In early May, 2020, during the covid-19 lockdown, I signed up for this facebook group that promoted itself as left-wing.

I lasted about a week. I expected thoughtful lefty reflections. There were a few, but for the most part, I found the posts dominated by shallow-thinking, ranting, often name-calling lefties (or claimants thereunto) with personal axes to grind and endless self-indulgent repeating (like lamenting Bernie’s failure to win the presidential nomination).

For awhile, I tried posting gentle correctives, but I soon realized that my efforts were as useless as trying to reason with Trump supporters. I offered a few independent posts, but most were rejected by the monitors. Since the same monitors were approving all those other rants, and since I was writing reflective pieces, and since I was never told of a rejection or its reason, I can only make unpleasant guesses about the critical ability of the monitors. I even came to wonder whether this was really a site to sow dissension among leftists, or even one run by old old-left sectarian leftists intolerant of any viewpoint that veered an iota from any “principle” of their own dogma.

The posts in this category are a collection of some of what I encountered and wrote about before I opted out of the site.