The apostasy of me. Or not.

[constance]

George W. Bush was in my town today, and my mind is on politics tonight.

I won't even start talking about how quickly he can make the bile rise in my throat (it's practically a Pavlovian response by now, I would think), or how his shell-game politics leave me feeling as though my intelligence has been insulted almost beyond bearing every time he opens his goddamned mouth and at the same time questioning the intelligence of all the people who lap up every word he says the way my dog licks up cat puke if he gets to it before I can. How it's taken years of... Nope, not going to talk about it any more.

Instead, I'm going to talk about a conversation I had with my father when I was in college. I was being probably unbearable and sanctimoniously liberal about something or other, and he informed me that he'd been a liberal once too, but that time and a family and a mortgage had changed his mind. That I would change my mind, too, once I entered the real world and had adult responsibilities to face.

And tonight it's nearly twenty years down the road, and undoubtedly my father would claim that I'm maintaining an unhealthy grip on my Neverlandish talent for avoidance and idealization. But the rest of the world thinks I'm toeing the line pretty well, I thank you. I have adult responsibilities now. No marriage, nor is there likely to be one, but I have a house and a car. Pets. I pay my bills on time, all of them. I'm middle-class! I go to work and pay my taxes and contribute to my 401(k) account! Hey, I even know how to punctuate 401(k)!

But I'm still a liberal. I don't think my affiliations are going to change, either. I don't feel as though I'm closing myself off from the beliefs I once held. They've become tempered by practicality, sure, and I'm more circumspect than I used to be, but I think I'm only less hotheaded now, not more reactionary. Possibly in some ways I've become more liberal, as I've become wiser and more compassionate and less self-centered over the years.

My father wasn't even ten years older than I am now when he made that pronouncement to me. Really, don't you think that if my conversion had been going to happen at all, it would surely have started happening by now? I think my father was wrong, and I won't insult him by ranting about yellow-dog democrats and lame-ass frat boys too busy drinking to know their own minds, much though I'm tempted to do so tonight, all soured as I am by insanely listening to five minutes of GWB before turning the television off.

Instead, I'm just wondering: what about you? Have you become more conservative as the years have gone by? More liberal? Have you changed in political essentials at all, as you've left your college years behind?

Comments

[gmth.livejournal.com]

I'm much more moderate now than I was in high school and college, but since I was practically an anarchist then I think I'm fitting pretty comfortably into the liberal spectrum these days. I was also told I'd get more conservative as I got older, and it was true, but considering how far to the left I was when I was younger it's not a surprise.

And not to gloat or anything, but we had Bill Clinton in my area today. :-)

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was going to say much the same thing. I used to be more or less a communist, and now I'm middle-left liberal.

My husband, though, used to be a Republican and is now farther to the left than I am. So age doesn't aways make one more conservative.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

My husband, though, used to be a Republican and is now farther to the left than I am

That's something you don't hear about so often. Did it happen gradually? Did one particular issue change his mind about many issues? (This latter actually happened to an old friend of mine, who was a committed conservative up until a few years ago, when she got a direct taste of the Bush administration's stance on an issue which meant a great deal to her, and was so upset by the entirely predictable party-line response to her emotional plea that she ended up rethinking her whole political perspective.)

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

He attributes his perspective shift to going to college and becoming educated. I should point out that his family are Western Republicans, which is a whole different animal from the religious-right style conservatives and are probably closer to Libertarians than to the mainstream of their party.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I'm still pretty much a Socialist; a few of my leanings hae shifted a little, one way or another, since college, but not too many. Not enough to shift me very far long the spectrum from where I was twenty years ago.

I'm not a terribly big fan of Clinton, though not because I believe he's a preliterate sock-monkey. I just think he let down the side badly in his years in office. He had the potential to be a truly great progressive president, I think, and the fact that he frittered away eight years dithering and trying not to lose percentage points and covering his ass (and then, of course, uncovering it) just pisses me off.

[gmth.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm a huge Clinton fangirl. He did amazing things with the economy, which Bush just threw away.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely give him the economy. A budget surplus! I wasn't sure such a thing was even possible -- and then of course Bush just pissed it all away. On fucking homeland security, among other things. Which that was money well-spent, right? -_-