I can tell you from firsthand experience that anger and vitriol don’t win arguments.
Trying to shove the same tired rhetoric down our throats doesn’t work and all this backlash coming from Democrats over the #WalkAway Campaign only proves the point for us that we made the correct choice to leave.
Thanks for listening, stay strong everyone and be excellent to each other!
Wow you guys. I’m floored by the response to my #WalkAway story — especially by my own friends! Over 100k *real* people organizing on FB to say they’re leaving or have left their respective political parties and instead of asking us Why, or using this as an opportunity to open a healthy dialogue, the majority of our friends would rather vilify us, call us brainwashed, racists, white supremacists and worse.
What about taking a moment to reflect on their own politics and wonder why someone would want to leave? What about trying to bring their friends back into the fold in a kind, supportive way?
Naw, self-reflection is hard. Pointing a finger at oneself is difficult. It’s far easier to try and shout us down and insult us until we see how foolish we are and come to our senses, right???
Except that’s not working.
Throwing insults, unfriending, even blocking people they used to care about is only driving an entire group of people further away. Calling a friend a brainwashed robot because they’ve decided to openly speak and think for themselves is only proving to them they we were right to leave.
Get off Twitter if it’s bothersome. Stop using it as the litmus test. That is not the home of this campaign. Every popular thing that exists on Twitter is full of bad actors. Go to any thread about a popular musician or group and you will find a flood of bots trying to sell you something. Twitter is a means for some of us to communicate, but Facebook is where we are currently organizing. And it’s on FB that we’re getting the most hurtful responses, because most of us understand that Twitter is full of trolls and shouldn’t be taken as seriously.
It’s on Facebook that we’re called traitors and cowards by our own friends. It’s there that we risk isolating ourselves in our real lives. It’s where the people we grew up with and love try to openly discredit us by insisting we must be brainwashed and mislead.
Those kind of ‘friends’ don’t need to worry about Russian bots encouraging us to #WalkAway, they’re doing a bang-up job on their own.
When I first publish my #WalkAway story, I think maybe five to ten of my friends and family will see it. I look at it as a “safe” way (oh the innocence of youth) to “come out” to them and admit what I’ve been up to lately.
I decide to cover my bases and post it to FB and Twitter because I have conservative friends and family on both platforms that I’ve deliberately lost touch with. I want them to know that I’m sorry and ready to listen with compassion and respect, but I’m still too much of a coward to reach out to them personally.
One of these people is my own brother. This amazingly funny, musically gifted, devoted father and husband who I cast out of my life for the “crime” of being a lifelong religious conservative. I hope that my message will reach him, we unfollowed each other awhile ago (of course), but at the same time I’m too scared to directly send it to him.
I figure I’ll quietly post it and then wait for the inevitable angry phone call from my mother.
When I realize my video has been seen by thousands of people, this giant lurch starts to form in my gut because I immediately think of what they’re going to do with my past. There’s some pretty aggressive religious criticism and “hyper-woke” tweets, I’m sure– but it gets a lot messier than that.
I understand not everyone can be open about their struggles with mental health so I feel I have a duty to everyone out there suffering in silence to be LOUD about my fight to stay positive and move forward.
Strangers are using my love for creative and artistic expression as a way to convince others that I’m lying. They’re using my looks and my ability to speak in complete, mostly coherent sentences to say I must be a Russian bot or an alt-right, paid actor. My 20-year-old suicide attempt and my willingness to speak openly about it are being used as a means to discredit everything I have to say.
The problem? I’m not ashamed of any of it. You aren’t going to make me stop acting, you aren’t going to make me stop thinking, you aren’t going to make me stop speaking by pointing out my issues. A damaged person that comes out the other side and embraces life is only made stronger by that damage. No amount of abuse hurled at me by strangers online will ever come close to the mental abuse I used to inflict on myself.
I just want to tell anyone reading this who has a past, who dares to say out loud that you’re going to think for yourself, if you’re openly proclaiming that you’re walking away they’re probably going to try and attack your credibility by using anything they can find to discredit you.
Together with his first child– that baby is 17 now!
And there are happy endings: my mother has yet to say anything about the video. I’m holding out hope for her. But my brother saw it, loved it, and reached out to me. I know that we’re going to be okay going forward and I hope we find ourselves together again soon.
Please keep adding your voice to this collective of people from every side of the political fence that want to return to the days of compromise by engaging in civil discourse. Stay strong everyone, it’s rough out there but there’s light at the end of this tunnel if we keep coming together to support one another. You know where to find me if you need help.
