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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
That sounds important, but I – and probably many other Ricochet members – have no idea who Tony Palmer was or what the situation was.
I grew up in a rural, conservative “gun culture” environment. We cared about High School sports seasons, but our real seasons were: Trout, Grouse, Turkey, and Deer. Buck season in Pennsylvania opened the Monday after Thanksgiving, and most of the school districts in the state didn’t even try to hold classes that day.
Following in my father’s footsteps, I was a one issue voter: which candidate is less likely to try to get my guns? So largely I voted for Republicans because they almost always won on that question. (But not always; PA Dems in the 1960s were socially conservative blue collar union people, and lots of them were fine on my single issue.)
College and my high exposure to the Vietnam-era draft pulled me to the left, but my ‘single issue voter’ status didn’t change. In the 1970s I got married and my revulsion to Jimmy Carter, the hippies and that lot solidified my ‘vote Republican’ pattern.
I endured (barely) the inflation of the 1970s, and blamed Carter for the lousy economy. Reagan’s election win made me very happy, and I remained happy until George H. W. Bush started to squish. I was sad when Bill Clinton was elected because I still believed Republicans would make my life better. I was quite happy when George Bush was elected in 2000. His immediate 9/11 pronouncements of “we must love Muslims because they are mostly good” did not sit well, and my estimate of Shrub declined as he refused to fight for things he should fight for.
I voted for the idiot McCain and the idiot Romney but had no real confidence in either one. The surprise win of Trump in 2016 really cheered me up. But then the corruption in the executive branch revealed itself. That’s when I really started PAYING ATTENTION.
I probably should have known better. I lived in New England and listened to and read Howie Carr from Boston. His book The Brothers Bulger is the best description of how the Boston FBI office was totally corrupt and was doing Whitey Bulger’s work for him.
My mistake was in assuming that the Boston FBI office was unique in its corruption. I now know the entire FBI is corrupt, and in service to something other than law enforcement.
So I guess you could say that I slowly awakened to the complete corruption of the executive branch during the Trump presidency.