listen, i'm dealing with the same problem that every leftist in the world has dealt with.

i'll stand up and say:

"i'm not really opposed to gun control, exactly, but i understand that tighter restrictions on guns isn't going to undo the war economy or fix the culture of violence that leads to this madness..."

and, i know that all i'm going to get in return for articulating my well thought out points is howls of nra sympathizing (despite the reality that i've never even seen a gun before....) and accusations of pushing right-wing messaging, despite the fact being that i'm actually trying to push back against this moralizing christian progressivism with what is really marxism 101 - the social revolution must come first.

and, that's just one example.

leftists have never gotten along well with liberals or "progressives", so it's not like this is some kind of surprising turn of events. it would just be useful to everybody if you'd understand what direction my criticism is coming from, namely the left, so i'm not continually confusing or disappointing people.

and, that is the only outcome if you don't relent on the facts, here: you have to give up on this and accept them i'm on the far left. otherwise, i'm just going to disappoint conservatives and the alt-right over and over, and i'm just going to confuse all these fake liberals and pseudo-leftists when they figure out that i'm actually a good deal more radical than they are...

but i'm not going to teach you anything you couldn't learn in more traditional sources, except regarding how confused and muddled the spectrum currently is. i can teach a self-identifying liberal why they're actually a conservative, and why my arguments - which they find so horrific - are actually right out of marx. but, they could teach themselves this, as well, by bothering to read up on it.

at the end of the day, the labels are kind of trivial. if this group of "progressives" are actually conservatives, and they dislike my "right-wing" views because they're actually marxist, then cutting through the language doesn't undo the outcome: they still don't like me, at the end of the day. & that's fine.

but, it's maybe a call to the left to reclaim some spaces, then - which is at the crux of it what i'm actually really all about.