And I’m sure at Easter dinner my whole family will still be saying “Thank god Trump’s second term will be over in 4 years and things will go back to normal!” as if anyone in the government will actually be willing and able to prevent him from simply continuing on with his dictatorship. This cinches it for me - I’m convinced that we’re not getting out of this without American Revolution 2.0.

Everyone already knows all the republicans supported it; anything under their jurisdiction is already a lost cause. What I want to know is how many people from the “left” party can’t even keep their own votes on the right side of history. It’s not news when villains are villains - it’s news when the people who say they’re here to fight back against the villains are caught supporting them, and it’s important not to drown out that important detail among a bunch of already-known regressives. People need to see that the current democratic party isn’t a viable defense against conservativism, and that we need to do something more to get things moving in the right direction again than simply trusting democrats to fix everything.

If by “we” you’re referring to the American people as a whole, then no, no we don’t. So many people I talk to are treating this like just another 4 years of republican shenanigans; I rarely find someone in real life who understands just how close we are to all-out war.

They’re in a country full of angry people with guns who have been trained over generations to think that there’s no need to use them - that protests will be enough because the only next logical step after that would be violence, and nobody wants that. But really, I don’t have a lot of faith that most will actually use them - I know in my heart of hearts that I won’t. I think we’ve been trained to have such faith in our loud bark that we’re left completely unable to bite. There are a few individuals who have worked up the courage to take real action, but we’d need a lot more than that to scare the wealthy into playing fair. I hope I’m wrong, but every time I think about taking that next logical step as a result of all the inconsequential protests, I fail to even come close to having the courage to do so, and I don’t think I the only one.

I was never full-on incel, but I was definitely headed down that path. I was a late-20’s fat guy with severe acne all over my upper body, and I’d obviously never had a girlfriend. I looked ahead in life and just saw it going further and further downhill. I tried dieting, working out, etc, but none of my attempts at making a change ever lasted.

One day I saw a facebook post that one of my old highschool classmates had gotten married. The guy looked a lot like me, and at first I was mad - I had that classic incel thought of “why is he successful and not me?” But after sitting in that dark place for awhile, I realized that the answer to that question is that I can be successful! I realized that I’d never tried to put myself out there because I always viewed myself as not being worthy - I needed to be fitter, more attractive, better at talking to people, etc - but did I really? I wanted to find out, so I made an online dating account, cleaned myself up, got a friend to take some nice pictures of me doing things I enjoyed, and put myself out there.

I made a goal for myself to never start a conversation with “Hey” or something similar - I went through every profile I found and picked something specific to talk about. It took a while, and I missed a lot of opportunities by being awkward, but eventually I got good enough at holding a conversation to secure a few dates, and in only a few months of that, I found the woman who is now my wife!

I’m still fat, but having someone to look good for was at least enough for me to shower more regularly, which cleared up a lot of my acne. I’m still pretty awkward, but so is my wife, and we both find it endearing. Life’s not perfect - there are still issues - but I’m no longer looking ahead at my life and seeing only downhill trajectory; I have a sense of optimism I didn’t have before, and it mostly came from me accepting myself. I’m not sure if other incels are the same as I was - not realizing that the one they actually hate is themselves - but I hope that if they are, they eventually come to the same realization that I did: that they are worthy.