I’ve talked with my therapist a lot. The conclusion I’ve come to is while the level of upset I get is outsized, my emotions are valid.

The weird comment was just the last straw. Since 2018, I’ve seen so much toxic behavior justified by political coding. It started off online, but post covid it really hit the mainstream. A lot of this behavior is almost objectively unacceptable, and the talking through this kind of stuff with my therapist affirmed my gut feeling that the political coding was just an excuse. Here are some examples I’ve seen, from online and real life:

• During covid, there was a subreddit called HermanCainAward. It made fun of antivaxxers actively dying from covid via screenshots of their social media pages. While it was supposedly about awareness, the comments seemed absolutely giddy
• It’s pretty common for liberal social media personalities to insult conservative for being ugly and unable to succeed with woman. This is in direct contradiction to their claims that slit shaming is unacceptable and their messaging about body positivity
• I’ve met multiple women in “ethical” polyamaorous relationships. They weren’t ethical. The women in questions were in LTRs, wanted a harem, and the partner always ended up devasted. Every time it was justified by framing poly as a sexual identity and throwing shade in regards to gender roles and heteronormativity
• I’ve met a significant number of women who treat men as a whole in a toxic manner. I used to gently ask how they would feel if that was the way they were being treated, and I always got a liberally-coded lecture about historical oppression
• Democrats in my city proudly matched in support of Hamas, a totalitarian regime dedicated to the murder of Jews worldwide. They justified this by using oppressor/oppressed rhetoric
• I’ve seen people excommunicated from a friend group for problematic behavior, but that standard is never evenly applied. A single, not conventionally attractive, guy can be cut off on a single sentence. Meanwhile a conventionally attractive man or woman can say horrid things and they’ll be excused.
• My siblings will straight up try to trigger an autistic meltdown any time I see them. They’ll always justify it by saying I was doing something problematic, but their justification was super thin.
• The biggest assholes I know are super vocal about being liberal. Like they’ll be casually cruel to people, but then brag about going to drag brunches.
• A lot of TV shows and movies these days are straight up bad, but then use flimsy political coding to imply that anyone who doesn’t like said IP is just a deplorable

At this point I’ve seen this toxicity on a personal level, from democratic politicians, on social media, and in traditional media. It is very much a real part of liberal culture.

What therapy has also helped me realize is that, in the past, I felt a similar resentment towards conservative culture. My shift in anger corresponds to when I moved from a more conservative area of the county to a liberal area of the country. I think that there are a certain type of people who are just shitty and looking to excuse their behavior, and political coding is the way to do that in 2024.

I’ve also explored how I became the person I am today, specifically how I “beat” the bullying. The answer was ultimately that I disengaged. Senior year of high school I avoided anyone in my grade that I didn’t have an explicitly good relationship with, and successfully attempted to make friends outside of my school. In college, I chose a university that students from my high school almost never go to, and made it a point to attempt to form connections from people with a different background. After college, I made a commitment to not move anywhere close to my hometown.

I am actively applying these conclusions to my decision not to vote. My feelings that liberal culture is toxic are valid. The best way to deal with them is to disengage. At the same time, there are equivalent issues in conservative culture that I’m not having an emotional reaction to by virtue of lack of exposure. So, the best solution is not to vote, and to transition to being a more apolitical person as a whole. While that’s by no means a perfect solution, absolutely nothing will change if I continue taking the same approach towards politics that I have for a good decade at this point.