I think she was into his communism until it challenged her. Liberals are so comfortable expressing views they would never act on.
Or the guy was never a communist and they were just fishing for clicks/dopamine.
My Fox News in-laws “revealed” to my wife that I have evil books (I don’t hide them, they’re on the bookshelf) and that I’m probably a communist. She asked “what even is that?” and they didn’t know how to answer.
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Not sure if it helps, but I personally don’t think labels matter much unless you are actively organizing. I even have a hot take that one can only be a “communist” if they are a member of an org, otherwise they’re functionally a liberal with better than average political views (perhaps they are a Marxist, or align heavily with the views of communist parties idk…).
I just say that to mean that it might not matter in your case, and you can keep talking to your wife about single issues to whatever level she’s interested in that conversation. You can just tee it up so that if you ever got involved with an org (where labels start to matter) and she’s like “communism? Socialism? What?” You just respond with “yeah they literally agree with all that shit weve talked about over the years”. At that point it’s just a tap-in instead of a “grand reveal”.
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I think you can be a communist if you do lone-wolf activism, you’re just 99% certain to be an inadequate communist. That said, for distinguishing being a communist from a liberal who likes the consumer-lifestyle aesthetic of “communism”, the difference is political action of some kind.
She does but the label itself is rather meaningless to her
“what even is that?”
this is such a funny question to pose to people, props to your wife
That evil book? My Life by William Jefferson Clinton
jkjk
they’re on the bookshelf
Hilarious, revealing something prominently displayed in your house.
I don’t care if this doxes me, it’s still wild. One of my prominent, public facing social media accounts used to have a profile picture of me laying flowers at Marx and Jenny’s grave. It’s very obvious from the picture what I’m doing and who’s grave I’m at since the tombstone is shaped like Marx’s head and there’s a big engraving saying “Workers of all lands unite.” Family members used to come to my account too to reminisce or catch up or whatever.
This was my picture for years. I’ve also been pretty vocal for over a decade now. My own mother didn’t realize I’m a communist until this last Christmas where I said hope the next time Jeff Bezos gets in a rocketship that it blows up on the launch pad. Like she audibly gasped and I guess the two cogs in her head finally turned. Straight up, “Wait, are you a communist?!” in a shocked voice
I had sort of the reverse with a co-worker recently where I told him he sounded like a communist because all his beliefs were basically that and he was shocked to find that out
That’s honestly hilarious
ur mom thought you were a radlib, owned
They were a happy couple until they had a sectarian split.
How do people live without being political? Everything is political. How do you live with someone who doesn’t in fact know much about you if they don’t know this?
A lot of people are weirdly comfortable with their lives and don’t feel like anything is structurally wrong. If they have issues they blame themselves or fate. You’ll hear a common refrain from them like, “I just want to focus on my own life.” They’re completely atomized and yet prefer it that way.
This is the majority of white Americans, by the way.
Not being political just means that the status quo works well enough for an individual that they will respond with immediate anger if you are so gauche as to mention something like LGBT people existing
Okay so don’t take this in any way than me just relating my personal experience, but while I agree with what you are saying from the position of someone who sees the depoliticization of the working class as disastrous and idealistic, and who does organizing in their community with other commies and socialists, I can’t stand politics. I organize with people who are good at it, and several people who like it and went to school for it; but while I can “play the game” as a matter of pure necessity, it is such a source of burn out and negativity. And I honestly don’t know what to do about it anymore, because powering through it has stopped working
I get it. But at the same time I don’t. I’ll try to explain.
I don’t know if it’s my neurodiversity or what, but I have never been able to separate my personality from politics in any way or politics from everyday life for that matter. Might also be cultural, I don’t think these are separated as strongly where I live. I visited the US once and had a partner there for a short while and the difference in this was a revelation to me and I didn’t like it. This was the one time I tried to pair up with my literal political opposite and it was a bad time, those shitty politics show up in everyday life: in the way people treat others, think about things, relate to the world, talk about other people, see history, see current affairs etc. I didn’t feel we could have a lot in common when this was a guy who started forming an aneurysm if you said “Obama”.
I can small talk and work with people who have bad politics (to me), but I won’t seek co-operation or closeness with them because I see life as political and don’t think the relationship can really be all that great with anyone who for example is very neolib in their thinking. I mean my grocery store choices are political and I will make choices based on that all the time. If that makes sense.
Pretty sure my profession highlights this too as working in welfare is always political, the decisions made always have room for consideration and the direction those decisions go tends to be dictated by the politics of the worker.
It might be that defining politics as a profession, as something external with some special sort of expertise and separating it from the people is actually the issue? The professional politician is definitely a disgusting representation of representative capitalist politics, but to me that isn’t what being political means, it’s a bastardization of it.
Okay so there’s some differences between what I’m talking about and what you are talking about. Everything you are saying is reflective of my experience as well, except I’d drill down more on your last paragraph or two.
Like you make good points that I agree with wrt dealing with people who you have nothing in common with concerning their individual political opinions. With this much difference, especially concerning what you said about dating someone with drastically different politics, the politics indicate deeper held values that made you romantically or socially incompatible. That is Fairly normal and unsurprising, and my experience is largely similar.
But what if you’re in an org that actually has somewhat strict rules about who can join: what political opinions they have, and what priorities they fight for? What if you agree with 95% of what an org participates in, but you see that they are wrong about 5%? And that is creating bad reads of current events, etc? Like for example, you join a group of explicitly Marxist communists, but they just aren’t that great about colonialism and decolonial struggles, despite being well read, well connected, relevant, and offer tons of amazing resources to its members. The people who have been dedicating their personal time and energy and money to educating you and trying to grow the org are now wrong about something crucial to the orgs ability to take on impactful work. A group within the org develops a critique that addresses the problems, and you find yourself aligning with them, but this puts you at odds with others who are struggling against those criticisms, people who you personally care about but seem to be somewhat hurt by your support of the critique?
Or you find yourself a leader of a few local working groups in a large national org, but other leaders, whose politics you find acceptable, due to their affiliation with factions that don’t like whatever faction you belong to, like not even actively vindictively opposing you, tend to go out of their way to distinguish themselves from you, at any conspicuous opportunity. They don’t like Marxism, or they think that “communism” is a synonym for “authoritarian”, or they are just kinda opportunist cuz they are young and not as well established. But yet they are in charge of work that you know is important and you need to participate in.
Even working in cadre is exhausting when I learn that someone I work with who I really admire and helped to get me established is like really into UFOs and alien conspiracy theories. Other than that you agree on everything else, but yet every once in a while discussions veer into this positively absurd territory.
And all of these are real examples from my perspective. If I imagine how I must seem to the other people referenced here, my actions become just as exhausting and frustrating.
In my experience a lot of leftists agree that everything is political, but then don’t really participate in politics outside of individual political opinions. There is a realm of the expressly political that exists not apart from but still distinguishable from the realm of the “everything is politics.” If you wanna say that is a bastardization that’s fine but what’s the alternative??
Right I get what you are saying I think and agree on the need to compromize and feel the same frustration even in my work. Few of the most lovely based leftists I have come across have for example turned out to hold weird crystal healing or antu-science views or whatever. But I also try to allow people some room to hold different views if the general core is ok, even when I don’t agree.
So I don’t personally talk about a 100% political fit between people, but mean that the basics have to at least be there. I work a lot with folks who are all anti-ML and anti-communist, but still leftist as this is all that exists here. It feels bad, but it is the reality. But I would not likely spend my life with them which is what my original answer is about relating to the OP. Or I might if their politics is open to discussion and at least aligned with mine as most left politics tends to be. But the politics still very much exists in the relatioship.
I meant that the profession of politics can be a bastardization of what politics is, to be clear.
I’m great at navigating all of these other inter personal/political dynamics except when we have to actually work together on the basis of politics. My experience of doing political work with other volunteers doing political work has been like working through the 5 stages of grief, where when I reach “acceptance,” I’m basically like “fuck this, it isn’t worth sacrificing my mental health” except this road of self improvement and political/historical education that I’ve been on for like 12 years leads to this. I feel very lost even though I’m exactly where I’ve intended to go
My wife’s a hopeless radlib, maybe demsoc. I am very open about my politics and she doesn’t care for the most part. I have tried to convert her but she’s got somelib hangups and can’t accept the historical necessity of violence. so we mostly agree until i say some
shit, then she just sighs and calls me crazy. love herThis is almost identical to my own relationship lol. I feel this combination of people is quite common for commies
I lean more syndicalist than traditional commie but the hubs is a demsoc and yeah, that’s pretty much how our political conversations go when I get “too feisty” lol
The concept both of social violence and violent maintainance of the status quo through cops, imperialism, etc. are helpful. So is a simple trolley-problem framing. The revolutionary socialist does not like violence (or in any case shouldn’t), but they see it as necessary for the purpose of stopping the violence that is continuously enacted by the ruling class. If cops were beating someone to death for shits and giggles, would it be wrong to brick them or wrong to not brick them and let their victim suffer and die?
Pretty much same boat atm, at least she’s much closer to a socdem but too embedded on lib talking points and beliefs (especially economical).
My first long term gf was/is a proud lib. I think we were watching Saving Private Ryan and somehow the conversation got to her asking if I’d have volunteered to serve in Vietnam. I think everyone knows my answer. She goes on this diatribe about the horror of the Soviet Union and communism, the KGB, and the dominoe theory. I pointed out that Vietnam won, and that was the last time we watched a war movie together.
Oh, she probably knew from the beginning but once he set out on a 5-year plan, there was no backing out
I turned my partner into a communist like Palpantine minting a Vader, and they thank me for it
Same my partner brought the 40 beheaded babies crap to me, I informed her a bit and now she want to kill billionaires
Five happy years of marriage
Just finishing up our anniversary dinner at posh uptown restaurant
Flip open the bill and see a tip-line. Zero it out.
Honey, waiters are working people too. They deserve to be paid for the job they perform
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdXoDwGQT78
Instantly file for divorce
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Or she changed. He was never a communist, just not an extremist. She started listening to bad people and was radicalized.
Yeah odds are “communist” here means “watches MSNBC”
My wife gets simultaneously bored and depressed talking about any sort of high level politics. She fully agrees on down to earth concepts and is mad at all the right things in the right way, but if you start categorizing political beliefs and getting into political history she glazes over. I’m the same way when she talks about horses, so we just don’t talk about those things much. And since I don’t go around saying “I’m a Marxist-Leninist-Hoaxist-Poseidonist” in real life, she probably wouldn’t call me anything other than anti establishment, or a socialist maybe
I’ve had (liberal) coworkers clock me as a commie after a couple months, I have no idea how someone could go years without knowing (or caring?) about your romantic partner’s political views
I just remember the punchline to this ancient joke: “There were red flags everywhere.”
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