i can’t stand megathreads – no one reads these! no one wants their posts banished there!
Communities with videos of violence and assault, justice porn etc. I hate those, this is honey for conservatives and fascists, they love it and it disgusts me.
I watch fight videos to remind myself that the world is dangerous.
You’re right that it has to do with me becoming conservative.
I was liberal until one night I was attacked by a drunk rando. Traumatized me. Woke me up. Made me realize how fucking deeply horrifying violence is. Armed myself, because I’m worth it.
I didn’t make any conscious decision to switch, but I remember the exact moment I realized how fundamental the second amendment is. It was when I tried to buy pepper spray and was told I needed a permit. This was a homeless guy who’d just been attacked, being told he needed government paperwork to get a weapon.
I would explain more except this wef wef app doesn’t scroll correctly so I can’t see what I’m typing.
But yeah. I’m fascinated by violence now. And now that it’s been a decade since that attack, I find myself starting to feel safe again. Which is a very bad thing, because the world is NOT safe and falsely believing it was nearly ended my life. So I watch videos of guys getting slammed into concrete, despite the fact I hate it, to remind myself how fragile I am.
(scrolling seems to be fixed now?)
So that’s why I watch videos depicting street violence. And that’s how it’s related to my conservativism. Definitely not a coincidence.
Long story short, I’d say my being leftist ended the day I discovered how scary reality actually is, in a visceral and real way that no video or description of violence ever could show me. Once I realized what was at stake, I started thinking clearly about problems like violence (I couldn’t afford to pick ideas based on their level of pleasantness anymore), and realized that being ready for it is the only way to prevent it.
You cannot simultaneously prepare for and prevent war
— Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist
You know you can be a liberal and still own a gun, right? And sure, most liberals don’t want Joe from off the street to walk in and buy a gun with no further investigation, but most don’t want to ban weapons outright. Guns should be in the right hands, in the right circumstances. You talk as if believing the the 2nd amendment immediately makes you conservative.
No you read as if that’s what I said, because I’m categorized by two bits of information in your head.
What I said was that encountering violence made me a conservative.
Just throwing this out there, but while this is the direction you went to deal with the trauma you experienced, do you feel like it’s the healthiest path? I have a loved one with PTSD from trauma. There are many ways to deal with it, but I dare guess that therapy (with the right therapist for you) may give you better, healthier tools.
I only wish you well, and hope you find peace.
I’ve done plenty of therapy. The weapon is not to deal with the trauma, but to deal with the real possibility that someone bigger than me might decide I deserve a beating. If I disagree with that person, the only way to stop them is the weapon.
I don’t want to be traumatized again. I’m taking steps to arm myself because I now see what my naive non-exposure to violence allowed me to ignore: that the world is a place of danger where my body can be hurt by another human who decides to hurt my body.
The guy was only slightly bigger than me, but the fight was over in less than five seconds. After the fight was over, the beating began. A beating I was powerless to stop.
I carry a weapon for the purpose of being in charge of whether that ever happens to me.
The trauma I am dealing with through things that are effective with trauma.
The weapon is not a trauma treatment. It is a rational response to the danger of being around other people, just as a seat belt is a rational response to the danger of driving.
The difference between the danger of driving and the danger of being around people is that the danger of being around other people is horrifying. Not scary, not terrifying, but horrifying. It is deeply horrible to acknowledge that the people around you can turn into monsters, that they can become as deadly as a cobra or a spider.
We don’t feel this horror when contemplating the danger of cars, because we have no evolved instincts about cars. They’re mega dangerous, but we easily ignore that danger on a visceral level because we didn’t evolve in an environment where a toyota corolla might kill you.
We easily ignore the danger of people, ie we know it in our heads but not in our guts, just like with cars, but for a different reason. With humans the reason is that it’s horrifying knowledge. It’s dark, it’s ugly. It’s not something want to look at.
But once you are forced to look at it, eg like when you experience the violence yourself, you are forced to think about it. And if you think about it, it’s just as foolish and negligent to be around strangers without being armed, as it is to drive and not wear a seatbelt.
Before the encounter with violence, I was on the fence. I could see arguments both ways. Like “well, the weapon could stop an attacker but it could also be an unhealthy attachment …”.
But it’s no longer balanced for me. I’ve realized the danger of grievous injury or death is orders of magnitude more important than the potential I might get weird about the weapon.
Like, would you recommend a person avoid seat belts in order to avoid unhealthy coping with their trauma from a car accident?
The misconception with weapons is that they enable violence. But this guy was unarmed. All he had was some shoes. Other than that it was all just his body and his decision to hurt me.
Why downvote this comment? He hasn’t said anything harmful or hateful, and conservative means different things depending on the context. Conservatives are not always regressive or republicans or fascist.
