Member-only story
I don’t know where to put this
My friends all fall into 2 camps…most obvious way to describe them as Leftwing and Right. I feel constantly pulled to one side or the other, and if I don’t want to participate, or even moreso, if I say that out loud, I end up feeling like I made a mistake saying anything at all. Both sides are quite aggressive in their entitlement to speak their truth, and anyone who disagrees can get lost, or is considered to be dismissing their view. But if I speak my view, I am dismissed by both. I have lost many friends because of it.
As a child I was politically oblivious. It wasn’t a thing put on kids, we didn’t participate in those conversations, if they were held at all. At least not in my family’s circle. Us kids were left alone to remain carefree and think only about kid things. My family is from Soviet Latvia. I, myself, was born in West Germany (it was still divided), because my dad was in the Army, working for the NSA on Project Blackbird (the later years of the spy planes over the Soviet Union), as well as Berlin. 1/4 of my mother’s family was oppressed by Russians, and my grandad joined the Navy to fight against the Nazis who murdered our family still in Latvia at the time. I was 11 when the Iron Curtain, holding my family’s country prisoner along with the rest of the Eastern Bloc, finally fell. I am not even remotely from a background that had nothing political to think about. But my parents…
