Thank you for sharing, Carol. You describe much of what I’ve been feeling for several years. You are fortunate to still trust your immediate family and friends. It’s particularly difficult when that is gone.
Great essay. You've expressed well a feeling that seems to be common these days. Are we learning that things have never been what we thought, that we had been happily ignorant of most of the details?
Thank you! That is a question I’ve been grappling with for awhile now. It’s more or less the focus of my original Substack (still going but I decided to make it separate), Liberal Confessions.
Personally, I’d say both “yes” in some respects and “not exactly” in others. I can see with the benefit of hindsight ways in which I either downplayed core issues in my mind or simply was ignorant of them. OTOH, it’s also true that things have really changed. Exhibit #1: The Internet and social media. These didn’t exist when many of my worldviews were initially formed. And then also: Wokeism. It only really took off in the mid-2010s. Also: The collapse of traditional journalism and the development of a new effort of big tech/corporate media/security state/Democratic Party control. And so on.
So I think things have really changed, but that they could only have changed as quickly as they did if the underlying conditions that made those changes possible were shifting for a much longer period of time.
Love this! Another one so well put at so many levels! I assume the SC friend you mentioned is Vicki.
Yes! Exactly right :)
Thank you for sharing, Carol. You describe much of what I’ve been feeling for several years. You are fortunate to still trust your immediate family and friends. It’s particularly difficult when that is gone.
Yes, absolutely. I hear you on that.
Great essay. You've expressed well a feeling that seems to be common these days. Are we learning that things have never been what we thought, that we had been happily ignorant of most of the details?
Thank you! That is a question I’ve been grappling with for awhile now. It’s more or less the focus of my original Substack (still going but I decided to make it separate), Liberal Confessions.
Personally, I’d say both “yes” in some respects and “not exactly” in others. I can see with the benefit of hindsight ways in which I either downplayed core issues in my mind or simply was ignorant of them. OTOH, it’s also true that things have really changed. Exhibit #1: The Internet and social media. These didn’t exist when many of my worldviews were initially formed. And then also: Wokeism. It only really took off in the mid-2010s. Also: The collapse of traditional journalism and the development of a new effort of big tech/corporate media/security state/Democratic Party control. And so on.
So I think things have really changed, but that they could only have changed as quickly as they did if the underlying conditions that made those changes possible were shifting for a much longer period of time.