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What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 6:05:31 PM   
OrpheusAgonistes


Posts: 253
Joined: 3/29/2010
Status: offline 		In the interest of understanding each other better, finding common ground, and killing some time, I am curious to learn what the political evolution of the other posters here looks like.  Some people have been fascinated by politics and held strong views from a very early age, and others become motivated to follow politics passionately by something that happens later in life.

On the subject of me...

Age 13:  I think mostly because I liked the way Alex P Keaton rocked a monogrammed sweater vest, I became a young conservative.  Hardcore devotee of William F. Buckley Jr and, as a consequence, had the largest vocabulary and most affected speaking style of anyone at school.  Also flaunted a secondhand knowledge of Burke, Carlyle, and Cato the Elder.

Age 15:  Read Atlas Shrugged to impress an older girl.  Became a teenage parody of John Galt.  Posted long Objectivist rants on BBSes.  Argued with parents, teachers, students, parrots, anybody who would sit still and make noises back at me.  Listened to Rush.  Ran away from home during the summer to make my own destiny.  Spent roughly a month in squalid, sordid circumstances that freaked me the fuck out.  Scampered back to the gated community.  Grounded forever.  Believed more strongly than ever in personal responsibility but loathed the smug, cartoon super-villain ethos and pathos of Objectivism.  Read Plato's Republic at my father's suggestion to clear my palette.

Age 16-20:  Rebelled against Plato's Republic.  Became an anarcho-punk with DIY sensibilities (I published zines to impress girls).  Politics cribbed mostly from Zinn (I read him way before Will Hunting made him hip), Chomsky, Emma Goldman, and Dead Kennedys liner notes.  Met a hot girl at a Refused concert.  Protested some things.  Usually had a pretty firm grasp, by the end of the protest, whether we were for or against whatever was going on.  Eleven out of ten for my grasp of political theory, minus several million for execution.

Age 20-late 20s:  Read Adams History of the United States and (slowly, so slowly) The Federalist Papers. Read complete Jefferson and John Adams correspondence.  Found myself laughing at PJ O'Rourke again.  Noticed an alarming number of my friends becoming Republicans.  9-11 had no real impact on my politics.  My philosophy cohered as follows:  Please stay out of my life, government.  Please don't make kids learn Creationism or Young Earth science or any of that nonsense because we have a civilization to move forward.  Please stop spending so much money; this means cutting out some programs and allocating funds more wisely (the military is not immune from spending cuts, my friends).  Please stop being afraid of innovation.  Please don't confuse "personal responsibility" (hooray) with "punitive measures against poor people and minorities" (fuck you!).  Please let people have sex with and marry whomever they choose.  Please let women goddamn well do what they want to with their bodies.  Thank you.

Current:  Pretty much the same, except I'm realizing I have no real party to vote for.  I'll keep choosing the lesser of two evils.  But my current views feel weird, all through-the-looking-glassy.  On budgetary issues I side with Pat Buchanan more times than not, on civil liberties I side with Greenwald, and on foreign policy I still nod my head from time to time when I read Chomsky.  Taibbi is a lunatic but he always cracks me up and he's spot-on about the banking mess.  My beliefs as they currently stand are a weird, ugly, tumultuous, loosely cobbled together alliance.  Tres American.


_____________________________

What I cannot create, I do not understand.--Feynman

Every sentence I have written here is the product of some disease.-- Wittgenstein
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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 6:24:08 PM   
slvemike4u


Posts: 17896
Joined: 1/15/2008
From: United States
Status: offline 		As a teenager...liberal as all get out. Muhammed Ali to my fathers Joe Frasier....cause of civil rights to my fathers racism,(seeing a trend here....lol)..Than I got older...and more bitter,started seeing things in terms of us...and them.So I became a miserable bitter Republican(I guess you could say this was my conserative phase) I had things and since I worked for them I didn't want others taking them away.Clinton and his sleaziness didn't help...Of course at the time I was going thru a divorce and dealing with issues such as my wife's infidelity...so Clinton -Lewinsky bothered me way out of proportion ...Thats when I registered Republican.
What did I get Bush...as if that wasn't enough to drive me right back to my liberal roots I had the great misfortune of living with a mirror reflection of my younger self....my own son...and boy was he a liberal.....you know what else he was?....He was right.
So my getting over my bitterness combined with Bush's evilness and my sons rightness....I am now once again a registered Democrat and a heart felt liberal.
Amen.

_____________________________

If we want things to stay as they are,things will have to change...Tancredi from "the Leopard"

Forget Guns-----Ban the pools

Funny stuff....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNwFf991d-4


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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 6:45:40 PM   
Musicmystery


Posts: 30259
Joined: 3/14/2005
Status: offline 		Step 1) Independent, raised in a Republican household, leaning Republican.
Step 2) Ronald Reagan spouted a bunch of simplistic nonsense, and put it into practice anyway, only to find it didn't work. This, together with Jerry Falwell, convinced me that someone had to reign in Republicans, and that left Democrats.
Step 3) I've watched the cycle repeat itself. Until Republicans wake up, or until a viable option presents itself, I'll remain a Democrat (though not one that buys the entire platform---but then, that's all Democrats!)

< Message edited by Musicmystery -- 4/12/2010 6:46:14 PM >

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 6:51:45 PM   
OrpheusAgonistes


Posts: 253
Joined: 3/29/2010
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

As a teenager...liberal as all get out. Muhammed Ali to my fathers Joe Frasier....cause of civil rights to my fathers racism,(seeing a trend here....lol)..Than I got older...and more bitter,started seeing things in terms of us...and them.So I became a miserable bitter Republican(I guess you could say this was my conserative phase) I had things and since I worked for them I didn't want others taking them away.Clinton and his sleaziness didn't help...Of course at the time I was going thru a divorce and dealing with issues such as my wife's infidelity...so Clinton -Lewinsky bothered me way out of proportion ...Thats when I registered Republican.
What did I get Bush...as if that wasn't enough to drive me right back to my liberal roots I had the great misfortune of living with a mirror reflection of my younger self....my own son...and boy was he a liberal.....you know what else he was?....He was right.
So my getting over my bitterness combined with Bush's evilness and my sons rightness....I am now once again a registered Democrat and a heart felt liberal.
Amen.


Interesting.  Clinton was probably the biggest reason I was never able to identify as a "Democrat" during the 90s, though my take was slightly different.  I was young and idealistic and I felt betrayed because he was so smart and so charming and turned out to be such a dick.  Never cared much about Whitewater or Lewinsky but I always thought his foreign policy was incoherent, his waffling on civil liberties and gay rights was inexcusable (there will never again come a time as opportune as the dot com boom to tell the Religious Right to go to hell), and I thought his behavior in the Vietnam era was inexcusable.  Before anybody says anything, others who behaved unconscionably during this era include Quayle, Cheney, Buchanan, Bush the Younger, and that whole sick crew.  Under similar circumstances I don't know what I'd do, but I'd like to think I would never make the jump from not having the stomach to go to war to not thinking twice about putting troops in harm's way to advance a political agenda (all the aforementioned are guilty of this except Buchanan, and that's only because he wants all the troops constantly patrolling the borders to keep out foreigners).  Anyway, I always saw Clinton as a dirty dealer who talked to the Left and governed to the Center Right.  Like Phil Ochs once said of his own generation "Ten degrees to the left of center in good times/Ten degrees to the right of center if it concerns them personally."

Bush the Younger I hated from day one (I always had a quirky affection for his old man, even when I hated his politics, he reminded me of my grandfather) and grew to hate more every day he was in office.  I still see him as the American republic's worst case scenario (only because I believe Palin is unelectable on the national level) and I don't think the damage he did will be undone within my lifetime.


_____________________________

What I cannot create, I do not understand.--Feynman

Every sentence I have written here is the product of some disease.-- Wittgenstein

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 7:02:13 PM   
slvemike4u


Posts: 17896
Joined: 1/15/2008
From: United States
Status: offline 		Oh Orpheus I simply went with the Lewinsky thing because it allowed me a chance to take an easy swipe at the ex(she isn't on these boards so what the fuck)You want the truth...you want to know where he lost me ?....."I didn't inhale"
Think about it...he and his crackerjack team sit down and have a brain trust meeting trying to figure out how to deal with this breaking story....and what they come up with is "I didn't inhale"...an answer so idiotic it is insulting.Lets say you are silly enough to buy it....what does it say about his character...he sat around in a circle of friends and pretended to smoke...what so he would be accepted by the in crowd.Where was his backbone while he was pretending to smoke.
A little shallow of me perhaps...but as a regular partaker of demon weed(in my youth of course...I would never thing of twisting a joint now...as a mature adult)I wondered why he couldn't have just said "yeah I tried it ....I didn't like it ...and I don't endorse it"

_____________________________

If we want things to stay as they are,things will have to change...Tancredi from "the Leopard"

Forget Guns-----Ban the pools

Funny stuff....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNwFf991d-4


(in reply to OrpheusAgonistes)
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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 7:16:36 PM   
servantforuse


Posts: 6363
Joined: 3/8/2006
Status: offline 		I started out as a union member democrat, voting the way our local wanted us to vote. That all changed in 1982. Jimmy Carter was the last democrat I ever voted for.

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 7:19:48 PM   
slvemike4u


Posts: 17896
Joined: 1/15/2008
From: United States
Status: offline 		While I thought he was an ineffectual President....I still think he was the most moral man to sit in that chair in my lifetime.

_____________________________

If we want things to stay as they are,things will have to change...Tancredi from "the Leopard"

Forget Guns-----Ban the pools

Funny stuff....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNwFf991d-4


(in reply to servantforuse)
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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 8:10:56 PM   
Arpig


Posts: 9930
Joined: 1/3/2006
From: Increasingly further from reality
Status: offline 		I grew up in a pretty much openly Liberal (well to the left of your Democrats) household, but oddly enough politics was never a major topic of discussion. I voted solidly liberal (except for my 20s, when in a drug-induced haze I tended to vote Rhinoceros Party for the fun of it). The more I saw of life the further to the left I veered, until I reached where I am today, a firm NDP supporter (Somewhat left of the British Labour party & so far left it isn't even on the map in the US).
I have always been a leftie, and by US standards far left, though Liberals are considered pretty much Centrist in Canada.


_____________________________

Big man! Pig Man!
Ha Ha...Charade you are!

Why do they leave out the letter b on "Garage Sale" signs?

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 10:29:03 PM   
TheHeretic


Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline 		I've been at this stuff essentially my whole life. Some of my earliest memories are of a rooms full of leftist student radicals discussing Trotsky, and the theory of permanent revolution, and the political events of the day (I tend to laugh very hard at certain scenes in Life of Brian for reasons most people don't get). My stepfather was a recruiter with a militant offshoot of the Socialist Worker's Party, and good enough at it that the draft board rejected him as "politically undesireable," for Vietnam. At five, I was out selling The Militant. COINTELPRO had officially ended by then, but whatever they called what came after, had us on the watch/harass list. How many second graders ever get a chance to have the FBI flash badges and ask their classmates about playground conversations?

Some of those old leftie values are with me today. Others just didn't make the cut. Pacifism, obviously, was dropped very early The interest in politics never went away. Of course, such an early start gave me the opportunity to develop a cynicism far beyond typical for one my age.

Two books loomed large in my school years. 1984 and The Gulag Archipeligo. The first taught me that authoritarianism was not something to be feared, and fought to the death, only from the right, the second, that of all the places in the world to be an enemy of the state, the USA was a pretty damn good place to be, and worth defending.

Following a tour in the military, I got involved with a few political issue campaigns as a volunteer, signature gatherer, sometime speaker, and guy with a pick-up truck. Except for Clinton, we lost on all of them. (Later I discovered the advantages of being a paid volunteer.)

My worldview was evolving though. The elements of human nature that socialist theory rode on were exposed as fantastical myths and foolish dreams. My faith in the competence of government to solve problems wore away like the paint on an early 90's Chrysler. Courtesy of a few years incarcerated with fundie Christians, I had an abiding loathing for the religious right, which left me pretty securely on the Dem side, for a decade, regardless of how conservative my ideas about the methodolgy of achieving liberal goals got.

Then came Al Gore. I believed (and still believe) that he represented the very worst element of the Democrats, and here he was as the nominee for Pres. I had choked hard before accepting him as veep, but not this. If my vote for Nader that year would have changed the outcome, I'd have still flushed my vote to Ralph.

So there I was. Disgusted with both parties in a two party system. Where does a socially liberal believer in limited government go?


The answer I found, that allowed me to make peace with my new affiliation was this. I despise authoritarian forms of government. All ideologies are going to have a streak of it to contend with. The Republican brand is pretty explicitly forbidden by the Constitution. Our separation of church and state fights are about whether or not a city council meeting can open with a prayer that mentions Jesus. We are not discussing what time the neighborhood alarms will ring on Sunday morning so we can all line up for the church bus. They are only going to get so far before the system slaps them.

The Dems, on the other hand, are power-mad whores who will backstab every value they hold in a tearful embrace during the campaign. Their intrusions into my life and wallet are not so clearly prohibited, and I have decided to oppose them.

This is a really long story, but this post is done.





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If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.


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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/12/2010 10:46:54 PM   
OrpheusAgonistes


Posts: 253
Joined: 3/29/2010
Status: offline 		Wow.  That was extremely interesting.  Thank you.

And for the record, much to the annoyance and consternation of my more "realistic" friends, even given the calamities of Bush's first term, I not only agree with this but have expressed this belief in very similar language:

quote:

Then came Al Gore. I believed (and still believe) that he represented the very worst element of the Democrats, and here he was as the nominee for Pres. I had choked hard before accepting him as veep, but not this. If my vote for Nader that year would have changed the outcome, I'd have still flushed my vote to Ralph.


_____________________________

What I cannot create, I do not understand.--Feynman

Every sentence I have written here is the product of some disease.-- Wittgenstein

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 1:00:40 AM   
NorthernGent


Posts: 8730
Joined: 7/10/2006
Status: offline 		Never interested in politics when younger. The school I went to was the sort of school where showing an interest in politics would pretty much end up in being friendless and a serious lack of interest from girls would follow. Not really an option - but not interested anyway.

I think the interest started when I went to University: a) it opened my mind to other possibilities b) I was now in an environment where other people were interested in politics.

I don't think I have ever read a particular book/author and thought: "yeah that's for me". I like some of what Tony Benn has to say (well known British socialist) - you can't argue with Chomsky's analysis of the issues as he's so knowledgable but how on earth he has arrived at his solution knowing what we know of human experience....well....

So I suppose there is a left-wing bias within me in that I tend to have time for respected left-wing champions.....though I have read Burke to some extent and would concede that what he had to say/predict on revolution and grand ideas is hard to argue with.

But really my politics comes from my background and the person I am rather than adhering to a champion of any particular position. I like a balance in my life - moderation - not a fan of big ideas and essentially promises that people simply can't keep. Which is quintessentially English when you consider the stability of our political system during the last 350 years and a distinct lack of extreme politics - right or left - when compared with continental Europe. As Francis Bacon - father of The Enlightenment said: "If a man will begin with certainties - he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties". And I think it really is a feature of the English - and it follows thus English politics - that we are fence sitters - we can see the plausibility of all of the alternatives - which leads us to the centre ground.

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 4:04:51 AM   
pahunkboy


Posts: 33061
Joined: 2/26/2006
From: Central Pennsylvania
Status: offline 		Everyone knows that I ONLY fund, finance and worship the New World Order== now and forever.


HEIL Rothschild!


================================================================

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 4:50:21 AM   
subrob1967


Posts: 4591
Joined: 9/13/2004
Status: offline 		I was born and raised in the 11th Ward on Chicago's south side, which was Daley's ward. Just about everyone I knew worked for the city on some capacity, and everyone voted democrat.

I had my choice of jobs after H.S., Cop, Fireman, Streets & San, Water, Park District, all I had to do was ask.

It was common to see city employees installing fences on personal property, or sitting in the local bars during work hours, everyone knew, and nobody cared. I got to asking questions about all the crap I was seeing, only to have the ward boss's wife talk to my mother about my "attitude".

The realization of just how corrupt  Democrats, especially ones from Chicago were is what shaped my conservative opinions.

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 5:12:14 AM   
pahunkboy


Posts: 33061
Joined: 2/26/2006
From: Central Pennsylvania
Status: offline 		Yeah well in Chicago 20 people can see a car jacking and no one ever seen it.

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 5:31:13 AM   
Aneirin


Posts: 6121
Joined: 3/18/2006
From: Tamaris
Status: offline 		Not interested in politics in my youth, first time I voted, I voted conservative due to family upbringing, still with no interest in politics, didn't vote next time around, nor after I think either as I had no interest. Post military voted UK independence party, then campaign for middle England. A few years later following a  massive change of life following failure of once believed in police, law and judicial system, I suddenly became  interested in politics as I could see the failures I could not see before to where I am now, a social libertarian and where my next vote will go.

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Everything we are is the result of what we have thought, the mind is everything, what we think, we become - Guatama Buddha

Conservatism is distrust of people tempered by fear - William Gladstone

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 6:52:23 AM   
variation30


Posts: 1190
Joined: 12/1/2007
From: Alabama
Status: offline 		republican -> anarcho-syndacalist (lol)

now I'm an anarcho-capitalist. I'll be one for the rest of my life.




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all the good ones are collared or lesbians.

or old.

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 8:02:22 AM   
Arpig


Posts: 9930
Joined: 1/3/2006
From: Increasingly further from reality
Status: offline
quote:

I'll be one for the rest of my life
The young are so certain....but time and life has a way of wearing down certainties.

_____________________________

Big man! Pig Man!
Ha Ha...Charade you are!

Why do they leave out the letter b on "Garage Sale" signs?

CM's #1 All-Time Also-Ran


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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 8:16:46 AM   
LaTigresse


Posts: 26123
Joined: 1/15/2006
Status: offline 		Indeed.

I was raised in a house that paid zero interest to politics. I kept on with that grand tradition until about 10 years ago. Got drug kicking and screaming (guilted) into attempting to give a damn. It really wasn't until I began working where I do now that I took any interest.

I am neither liberal democrat or conservative republican. Much to the chagrin of my liberal friends.

GD used to be a die hard republican. Over the years he has gotten very frustrated with the republican party and their weakness. How they have allowed the religious right nutters to have too much influence. Their last ticket, McCain, had him fuming mad. He has since considered himself an independent like myself. Like myself he will never vote for a republican candidate that panders to the far right.

I now investigate individuals and vote on their personal actions and points of view. Never by party.


< Message edited by LaTigresse -- 4/13/2010 8:25:24 AM >

_____________________________

My twisted, self deprecating, sense of humour, finds alot to laugh about, in your lack of one!

Just because you are well educated, articulate, and can use big, fancy words, properly........does not mean you are right!

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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 8:37:33 AM   
slvemike4u


Posts: 17896
Joined: 1/15/2008
From: United States
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Arpig

quote:

I'll be one for the rest of my life
The young are so certain....but time and life has a way of wearing down certainties.
Nah,Arpig...in his case I don't see much chance of change.....nor of growth.
Some things just can't be cured.

_____________________________

If we want things to stay as they are,things will have to change...Tancredi from "the Leopard"

Forget Guns-----Ban the pools

Funny stuff....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNwFf991d-4


(in reply to Arpig)
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RE: What was your political evolution? - 4/13/2010 9:15:26 AM   
pahunkboy


Posts: 33061
Joined: 2/26/2006
From: Central Pennsylvania
Status: offline 		Umm- for me- TARP changed everything.

When I seen both the left and the right voted to rob us- that was my wake up call.

From there- I decided to try to vote with my $, not fund the system to the extent that I once did.

This is the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world.  and I blame both parties.

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