I was in 10th grade chemistry class at Pine Forest High School when the news came in over the radio that a plane had hit the North Tower. I wasn't anywhere near New York. I didn't even know anyone in New York. I initially reacted to it the same way I would news of any other terrible accident or natural disaster. Then news started filtering in that the South Tower was hit, as well as the Pentagon. It was obvious to everyone this wasn't an accident anymore. Out of all the feelings going through my head at the time, the one that was most poignant was confusion. I couldn't fathom why anyone would want to attack us. We were America. We were the good guys. So then who were the bad guys? I remember wondering if this was how people felt after Pearl Harbor.
I hadn't ever cared about politics before 9/11. During the 2000 election my knowledge about the campaign could have been summed up by the Saturday Night Live skit where Bush and Gore fuse into “Al W. Bush Gore, the ultimate middle of the road candidate”. I didn't know what the locked box was, or who's math was fuzzy. It didn't seem important to me at the time. I operated under the assumption that things would continue on more or less as they had in the 90s.
My interest in domestic and international policy sky rocketed. Whether by accident or design talk radio started to show up in my moms car more often. I started watching Fox News. I really had no clear idea of what exactly differentiated the Democrats and Republicans, and that gap in knowledge began to be filled in by the likes of Hannity and O'Reilly. You can imagine how that went.
As bad as Fox was, it wouldn't have been nearly as effective without my 11th grade U.S. History class. It was one of the few that I took a genuine interest in. I sat in the front of the class instead of sleeping in the back corner. I took notes and payed attention. Over all, the class was actually pretty good. As far as the dry history, our teacher did a solid job of making it engaging and accurate.
The thing was, he was a huge Neo-con. This didn't color most of the historical material much, but he would occasionally take whole classes out to lecture us on current events. One of the better ones was the talk he gave about why people in the middle east were mad at us. Looking back, even with his bias it was reasonably accurate. The most egregious though was his talk about Iraq. Essentially, it was the High School equivalent of Collin Powell's yellow cake speech.
He told us Saddam had mobile chemical weapons labs. He said we have satellite images of places we know hes hiding weapons. He said there were training camps with old airline fuselages that were used to train terrorists to take over planes. The thing I remember most clearly was his certainty, not only that Saddam had chemical and nuclear weapons, but that we knew exactly where they were. He did everything he could to sell us on the urgency and necessity of invading Iraq and getting the weapons secured.
And so, Iraq was invaded. He took pride in how quickly Baghdad fell, insisting that in ten years Iraq would be a great place to visit. It would only be a matter of time until we found the weapons, and all the dirty hippy liberal tree huggers would have to eat their crow. Three weeks went by. Six weeks. Three months. Six months. A year, and no weapons. No yellow cake. No anthrax. No smoking gun or mushroom cloud.
This is how my defection began.
The breaking point for me came with Abu Ghraib. This was on such a clear level of extreme wrong that the subsequent efforts of the right wing Media to minimize or excuse it proved extremely enlightening. For me, America was about justice, right to a fair trial, due process, etc. The idea that it's somehow ok to torture someone because you think they might be a terrorist is so thoroughly anti-American to me that it really shows the true colors of those who espouse those views. Torture is NOT ok. Torture will NEVER be ok. It's a war crime for a reason.
I think Al Gore said it best.
“In Iraq, what happened at that prison, it is now clear, is not the result of random acts of a few bad apples. It was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy. “
This wasn't Lynndie England going rogue. This was wide spread and systemic. This was being done all over the world in our name. Abu Ghraib ultimately lead me to become aware of all sorts of unconscionable malfeasance we've engaged in in our recent history. Iran Contra, the Gulf of Tonkin, My Lai, and the Tuskegee Experiment, to name a few. It shattered all my illusions of moral authority, and sent me in an incredibly cynical direction.
The implosion of my worldview caused me to have something of an autoimmune over reaction. I went from overly credulous that the government always had more or less noble intentions, to an extreme cynicism and paranoia about everything they said and did. I became completely disillusioned, convinced that just about everyone in politics was out there to represent corrupt interests and subjugate the rule of law for personal gain. I refused to identify with a major party for a long time, settling for Libertarian if anyone ever asked.
These were the dark times. As the Bush Administration wore on, it became incredible to me just how much thoroughly egregious crap they got away with. It was like terrorism made them tefflon to any legitimate accountability. They were already engaging in warrantless wire tapping, extraordinary rendition, and torture. How far would they go? I didn't know the answer but I wasn't optimistic.
The 2006 midterms came around eventually, and I wasn't going to sit this one out. I voted straight Democratic but wasn't terribly confident I'd accomplished anything, this was in Florida on an electronic voting machine after all, but I crossed my fingers. Stupid Vern Buchanan won anyway, but the Democrats did much better nationally. I was feeling pretty good at the time, hoping that maybe with the opposition party in power we might actually see a real investigation of all the awful crap that had been going on.
Much to my dismay, one of the first things Nancy Pelosi did as Speaker was to announce impeachment off the table, which felt like a huge betrayal. It wasn't that I voted for the Democrats specifically to impeach Bush, but to just nullify it as an option wasn't a good sign to me. To this day, we're still looking forward not back, and to this day Gauntanamo stays open and no one behind the torture policies has been held accountable.
The presidential primaries started pretty early and I was knee deep as soon as they did. I watched both the Republican and Democratic primaries. I thought it was interesting just how much everyone assumed Hillary was going to be the nominee, to the point where all the goofball Republicans were already attacking “Hillarycare”. I liked Kucinich but it was clear he was being marginalized. I remember being disappointed that both Obama and Hillary seemed to be pretty firm about a 2013 Iraq withdrawal (I thought that was too long).
For me the most interesting part of the primaries turned out to be the Republican ones. Most of the time they were painfully boring, consisting of Mittens and McCain arguing about who was going to build the biggest Guantanamo. Every once in a while though, they'd ask Ron Paul a question, and almost without fail shit would hit the fan. He'd start talking about blowback and civil liberties and getting out of Iraq and you could see everyone else's heads metaphorically explode. I never expected to see an anti-war Republican up there and it was pleasantly surprising.
It got closer to the Florida Primaries and it was becoming clear the Democratic nominee was going to be either Obama or Hillary, and I'd been convinced Obama was going to end up with it, he was just way too good of a candidate not to. I really liked the idea of having both nominees for president being anti-war, so I changed my registration to Republican so I could vote for Ron Paul, even if just to keep him in the race a little longer and drive McCain up the wall (he was irritating me before he even got the nod). McCain ended up cleaning up in Florida and that was about all she wrote.
Voting for Obama was something of a foregone conclusion for me, especially after it was clear the Republicans were doubling down on the Neo-con business with McCain. After moving to Santa Fe in 2008 I ended up working for Progressive Future doing data entry. It was a great experience. The office was run by a few 20somethings the organization picked up from different parts of the country and sort of unceremoniously plopped down into a tiny office in downtown Santa Fe. It was a new experience to hang out with other people who genuinely cared about politics.
November came around and, despite all the pundits wondering if white people were too racist to really vote for Obama, he won. It was a huge emotional release for me. America under the Bush administration was stifling and oppressive. The fact that it was really over was hard to completely accept and it wasn't until Obama was sworn in that it really hit me. I wasn't delusional about how much would change, but for the first time in years I was genuinely optimistic.
And so far, all this Hopey Changey stuff is working out a lot better for me than the Hatey Feary alternative.