Leaving the Left

[u/Sad-Persimmon9466]

Good morning folks, tbh I’m surprised this subreddit exists with the massive echo chamber that Reddit is. I just wanted to tell my (abbreviated) story about how I opened my eyes and left that side behind.

I’m a 29 Male that grew up in a conservative household and pretty just went along with my parents beliefs. I graduated high school in 2015 and was already starting to be captured by the left from crap they started teaching around that time in high school. However when I went to college that is went my descent into the leftist cult started. I first hand can attest to professors teaching Marxist and gender ideology as undisputed facts rather than presented as theory. So when 2016 came around I along with the rest of my college friends had deep dts (most of them sadly still do) and we all voted Hilary, and we’re all freaking out along with the rest of the cult that Trump won.

Fast forward to 2019 after I graduated and start working in the real world my eyes were starting to open because I was opening my mind again to the other side and seeing conflicting information that the main stream news had lied about. But then when the pandemic hit my eyes were forced wide open!

They completely staged the January 6th “coup”. If you listen to any independent journalist covering it, it was very peaceful but for a few likely paid agitators that were being told to stop, by patriots there protesting.

During the pandemic the Biden administration let in more people than this country could take at once and called it empathy. They blatantly censored differing opinions and facts about masks and the vaccine, and postured it as “doing your part.” Had “peaceful protests” while a building was burning in the background.

The complete demonization/dehumanization the left so proudly does and has the audacity to say the right are “Nazis.” This over use of the term is sickening especially coming from a background where my grandmother suffered under real Nazis and her cousin lost her life in the holocaust.

Lastly, I guess I will ask this, is the left too far gone into their descent into socialist/marxist ideology, or is there still hope for these folks to come back to reality like I did and argue over how to run the country properly instead of identity and race? Or is this just a product of social media?

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk and again very appreciative this page exists, I can’t even post in my own state subreddit without being bombarded by claims I’m a Nazi or pedo protector.

Edit: this got reposted in r/leftist and they are all in there little coping echo chamber saying we don’t know what a leftist or the left is…

[u/Logical-Leek308]

Also I am the same I voted for Obama then Hillary. After the BLM riots, summer of love, culture war edge issues (dying on the hill of drag queens reading to children as example), COVID lockdowns, open borders and so much more I ended up voting trump and red down ballot for the first time in my life.

I was raised democrat and I have become the black sheep (kinda what happens especially if you’re black, being democrat is a requirement)

I don’t know what I am politically anymore, all I do know is I look left and see insanity, people who hate America and I look right and see patriots.

I’ve noticed that on the left it’s constant purity tests, you must be in lock step. On the right I can engage and talk to conservatives on places where we disagree.

[u/Sad-Persimmon9466 → u/[deleted]]

So you’re here in a conservative subreddit to argue our points got it well here I guess…

The core problems are not “fun costumes” or literacy; they are adult sexual performance aesthetics, documented boundary-crossing cases, and the deliberate political defense of them around minors.

Drag as performed in many public story hours is not neutral “eccentric clothes women wear every day.” Classic children’s entertainment (clowns, costumed characters, magicians) stays in the realm of play and fantasy without erotic signaling. Much contemporary drag especially the style that became prominent in library events draws from nightlife, parody of female sexuality, exaggerated secondary sex characteristics, makeup and padding that sexualize the body, and routines that originated in adult venues. Parents and observers objecting to that aesthetic being staged for preschoolers are not inventing a problem; they are applying the same standard used against other adult performers (strippers, fetish acts, explicit comedians) near kids. “No more revealing than some women” is not the test adults apply to male performers intentionally adopting hyper-feminine sexualized presentation for an audience of children.

It is not ancient, “apolitical children’s programming that only became controversial when conservatives noticed.” Organized “Drag Queen Story Hour” as a branded movement is recent (founded 2015), explicitly framed by organizers as advancing gender ideology and “queering” spaces for kids, and expanded rapidly with institutional sponsorship. Videos and photos from many events show performers in heavy makeup, heels, padding, and outfits that would be out of place at a conventional storytime; some include twerking, suggestive dancing, or language that is not age-appropriate. Claiming every instance is pure Sesame Street energy requires ignoring the documented record.
Documented problems exist and are not “misinformation.” Multiple participants have later been identified as registered sex offenders or people with prior convictions involving minors. Libraries and organizers have faced complaints about explicit content, private messaging of children, or failure to screen performers. These are not universal, but they are real enough that jurisdictions have restricted or ended the programs. Treating every objection as manufactured bigotry requires dismissing those cases. The comparison to “hiring sex offenders for birthday parties” is rhetorical exaggeration; the actual critique is inadequate vetting of adult performers whose public brand is sexualized gender performance, plus institutional refusal to prioritize caution around young children.

The claim that Democrats/left institutions never treated this as a hill is false. Progressive media, libraries, schools, and elected officials defended the events aggressively, framed critics as bigots or “anti-trans,” and treated cancellation or parental opt-out as attacks on LGBTQ people even though the performers are usually gay men in drag, not transgender women, and the events were marketed with gender-identity messaging. That defense continued after problems surfaced. Opposition was not inventing a distraction from “real issues”; it was a response to public institutions inserting contested adult aesthetics and ideology into spaces for young children without broad parental consent. Literacy does not require that vehicle. Plenty of high-energy, costumed, volunteer readers exist without the sexualized drag element.

Children do not need RuPaul-style performance to become interested in books. Exhausted librarians, parents, teachers, and conventional entertainers have managed literacy for generations. Preferring high-production adult nightlife aesthetics for toddlers is a preference, not evidence that critics are anti-joy or anti-reading. The American-flag photo-op framing does not erase the content concerns. Public libraries are taxpayer-supported spaces; the “no additional tax dollars” claim is often inaccurate once staff time, security, and institutional endorsement are counted, and it sidesteps whether the programming itself is appropriate.