Why I Left The Left

A politically homeless manifesto

The “folic acid” essay I promised in my last post is still being edited and forthcoming. It turned out to be a huge topic and is taking a little longer than I expected. In the meantime, this came spilling out of me and I wanted to share it.

Note: I realize this essay title has been used by other authors. I hope they will forgive me.

I’ve seen a smattering of essays along this theme from people around my age, charting their political journey from the left or right toward something more “moderate” or “politically homeless”. It seems to help orient both writers and readers, and I’ve picked up quite a few new subscribers over the past month, so I thought I’d give it a try.

To give a quick overview of my history: As a teenager, I had a South Park-inspired political worldview, where I disliked both conservative and liberal politicians and didn’t want to engage in such things at all. I cared deeply about certain things, and was a bit of an anti-progressive. I hated how technology was taking over the world, and was a late-adopter to getting a smartphone (2013) and joining various social media sites. I hated that independent small businesses were closing and being replaced by global chains. I hated big department stores. I hated cars. I wished my extended family lived closer to me, as in, walking distance. I hated consumerism, most television and movies (especially “reality” TV), and had very little desire to participate in “beauty” culture or anything like that.

I hated seeing people suffering, in particular in my city where there’s a lot of homeless and drug-addicted people. I was, and still am, the kind of person who slips $5-$20 bills to people on the street or offers to buy them groceries or a fast meal. I hated the pursuit of wealth and money and status. My father has a high-powered, high-paying career and it bothered me that he seemed to love his job and money more than he cared for his wife and children. Because of my family history and mixed-cultural background, I was critical of WASPs and Northwestern European cultures, of “colonial” culture, if you will. I grew up with family stories of pale, wealthy or downwardly-mobile WASP relatives who were openly racist toward my poor, darker-skinned Southern Italian ones, of affluent relatives/ancestors being “cold” and working-class ones being warmer and kinder. My father is also partial to other cultures and to working-class people over WASPs; my mother very in favour of marriages and friendships between people of different ethnic, religious, and class backgrounds.

My family history is complicated by my mother’s adoption (by a woman descended from British and Scottish royalty and the child of poor Southern Italian immigrants, who defied her family to elope), but by blood I am a Euro-Mediterranean mutt, with ancestry, in rough order of magnitude, from Calabria, Central and Southern Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, England, North Africa and the Middle East (mostly Iranian and Egyptian), Scandinavia, and Ashkenazi Jewish (plus just over 10% who-the-eff-knows European, according to 23andMe). Most ancestors were middle or working-class or poor, but one great-grandparent on my father’s side was from an affluent French-British WASP family (her parents were allegedly “cold”, and she was institutionalized with multiple sclerosis—a condition linked to childhood stress and trauma—while in her twenties). I am a natural blonde, but get questioned about my ancestry because of my (light) olive skin colour, deep-set eyes, and aquiline nose. I identify as Southern Italian and WASP culturally, and “white” for census and socio-political purposes, though I always feel a bit like I’m erasing a part of myself or lying/oversimplifying when I do (a feeling I’ve found is common among those with Mediterranean ancestry).

I used to be pretty insecure about this nose, but I’ve grown to embrace it.

Perhaps, not surprisingly then, what initially drew me to leftist politics was anti-racism, anti-white supremacy, and anti-colonialism, as well as a sense of solidarity with working-class people and general dislike of the culture of affluence. I also fell in with feminism after a drunken (possibly drugged) rape by a guy I met at a bar in undergrad, initially drawn to the anti-violence aspects but always somewhat repelled by the girl-boss twist.

I also thought of myself as “anti-capitalist”, until a wiser, older friend astutely pointed out that everything I complained about was better described as “globalism” and “corporatism”. I’m not opposed to hierarchies, or to competition. I don’t believe that all people are born equally smart, talented, and/or hardworking, but I dislike the incentives that push top-talent into careers I consider to be unethical or exploitative (e.g. investment banking).

Inspired largely by a fear of wealth consolidation and growing inequality, I volunteered with a local NDP (Canada’s left-wing party) politician for the 2019 election, and switched from writing fiction and poetry to writing “anti-capitalist” essays, which were very popular, at least in Canada. I read Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century and thought a wealth tax might help things. I quickly became disillusioned by the socialist activists I met and by many of their political stances (e.g. abolish or defund the police). I didn’t understand why they didn’t share my concerns about Big Food and Big Pharma, and it seemed to me like a lot of their ideas would hurt small businesses. I was terrified when the 2020 pandemic hit and I saw the mainstream response. I was convinced that lockdowns and masking mandates would cause more death and longterm illness than otherwise would have happened. I watched as many people I knew who claimed to be radicals suddenly act as hysterical shills for policies I thought were dangerous.

It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly I gave up on the left. It might have been when my provincial NDP government tweeted that it was a “dangerous myth” that having adequate Vitamin D levels would protect against Covid. It might have been when I saw “leftists” and “socialists” celebrate the burning of Catholic churches. One of the final straws was in the summer of 2022, when I attended a socialist rally in a local park after being urged to come by some people I’d volunteered with in 2019. It was a sunny day, and everyone except for me, my husband, and one Indigenous speaker were wearing masks. They praised China for their Covid policies and said Canada should be more like them. They served chips and other junk food. They vilified the police and landlords, without making distinctions between law-makers and the working people responsible for enforcing them, or between slumlords who owned multiple buildings and small-time landlords renting out their basements. They pushed for decriminalization and legalization of hard drugs such as cocaine, meth, and fentanyl, but made no mention of decriminalizing or legalizing psychedelics or supporting the medicinal uses of them. Both my husband and I have loved ones who have had (and in some cases, recovered from) serious addictions; my husband is an addictions counsellor and a big believer in the healing potential of psychedelics for addictions and other chronic health, mental health, and spiritual ailments. We were furious.

After the event, I went up to a friend and organizer who I considered to be fairly smart (and, since far-left and “woke” politics are disproportionately a “white” thing, it’s worth mentioning he was one of of the only people present who isn’t). I mentioned the psychedelics thing, and pointed out that even in a more equal society, crimes like rape and murder would still occur and require police action. I said if anything the police needed more funding to hire forensic lawyers and accountants so they could do something about rampant white-collar crime, money laundering, and drug trades. I asked him why people were wearing masks when it was obviously unnecessary, and that it was hypocritical to serve highly-processed and disease-causing foods at the same time. He said he knew masks were stupid, but that one member of their group—a man known for being fairly difficult and angry—had insisted on it.

“Masks undermine social connection,” I said. “I think it alienates people. It doesn’t bode well for a social message that people are kowtowing to the most sensitive and demanding among you …” I pointed out that outdoor masking would be more likely to cause or exacerbate illness than prevent it.

He agreed with me, and admitted he’d tried and failed to convince the rally organizers not to wear or require masks.

“I think too many of us have become beholden to lonely, angry, chronically-ill social media bullies.”

“I mean, that’s certainly true,” he replied.

Image from a 2021 Atlantic article “The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown” (Source: MediaNews Group / Boston Herald / Getty).

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Over the past four years, I’ve done a lot of reading and podcast-listening. I started engaging with content and content creators that mainstream liberals maligned as “right wing”, “conspiracy theorist”, evil in one way or another. I discovered that I quite liked Joe Rogan and many of his guests, and frequently agreed with him. Many of the people I’d been assured were “bad” actually seemed pretty reasonable, or at least well-intentioned. I did a lot of hero-dosing of magic mushrooms in 2020, which shook me out of a lot of rigid thought patterns. I began to believe in God, or Spirit, or Gaia, or some kind of higher consciousness. I became more critical of Big Pharma and Big Food, more distrustful of the government, the media, and mainstream allopathic medicine and public health. I despaired when I saw the doctors and researchers who tried to speak out against Covid policies being attacked and vilified and often losing their careers, while many of the “left”-wing “activists” I knew posted selfies of themselves masked-up and wearing bandaids post-vaccination and led the charge against those who were truly brave enough to speak out against abuses of power. Exhausted and disillusioned, I deleted my Twitter account (with 3,000+ followers) in the late summer of 2020. I stopped writing and kept reading. I met and married my husband, who is half-Jewish and half-mostly-Irish, from a lower-income background, and has gone through a similar sociopolitical journey as me.

Until 2020, I’d been in denial that “wokeness” is an ideology, full of black and white thinking and driven by vulnerable narcissism and resentment. I’d thought of it as an initially healthy movement of different interest groups that had formed a loose coalition but which had been hijacked by opportunists. In 2022, I started watching

Josh Slocum

’s “Disaffected” podcast, which has a central thesis that the “woke” left is an abusive movement driven by Cluster B personality traits. I didn’t, and still don’t, agree with everything Josh—a gay man and ex-leftist—says, but I was deep in a rabbit hole of research on narcissism, disordered personalities, and neurodivergence myself and saw many of the same patterns that he did. The totalitarian aspects of the “woke” movement became impossible to ignore.

Pregnancy and motherhood further changed me. I became more critical of mainstream feminism. I started reading

Mary Harrington

’s work religiously. I was overwhelmed by all my mistakes and what I’d misunderstood.

I emailed apologies to people I felt I’d been unfair towards, and posted the occasional heterodox opinion on social media. I should have started this Substack in 2022, but wimped out until the end of 2023, when, after my first ayahuasca ceremony, the spirits shamed me out of my silence.

I’m not super prolific on here, but several of the essays I’ve published so far have gotten good responses, and a small following of highly engaged readers is building, which I’m very grateful for. At the same time, many former friends and colleagues have blocked or unfollowed me on social media over things I’ve written, without confronting me or asking me about them. I’m “bad” now, I guess. Or maybe just less useful, as many of these people were people who seemed to want to be close to me while I was in a position of influence in the Canadian literary scene and could help their careers. Now that I’ve quit my job and deleted my Twitter and started speaking more openly about my real beliefs (I held a lot in before 2020, largely because I didn’t want any backlash against me to affect my colleagues or the progressive, feminist organization I worked for), I don’t have much value.

That’s okay. When I express sadness over this, longtime loved ones, new friends, and my husband tell me it’s for the best.

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So where do I stand now? It’s hard to say. I’m politically and ideologically “homeless”, I guess. I’ve found things I disagree with and agree with among most of the most popular lines of contemporary thought, but I don’t fit in with any one community. One of my goals for this Substack is something I’m calling “reality tunnel collage”, or examining and engaging with different viewpoints or “reality tunnels” to try to piece together the bigger picture.

For more on this, read Particles and Waves: On Changing Your Mind.

Loosely and quickly, here are some of my (controversial) beliefs and areas I’m interested in exploring on this Substack. I aspire to learn and encourage engagement, including criticisms, which may help hone my own thinking and steer me in new directions of research:

Big Pharma and Allopathic Medicine Skepticism: I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and recognize that Western medicine has some significant achievements, in particular when it comes to surgical interventions. However, I believe plant and natural medicines have a lot of value and often work better (with fewer side effects) than lab-made pills, and believe that pharmaceutical companies and Western medicine has been corrupted by greed for well over a century. I am particularly interested in learning more from various Indigenous medicinal traditions (e.g. the use of plant psychedelics) and ideas, as well as Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine. I would like to see healthcare “decolonized” and the corrupting influence of people like John D. Rockefeller to become more well-known. I’m pretty sure certain common pharmaceuticals like Tylenol, birth control pills, and various psychiatric medications are really, really bad ideas and should be used sparingly or not at all. I am both skeptical of vaccines and skeptical of anti-vaxxer rhetoric that blames various societal ailments primarily on vaccines.

Pro-Psychedelics: Similarly, I think psilocybin mushrooms might be one of the most effective natural medicines on the planet and have the potential to treat and cure a wide range of conditions if used properly. I am more skeptical of synthetic psychedelics, but recognize that substances like MDMA, ketamine, and even LSD have helped a lot of people and have some medicinal benefits (but I think significantly greater risks than psilocybin).

Big Food Skepticism: I think refined sugar is a drug, not a food (see Robert Lustig’s work for more on this). I suspect seed oils, highly processed foods, and synthetic vitamins are toxic, and that well-sourced, high-quality eggs, red meats, animal fats, and sea salt have been vilified when they are actually pretty healthy. I think the “food pyramid” was a scam and “a calorie is a calorie” is BS. I’m worried about soil depletion, chemical farming, and the use of pesticides and herbicides such as glyphosate, and believe that food is healthier and tastier when well-seasoned with herbs and spices. I’m very much a “crunchy” mom when it comes to feeding my family, but I also wouldn’t rip a goldfish cracker or a store-bought cookie out of my child’s hands if someone else gave her one.

Sex Realism and Pro-Motherhood: I believe males and females, on average, have different skills, interests, desires, and weaknesses. I do not think that makes either “better” or “worse” than the other. I do not think gender parity in certain professions is desirable, and I know from interacting with a lot of mothers that most of us would prefer to only work part-time or stay at home with our children, but many of us cannot do so for financial reasons. I think there should be more support for stay-at-home parents, and that children tend to fare better when raised primarily by family members instead of a rotating cast of paid childcare workers. I see a lot of career women struggling with burnout, and I think sex differences contribute to this. Many women thrive in masculine careers; but they are a minority. I am a big fan of Darcia F Narvaez and Erica Komisar’s work on the importance of mothers and motherhood.

Feminism: I believe feminism was a natural reaction to an unhealthy attitude toward women (and children and childrearing) that had been present in the West for centuries, as well as to violence, mistreatment, and neglect by male spouses and family members. However, I think the movement very quickly was hijacked by financial and governmental interests (encouraging women to join the workforce en masse depressed wages, increased tax revenue, and pushed children into state education, and, arguably socio-cultural indoctrination), and in its present incarnation it probably hurts women (and men and children) more than helps us. This is complicated, and I’ve found writers such as

Mary Harrington

,

Louise Perry

, and

Janice Fiamengo

compelling on the issues with modern feminism. I agree with Sam Vaknin’s take that modern feminism encourages women to “imitate and emulate narcissistic, psychopathic, bullying, chauvinistic men.”

WEIRD Parenting Skepticism: By “WEIRD”, I mean “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic”, but this could also translate loosely to Europeans from within the “Hajnal” line (Northern and Western Europeans, loosely), their descendants, and families influenced by their culture(s) and ideas. I think parenting books full of toxic ideas about childrearing have had a destructive impact, and I suspect certain parenting practices that neglect the right hemisphere of the brain in particular during the first three years of life are one of many contributing factors to rising rates of autism, ADHD, personality disorders, mental illness, and totalitarian ideologies since the 1600s. I’ve already explored this topic in detail here, here, here, here, and here.

Race Realism: Oh, I know this is an unpopular one. But I do think there are average differences between different races and ethnicities and because of this racial parity in certain careers is not desirable. If medical doctors are disproportionately Indian and Jewish, that’s fine because I think what’s more important is we all get fairly good healthcare. If the majority of airline pilots are white men, I also think that’s a good thing because it’s in everyone’s interests that planes don’t crash.¹ I also think that “white” people, in particular those from within the Hajnal line, are unique (note: not better), in particular that they are more “autistic” (for lack of a better word) on average than other populations and I’m interested in exploring the reasons why (e.g. parenting practices, marriage patterns). Because I’m roughly half-WASP/Germanic and that’s one of the cultures I grew up with, this is the group I will spend the most time discussing and criticizing on this Substack. It’s not that I don’t think other groups are worthy of criticism, this is just the one I happen to know the most about.

Jewish People: Yes, the Jewish advantage in general intelligence is clearly a real thing, and in a pure meritocracy, Jewish people will disproportionately be represented in “elite” professions. Jewish people seem to be unusually capable, and that means that individually they are capable of great good and great evil. Whatever path humanity turns toward, whether to light or darkness, I suspect it will largely be Jewish people who lead us there. My (Jewish) husband had an interesting revelation at a plant medicine ceremony recently, which my religious followers might find interesting; he thinks that one of the ways Jews are “chosen” is that they are “chosen” to need the guidance (and assistance) of G-d and wisdom traditions more than other people. I’d be very interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

Other topics I’m interested in: the effects of excessive reading and the invention of the printing press and later smartphones on cognitive development, the rise in narcissism and other personality disorders, gender ideology and rising rates of people identifying as queer and trans (I don’t think it can be attributed solely or perhaps even primarily to social contagion!), the overlap between autism and gender dysphoria, causes of homosexuality, religious and spiritual questions, fractal geometry, and much more.

Just because I discuss average differences and group trends does not mean I think any one group is monolithic or that we should make assumptions about individuals based on race, sex, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic. I don’t do this in the real world and I have no intention of doing so here.

I feel a little lost, and I’m looking for intellectual allies. It hurt a little to be un-friended or un-followed on social media by people I thought I had been fairly close to, who I thought knew me well enough to know I have good intentions, albeit clumsy ones sometimes. However, I discuss the various ideas I present on this Substack extensively with friends, family, acquaintances, and even strangers at length before publishing them, and tend to find that in the real world, most people agree with me. A lot of healthcare workers in particular seem to resonate with these topics, but frequently lower their voices to talk to me about them (in their workplaces) because they’re worried about getting into trouble.

I know I’m digging into controversial topics, things a lot of people don’t want to think or talk about. I want to engage with people from a variety of perspectives, and I hope to receive pushback when I’m off base. Since starting this Substack, I’ve cited work by people on the left, people on the right, conservatives, liberals, believers and non-believers, people who are kind of “woke” (e.g. Gabor Mate), and many people who are critical of “wokeness.” I accepted an invitation to appear on a podcast hosted by a young ex-white nationalist (

Walt Bismarck

) after I discussed an excellent essay he wrote about early puberty in girls in my essay “The Lost Girls and Boys”, and I corresponded with a gender-affirming doctor about his theory that folic acid supplementation might be contributing to rising rates of autism and gender dysphoria. I don’t think people should have to agree on everything or share a worldview in order to be able to engage respectfully.

At the end of the day, I care about what’s true, and deep down I want to help people. And I don’t think lies help people. And I know censorship doesn’t.

So I’m no longer a “leftist”. But now I’m free.

1. Men on average have better spatial abilities and mechanical skills than women, in particular at the top levels of talent. Western white men also have slightly better spatial skills compared to other populations. As well, Western white people have an average advantage when it comes to eyesight, in particular the sort of detail-oriented vision that can come in handy while flying airplanes. The analytic kind of thinking favoured by Westerners (compared to more holistic thinking) is also well-suited for flying a plane. (Most of this information is found in Chapter 1 of The WEIRDest People in the World).