And then they convince themselves it was their perseverence and gumption that resulted in all their success, which enables them to look down on anyone who isn’t successful, because clearly they just lack perseverence and gumption.

It’s pretty intuitive from the saying. It’s the carrot OR the stick, not the carrot ON the stick. The carrot is the reward for doing the thing, the stick is the punishment for not doing it. Just google it.

It wasn’t a nazi salute, he was just waving

Nobody’s suggesting it wasn’t. But a lot of us have lived our whole lives with the idea that racism was generally frowned upon by most and that it was naturally dying out. I don’t think many of us could have predicted how readily it would come roaring back, along with god damn nazis, FFS.

In what way is he your boyfriend? He doesn’t sound like he is. Poly is really hard, and it’s full of shitty people who use it as a justification for being shitty. Sounds like you need to do a whole bunch of work on yourself right now, and it doesn’t really sound like either of your “partners” are good for you.

There have always been Nazis in America, even during WW2. Listen to Rachel Maddow’s podcast “ultra” to hear about how close they came to a takeover of the US way back then. They never went away, they just went low profile for a while.