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When Did You Start Really Paying Attention?
That’s a question Sundance has asked in a essay at the Conservative Treehouse. Here’s a quote:
Think back… So, you are living your life, doing what you and everyone familiar to you are doing in the ordinary and regular way of living your specific life.
Perhaps you paid some attention to the political comings and goings of things, perhaps not.
Perhaps like most comfortably invisible people you were just putting one foot in front of the other, and generally doing the day-to-day things that most would consider ordinary.
Then one day, for some unknown and likely not that consequential reason, something caught your attention. Something piqued your curiosity; perhaps you noticed something you wouldn’t ordinarily have noticed. Perhaps you heard something, or saw something, or were just in a situational space where something itched your brain as you looked at something, heard something or noticed something that just didn’t quite fit or sit right.
I’ve thought some about this question myself because I recognize a substantial increase in my attention, even to the point of passion, that I had never had in my lifetime until recently. The passion I refer to is my sense of patriotism in my devotion to the ideas behind the creation of the United States underpinned and documented by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist writings, and our history.
I think the first thing that got my attention was the intelligence work that led us to engage militarily in Iraq after 9/11. Not a big deal, but it did make me wonder if our President was getting a true picture.
Then through those years, in the first half of that decade, I was distressed by what I thought were abuses in the financial transactions taking place in the real estate markets. I think I noticed this because so many of my family members were in the real estate sales business and the fact that they dealt quite often with customers with Latin-American backgrounds and my own work background had been in banking. Then we had what is called the 2008 crash, and I saw the results of some of what I thought I had been seeing. But most of this so far does not reflect a big change in the political picture.
Then we get the Obama election, Obamacare, and the shenanigans associated with how that bill was passed, and then Pelosi showing she didn’t even know we had a Constitution and saying we have to pass the bill to know what is in it. I got interested in the Tea Party, and when I moved to Utah, I got involved in Mike Lee’s initial campaign for the Senate.
A lot went on over the course of two Obama terms, and in 2013 I joined Ricochet and had an opportunity to hear others and express my thoughts and learn a lot. Trump entered the scene and caused much ado in the campaign, and he was elected President.
I have often called what happened over the next four years “The Great Reveal,” and this is when I really recognized just how corrupted our political process and institutions had become.
So, there it is, my answer to Sundance’s question.
Others may add your answer and/or any other commentary relating is welcome.
Published in General
I have always followed politics and been interested in political philosophy, BUT following 9/11, when I observed how many Americans…some quite prominent…seemed to react by despising their own country, and, indeed, their own civilization, I started paying attention a lot more, writing, and contributing to good candidates.
After Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. Because I know a little bit about how police use of deadly force incidents are investigated, I didn’t worry too much about it at first. Then I began to notice how the story was being reported by the news media and how it was being used by the president. I was being lied to, and not accidentally but deliberately, by those who had to know better.
It was a very unsettling feeling— as if the floor under my feet had turned to jello.
I was apolitical through most of my twenties, too busy doing twenties things. Obama’s second term and the rise of Trump really woke me up.
Despite being apolitical, I always hated welfare scum, and my parents usually voted Republican. The first election I could have voted in was the 2000 election, but I wasn’t feeling what Bush was selling. Something about Republicans seemed off to me, so I never voted. I grew up in the MTV “Rock the Vote” generation and always thought that stuff was hokey nonsense. I never believed it was your duty to vote. I’ve always believed that you should do your homework before committing to anything.
I have been diabetic for almost my entire life, and my insulin prices really started skyrocketing in the early 2000s. Obama made sense to me. People need medicine to live, a legitimate function of government is the safety of its people, so government should pay for it.
We socialized medicine even more than it already was, options decreased, and prices got even worse. That led me down the road of free market economics. I found some Thomas Sowell videos, and the rest is history. I guess I was always a free market guy, but Sowell really helped me understand that everything, including housing and medicine, is a commodity. They do not operate under separate economic laws.
Trump wasn’t a total free market guy, but he wasn’t pumping third world socialist rhetoric, so I voted for him. My insulin prices dropped dramatically during his administration as a result of his deregulation. And a lot of the stuff he was saying made sense. He was sick of politicians and their wars like I was. He promised to vet immigrants, which makes total sense unless you’re completely insane. I think there was one month in France where Muslim terrorists blowing people up was a weekly occurrence. All that stuff resonated with me and I absolutely despise all of the people that hated him because they really hate me. “Flyover country.” No other Republican was talking like Trump so I pulled the lever for the guy.
I’ve been much more “aware” since 2016. My only regret is that I didn’t wake up sooner. There is a certain bliss in being ignorant, but I also believe that it’s a moral duty to seek knowledge to be a better citizen of your town, state or country.
It depends on what we’re paying attention to. I started paying attention to politicians having evil policies when I was a kid informed by his parents that Bill Clinton was pro-choice. I started paying attention to politicians being lawless lying scum during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I started paying attention to double standards and media bias in high school when I noticed it on CNN.
I started paying attention to outright dishonesty and political myths when they lied about the WMD in Iraq.
But I didn’t start paying attention to how incredibly bad and corrupt the elites are in general until the Trump era.
The epic levels of corruption and illegality in the 2020 election made me start paying attention to the fact that a whole lotta the world might not be what we’re supposed to think it is.
Wow, four comments presenting very different things getting their attention to corruption in government and some insight into who doesn’t care about the ideas behind America’s founding.
It is kind of astounding how wide spread the corruption is, it touches everything.
I came out of the womb Conservative and aware.
I was in My single digits and My Family called Me “Alex P Keaton.”
When I was a kid I would stand whenever President Reagan was on tv.
My Family thought I was weird.
I would have said—prior to that moment—that I absolutely cared about the ideas behind America’s founding, but also that there was no contradiction between being a patriot, a history buff (real history, not the Howard Zinn kind) the wife/widow of a police officer and being a Democrat.
That illusion was far easier to maintain before …2014 or so?
I’m not sure when I started waking up, but January 6, 2021 was a significant milestone. When I saw that America had become the kind of country where people could be rounded up, jailed, held indefinitely, and then tried in kangaroo courts merely for protesting against the party-in-power, I knew we as a country had reached the point of no return.
I recall saying to a much younger and more politically astute friend that once we had vaccines for covid that things would quickly return to normal. He laughed and told me I was an optimist. He was right. Covid was instrumental in Trump’s undoing. He played right into the hands of his enemies (and ours) with Operation Warp Speed and was unable to extricate himself.
I had been a conservative and Ricochet member long before that and thought that I was pretty aware politically. I listened to conservative talk radio -Rush, Hannity, and others. Somewhere in the whole covid mess and the 2020 election, it began to become clear to me that things were much worse than I had ever thought. It is more than just Obama and a small cadre of malefactors.
I was in the USAF and flew in the area of Iraq (Northern and Southern Watch) and Kosovo (Allied Force). How those operations were run opened my eyes to the mismanagement of the application of force by those on high (meaning those not in theater).
You think it’s definitely known that Iraq didn’t have WMD that were moved out of the country?
What about stuff that’s been found more recently?
The lie to which I refer was that no WMD were found in Iraq. I’m aware of at least 5,000 WMD that were found in Iraq.
Oh, okay. I would have worded that differently.
I think that was the year things reached a tipping point; both parties believed that the Democrats had achieved a ‘permanent majority’ in what was now a center-left country after Obama’s re-election, but they were still feeling things out up to that point (the Democrats in tearing off all masks, the Republicans in trying to move to the center and kneecap the base under the assumption that they had nowhere else to go). In 2014, everything started feeding off everything else, snowballing into something that could no longer be overlooked or ignored.
It still took me a while longer to realize the extent to which previously centrist or right of center institutions like defense and intelligence had become thoroughly corrupted, however, that only became obvious to me during the Trump administration.
Sounds sort of simplistic but I started getting turned on to conservatism back during Buckeye Boys State in 1964 when the American Legion gave each of us a copy of None Dare Call it Treason. Of course it was written for simple minds (like mine) but it didn’t stop me from going back to school for my senior year and putting up Goldwater for President stickers all over my wall locker.
Since then my conservatism has been somewhat more refined. I can usually tell which politicians are the real deal and which ones are blowing smoke (which is the majority). I’ve also learned that sometimes we need to accept some who may not be so ideologically pure.
I think I was born contrarian, skeptical and cynical. When I young I read a book about sheltering income from the IRS (hint: race horses) and the die was cast. I never trusted that Alex P. Keaton, but he did make me laugh.
I remember the line from “Summer Girls” by LFO. I only understood some of the references in that song. I was an mk in Africa.
For me I think (but it’s not true) that my eyes were opened by the 2020 election. But it goes back farther than that, to the CIA’s Russia conspiracy and attack on General Flynn. But it goes back even farther than that, to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The day of 9/11 there was shooting in the night sky over Kabul, and I thought, Ah ha! They’re getting the guys back with a retaliatory strike, but it was little to nothing, and it was reported to have nothing to do with the hijacking, and it was quickly expunged from the news.
But it goes back further to the Gulf War, in which we — strangely to me — invaded a country, planted a flag at the capital, then turned around and walked out.
But it goes back further than that, to ’92 when GHW Bush invaded a country that wasn’t threatening the US or any ally, invaded it altruistically, as the world’s responsibility, and according to a coalition of the concerned nations who felt it was their duty to liberate an oppressed population, and this was when GHW Bush declared a new paradigm for international relations, a New World Order. That’s when I first thought things are going south.
But it always starts with little things.
There is an incident that sticks in my memory. It was during the 1996 election. There was a news story about Clinton campaigning I think in New Orleans. A young woman supposedly ran up to the president to confront him about his abortion position. After speaking with him, she told reporters she felt better and would consider supporting him.
And even back then I was thinking, “No way does the secret service allow a random woman to run up to the president at a campaign event. This story is too contrived. It had to be fake.” But no one questioned it. The media were promoting an obvious campaign stunt as straight news.
It was from an early age. My parents were both involved in Republican politics from the time I was born. My grandfather was involved in politics from the time I was born. My grandfather’s father was involved in politics from the time my grandfather was born. Those politics have been in the Republican Party in the south for over a century.
Those politics have been pro civil rights, anti-interventionist (which gets slurred with the label isolationist), anti-free trade, and pro-industrial policy.
I’ve considered what is published in a newspaper to be lies. When you go to meetings where no member of the press is present, but then read in the newspaper an account that is so absurd, you realize the integrity of the press is nil. You also realize the press are lap dogs peddling fiction of a particular group.
I wasn’t much interested in politics until the Iraq War. I was getting into arguments with people who were supposedly spiritual but were incredibly Leftist at the same time. I could tell our values were far apart, and I decided it was time to clarify my own values, my positions regarding politics, and how deeply I wanted to investigate the U.S. history and our story. And here I am.
I was very Libertarian prior to 9/11 and paid attention more to economic issues than political ones. 9/11 got me involved and made me more conservative. Iraq and the handling of the financial meltdown made me skeptical of the Federal government.
When Nixon opened up US trade with the Chinese Communists, I thought, he should not have done that.
Thereupon, a great many acquaintances rhapsodized about how wonderful this trade and these business opportunities were going to be; that China had made everyone equal and that was great even though there had been costs; that we had so much to learn from them; that unification of Taiwan with China surely would come soon. I heard all this and thought, this is exactly like that movie where the woman hears something on the radio and defiantly flips up her jacket lapel to reveal a Nazi swastika pin.
Then Clinton sold some technologic secrets concerning our ICBM controls, to whom? To China.
So, yes, it was impossible not to pay attention when Obama went on vacation from college for a month or so in Pakistan. Pakistan? – then had an inexplicably meteoric political rise, having launched his career in Bill Ayers’s living room. Bill Ayers? Then in a campaign speech he promised fundamental transformation of the United States of America!! The crowd of idiots went wild with delighted happiness at this great news. Sometimes I wish I could stop paying attention.
So the question is, politically speaking, when did I hear something or notice something that just didn’t quite fit or sit right?
It was probably in the mid-1980s, when I was about 18. I can’t recall whether I first noticed Black Privilege, or first noticed feminism. These occurred at just about the same time.
By Black Privilege, I mean the so-called civil rights ideology that claimed to oppose racial discrimination, while in practice is openly discriminated on a racial basis against whites, and especially in favor of blacks. (To a lesser extent, this ideology also benefitted other non-whites.)
Feminism had the same problem presented by the Black Privilege ideology — openly discriminating against men, while claiming to oppose sex discrimination. The feminist ideology was also, quite obviously, at odds with basic human biology, working in opposition to children and the traditional family.
The racial ideology of Black Privilege was less obviously at odds with biology, because it was not necessarily a fact that there would be significant differences in the distribution of important human traits and characteristics between different racial or ethnic groups. Empirically, this appears to be the case with respect to some groups and some characteristics. The most notable and important racial differences appear to be the black-white differentials in intelligence, promiscuity, and criminality.
I remember I guess 1968 when the Black Panthers or some right-fisted group came to our elementary school auditorium and gave a half hour presentation on Black Power. After speaking, five minutes was given to a guy in a head dress representing American Indians saying that they were going to use Red Power because Black Power seemed to be working so well. As a child I thought this was stupid to be following the leader (don’t be an also-ran hanger-on-er, come up with your own motto) and also it ran counter to any peaceful solution to anything. (This was before Indians discovered ancestral casinos.)
I started, what I thought was, “paying attention” when I was in college. A typical Lefty professor had indoctrinated us into the premise that all that was bad in the world was due to the United States and Capitalism. One weekend at home and discussing the Soviets with my father brought that flirtation with the Left to a screeching halt. From that time on, I could pick up on the bias in every institution: the news media, education, the bureacracy… once seen – it couldn’t be unseen.
Unfortunately, the second revelation in my adult life probably occurred during the time of the Tea Party and its squashing by the GOPe. The last few years have been truly depressing. Where I learned when I was young to be on guard against the perfedy of the Left, these past four to six years have revealed to me the perfidy on The Right. They’ll never secure that border, they don’t want those jobs back here, they’re fine with ‘The Great Replacement’, they’ll cut any entitlement I’ve paid into before they ever cut back on the payroll in DC. I actually drank the “W” & Romney/Ryan Kool-aide and I’m embarassed as can be about that.
I feel like that guy/crew in a sci-fi movie where the gravitational system gives out and everyone and everything is floating around, trying to grab on to something fixed.
As far as the PTB cutting entitlements we have paid into: it sure is fishy regarding the great concern over Soc Security running out of monies soon, while there is rarely any concern about how unlimited the funds are now or for far into the future for the hordes of illegal immigrants allowed in.
Don’t feel too bad, most of us are right there with you. With the same koolaid moustache on our upper lips too. I came out of the 90s hopeful, but that all was squashed about the same time you describe.
I think the first awareness I had was as a kid in the 80s watching Phil Donohue or the Morton Downey shows. It wasn’t fully formed, but I do recall frequently siding with those I was meant to disagree with. Then came Rush and I was aware.
My awareness of the hollowness of our institutions and elites didn’t come until Tea Party days, but I had started to gather data I couldn’t yet contextualize. Fiscally conservative but socially liberal, always acceding to the latter and never achieving the former. No hill worth dying on. Chasing the moderates, always just out of reach to our left.
I red-pilled in July of 2014. Tony Palmer, an evangelical Christian and friend of Pope Francis, died in a motorcycle accident. What struck me was that Palmer and his family had wanted to come into full communion with the Catholic Church prior to this accident, but was told by the pope that this was unnecessary. And then he died. Seeing my pope saying and doing this was almost unbelievable. Knowing that the pope could do something so unbelievable made me skeptical of almost everything.