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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • This is what springs to mind for me as well. OP, you should try to remember this: the people around you are not as concerned with you as they are their own lives. And their own lives are probably pretty intense for them to deal with!

    • Understanding other people’s lives might have intensity you don’t know about or understand is empathy. Displaying empathy will help you establish bonds with others and this is a good place to start.
    • Say they do ostracize and dislike you. So what? Can they really even do anything about it? Should you even care? Probably not. It probably doesn’t matter at all. So you’ll have to deal with it for now, but they’ll move on and so will you.



  • It’s a convenient wedge issue because although no one disagrees, and Harris is the clear choice, people are very upset about it. That allows the topic to steer people away from reason and into raw emotion. That in turn allows the conversation to become a way to subvert the topic into a general negative sentiment that plants itself association with Harris.

    It’s a good manipulation tactic, and you can observe that any dissent turns into a pithy back and forth quickly. That’s going to leave it in the conversation for good. Because we’ll get upset every time it comes up.

    It’s a very cynical, awful thing to do. To take the genocide of a helpless people and only serve it when convenient as a wedge issue. But it works, so here we are, talking about them but only when people want to take pot shots at specific politicians.


  • If you’re implying that they were deliberately sown doubts, I very much agree. I’m not saying a bunch of folks didn’t get duped. I think it was very much to blame on agents provocateur.

    What I’m saying is that the acrimony can’t be waved away, not then and not now. It has to be taken seriously even if it was the result of manipulation. Saying “nah you got suckered” gets exactly the kind of lukewarm response it deserves.


  • I have heard stuff like this so often, and I feel like it’s as silly and callous to say now as it was 8 years ago. The part of the Democrat base that chose time and time again to keep denigrating “Bernie Bros” absolutely own the consequences of their behavior at the time.

    In a moment where part of the coalition has doubts, historic precedent isn’t relevant. What is relevant is the work to answer those doubts and that did not happen. Instead the infighting continued and the doubts were ignored. Smug headline after smug headline told potential Hillary voters to shut up and fall in line. But Democrats don’t really fall in line like that.

    It doesn’t really matter if other primaries went the same way, because other primaries have also produced failed coalitions. Some are examples of success, some failure. You learn from both. In 2016 we saw infighting and discord dissolve enthusiasm, a crucial part of what gets Democrats to the polls. It’s my feeling that ignoring that is a bad idea.









  • It sounds like your wife is in deep grief. MS is torment, and she might be processing that grief for the rest of her life. She may not have space for a romance at all. That may never change. Sometimes, MS doesn’t let you get “back to normal”.

    It is deeply crucial that you get everyone to counseling now, and not just individually but in spouse and group sessions. As much as you can afford. You have already started a new dynamic and grieving your old one is natural. But you can still support each other and it’s important to do the work and figure out what that looks like.

    Partnerships can be loving and supportive and caring and not romantic. Sometimes it’s a phase that comes back to romance, sometimes not. But you need to be ready to relearn a lot of things and that starts with counseling.

    Edit: And oh my gosh, I should have led with this - I’m so sorry y’all are going through this. It’s incredibly hard and I hope you get the help you need.