Seems fit for the community as this is more "real life discussion" than "rage inducing news bait"

Post seems fit for the community as this is more "real life discussion" than "rage inducing news bait" and appears asked in good faith.

OP, disregard this comment: just commenting this per admin suggestion to sticky it to get ahead of any potential reports.

this place has become the de facto "my changing feelings are all y'alls fault" board.

It's pretty much the same thing yeah: you find something you're somewhat interested in, and then The Algorithm will shove increasingly aggressive content at you and hey presto, you've fallen down the rage-bait circlejerk hole for whatever side you were already somewhat aligned with.

I'm old enough to remember when you could have friends with different political opinions and it never went past 'oh, cool, well i don't agree but whatever'. That's 100% not a thing anymore, because everyone on both sides of any issue have been completely radicalized.

The right are Nazis, and the left are raping children, and that's where the discussion starts now, and thus you have... the mess we have now.

I don't know what the solution is, other than literal deprogramming, since that's almost exactly how a cult works: the cult leader affirms what you already think, tells you that you're special, and then makes sure no voices of dissent are heard.

You know, like social media's algorithms do in the name of "engagement".

Left and right, particularly in American politics, are very wishy washy ( definitions easily changed).

The politics have drifted rightwards ( the Overton Window) in the USA the last two generations.

A hard core American socialist these days is more like mildly leftist when compared to different places and times.

Often, in lemmy and other fringe media, this is the first exposure many mainstream Americans get to the real left. And I have to say, having been in the 1970s, most of this left here is cozy and mild and nonviolent compared to what it can become.