Yankee here. I wouldn’t say it makes me more calm, but I also have chronic anxiety and had that before becoming ML. Being ML sharpens the clarity of where the real threats are, but it doesn’t make them any less real on its own. I think I was actually less anxious in a political capacity when I was liberal because I sort of trusted the system to work things out. Now I look at things like the mass murder done by it, the targeted assassinations, the slander, and so on, and it’s like, okay that’s a new kind of scary. It’s a bit like a Matrix type of thing in a place like the US. Waking up can make you seem like a threat to the system in ways that you weren’t before.

On the less fearful side, diamat is more grounding. It’s not all on you, it’s a fight that’s been going on for a long time, you don’t have to “just guess” and instead can look at the tactics and science others have used, etc.

But for me, that’s not enough to smooth over the understanding of how deeply depraved the empire is. It means unlearning a lot about how to deal with people and systems. There’s a Kwame Ture quote that goes something like, “In order for non-violence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The US has none.” It’s an unnerving thing to grapple with coming from a worldview that was something in the realm of liberal pacifism; that it’s basically junk and I have to learn a more militant way of being, along with the consequences that come from that.