my partner and i have a reoccurring argument. at base, i guess it’s a disagreement about the nature and/or possibility of capital-T ‘Truth,’ though the explicit focus is usually on some current event. the most heated of these battles took place in the months following the presidential election in 2016.

we were arguing about Fox News and the other right-wing media that played such a role in the outcome of that election. my partner was lamenting the fact that there are so many voices shouting out so many entirely subjective versions of reality, that it’s effectively impossible for any one voice to cut through the noise and establish a clear baseline, a shared reality. she was arguing that our current reality (or, more precisely, lack of ‘reality’) is incredibly dangerous, that self-interested and/or destructive voices can highjack the conversation and cause real harm to people, particularly those who are least vulnerable. her Exhibit A, naturally, was the result of the recent presidential election. this is not an outrageous argument. it makes sense, and my partner is not the only smart person who made/makes it.

my response to it, however, is that it’s built on a false assumption. we’ve had a fairly coherent ‘truth’ offered to us in the past, and those same people still suffered. the difference was that there was even less chance that their voices could be heard. as far as most of the world knew, they didn’t exist, because they were never even acknowledged by the tiny handful of people whose voices did get heard. a stable, monolithic truth might make my people like my partner and me feel more comfortable, but that’s because that single truth will most likely reflect our reality. i don’t deny the mischief caused by the (seeming) free-for-all we have now, but the problem, to me, is that people will always be selfish, paranoid and self-destructive. i’d rather have all the voices being heard, even if that’s really dangerous and one group has the biggest megaphone.

although this is all context. (but i do hope you think i’m really thoughtful and just mad woke.) my real thing i want to talk about is what my partner said towards the end of this argument. she was really thoughtful about my perspective (because she always is), but she offered the stray observation that, actually, i’m kind of like some of those alt-right guys, because we both have the same lack of faith in the system and instinct to want to burn it all down. this was consistent with her previous assertion that there was, in fact, not a huge difference between me and the Tea Party people during the Obama presidency. i never liked that idea, and i wasn’t much fonder of this new claim. what i really, really, really don’t like, however, is how much truth there is in it.

i lurk on in the r/the_donald sub-reddit quite a bit, and i’ve spent enough time there to feel comfortable making the claim that it is a rancid, pathetic, mean-spirited pile of sloppy and inconsistent idiocy. honestly, when i first started lurking there i thought that everyone there actually must be a Russian bot, because it was the only explanation for how nonsensical it all was. then the election happened, and i started to wonder if it was real. i’ve spent, conservatively, one-hundred hours there, and i still have no idea what the fuck is going on, who’s serious and who’s not, or if any two of the regular contributors would give the same answer to those questions unless they had coordinated ahead of time. it’s a scene man.

despite all of this, there are some fairly clear, consistent and deeply-held beliefs:

1. the government is corrupt and in the pocket of corporate america
2. the media is slanted and biased, either distorting or ignoring legitimate stories while ignoring really important events that people need to know about. they lie, basically
3. race and gender discrimination are destroying lives every day
4. pretty much everything is broken and revolution, not reform, is the answer.

it is more than a little troubling that these are identical to my beliefs. this is like a bizarro version of my beliefs, with the key difference being that an entirely different set of values motivates me. and that’s what i’d like to focus on, that’s what i want you to think about; that i’m motivated by empathy and compassion, that any extremism in my worldview is an expression of disillusionment, rather than self-serving nihilism. i want that to be the truth, but in practice i’m kind of just as nihilistic as these guys are.

i may find fault with my partner’s philosophy, but at least she has a truth, some star to steer by. there’s something to work towards for her, whereas i feel like everything should just be blown up and reset. i mean, i guess. because, as bad as i think it is, i have no faith that anything better would come out of the revolution. people are stupid, selfish and violent, and we’ll always make the worst, most evil choice available to us. but, i guess, we should all get the right to make that decision, to follow the stupidest possible choice we believe in.

which sounds really noble, right? until you think for a second and remember that, in the broad strokes (which end up being all the matters most of the time), i agree with these chuds on r/the_donald.