Comrades: It’s ok to disagree and debate.
This is the first Struggle Session episode of its kind. On August 5, I posted the note below searching for someone who has shifted from Trump over Biden to Harris over Trump. As MSM propaganda gets worse, I believe it is important to search for ground truths and talk to real Americans. Anna represents a rare demographic that may decide a close election.
I give massive respect to Anna for volunteering to join me on today’s show. Of all the 40+ guests I have hosted, she and I have the most different views. In this episode, we discuss:
Her political awakening and evolution through 9/11, Patriot Act, Occupy Wall Street, lockdowns, anarchism, libertarianism
The issues she cares about
Where she gets her news from
Why she has shifted her preference from Trump over Biden to Kamala over Trump
The major areas where we disagree or align
What would make her change her mind and shift back to Trump over Kamala
Her Out of Lockstep project launching in NYC September: https://www.outoflockstep.com/
Anna’s background:
It's probably good to have a little background on me for context. I first got interested in political things after 9/11 when I thought that Bush's invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was uncalled for and wouldn't do anything to bring back the people who died in the terrorism attack (or do anything to end terrorism). The moment that really "radicalized" me though was graduating from college in 2008, when the Recession hit. I grew up in Rochester, NY, which had a collapsing economy already in the 1990s/early 2000s and just got worse due to the Recession. When Occupy Wall Street started, I was unemployed and just got a one-way bus ticket to NYC from Rochester-- and I wasn't the only unemployed Rust Belt kid there by any means. There was almost like a "neighborhood" of Rust Belt people camping together in Zuccotti Park. I stayed pretty left-wing after that, but focused less on politics and more on my career in NYC in the later 2010s...
So the point where things flipped for me was when I was extremely depressed due to losing everything from the COVID lockdowns in 2020 and my friends kept insisting that the reason I was sad was because "well, we have this clown in the White House"... but when Biden won, I didn't feel better at all. I just got drunk on Zoom with a friend who had moved from Washington DC to Berlin and then dropped the call because I started crying so much about how I missed my pre-lockdown life and wanted to be in NYC. Biden winning fixed literally nothing. I also didn't like the way after January 6th, my friends went from sharing my excitement about the world re-opening to having this sentiment like "in-person events are for right-wing fascists." It just wrecked the will to live that I'd been struggling to maintain for almost a year at that point. So, I joined the Anti-Lockdown movement and learned to empathize with Trump's supporters that way even though Trump wasn't really that anti-lockdown.
But things have shifted again since 2021, and I've especially noticed the difference starting in maybe mid-2023 with the Right going back to kind of being the buzzkills I remember them being pre-2020 instead of the rebels they were during the lockdowns. It's a little hard to put my finger on, but a lot of it is a dynamic around very loud misogynists. Now, here's the weird part-- it follows EXACTLY the same timeline that I saw with the left becoming divisive, judgmental buzzkills and losing the spirit they had in 2011. By 2014, they were more like the obnoxious "woke" types that kind of alienate people, and it was largely the work of 3-letter agencies brainwashing people in the movement (I swear I'm not crazy-- my dad used to work for the NSA back in the day, and a lot of people on r/NoNewNormal had some eye-opening insight into what happened). The right sort of losing the plot is following exactly the same timeline of peaking in 2021 and turning divisive and obnoxious now, in 2024.
Her shrine to “The Science”
Who else should I debate?
