Why I Became A Radical
The Introduction of Synthesis By Jae
I just can’t help it.
I can’t help posting my ideas on the internet. I can’t help sharing what I know and what I’ve learned with others. I just can’t help but speak up and speak out against a system that I know from first-hand experience fucks people over.
I can’t help it and now I arrived here, I arrived at yet another attempt to flesh out my thoughts and connect with likeminded people.
If you are new to my account on Substack, I want to welcome you and reintroduce myself.
My name is Jae, and this publication is called Synthesis by Jae. This publication is a way for me to connect my thoughts on politics, philosophy, psychology, and my various other interests.
Like many of you, I am a human being with a unique story. It all started when my parents had me at the ripe age of 16, and from then on, I experienced numerous hardships. I was homeless, I dealt with abuse, I felt alone, and I continue to struggle. I tried to use my intellect to make sense and navigate my experiences, but I came up empty-handed until recently.
Now I am an adult with two bachelor's degrees, which are worthless in today’s job market, but gave me the razor-sharp analytic ability to see things in a different light.
While my experiences were awful, they are hardly unique in our society. Many people struggle, and they often struggle in similar ways. For a long time I wondered why that was and I attempted to go to college to find the answers, but I found nothing worth mentioning.
What was introduced to me in college but fleshed out outside of the walls of academia was the true history of radicalism. The history of struggle, the history of oppression, and the history of rebellion. Even after finding this history, I was hesitant to adopt it’s conclusions. The conclusion being the need for revolution to truly liberate the working class.
Growing up, I was a milk toast liberal who believed that the Democrats were good no matter what and the Republicans were bad no matter what. As I went through college, I had a mentor who pushed my positions towards a more refined progressive liberalism. However, my position was compromised during the global pandemic.
As a public health student, I saw the ideals of science held up by the liberal establishment and institutions go to the wayside for corporate profit. The nail in the coffin was seeing President Biden declare the pandemic over without any evidence or consideration. The reasoning was primarily to ‘open the economy’; many lives were sacrificed at the altar of capitalism.
I then became disillusioned with my public health program, which attempted to teach me to appease our political system and be okay with for-profit healthcare. I was told in class to think about ‘healthcare CEOs’ when discussing universal healthcare. It was incredibly disillusioning to go through that experience, and I had to look beyond my current understanding.
I decided to move to another city to study philosophy in graduate school. I learned a lot during that time, and my mentor was a self-proclaimed radical who was questioning the racial history in the US, particularly its treatment of black men. However, my health became worse. As a result, my mentor shunned me rather than supported me. He gave me a very neoliberal ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ speech even while he spoke about racial injustice in another class. I left that program rather quickly.
From then on, I was in limbo, lost in what to do or who to be. My previous illusions concerning myself were shattered. I would go to a few meetings with notable leftist groups and even half-assedly participate in a Marxist study group, but I was still lost.
Then, on October 7th, the commencement of the Gaza genocide proceeded. I saw the atrocities committed by Israel against the people of Gaza. I watched as the US enabled and supported this massacre by sending billions of taxpayers’ dollars and giving weapons. I watched as many Western media outlets supported these crimes and demonized the opposition towards them.
This led me towards further disillusionment with my liberal past, as many prominent self-declared liberals supported a genocide. However, before my past self could be put to rest, I was petrified with fears of another Trump presidency. The American liberal establishment fed off of these fears to drum up support for the pro-genocidal Kamala Harris.
Like a fool, I voted for Harris, thinking she was the ‘lesser evil’. I gave in to my selfish desires by putting the people of Gaza last, so that maybe, just maybe, things wouldn’t be so bad for me and those I love. However, as we all know, Harris lost and Trump won. Hindsight hurts when you turn your back on principles to hopefully save your skin, but you learn it was all for nothing.
These events increased my commitment to leftism and socialism, leading me to completely abandon liberalism. There cannot be prosperity and freedom for people with the chains of capitalism and the boot of imperialism on the world’s neck.
My experiences with homelessness and struggle, along with my educational attainment, have made me overtly critical of the system as it is today.
Synthesis by Jae is really about my personal reflections on class politics, socialism, and other events within our political sphere. I genuinely know that politics intersects with different areas of people’s lives. There is a psychological toll to capitalism that I would love to explore. Many areas of study intersect with what’s going on societally. I fully intend to explore this intersection.
I appreciate everyone who will follow along with my journey.
My other publication, called The Last Leftist, will focus on more theoretical considerations rather than my personal reflections. My other publication, Ghost Pepper, was originally for my vegan journey, but it will now be repurposed into my thoughts on public health in America.
I connected with SO MUCH in this. Thank you so much.
Man, I felt what you said about healthcare. I was studying to try to go into the medical profession but fell sick with a chronic disease.
I learned through first hand experience that one of the biggest diseases in America is capitalist a healthcare system. There is business when there is sickness but hardly any profit in prevention ;)
Keep up the radical writing!