Have you ever had a Political Epiphany? If so when?

POLITICAL EPIPHANY = a sudden revelation, perhaps a major change in ideology -- leading to such things as taking immediate action, changes in your voting pattern, becoming an activist, changing your attitude toward politics in general, or paying attention to politics for the first time.
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In other words, have you ever had a galvanizing moment in your own thinking as a response to a specific event or series of events in national politics?

If so, to what and when?
(Feel free to use the categories here, or post your own).

along with the JFK murder revelations (Zapruder film coming out in '70s etc) the whole Gulf of Tonkin fabrications (see Adm Stockdale's book) or this:

"One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who gained fame later as a POW and then Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate. "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," recalled Stockdale a few years ago, "and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.""

30-year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261

Also see LBJs quote ""For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

Tonkin Incident Might Not Have Occurred
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0805-09.htm

As in the Gannon/Guckert incident, we are learning (all over again) that those in absolute power will lie to you. Operation Mockingbird has not ended...it is still ongoing.

I voted for Nixon, my first election, along with my Republican parents. I believed him when he said he had a secret plan to end the war. My husband-to-be was making me very upset at the time, "disrespecting the President," trying to tell me about Watergate, calling Nixon a liar. :-(

Needless to say, I learned a lot from then on.

tho it took me years to "get it" about the Kennedy assassination.

when I was very very young. But Viet Nam really made me sit up and get active! Especially since I was an Army brat, and knew a lot of classmates who got DRAFTED!

Then I watched the primary debates, and heard many of the candidates speaking about what I think and feel about this country. I had voted for Clinton and Gore, but never really "clicked" with them--I still maintained some skepticism.

But now I believe that there are sincere politicians out there who are patriotic, idealistic, and sincerely want to make America better. I believe in John Kerry and Howard Dean the most, but other primary candidates too: John Edwards, Wes Clark and Dennis Kucinich are also good guys in my book.
So now I'm tuned in to politics and hopeful for the future.

I was so disgusted at the politics behind the Iran hostage situation & the shenanigans to get Regan elected after 1980 I said I would never vote for a person again. I remained registered & on occasion I would vote for issues, but I didn't vote for a person until 2004. So I guess the 2nd epiphany was Boosh. If Gore had won, I still wouldn't be voting or paying attention. Not sure if this is a good thing or not!


on edit: Carter/Regan was my first election.

1st elected. I voted for Clinton mainly because I just didn't trust Bush Sr. Then I would hear on tv that Clinton was doing this or Clinton had done that (so many bad things), such as raping women, showing his penis to women, landdealgate, travelgate, I was loosing track of all the "gates" At 1st I thought what kind of man is our President. THEN I started paying more attention to what was being said and started asking "where's the proof" These people were out to smear him to the ground. I wondered how much they were paid to help bring President Clinton down. Now the man is no saint, but he had not done anything worse than most other Presidents,Senators, Congressmen, Governors, Mayors and etc (and this includes both Democrats and Republicans). I'm not saying it's right for him to mess around on his wife (I wouldn't want my husband to have sex outside of our marriage) but that was between him and his wife and it was no one else's business. I've often wondered how much money Linda Tripp and Monica received for their dirty deeds. If I was having an affair with someone(rather they were President or not) and I cared anything at all about that person, I would have protected that person and I would not have keep a dirty dress or anything else that could be use to bring them harm) That was a setup deal! The Republicans knew his down fall and he fell into their trap.
Gayle

Saw the totalitarianism of the radical right and adopted a more libertarian philosophy, started reading about localizing government and anarchism. Got into Thomas Jefferson and Gnostic Christianity and Buddhism.

Went from an "Agnostic Athiest State Socialist" to a "Christian Libertarian" in three easy steps.

And still liberal as all get out. Take that you Free Republic fascists.

I see just how evil the repubs have become under bush and the christian bigots.

When the Chimperor came up short of WMD and it became clear all the justifications were lies, I gave up on the Republicans for good.

I began looking into what the hell happened. I came across a post at another site that laid out the whole Taliban-pipeline situation. It was an eye-opener and the beginning of my descent into the rabbit hole.

There is no bottom to this hole.

You never know what effect putting the truth "out there" will have on someone. I was willing to hear and understand. I wish that for the rest of the sleeping people.

But if 9-11 didn't do it, what the hell will??

made me realize I had better do something if I wanted to live in this country anymore.

... until Iran-Contra. At that point I started really reading and thinking and I realized that 95% of the things the left had to say about Reagan were in fact true.

I know, I was a dumbass - but better late than never.

I voted for Anderson, but seeing RayGun in power, what he was doing to the environment and children, that clinched it for me. I became a full scale Democrat.

I was 14 and realized: "I fucking hate Republicans and everything they stand for."

religious right.

When the Reagan landslide occurred I first began to realize how screwed up this country had become. He carried Massachusetts for Dog's sake! .... And California! .... where they KNEW what he was!!!

When I heard my sister relate a speech she'd heard Jerry Brown give in 1992, talking about working with Mother Theresa and his political transformation. I was moved to tears and knew immediately that I wanted to work to help get him elected. At the time he was considering running for the senate but later changed and ran for president. Working on that campaign transformed my politics completely - I'd pretty much voted repub prior to that.

Reagan being sworn into office just as the hostages were being freed. Obvious political ploy - they engineered it so the hostages wouldn't be released under Carter's watch.

Both my parents are Republicans - I was raised one. Even voted for Reagan the first time (hey, I was 18). That day changed my mind about the party.

And I haven't trusted one thing those bastards have said or done since. And I can't understand how half the country can be so fucking stupid as to vote for them again and again. Or should I say roughly 20%, since half the voters don't show up at all.

there was a thought that it might not be that bad... the country survived 12 years of republican rule, and we got through it okay.

But very, very soon after * got into office, I realized that yes, it was going to be that bad, and when sept 11th happened, I realized that it was going to be worse than I ever could have dreamed.

Quite possibly the most sobering read I've had.

If knowing something horrible could possibly save the world would you want to know it?

I also have, "Why Johnny Cannot Come Home". Haven't started reading it yet. Because I'm also reading "Nickeled and Dimed" and "How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office."

Been as active (as time and money allow) as I can be since.

when I saw those *ucktards running amok in the hallways in Florida, I knew we'd been had.
I haven't woken up refreshed since the supremes selected him.
Ugh! Every morning I wake up and hope it was all a bad dream.

In that one night, I went from a liberal McCarthy supporter to a radical with a deep distrust of Republicans and the misuse of power. I clung to those radical ideas throughout the early 70s, and while I only hold to some radical ideas these days; I've never forgotten watching that night unfold, and my distrust remains.

I was at the Chicago Convention as a protester in 1968, and I have the scars to prove it. I was so young and naive that I went with an armful of daisies to hand out to the police and troops hoping to spread a message of peace. My first "epiphany" came at the end of a nightstick to the head. I was from that day on, a serious, but realistic, peacenik/anti-nuker who knew what to expect during a protest, and how important organization was. I traded in the armful of flowers for a sign or a bull-horn, and never looked back.

The next epiphany came at the hands of Ronald Reagan. Until his administration, I always saw Republicans as people who were good and decent, but with a radically different view of how the government should be. With Reagan came so many homeless on the streets of Boston that I volunteered to go into the city on Christmas Eve to hand out food and blankets. I was not prepared for what I saw: Women and children huddled together, shivering, over the subway grates trying to stay warm. Whole families. Christmas Eve. I never again saw the Republicans or their "trickle down" economics the same way again. Not ever. So, when the Newt Gingrich "revolution" came along, I had no illusions about what it meant, and still means, to this day to this country.

The next epiphany was the 2000 election. Ugh. You were all around for it, if you weren't disgusted out of whatever you felt about politics, and radicalized, you weren't paying attention.

My last epiphany was the 2004 election. It was personal this time. The candidate I worked my fingers to the bone for did not win the nomination, but my life, and the lives of my family and friends were effected by the Bush win in a way that changed me forever. I now see the DNC/DLC as a complicit element to the Bush success. When our candidate conceded 4-1/2 hours after the last vote was counted, I knew we were all on our own, and we had to take the Party, the media, and our own welfare back into our own hands. I am now a totally committed grassrooter, and at a very late date. I will never again trust the DNC/DLC to win against the Republicans. They don't seem to have the will to win. So, I am radical about who the next candidate will be, or the election will go on without me.

TC

but really didn't pay that much attention to politics. Now I'm practically obsessed with getting * and his regime out of office.

1. Civil Rights and War on Poverty (1960s)

2. During Iraqi war in early April 2003 when it suddenly hit me that, unlike the first time in the 1960s, when it was more of an epithet to be bandied about, and despite the fact I have since been thoroughly educated in Modern European History, I was looking at my television at a big overturned nasty rock with real creepy-crawly fascism scuttling out from under it.

I was horrified that I could even be in a position to think such a thing about my own government--went silent for about a week, contacted my former mentor in history, a prominent academic writer on German history, thinking he would say I was seeing boogie-men under the bed. Instead, he was at that very time, thinking the same thing and ended his email with "We mustn't let it happen this time."

Had already been tuning to CNN just to see Wes Clark on Aaron Brown. When I found out on April 15th, 2003 that he might run for president, I was galvanized into action again.

School when it "ended". I remember the parents discussing it when i was six (age range fuzzy), the "early" rumors I suppose. AS vets themselves they were a bit dismayed by what they were hearing. Little ol' me was quite surprised that Reagan was considered something more than a puppet until I actually heard someone outside my family speak about it. Apparently, Ollie North was an honorable soldier too. Imagine their (my first freeper interactants) surprise when a little middle schooler asked, doesn't Reagan have Alzheimer's and shouldn't North be in prison? "Whaa... Whaa... Whatttt?" I was shocked to learn there were more of these people out there in the world. I guess my epiphany was that there were idiots in this world who would believe anything just to protect their dogmata. Trickle down makes us poor folk rich and treason is pardonable whenever it protects the president.

gotta love the National Security archives

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/irancontra/irancon.html#OSRE

My natural political instincts let me to the Libertarian Party, which is how I registered at age 18.

The Libertarian "non-coercion" principle - which states that the only justified use of force by a state or an individual is in response to the use of force - seemed utter natural, right and beautiful in it's simplicity.

Libertarians are to the left of Democrats on Civil Liberties and to the right of Republicans on Fiscal Policy. They do not believe the state should interfere in the private lives of individuals, nor should it interfere in the affairs of private companies. This makes Libertarians advocates of laize fare capitalism.

Now my epiphany consisted in the realization that economic coercion was as real and in some cases more brutal and prolonged than physical coercion. The 'ownership class' exercises economic coercion over the working class. People always say 'anyone is free to quit or take any job'. But if you have a family, and a mortgage, and no capital to draw on - you are NOT free.

However, those in the 'ownership class' are free to fire people, or even to endure periods of complete non-productivity while they live off their capital. They can use this financial buffer to wage a war of economic attrition on those who must work for a living. They can thereby drive down wages, eliminate benefits, and increase profits. And they are in control, the workers are at their mercy.

And that insight is how I was transformed from a Libertarian into a Left-Leaning Liberal Democrat.

I began as a libertarian Republican and as the party moved ever closer to fascism, it left me outside its doors. My galvanizing moment was the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearing. I found myself agreeing with Ted Kennedy (!) and was so angry at the politics of personal destruction that the Republicans seemed to revel in. People who I thought were decent turned out to be vicious and I have never forgiven them nor will ever trust them again.

I joined the Libertarian party and was comfortable for awhile there.
I really started to pay attention instead of traveling through life on cruise control. I was appalled at the deliberate agenda to transfer wealth from the lower classes to the upper class and the lengths to which they would go to get more. It was okay to force women to have unwanted children, and okay to cut funding and programs to help the less-fortunate - like day-care, which makes it possible to work, and public health, which makes it possible to raise healthy children. At the same time, they helped businesses by starting the decline of required benefits, working hours, etc., which effectively funneled money from the working poor into the hands of upper management and upper classes. Somewhere around here I became one of those left wing progressive liberals and joined the Democratic Party.

I have since had all my faith shaken with the theft of the 2000 election. It proves that the controlling Republicans do not actually believe in our democracy. They purposefully subverted an election, disenfranchised voters, kept minorities from the polls, implemented a Good Old Boy firm to cast many innocent people as felons (then rehired them to do it again!), and stole the Presidency. Their success has led them to use these techniques and more to force the vote in their favor. They have taken over the media via their beneficies in the business world so nothing gets challenged.

I fear for my country and my countrymen. I am now part and parcel of the "vast Left-Wing Conspiracy" and proud of it. I am angry when I see them wrap themselves in our flag and claim themselves patriots. We need to shine the light on their secrets and deceptions, proclaim to all who will listen, I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!

It was Spring 2002, and the discussion was on Cynthia McKinney's suggestion that Bush knew more about the attacks on September 11 than he was letting on. You know what happened? Faced with this query, Paul Begala, representing the "Left," scurried behind a chair and hid there. Shortly after, he accused her of being a "crackpot" (or something along those lines).

That's when I knew that the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties was scant. Twin heads of the War Party. Within a year, I cast aside my tacit liberalism and became a Christian socialist.

Thank you, Paul Begala...you craven sod.

I campaigned for Michael Dukakis in my second grade mock election, ever since I've loved politics, elections, and debating policies.

and I was fortunate enough to witness in my youth the Civil Rights Movement, Watergate, and the proudly Liberal politics of JFK, RFK and MLK, etc.

I was active in The Young Republicans in college and a fanatic Goldwater supporter in 1964. The insanity of Vietnam and the racism that became so openly vile during the Civil Rights Movement turned me liberal forever.

Poppy helicoptered out to Ocean Reef, a wealthy south Florida private community, checked on his buddies, and then flew back to D.C. And left the rest of the area to die. Bastard.

I was very oblivious to politics before the Iraq war. Bush has turned me into a liberal for life.

The fact that so many "so called" Democrats voted for the bankruptcy bill. I expect that republicans will vote to serve their corporate masters but was shocked that a large number of Dem. Senators are also owned, lock, stock and barrel.

The news media coverage of the fall of the Saddam statue in Baghdad. I had no illusions that the corporate news media is liberal but was shocked that they would so willingly cooperate with the manufactured news event and blatant propaganda.

I am a military wife, so when the war in Iraq started with no apparant cause besides the obviously oil factor, I started paying more attention, but I thought things would get better; Kerry would win the election and stuff would start clearing up....then the elections came and I realized what the next four years could possibly bring to this country and I got serious. I have actively kept myself informed as much as possible, and spread the word as much as possible. When I get back to the lower 48 (I live in Alaska right now) I intend to become much more active. My father's side of the family are all 'freepers' and my mother's side are all passive democrats/liberals. I'm not sure which make me angrier anymore; my father's side who ignorantly believe that God wants Bush in office and that he is doing great things or my mother's side who get a little miffed at times but don't believe there's a big enough threat to our way of life to get interested or active.

*On an interesting sidenote, I have found that it pisses my 'freeper' side of the family off to no end that I stay informed and call them on there inaccuracies, so there is still some fun to be had at family reunions.

:hi: :toast:

As long as I can remember, but there was a day, a specific time when it went from intellectual interest to deadly serious commitment. Dec 1980, three Mary knoll Nuns and lay church worker Jean Donovan had just been raped, murdered and buried in a shallow grave. That was bad, I was devastated, but then, apparently in an effort to show there was no level of moral depravity to which they would not sink. Alexander Haig I believe, told the media that these good women, who had only gone to El Salvador to alleviate some of the misery we were heaping on that country, were running guns, tried to run a roadblock and exchanged gunfire with the animals that raped and murdered them. Actually making apologies for this act of inhuman barbarity. To this day I cannot think of it without tearing up and becoming livid. My hands are shaking right now. Later I found out that the murderers had been recently trained in the School of the Americas in Ft Benning Georgia. I was always very liberal it didn't really change the direction of my politics but from that day, I understood that unless you are somehow opposing the kind of evil we were supporting in El Salvador and Guatemala, and doing in Nicaragua that you become complicit in it and that can never, never, never happen for me. To me. You must never stand with the powerful against the weak.

A lesser awakening happened when I read Chomsky's deterring democracy, again it didn't change what I felt so much as explained a lot and made the dynamics of world affairs more easily understood

Thank you for sharing.

I like your sig line. May I use it?

I believe it is Thomas Jefferson, I thought I had pasted that onto the sigline when I set it up, but it no longer seems to be there.

You're right ... it was Thomas Jefferson. I thought I'd seen it somewhere before. It's very timely IMO.

has on our government. We were fighting a developer at City Council, and, long story short, the City Council told us that even though we were right, the developer was bringing a lot of federal funds to the community that would be lost if they didn't go along with him.

After that, I saw politics in a different light. When you follow the money, things start to fall into place.

to REALLY look at how one's community is run--what really goes on in the council, the legal system, the business sector, the local media. Most people have the illusion that decisions are based on a commonly held set of values and operate in the best interests of the
majority of residents. However insiders know that local politics is all about money and power and special interests and deals, and directly reflects policies operating at the national level.

Interesting that you were not affected as much by national issues, but sensitive to the expedient nature of political maneuvering when you saw it close to home. A lot of people have (or had) that disconnect (I did too)-- between local and national government. It takes awhile to realize that it's all connected and politics has an impact on everything. Yep, follow the money.

I'm 26 now, and before the 2000 election I didn't really follow politics. The decade of the 90's, for me, is just a big ball of mush. There is some middle school, highschool, and college, and all the years just blend together. Sometimes I'll watch a movie made in 95 for example, and wonder how it can be that old already. But anyway...

I was flipping through the channels during the 2000 election, and started watching for no reason whatsoever. When all the stuff was starting to happen in Florida, I couldn't turn it off.

So I started paying closer attention from then on, but nothing in any real depth. Then 9/11 came along. After the shock, and watching TV non-stop for that week, I started reading about this and that. The Taliban, Afghanistan, anthrax, dirty bombs, etc. Finding out about all the things they were talking about seemed to be the thing to do.

Then around late winter, early spring of 2002, I was listening to a former military guy as a host of a sports radio talk show(shame he's retired from the radio now). He's a lefty, and he was talking about politics. He mentioned an article in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution about something called the Project something. I didn't quite hear what he said. So I go and read that article. From that day, if there's one quote I'll never forget, it's the one about PNAC needing a new Pearl Harbor.

I finish reading that, and I can't really believe what I was reading. I eventually find their website, and sure enough. So some of those crazy ass conspiracy theories that you always heard growing up might actually be true.

And after reading that, everything else opened up.

So it was PNAC that changed me(my jaw literally dropped when I read that first article), but it was the 2000 election and 9/11(jaw dropped on that one for a week there) that got me interested in all the issues.

That started it all for me. I still recall Senator Alan simpson (R-Asshole) holding his hjnds in the inside pocket of his suit coat swaying that he had all kinds of bad info on Anita Hill and thretening to use it.

I can't remember the exact moment, but I finally woke the hell up when my outrage was sparked to the nth degree by the realization of the extremes * was going to in cramming his fundie bullshit down everyones throat and into places it doesn't belong, like the government and schools etc etc etc!!! :grr:

Nuff said ;-)

really forced me to look critically at the media and read up at the library on the subject. they lie and deceive, and that is all they do.

so I voted for "First Gulf War" although that event was compounded by as you point out, the serious media complicity in the lies and also the blatant right wing incursion into freedom of expression (the heyday of Jesse Helms)at the same time. I saw that the war was being used as a tool to distract and solidify RW power at home in the most corrupt and ruthless way, and I also saw the potential for what is going on in Iraq now...the "unfinished business" there, after wrapping up in 39 days. So this debut of the first "sanitized" war, the hypocrisy of that war on the heels of the Reagan era (when the US supported and armed Saddam), the "curing" of Vietnam Syndrome with extreme jingoism, the media muzzling and self-censorship, the coverup of Gulf War Sickness--well, once I started paying attention, there was a lot to swallow.

Somebody above referred to their "decade of mush." My Decade of Mush was the 80's. I was in a graduate program and took the "wake me when it's over..." approach. I do remember hearing Reagan deliver the lines, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!" and thinking it sounded like something out of a bad movie. When I awoke from my slumbers, it was like having a newly tuned antenna. So I realized around 1990-91, when my Dad told me that people in his little rural town (population 800) were up in arms against "artists" and "the cultural elites" that something very scary was going on. My dad said that a lot of this brainwashing was coming from the churches. Then during the Clinton era, with the relentless attempts to destroy the man, and the govt-sponsored witch hunt culminating in the most hypocritical impeachment spectacle in history...I knew the fundies had won a great victory.

So after the 90's, the election of 2000 did NOT surprise me, the invasion of Iraq did NOT surprise me. 9-11 did surprise me, but I've done a lot of reading on the middle east since, and have put it in perspective. The election of 2004 did surprise me, but only in the breathtaking magnitude of the (oh yeah) "irregularities," and the refusal of a large part of the country to even entertain the thought that the corporate media might not be telling the whole story.

From that experience I saw what angry, hateful people Republicans can be. They have done nothing to change that first impression

Sometime during this life I woke up, and the scales fell from my eyes, when I discovered that males were bigoted against women. It was the '70s and the resurgence of feminism, and I was a teenager, hearing and reading things for the first time from great people such as Gloria Steinem, Phil Donahue (then), the writer Caroline Bird, Maya Angelou, Alan Alda, Ashley Montagu ("Natural Superiority of Women"), and "All in the Family" on TV, etc. It was all an exciting new world, and it related to me--I wanted to talk about it with other people. To my shock and deepening anger, until finally hopelessness, whenever I talked about the most common-sensical things--the fact that there is prejudice against women, equal rights, equal pay, need for protection of rape victims and the fact that they were not "all lying," the belief that a woman could be President and be qualified, the fact that both parents should take care of children, not the woman alone always, etc.--with males, either other kids at school or family members, I got hit with a kind of hysterical, fuming hate that I never before realized was there. I would listen to male family members I thought I had known all my life, giving me the most incoherent bullshit about "why" women "have to be" second-class citizens, why "they" actually "want" it that way, why women are--and I cannot describe the rage I felt to hear it, "inferior." I was not prepared for the kind of spiteful laughter that they would give, to any suggestion that we were their equals. All women know the rage of knowing we deserved a job some phony, back-slapping, yuck-it-up male got, hired by another male, and realizing at some point that there was no objective, moral source to go to, to lodge a complaint. It was not a Frank Capra movie, after all.

A similar shock over the past several years has been to realize the total takeover of what used to be a society, by the corporate world, which now owns it as property. No unified nation, now, with a shared sense of time, identity, what is important--nothing; now only isolated fragments of cable audiences. Whatever we hate, they cheer. Whatever we hope for, they kill. Over the oligarch's media, nothing now but alternating advertising campaigns/smear campaigns. Our own country is like something distant from us, not a place where we live and affect things, but a far-off spectacle of rich people doing whatever they want, against us, and telling the "official" version of it all. We are losing the communal sense of meaning itself, and grow more and more aware of only: when the capitalist is happy, or, on the other hand, when somebody or other is going to suffer retribution. The more corporate everything gets, the more "complete personal destruction of someone who critcizes it well" is used as a routine tactic. It once would have been unthinkable, cruel behavior, discouraged by society, but we decide nothing anymore. TV is now just an irritating blur of quick-cuts, grotesque extreme close-ups, flipping the camera around--brainless, insane, lack of content, no meaning, no end. This is designed to take everything away from us, until finally we can't even think, except grotesquely visual.

It makes you worry that even though everybody in the world, it seems, knows what is going on and is against it, that we just are not even really here anymore. Problems and injustices don't necessarily get solved.

"Whatever we hate, they cheer. Whatever we hope for, they kill." It seems as if that is the modus operandi, all right.

I know what you mean about how we are being manipulated by the powers that be like we are pigs at the end of the trough. The abuse IS that serious. We need our own cameras, our own voices.

Welcome to DU, Hidden Stillness:-)

"other"

followed by 2) election of 2000, and 3) election of 2004.
Can we conclude that at least at DU, this says something about our elections? What?

long enough. We had a chance to fight back - I mean take to the streets and HOLLER- in 2000 and we didn't. 2004 was our reward for acting like sheep. Maybe we've learned, maybe not.

I have a friend who is a lifelong Dem, intelligent, but never all that active. Believe it or not, it was Al Franken's book about the Lying Liars that woke him up and got him angry and active. Before that, he actually BELIEVED the Republicans.

I was raised in a Democratic home and have always believed that my party is vastly superior to the opposition. Not to say that the cited events didn't have an electrifying effect on me, but they did help to confirm what I always knew to be true.

When your a working stiff, it's hard to know what to do. I keep my ears open, work a staying informed, and "Trust No One," in government that is. I no longer listen to the news? on television. Occasionally I'll check in to reinforce my disgust with it all, but, I generally look to the Net for my news. I also come here for some lively discussion and biting satire. Thanks DU(but it's getting a little whinny in here lately).

I stood in my living room and vowed I would never again "just vote." I would do everything in my power to create change.

I was watching on TV when Gulf Wars I began and I became suddenly mortified that I might have to be in a war. Of course no draft happened but the situation made me wonder more strongly about why we do what we do.
Before that, I pretty much took everything for granted. In the years since, while trying to learn, I became aware that my questions and then skepticism were not greeted kindly by a certain group of folks known as Republicans.
Because it takes me a long while to judge things and because I don't see the world in black and white I was told many times to leave my own country. I have difficulty remembering any time when the other political side ever told one in disagreement to leave his/her own country.
As time rolled on it became apparent that many Americans, usually on the right, needed a leader who would do the thinking for them. Since God gave us each a brain I figured we were supposed to use it. I knew which side I was on for being criticized for thinking.
That has continued to this day.

was going to take the rest of my life (ugh) but that there WAS still hope, goddamnit.

The only other epiphany I've had that's remotely related to politics happened in 2001, for some random reasons. I was 22 and I heard a convincing argument from a fellow feminist author who explained why it's pretty messed up that prostitution is illegal anywhere, let alone most of the United States. That had, shamefully, never occurred to me before. And after she pointed out reasons why its illegality makes no sense I went, "you're so right!" like out loud, in a crowded room, and the other audience members at that lecture laughed politely at me.

the beginning of the end.

Been a hard-core Democrat ever since then.

Actually, it was a bit before that when the gingrich congress came in with their "contract on America", but after the lewinsky stuff and the starr investigations, I just freaked. The indispicable, relenting witchhunting and shameless singlemindedness to destroy a president over anything possible, was an outrage I couldn't digest.

I could not believe what I was seeing. The lowest point was when they published the report and put it on the internet.

I was an elementary school kid in the nation's capital, and already I saw riots near my home, read about or seen on TV the assassinations of a Nobel Peace Prize winner and a Senator, the Vietnam War taking a big hit, and observed the election of a president I thought was dubious at best.

Looking back, that was really heavy stuff for a kid my age to know what the hell was going on. It was a good thing because it forced me to be politically aware and look at things from a global perspective.

Thought it was odd that the Bush regime claimed that the anthrax from the first attack had been traced to Iraq, odder still that Bush was supporting the inspectors AND threatening Saddam while amassing the troops. But for me, all the pieces fell into place five minutes into Colin Powell's UN presentation.

You could tell his heart wasn't in it, and he started out by booming, "You will find that this evidence is IRREFTUABLE!" I knew right then that Bush was going in no matter what, but more to the point, I had my answer as to why he was in such a hurry.

He COULDN'T let the inspectors find out there were no WMDs--if they did, he would have no justification for invading. And without an invasion, there would be justification for taking control of Iraq's oil resources, or for establishing Iraq as a point of departure for taking over the rest of the Middle East. And it's been all downhill from there...

:headbang:
rocknation

I turned to my wife and told her if Kerry hasn't lost the election yet, he just lost it now. Is that an epiphany?

"If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter........WHO IS A LESBIAN......she would tell you..."

The statement as it stands by itself is pretty harmless, but in the scheme of things that were going on, the timing and delivery were horrible.

That's like saying "FDR said something bad about the jews. I am beginning to like Hitler a bit more!!!"

As demonstrated by: Iran-Contra deal to hold hostages until the inauguration (courtesy of Ronny RayGun), and the Watergate burglary (courtesy of Tricky Dickless).

Saw it summed up in an op-ed piece on DU way back in 2003. As a prosecutor who deals with evidence in criminal cases all the time, it made it clear to me that THEY are the party who has a demonstrable history of attempting to steal elections. Where there's smoke, there's fire.

Gyre

What an awakening.

...what strikes me in this poll--is the array of individual reactions to political events over the past 4 decades.

...and how the Vietnam era still influences the course of our history
...also the reflection of serious concern about the outcome of the last 2 elections

the first time i really started getting into politics. up to then i was brainwashed like most others into thinking that things like that could never happen. i was shocked. since then i've been obsessed.

It was sometime in early 2001, when I began to read about how the election may have been fixed. I started getting my news from international web sites, places other than mainstream TV and newspapers. My eyes were opened. It was difficult to fully accept the truth at first, but since then there's been no looking back. Since then (and especially after 9/11), I've been trying to open other peoples' eyes as well.

(Edited for spelling)

I had always been into politics, and I followed it all in my early years. I have always been a dem because I was raised with social security and veterans benefits. We were a Roosevelt and Kennedy household...period. In 1987 though, I realized that republicans weren't the financial geniuses they claimed to be. In fact they were robbers.

I took a hiatus from politics in 1992 because I was in college and Clinton was president. I naively thought we'd have no more war, no more depressions or recessions, and we will be living in a dream world. Best damn years of my life.

Then 2000 came, and I realized that there were a lot of stupid people out there. Republicans, Moderates, and Greens weren't satisfied with the near-utopia we had and decided to screw it all up for their selfish gains and the rest has been our disappointing history.

Before the iraq war, I did not care about politics at all. Now, I am more into it than anybody I talk to. So i'd say, the iraq war would qualify

happen twice, but when they got away with it the second time, I decided my life was going to change. Call me hostile, full of hate, meaner than a cat in a gunny sack, filthy talking, full of crap, whatever, but every repuke I discover in my life goes that is there optionally. Hate 'em and all the using bastards stand for! Cut them off at every corner, turn, even in the grocery line... Just wait for the truth to be revealed, and reveal every day what I know and people will read or listen too! Will not back down, will never surrender and every day is a fight!

My foreign policy epiphany came during the Vietnam War, which I first supported, as most young people with relatives in Eastern Europe did when we thought that it was all about "containing Communism." Then I started getting educated, particularly in college, where professors I respected pointed out the illogic of that view. (Durn librul perfessers!)

My domestic policy epiphany came when I was an unemployed Ph.D. and had to work temp at a series of dreadful jobs. I saw what life was like for a huge segment of the population.

(see link in sig line.)

When I saw the Big Picture and realized how immoral and corrupt the bastards are and the lengths they will go for power and greed, I was seriously depressed for several weeks. Now I've morphed into a rabid anti-Bush* Agent of Truth spreading the word to anyone who will listen.

I mean, if outright torture isn't scandal enough to cause a deputy somebody or other to resign or be charged, nothing is.

My parents were moderate repugs and so was I. In 1976 here in CA my mother was working during the primary for President Ford, the other repugs (her 'friends') called her a 'TRAITOR' because she wasn't backing Raygun. It was an awakening for my whole family because we realized how fanatic the party was becoming when your own party called you a 'traitor' for supporting the moderate Republican President instead of the RWinger usurper Raygun. That was the last time any of us supported or voted Repub we all became Democrats after that.

I used to be a Republican, but that pushed me to the Democrats.

Mine was by far the 2000 election. I found it complete crap that the supreme court gave Bush the presidency when Gore had majority of popular votes

human rights in exchange for some illustory votes. This board, the party's selection of Harry Reid, Hillary's waffling, Howard Dean's hedged defection, and the Nassau (NY) County's willingness to endorse an anti-choice Republican (Dennis Dillon) so it could barter for a few votes--all conspired to show me that I was not what Democrats have become: I am simply not craven enough to cave in on my principles for a vote. A sad, sad epiphany.

affiliations. I used to be a Republican. :(

Was a fan of Bill Clinton, but that was only cause my mom was. The election really lit a fire up under my ass though.

exactly why it happened, and, more importantly, why no one stopped it.

Having been in the military at the time of the hostage crisis it seemed to me that Carter handled the situation poorly. There are, like it or not, some things worth dying for. For the hostages and a good number of soldiers that was one of them. The country (Iran) had just gone through the radical revolution a year earlier, we didn't want this to spread through other countries of the region, and the new government was not yet entrenched or fully supported and was very vulnerable; for these reasons I still believe that Carter mishandled the situation.

I knew that Reagan would not have allowed that kind of act of aggression to take place without an appropriate response. At least I knew it until the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, and the details of the Iran-Contra affair started coming out. Imagine my shock when I discovered that the Reagan administration was weak-kneed enough to pull out of Lebanon (not that they should have been there in the first place, but once there...) then to find out that they were selling arms to an avowed enemy and using the funds to support a band of terrorists in our own hemisphere was beyond the pale.

Suddenly I started to question anything and everything that the GOP did and said. Oddly, I have not been too fond of many democrats on the foreign policy scale either. In fact it has occurred to me that we have not had a president since Grover Cleveland that has had a hands off foreign policy. Empire building, meddling, and making the world safe for unfettered capitalism has been the goal of both parties since the days of McKinley.

Historically it is the democrats that have looked out for the working class in our nation and that is the primary reason I am a democrat. This is in spite of the fact that I am rather conservative on social issues. I happen to have one of the worst senators in America, this side of Joe Lieberman, in the person of Herb Kohl. He's an economic conservative, a social liberal, and foreign interventionist; there may not be a more despicable type in politics. These guys are even worse than Bush IMHO. At least Bush makes no false pretense as to what kind of scum he is.

before this wafts away into the DU archives...???