How much may an independent criticize (Party A) without being seen as a covert (Party B) supporter? (All answers are OK!)

Good faith question. Not here to fight (I'm a pacifist!). I don't mean to provoke anyone or single anyone out. I'm open to suggestions on how to better phrase it.

I want to emphasize: conservatives do the same thing*. But everything I post for them gets auto-deleted.*

------

I've become so accustomed to being mistaken, by both sides, for a covert "other," that I've learned to just laugh at the absurdity of these situations. There's no use in taking anything personally on the Internet, in my opinion. But without mutual trust, things are very boring. When everyone feels comfortable to speak their mind, without fear of being judged, those are my favorite conversations.

No wrong answers:

  1. Do you accept that there are "double haters"? Or does everyone ultimately have to pick one side or the other? (Even if they don't pick)

  2. What would/should be acceptable evidence of an independent's dual disloyalty?

  3. Can or should independents do anything differently, so as not to confuse anyone?

4. Is this just an inevitable consequence of long-running abuse suffered by Reddit? Particular for users who are not already familiar?
------

Blah blah blah (disclaimers and stuff).

I made a bad mistake to include a link in my last post. That was not a classy move on my part; I thought concrete examples would help show I wasn't making stuff up; but I didn't consider the whole chain of consequences. I don't want to make examples out of anyone ("attack ideas, not people"); I'm asking these questions in general.

No hard feelings intended toward anyone. (I've had friends from every ideological extreme, I see people as people first.) I always hope that my harmlessness and insignificance are self-evident. But if not, I'm sure my post history probably corroborates this, although that's the last thing I would want to spend time reading.

Posted Jun 23, 2026, 10:21 AM UTC

075
Loading comments…