself on the left.
Well said. I agree. What you said about groups seems quite accurate. People change when conforming to the group and seem to lose a sense of individual autonomy. There's a MAGA cult and a progressive cult, and ironically they're not as different at the core as they may seem externally. Thanks for the note. Love 'Heterodork.'
they aren’t the left. they are liberals.
Actually, as a writer and historian, I wonder, "Where's it all going?" Obviously such times end, or we'd still be in the last one from 1,000 years ago. But HOW do they end? I'm torn between, adults would rather die than change their minds and admit wrong, and *"Science advances one funeral at a time" -- Max Planck*; to knowing millions of people have already left, "Walked away" as Brandon Straka says (a gay, NYC Democrat) while millions others here daily left real hardcore cults...or what they feel were cults, such as being tepid Methodists in Missouri. So you could ask, "Where does it end for THIS person?" or also, "Where does it end for ALL people," i.e., the movement.
I don't know, and I'm surprised and somewhat disturbed that in all history I don't have a very clear parallel or example. Maybe you will. That question may be far more useful, though.
Interesting thoughts. Thanks for reading and for the comment!
This was very relatable, and an important story to share to illustrate that this phenomenon is widespread. And, Coddling of the American mind was the one that flipped the switch for me: I understood that liberal women were basing their politics on cognitive distortions like I had done while I was depressed. Suddenly the connection between depression, wokeness, and gender was so clear that I couldn't unsee it.
Exactly.