I'm a queer Marxist teen from the U.S. I was exposed to the internet when I just spawned, so by like 8 years old I was watching those stupid ass "feminist debunked!!!1!!!111" videos (alt-right pipeline), but as my prefrontal cortex formed I gained compassion as well as sentience. I evolved into an 'apolitical' 'person' (I was like 11 so idk if that counts) and lived my life not really giving a shit.

An important thing to note going forward is that my parents are labor aristocrats, I won't be elaborating too much further for opsec reasons. We live in a town with a lot of wealth disparity, and many of my friends were not nearly as well off. This was always confusing as hell to me as a kid who was pretty sheltered from actual reality, and was always a point of contention with my (conservative) parents. It never made sense to me why some people had to struggle to get by and others lived lavishly, which led to me becoming really, really angry at everything.

The cognitive dissonance had apparently not infected me yet, because I still considered myself in the 'apolitical center' between democrats and republicans (), until I came across that Second Thought video about how centrism favors the right wing. By some miracle my mind was still malleable enough at 14 to be swayed by it, and I actually changed my mind about life. An even bigger challenge to my world video was those "Why you should be a Socialist in 20XX" videos, which I at first laughed off. Eventually though, I actually watched them, and my mind actually changed! I was convinced socialism was right.

So naturally, as any dumbass 14 year old socialist does, I downloaded a PDF of Capital and gave up immediately, eventually just reading wikipedia pages about different micro ideologies and watching Hasan Piker. Now, I was still an Amerikkkan, so my anti-AES and brainworms were still deeply rooted, and my 'one of the good ones,' Stalin was ebil, brainrot led me to be a Trotskyist. I read the permanent revolution, a bit of the manifesto (I wasn't much of a reader, if you couldn't tell by me being a trot), and got very zealous. Like, VERY zealous. I almost lost some friends over it.

A year or so passed and I discovered Lemmy somehow, and ended up on .world after a while. Now, this is where the .world admins made me the most dedicated teenage marxist in bumfuck nowhere, USA. They preemptively defederated from this super extreme socialist instance, putting up such shocking takes as "NATO is bad actually" and "the USSR wasn't as bad as Nazi Germany." Even as a brainwormed usonian, I wasn't dumb enough to believe that gommulism killed 2139438905 marxillion innocent babies, and I quickly left .world to join Hexbear.

And that's it, that's my leftist story. I was corrected in most of my shitty viewpoints by other marxists and anarchists here, I began reading and shit. Yeah. I don't really know what else to say or how to end this. lmao

Thank you for making me a well read Marxist, if anyone has any questions I'll answer it, I like answering questions.

Salutations!

Snowshadow:

A message from Canadians to US citizens: Dear US,

As the smoke from our wildfires continue to pollute your air and many of you struggle to breathe please think about this:

If you chose to abstain from voting or do not vote Blue, your air quality will continue to worsen because Trump will increase the use of and development of fossil fuels which will increase our wildfires.

Thanks for listening. Breathe easy today.

Donnodubus:

The U.S. is drilling more oil under Biden than it ever has, in history.

Snowshadow:

Sorry but I have seen you try this elsewhere.

Let's get your facts straight here.

The US is "drilling" in order to keep the economy going, your transportation moving until alternate energy can take over.

At the SAME TIME he has invested MORE in alternative energy projects than any other president in history. He also has reduced drilling on federal lands.

So please take your right wing propaganda elsewhere!

Donnodubus:

It's incredible that you think "keeping the economy and transportation going" somehow makes Biden's oil drilling different from Trump's — everyone drills oil for those reasons!

Yes, if you want to make a case for Biden, argue that he is expanding solar power or something — don't mislead people into thinking he is reducing U.S. fossil fuels when he's not!

P.S., fact checking pro-Biden campaigning is not right wing propaganda 👍

Snowshadow:

Please show me exactly where in my post I stated Biden was reducing fossil fuels? !! I will tell you...nowhere!!

pmonks (replying to DD):

Do you think a second Trump presidency would reverse that?

DD:

No one thinks that. The point is that Biden is not reducing oil output like his proponents are trying to make it sound.

We can't solve the problem if we ignore it as long as a Dem is in office...

pmonks:

For better or worse, our choices are Biden or Trump. Anything else is a distraction.

DD:

Criticizing Biden is not the same thing as promoting Trump, actually.

In fact, criticizing him can push him to do better electorally...

pmonks:

Criticising Biden without also comparing and contrasting to the only viable alternative (Trump) is misleading at best, and imo downright dishonest.

Too many people cling to the fantastical notion that a perfect candidate exists. I don’t even believe such a thing is theoretically possible (let alone even remotely possible in practice). And that’s before I even start ranting about how whack our electoral system is, and how it’s only capable of giving us mediocre-at-best candidates…

DD:

And here I thought honesty was about telling the truth! My source literally does compare and contrast Biden with Trump!

pmonks:

So then why did you editorialise it in such a one-sided manner?

snowshadow:

When it comes to Biden, you always promote the negative take...never the complete truth. I have been through your replies and posts.

(in reply to DD's claim of comparing and contrasting)

Wrong. If you do nothing but criticize him (and that is all you do-I checked through your account) you are pushing people into thinking of not voting or voting for Trump...same result. This is not the time to be full out negative, not this close to an election. Don't aprove of Biden's policies? There will be plenty of time to pressure his administration after the election. Push for Trump there will never be another election and you will never see a change for the better.

DD:

In case you haven't realized, an environment where citizens can't criticize their elected leaders is one where Democracy is already lost 👍 Furthermore, it doesn't follow that criticizing Biden for drilling more oil than Trump helps Trump win.

There are many Trump-to-Biden voters who aren't exactly environmentalists or Left leaning...

Snowshadow:

You are exhausting. I am done with you. You are completely missing the point. Bye.

pmonks (after a confused reply from DD):

How childish. Choosing not to engage with a recalcitrant troll is not even remotely the sane thing as losing an argument. Grow up.

( Transcriber's note: I did this all on mobile, and it sucked.)