Yeah, it’s shaped mine immensely as well, I’ve experienced all sorts of material and intangible benefits from it; there were many times I enjoyed and it helped me to grow, and a lot of problems that it’s caused for me too. I can’t completely separate myself from it either. But the question I always ask is why it takes me risking my life and participating in what resulted in a genocide to be able to get an education and some damn healthcare in what is supposed to be the “greatest nation on earth”. I think that was the question that really radicalized me.

If it weren’t for me getting introduced to dialectal materialist and Marxist analysis, I wouldn’t have been able to live with what I participated in. I wonder if that’s a big reason for so many turning to substances and suicide, something in their soul tells them it was wrong. I was able to recognize I’m not the main character (great man of history) and the whole thing didn’t hinge on me. Also, that this larger system is going to do these things with or without me, and I was suckered into it because I didn’t know better. Now I know better so I do better, and my testimony to the evils of the US government carries more weight than the typical burger amerikan - I am become burger deluxe.

At any rate, have you been able to process this with anyone?