The Personal Costs Of Radical Politics
Being A Part Of A Movement Can Be Taxing To Your Mental Health
If you’ve been following the online left for the past few months, you’d have noticed that many progressive activists have turned on one of their premiere candidates of the past few election cycles: Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. The freshman, whom progressives enthusiastically supported in 2022, has taken staunchly pro-Israel stances since the start of the Israel-Hamas War, and even come out for stricter immigration laws. It has rankled leftists who promoted his candidacy over the more moderate establishment favorite, former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb in the 2022 Democratic primary.
Fetterman notably suffered a stroke during his 2022 campaign and spent time in treatment for depression early last year. His recent political stances have led some leftists, who praised his candor on mental health a year ago, to cruelly mock his health problems.
Others, usually in jest, have connected the two. Over the weekend, I saw a tweet, offered up as a joke, that struck a chord with me:
Fetterman literally went to a mental hospital and now he's no longer a progressive. Whatever therapy he went through should be studied and replicated across the country and world.
I’ve been in therapy dealing with anxiety and depression for a while now. I've realized that I’ve been identifying less with the progressive movement since, and believe it is because therapy has brought me to the conclusion that my place in progressive politics has been more about pleasing people and keeping friends than what I actually believe. When I’ve spoken up about this, others have said they’ve had similar experiences.
It's exhausting to be progressive (and probably also MAGA) because you have to constantly adhere to a shifting set of rigid rules about language and priorities, and if you stray from the path, you are beaten down, often with accusations of being a racist, classist or another kind of bigot – the worst thing a progressive can be accused of – until you get back in line. I think a lot of progressives, including myself, didn't notice it because we didn’t stray. Once you have the experience where you don't agree with something, however, a target is put on you and it changes you dramatically. You begin to feel like Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games when she arrives in District 13; being forced into some pointless conformity despite generally agreeing with the underlying cause.
That was me during the Bernie Sanders campaign and COVID-19. I did not care for Bernie the way other progressives did, I found his campaign pitch lackluster and naive, but any criticism of Bernie was met with accusations that I was not a true progressive and that I was an apostate. True progressives only support Bernie. It didn’t matter that I generally agreed with him but saw him as a flawed figure who would be unable to deliver those promises. You must be for Bernie to fit in.
Same with COVID-19. If you questioned the protocols; masks, lockdowns, school closures, etc, you were just an ableist who wanted to kill people to satisfy a selfish need to go to a bar or take a trip. It didn’t matter whether you thought these protocols were unsustainable and would trigger social and economic problems that would reverberate for years. You were a bad progressive if you weren’t sacrificing these urges in service of the greater good: preventing COVID-19 from spreading, and yes you have to do this indefinitely or you’re a fascist. It felt eerily close to the type of religious fundamentalism that pushed me into progressive politics in the first place.
When I was younger, and more actively involved in progressive politics, I would often sneer at friends who appeared apathetic to political and social fights, sometimes mocking them for spending a Sunday watching football rather than doing political activism. I assumed that it would wake up my friends and acquaintances to see how their apathy contributes to suffering and oppression. I came to realize over time that it wasn’t working. People just tuned me out or went out of their way to avoid me. Some of my closest friends sat me down and explained to me that my political lecturing was getting tiresome and people didn’t want me around. I initially took it as a sign that I was right, and they just didn’t want to hear the truth, but then things got lonely. It might have been worth the social cost if I was converting people and effecting change, but I wasn’t. What was the point in making myself miserable when it wasn’t even helping the causes I believed in? I recognize this type of smugness even today when “Joy Is Canceled” Progressives talk about non-political events like award shows or holidays or try to protest and disrupt cultural events.
Radical political movements, like organized religion, use the threat of social isolation to keep people in line. It works for MAGA because people are desperate to fit in with them or often need to, so they are not socially isolated in many of America’s small rural communities. MAGA is fun, progressivism is not. Progressives, especially since COVID-19, are often joyless, tight-assed, and exhausting to be around, and no one *needs* to be in their social circle, they do so only because of shared values. So much of progressivism nowadays feels like religious fanaticism, ironic considering the anti-religion aspect of progressivism. The type of extreme self-sacrifice, like calling vacations “colonialism” or sneering at people celebrating Christmas or going to eat a restaurants, reminds me of life in a convent.
One of the big things that hobble the progressive community is, unlike MAGA, it often doesn’t feel like an enjoyable space. I don’t mean to say you aren’t “welcome” in the community, it is certainly far more diverse and inclusive than MAGA, but it’s just not attractive to someone who wants to enjoy life and not wallow in doom and gloom every waking moment. The far left is so full of melodrama, microaggressions, unreasonable expectations, and meaningless rituals that unless you’re a true believer, or are desperate for a place to fit in, it feels like you’re just wasting time you could spend enjoying life. Progressive communities largely exist in major cities and college campuses where there are plenty of other communities to be a part of that demand less of you.
Progressives will dismiss this as selfish. That one must be willing to sacrifice for the cause of the greater good. Maybe so, but that attitude is no different than religious fanaticism, and at least religion offers the promise of paradise in the afterlife, and not a meaningless oblivion. It feels so much more liberating to just be yourself, define your own boundaries and values, and ignore what the self-righteous scolds say about you. I’m sure Fetterman feels that too.