literally just had the same reaction that i could have got from some maga dude, right down to the misgendering in this exact thread. i really hope you can appreciate that this isn’t a new experience for me either. Try to remember everyone’s unique. I can’t answer for that person’s response to you, but I hope you can see mine are different. But, yeah - I fully get where you’re coming from. I’m the “black sheep” of my family because I’m not on board at all with their right wing crap, and after many years I pretty much instinctively expect the worst out of every Republican because they rarely deviate from the hive mind. Yet, I still wait for them to dig their grave first before being dismissive of them because I always try to treat people how I’d like to be treated and that’s with fairness & understanding. i don’t see what benefit there is to participating inside the democratic party in any way. certainly not in voting for it; we don’t even have a popular vote. The progressives taking up more spaces within the party of late show why. You really need to focus on the primaries - work towards keeping the corporate Dems from getting the nomination & we can change things from within. Unfortunately, I’m not really aware of any other credible approach available to us short of an extremely unlikely full-on revolution - but at least there is a path towards change if we work it hard enough.