Back when I was 20 I had no firm political views at all - unless you count being a staunch atheist. Nowadays of course I’m quite liberal.
The only consistency has been my atheism; everything else has changed. At 20 I was a devout Randroid. Jesus.
Age 20 is a good set point for me since I stopped going to church shortly before I turned 20. The viewpoints of my past that I’d find reprehensible now would be associated with the Lutheranism I was raised in. It took a year to come to terms with not having a religious home. It took ten times that long for me to learn to cope with some of the residual cultural baggage that stuck with and impaired me - that’s too personal IMO for this thread and bringing up the dynamics of it here would be taboo anyway.
I was clueless about politics then and still kind of am. I did become more open minded toward more radically progressive ideas in my 20s. I had no reason not to be other than being conditioned by society to be closed minded.
I’ve settled on chiefly being concerned with consequentialism focused on mitigating suffering rather than a more positive utilitarian outlook. Other major realizations: nature is not beautiful, it’s utterly indifferent to monstrous suffering. The powers that have been channeled via various -isms and religions are secondary to the power of language itself; the ability to manipulate and abuse language has always been the true weapon of terror within the king of the hill.
Whoa yeah. At twenty, I was only just beginning to question my Jehovah’s Witness faith. And the thing I was questioning was their denial of evolution vs the talking snake theory they promulgated. I was certain their take on personal morality was absolutely correct, and I followed it to the letter. I would’ve proudly died rather than accept a blood transfusion.
That’s all gone now, many decades later.
I was a Democrat at 20. But I really thought that Republicans just didn’t understand other people’s problems. I now know that they don’t care. I am more laid back now. I do think that the only way a lot of republicans will change is when they assume room temperature.
I realized this am that when I originally posted, I misread the title. HOW is that I don’t care, and I don’t think it’s any of my business who you bump uglies with. Trans, gay, lesbian, other, whatever, I don’t care. Go, be happy and fruitful in whatever way by whatever means increase joy in the world. Just, please,for the love of all that’s good, stay off my damn grass.
I used to be a fervent Reagan conservative who went to church and Just Said No to drugs. Now I’m an atheist, think conservatives are ignorant and corrupt traitors, and I smoke weed daily.
Significantly. I found myself on the ground in Vietnam just short of my 21st birthday. Seeing how people in the third world live changed my perspective on the world in a huge way.
Mostly in minor ways rather than full-blown sea changes. And most of them have to do with being able to see more shades of grey or understand the perspectives of folks I don’t agree with better than I used to.
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In 1979 I would have told you that all of the “pro lifers” were cynical misogynist assholes whose real interest was in controlling and curtailing women’s sexual autonomy, and that none of them had any more interest in the welfare of as-of-yet-unborn children than they did in the qualify of life of mosquitos. I’m still pretty fervently pro-choice but I’ve come to acknowledge that many pro-life people are quite sincere and mean what they say, at least on a conscious level. This is less true, I think, for the leadership of the pro-life movement, but I no longer discount the concern that pro-life people have for the “ongoing slaughter of innocent babies” or however they put it.
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Similarly, in 1979 I would have said social conservatives were just unthinking reactionaries who believed everything was better in some mythical 1950s-vintage father knows best world and were determined to undo all social changes and roll everything back to that era. I now give more credence to people’s suspicion of government as a manifestation of “us in the plural” and their belief that it is nothing of the sort and is instead an invasive and coercive force, whereas other forms of people coming together (including the church, by which they usually mean the actual congregations of neighbors and villagers and local folk, not the church hierarchy and its theologies) are a better way of us taking care of us in the plural. I still find them opaque and clueless about the ways in which informal “normative-centric” forms of “us in the plural” can and often do out-coerce government by a long shot, but they aren’t wrong to distrust the politician class and I do see their point.
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I have to cheat a bit on the psychiatric front, because my views on the psychiatric system didn’t form and gel until I was at least 21 or 22 and more so after I was 24; but back then I would have characterized the psychiatric system as the thought-and-behavior police, an entirely evil social presence that only did harm and damage to the people it purported to “treat” and “help”. I have come to accept that even if the legends about how psychiatric medications (“chemical imbalances” and the like) are not founded in reality, there are indeed people who credit them with having saved their lives and others who say they are more helpful than harmful. I’m still militantly opposed to forced treatment, or the imposition of psychiatric treatment or incarceration on any situation other than fully informed consent and unthreatened full volition, but I can see some gradations of experience; and I will also acknowledge that many people go into the field intending to do well for suffering people and do their best with what is available to them.
I voted for Ralph Nader at age 18 in 2000, Obama at 26 in 2008, and Gary Johnson at 34 in 2016. What else do you want to know?
I was raised by two left-wing college professors. (Both have become more moderate since I was young, but mainly after I left the house.) While growing up we subscribed to The Nation and other stuff of that general nature. So I took all that in and believed it uncritically, through roughly age 20. At that age I would have told you all about the evils of how American capitalists had overthrown wonderful, democratic, communist governments in places like Iran and El Salvador. Meanwhile if anybody even mentioned the thirty million killed by Stalin and the sixty million killed by Mao, then I suspected them of right-wing tendencies.
I grew out of that by taking classes, reading books, and otherwise studying and learning about a great many topics that are not covered at my home or in American high schools. I studied history, economics, philosophy, literature, art, and religion, both in and out of class. I learned that some things I was taught at home and in high school are blatantly false, and a great deal of important things were simply not taught.
I’ve never been conservative, but I used to be much more centrist than I am now. Now I’m practically socialist, or at least mildly Democratic Socialist. Although I do think it’s mostly because the political right in this country (USA) has gotten so much worse than it used to be in my childhood and adolescence.
When I was in college I was extremely left wing. Borderline communist. I was young, stupid, and naive.
And then - almost overnight - I became very conservative.
Since then, I have slowly moved toward the libertarian side of the political spectrum. Today I consider myself to be a “conservative libertarian,” a.k.a. paleolibertarian.
I’m less tolerant and less flexible. Back then, I would have been interested in what Trump and Sanders and Clinton had to say, even if I didn’t agree with it, and I always thought that people who were more radical than I was brought something useful to the table.
Now I’m just sick of the lot of them. I’ve seen enough politics that I don’t feel like I’m learning anything new, and I know enough facts that I have no time for their bullshit. I disagree with the parties and have no time for the independents.
I’m still dry, conservative and liberal*, but now I’m stuck in my beliefs.
My political views haven’t changed that much. I remember my college cross-country coach (who was also the library director) telling me that I would become more conservative as I got older. Alas, that didn’t happen. We’ve communicated off and on over the years (I became a librarian as well, so our paths have crossed), and I guess as he got older he let go of the idea that liberals become more conservative as they get older. As far as religion goes, I still identify as Christian. However, I do so in a way that makes many evangelical Christians say “you’re not Christian.” Some non-religious folks don’t seem to like me hanging on to the Christian ID even though I’ve dispensed with the myth.
Certainly. I used to think things like homosexuality were not normal, thus should be shunned. Mathematically speaking, it’s still not normal, but I don’t give a fuck. Do what you want to do as long as it doesn’t affect others. That goes for drugs, transexualism, etc.
(My brother came out as trans several months ago. He was afraid of my reaction. I’m actually pretty cool with it, except he’s only a part-timer, I guess, and I still refer to him as “he” because he’s not fully committed. I’ll be happy to call him her if he every decides to full-time it. The strange thing is, he’s a full-hard-on Trump guy/gal.)
I was a conservative when being a conservative meant something. I’ve since become a big-L Libertarian, because the Republicans are just as crazy/crazier than the Democrats these days. We Libertarians aren’t without our faults, but holy fuck, both the Dems and Republicans are way the hell more bat-shit crazy than we are.