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The only satisfying thing about US politics right now is that I finally get some reprieve from being constantly gaslit about this country and my own experiences and the experiences I saw of others growing up, by being able to see it all plainly laid out. Like, I don’t know how to convey how frustrating it was to be Chicken Little back when I had more solid ties to certain movements. I am not saying I made this very specific call, but I saw the things I was talking about escalating over time. I saw the complete decimation of certain spaces by certain toxic dynamics, how the right-wing then started leveraging the repressed resentment for the decimation of those spaces by those dynamics, etc. I saw legitimate concerns drowned out by concern-trolls and then by those pearl-clutching at those defensively reacting to this entire series of escalations. Which then gave more fuel for the concern trolls, which then fueled more of the defensive lateral toxicity. I saw fellow travelers try to eventually take the fight into their own hands by warning about what was going on only to be dismissed as too militant or exaggerating, or otherwise force-fit into a highly dichotomizing discourse that had already congealed by then. Ultimately their warning message was drowned out in a sea of discursive confusion and half-truths. It may seem ridiculous, but when I saw the destruction of spaces where I could openly talk about theory and even *potentially* organize without either paranoid, punitive readings/interpretations of my words from fellow travelers or a cadre of constant waves of right-wing trolling, rhetoricians and derailments, I knew we were cooked.

Sure, engaging in theory can be its own form of slacktivism. I’m not saying I ever was some amazing activist going out doing things in the streets. But my point is, when you can’t even discuss theory online or in real life spaces in peace, it’s a really bad sign. How likely is *anything* to get off the ground at that point? I literally *stopped yapping about the things I used to yap about* because of all I mentioned. Of course, many other more concrete indicators were already there even by then of where things were headed at a larger scale—just certain facts about the way US “democracy” has operated, hostility to unionization, etc. But when social life, which seems more smaller scale, starts to radically change in such a way that certain cultural activities are unsustainable for social movements outside of a purely reactive frame that is a big sign of catalyzation.

Now people have been catching on but at significant delay. I guess that is only the natural consequence of relegating the underground to oblivion. Of ignoring the messy, experimental, or marginal canaries in the coal mines, in favor of the mainstream, clean and sanitized normative spaces. One is so easy to manipulate if one had only ever heard of something like antifa on and after cable news rather than before. If one had only ever witnessed what disability means socially after the pandemic. And a whole slew of other things. The worst part is, though some of us may be guiltier than others, none of us are innocent on that front. It is only this recognition that can keep me compassionate even as I succumb to anger and disgust.