To be a conscious adult in the 21st century is to vacillate between exasperated anger and pity. There have always been political divisions among Americans; there have always been people more left-leaning and people more right-leaning. But today, in 2025, it’s so much more extreme than it ever has been in living memory.
Your political leanings have become a non-negotiable statement about your morality and character. Democrats and Republicans don’t bicker over the dinner table about tax rates, or how much or how little we should pay into the social safety net anymore. They scream, get irate, and accuse their dinner companions of “hating the poor,” “hating blacks,” “being a Communist,” etc.
For conservatives, it’s become hard or impossible to have any discussions of current events with liberal family members. How can anyone discuss things rationally with a group of people who are likely to believe insanely exaggerated claims, such as the false idea that police are killing hundreds or thousands of “unarmed black men” every year.
The dam completely broke, finally, with the alleged pandemic. People sorted themselves into opposing camps, and there was nothing exaggerated about it. And it wasn’t “both sides.” The left, the Democrats, went fully insane, backing the suspension of Constitutional rights like freedom of assembly (not to mention speech), many backed forced vaccinations, and millions of leftist families threw their own kin to the wolves if they refused to buckle down underneath the left’s demands.
And it’s not as easy any longer to have pity on people who seem deluded, paranoid, or deeply mentally unwell. That’s because these people–Democrats and leftists–aren’t just unwell by themselves. Their disconnection from reality is a direct social and sometimes physical threat to the people around them. Don’t forget the stories of children turning their Trump-supporting parents in to authorities for being in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, the day of the riots at the Capitol.
What do you make of this sad spectacle of a young man? In this video, a streamer catches up with a pale young man wearing a Covid mask. The guy with the microphone is white, the young man with the mask on is white, and a third young black man joins the discussion. It’s, well, insane. The masked white man gets agitated talking about how white people are living on stolen land (he even says they’re standing on occupied land that very minute on camera), and that he and the other white man in the scene “deserve to be robbed.” Why? Because they’re white.
You may enjoy the baffled reaction of the young black man.
The black man says OK, I’ll steal your iphone. All of a sudden the young white man protests, saying he uses his phone “for mutual aid.” I know-it sounds absurd. You’ll just have to watch and laugh.
Here’s what people on X/Twitter had to say:
Some are having trouble believing it’s real.
