Oh, I’m long gone from them now. I’m pretty adamant about never ever propping up someone who enabled Trump in a meaningful way, which means that the party is dead to me for at least several decades.
A time existed when I voted for George W. Bush, but by the end of his administration I wasn’t hesitant to admit that that whole thing had gone pretty damn badly. I had soured hard on their love of Middle East war. Ron Paul was something of a gateway drug where I could hold onto a number of GOP positions and not continue to be an apologist for the foreign policy the party had largely adopted; it was honestly also a more palatable place to turn than to the Dems, because even now it’s not like the Dems are some wonderful alternative on foreign policy issues.
I became more socially liberal with time, taking the Dems’ side on things like gay rights and drug legalization. Once I dislodged myself from any sort of GOP orthodoxy on immigration also (along with most criminal justice issues), I was not meaningfully more ideologically aligned with them than with the Dems. I started calling myself libertarian, but still tended to vote Republican for little more reason than the fact that I had done so for a long time and still harbored a lot of contempt for the Democrats.
By the time 2016 came along, there had still been a subtle but real continued leftward evolution on my end that now included economic issues, and it was clear the Republican Party was only getting crazier, so my rationale for continuing to vote Republican was only getting weaker. In large part, I think the frailty of my ego was mostly struggling with actually having to take the big step of admitting that I’d been on the wrong side for many years (in fairness to myself, I’m guessing my ego is fairly typical in this regard; doubling down is way easier than admitting to having been a complete fool), but Trump happened, and at that point there wasn’t a split-second’s hesitation as to what I would do.
I’m not sure how to answer “how far left.” I feel like I’m less left than this forum’s median ideology is, but I don’t really hold any meaningfully conservative positions anymore on the major issues.
Not sure I know without it actually happening. I donated to Elizabeth Warren several times during the recent primary, but did so while feeling like she was further left than me; I was willing to make ideological concessions because she really impressed me as a candidate.
Tendency is to think that I would vote for the Democrat under that circumstance, but I honestly don’t even know what exactly a moderate, anti-Trump Republican looks like. Mitt Romney isn’t ideologically moderate; he just has something of a moral compass that most GOPers discarded years ago. I guess maybe Lisa Murkowski? I’d have to actually see it play out.
I’m happy to continue discussing, but I don’t want to derail this thread too much by continuing to go on about my own politics.
I was in a similar boat but what pushed me all the way to the left was mccain in 2008 (really it was Palin that horrified me) and then the final straw was romney in 2012. I voted bernie last primary and will never vote R for the rest of my life.
I think if you had a very conservative upbringing, it’s difficult to shake certain ways of thinking. Same goes with religion. The biggest personal growth I ever underwent was when I realized I didnt actually believe any of that bullshit I was raised to believe.
I was lucky because my conservative brainwashing was centered around George W. being the second coming of Christ (not actually but at the time that’s almost how the GOP portrayed him) which is hilariously easy to fall out of.
I worry about young people indoctrinated in the Trump/QAnon era. I’m not sure there’s any coming back from that if you get exposed to it at a young age.
I think this thread isn’t active enough for a derail to be a problem at all, and thats coming from someone who hates derails. Derails are mostly annoying in super active threads. Plus I’m sure most people will be interested in it.
I find the 2012 part of this a bit weird. The 2012 R nominee field was Mitt, Other Mitt, and a bunch of whackos (Santorum, Ron Paul, Gingrich, Lol Bachman). Not sure what other direction the party could have gone.
Thankfully there is a significant amount of research showing that kids are actually insanely hard for their parents to influence. It is much more likely that puberty is going to happen and some instinct to thwart his parents is going to make the other side very attractive. He’ll get some space and then, if he’s naturally more conservative, he’ll slowly come back. If he’s naturally liberal (and let’s be clear the definitions of liberal and conservative will be different policy wise by the time this kid is our age) he’s gone.
I grew up under the thumb of a parent that cared a great deal about making sure my world view was the same as his. To say it was a spectacular failure is an understatement.
Unfortunately this also explains how your kids might turn out to be RWNJ’s as well.
If thats true then why do red states stay red as fuck and racist as fuck over generations? Seems like most people do end up taking their parents positions, otherwise those states would be liberal as hell now and blue states would be red and it’d switch every few generations.
It might be true with other things but doesn’t seem true for politics. Racism and hate probably tend to stick.
You zoom out one level on the same research and it shows that your community is what has massive influence on you. This unfortunately explains why kids raised by liberals in illiberal places make illiberal people more often than you would think.
The kids don’t get their ideas to thwart mom and dad from themselves. They get those from their friends and in 2020 the internet.
Speaking of the internet I’m on Tiktok a lot these days and the kids are alright. The future generations that we have visibility on right now are if anything culturally much more to the left than even millenials. I realize that the algo is showing me the content I want to see, but I’m seeing a lot of frankly fantastic content made by very young creators.
yup. And it needs to be the opposite if we ever want to win back those places. One of the “good” things that might come out of this pandemic is a new culture of work that allows for telecommuting and working from home. This would allow more people to move out of cities, including liberals.
Obviously, we’d need to update our rural infrastructure, but we can do this if we have the will.
Here’s an example of what I mean (and also a rare example of right-leaning media calling for working across the aisle)
To some degree stuff our parents try to drill into us won’t stick. For me, I was raised to believe that black people are dangerous criminals and mexicans will kill you on a whim. I never really bought into that, although I’m sure I had racist moments as a kid/teenager/young adult I’m not remembering that were probably from sheer ignorance. But I grew up hearing harsh slurs constantly and to my recollection never repeated them. And I never was able to understand the sheer malice my mom always directed towards brown people. And my dad was the same too, to some degree.
The funny part about this is my dad wasn’t totally white. Lol. Maybe that’s what saved me, the sheer absurdity of my mom’s beliefs given who she married.
I gotta say I’m glad my parents never tried to drill anything into me, then again they were drug addicts most of my childhood so I don’t think they gave a fuck lol. But me and my sisters were running with Hispanic and black friends from birth so I always had that. Then again that was the majority of the neighborhoods I lived in.
Was super liberal idealist at 18, Bush is a war criminal etc. Most political of anyone in my friends group. Super for Obama, then he turned out to be a shitlib and gave up on politics and was a both sides are the same guy until Trump reminded me holy shit no they aren’t.
Now I’m kinda back to ok they aren’t the same, but dems are still pretty fucking horrible and not that far away from Reps. Just try to be slightly less shitty enough you gotta vote for them. No more though unless they earn it.
Circle of politics. If Reps had elected a Romney type character in 2016 I’d probably still be a both sides dude not paying any attention to any
