I will say that there’s really no coming together between the middle class and the most impoverished. Though it might seem different here, the acrimony is decidedly reversed. The poor doesn’t have anything bad to say about the middle class, whereas the middle class regularly maligns the most impoverished.

This is definitely true. The nobility of the poor appears to somehow vanish once they are on your doorstep. As I said, I wont deny that in the real world the responsibility to form this solidarity lies primarily with those in the middle class.

As it stands, Ill never be able to do my research. I am too far in debt from paying for college, and no one is funding environmental research PhDs, so I would have to pay to go back to school for them. I simply cant afford it, and I never will. Not much money in climate science and alternative energy, even as we stare down the barrel of oblivion.

You are right though that I will largely remain middle class. That in itself is a blessing, I suppose, but having the rest of my life be in service to some corporation for a sweet, sweet 40k a year doesnt always feel like a blessing. I wont make enough to retire on, and Ill be repaying my student loans until Im in my 50s. I do at least have stable internet and a nice 9-to-6 (plus a 1 hour commute and a bit of part time work most weekends lmao), which allows me to continue learning on my own. Your post did remind me of that, and maybe youre right I was being a bit dismissive even if I didnt mean to be.

I enjoy leftism, because it supposes that if I can find enough solidarity with those around me in similar positions, we can work together to solve some of these problems and gain back a little bit of power. Some of it may be overly idealic, and it is --unfortunately-- an ideology largely populated with middle class kids like myself, meaning it is fundamentally missing something in its analysis. But after working as a maid for the wealthiest people in the world, it was like... my entire world shattered. I realized all these lines I had drawn, though real, were so small compared to what some people lived life like. I also realized that all those opportunities I had been told I had didnt really amount to much.