I hate political labels. They turn people into objects and keep us focused on differences, distracting us from the many things we have in common. And they're confusing. I think I'm always trying to make sense of the complex characteristics that underlie them with some sort of yin and yang inter-connectivity. Like democrat vs. republican, which used to be one of the easiest for me to wrap my head around, until those words stopped describing political leanings and started being used as caustic slurs to express condescension and disgust.

And there are so many other labels I find even more difficult to define. I used to have an understanding of liberal vs. conservative, but from what I'm reading, especially from the #WalkAway videos, liberal doesn't mean what it used to mean. And then we start to get into idiosyncrasies, like:

left and right,

far left and far right,

left-wing and right-wing

radical left...do people say radical right? or is it extremist? or something else?

And what is the difference between woke and social justice warrior? Is there a conservative "opposite" for either label of those? or is it just a label related to a particular issue, like racist, misogynist, homophobic, bigot...

What about the word leftist? illiberal?

And any other political label I'm forgetting?

This is why I hate labels and try not to use them. How can we have meaningful communication with real people when we reduce them to simplistic terms, especially when we don't have common definitions for them? Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks these words are counter-productive to understanding each other?