Politics Continue to Ruin Me

I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Not a day goes by where I’m not being bombarded by some *** about how dumb, evil, and wrong whatever gender, race, age demographic, side of the political spectrum, etc are and always have been. I keep seeing these claims about how we’re all mentally unstable, ugly, stupid, irrational, lack empathy, spoiled, entitled, don’t have real relationships, or don’t have real jobs or skills. Where the *** did all of this even come from, I swear things weren’t this bad a few years ago, but now all of a sudden everyone’s at each other’s throats.

I’ve even been guilty of this myself, as I’ve forced myself to look at the posts or reposts or people I follow online to make sure they don’t have the “wrong” opinions, because I’ve been so burned and browbeaten into worrying that people are either evil or stupid for holding unpopular beliefs, or that if they repost something objectionable then I’m no longer allowed to like the art they post or interact with them about my hobbies.

I never even wanted to get into politics in the first place, all I wanted was to brows art, read about science, and talk about my niche hobbies and hyper fixations, but it feels like I can’t even do that anymore. For example, some people I’ve been following in online spaces for the last few years recently reposted some pretty nasty things about Charlie Kirk, which has come out of nowhere, given the fact that they’ve hardly, if ever reposted things like this before, and even then, just last year, the things they reposted about him were nowhere near this harsh.

I’ve been following and liking their work consistently for quite some time, I’ve even interacted with them before. I won’t claim that they saved my life or anything, but I found out about them when I was in a bad place, and watching their work helped me get my mind off my worries, even just a little bit. So now what do I do? Do I stop following them? Do I stop liking their work? Does this make them bad people? The things they reposted about Kirk are horrible, but they’ve rarely done anything else like this before.

I’m just sick of all of this. I just want things to go back to the way they used to be, when I could just breathe and actually allow myself to relax with something I enjoy after a long day at Uni or at work. Where do I even go from here?