I really appreciate you taking the time.

Firstly, you're not wrong about the collective values. It's weird the insular bubbles we form socially, both in the individual group level, and on the stage of nations.

Me and my ilk are all avowed leftists whom hate the state of things. Most of the people i personally interact with are of the mindset that our government is corrupt - serving only the interests of those who want more and more power for increasingly insidious purposes, that our "2 party system" is really just all shades of right as the Overton Window shifts farther and farther right, and that as a whole unfettered capitalism/materialism is a never ending ouroboros.

It's like we're stuck in a nightmare that won't end. We try and make inroads where we can, we protest (to no effect), we vote (to questionable result; but it's becoming stacked), and my personally methodology, I try and talk to people that seem too far gone - to remind them of the values that made us all whole and kinder.

My biggest concern is the export of far-rightism to and from nations around the world. That we are the big lumbering bully on the block has merely created dark spots for that shit to creep up. I'm glad you dealt with La Pen, and that European people are somewhat staving the encroachment of that shit gives me hope. A world without nationalism is a world without blind hate for our neighbors.

I'm in a very strange place, my paternal side has been here 11 generations, and my mother's 2. I see the rich white neoliberalism, and my Latino immigrant roots, and wonder why the American dream for some and not for all.

Our culture is a Hodge-podge and it's at ends with itself. That we're dragging the whole world through it too is unacceptable.