Into the Political Wilderness – Part 2
How the pandemic unmoored me from my lefty politics and set me adrift.
“The last few years have certainly stirred the pot. While in some senses polarization has seemed to increase, the neat boundaries between left and right have also blurred. Leftish natural living hippies suspicious of vaccines have made common cause with gun-toting libertarians suspicious of anything coming from the government. Dreadlocked digital nomads invested in Bitcoin support Trump because he wants to weaken the state. Environmentalists angry at how the rich and powerful are destroying nature get lost down the QAnon rabbit hole. In Europe, populist political parties, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, combine traditional right-wing antipathy to immigration with a strengthening of the welfare state. My journey is just a less extreme version of this same intermingling.”