Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead

[synkr0nized]

[HisDivineShadow]

Yeah Mim, despite our disagreements we've never really butted heads. I think everyone gets concerned over your general well-being too. :P

[Esunasoul]

All must return, world without end.

[Emoore]

[HisDivineShadow]

I remember well our arguments over abortion, and in particular the Terri Schiavo case, largely because I was studying in a grad-level neuroanatomy class at the time.

You were the one who argued that her ability to swallow solid food was evidence of consciousness, I believe.

[Despanan]

First of all, I was never an ultra-conservative.

When I first came to CB at age 17 or 18 I was a largely a-political moderate republican. In college I was a libertarian. At both times I was a Buddhist who was all about balance: politically, economically, religiously etc. I thought radicalism itself was a huge problem no matter what you believed.

I argued for the war in Iraq because I thought the arguments against it were too radical/conspiratorial.

I argued against socialized medicine because I thought it would result in poor care and couldn't understand why people couldn't just budget and buy good care themselves.

I argued against feminism, but only because I saw it as unnecessarily radical.

I flipped on Bush and Iraq because direct observation proved me wrong. I became a moderate Democrat because I thought Obama offered a better chance for compromise than McCain/Palin.

Then I argued with actual radical leftists and realized I had been wrong the whole time. I became an atheist and later an Anarchist as a direct result of those conversations and a number of other things in my life.

I've become a radical leftist because it's the correct position. Period. Honestly, anyone who takes the time to honestly consider the data, and read the philosophy, and pay attention to the world around them would probably come to the same conclusion.

Unfortunately, we're raised from birth to reject the ideas out of hand without ever considering them, and it's hard to break through that kind of conditioning. Capitalism is our culture and it's harder to give that up than religion, honestly.

[HisDivineShadow]

Well so long as we're going on about confessions:

Religiously, I was a Wiccan starting from 8th/9th grade or so.

In high school I was actually VERY socially and fiscally conservative, even though I was never really all that engaged in politics.

I supported social Darwinism because I was filled with nothing but disdain for the lazy assholes I was surrounded by and had a certain sadistic streak in imagining them living in squalor for their own ineptitude and short-sightedness. I was like, 15, and frankly most boys are kinda sadistic at that age. But the major factor was that I became very disenchanted with many of my classmates when I realized how stupid the average person was. Up until this point all of my teachers had thought I was a prodigy and I was insulated from kids who got D's and F's because I was placed in a Gifted and Talented program. Being tossed into a population that had never built an electrolytic reactor when they were 12 was a major culture shock.

I was very much against premarital sex and thought it was tawdry and gross.

I had this incredibly naive and stupid idea that gays were natural and okay, but they shouldn't have sex because ew sodomy.

I was uncomfortable with but tentatively supportive of abortion rights. Though my perspective and justifications on this matter have elaborated, I'm mostly the same on this.

By my junior year of high school I took a western philosophy class and thought Descartes' skepticism was hot shit and was undefeatable: postmodernism ahoy!!!

When 9/11 hit I was of course appalled and shocked by the event, but even with 3,000 people dead and the Twin Towers demolished I could not understand how people went so batshit insane and paranoid. The PTSD we suffered as a nation never really hit me.

By junior/senior year of high school I softened up and became much more affectionate. At the time I credited my religious views (a mix of paganism, postmodern subjectivism, and Zen Buddhism) for teaching me to become more accepting of others and that everyone had their own different and unique destiny in life. Yes, even the not-so-bright people I had once disdained.

By the time I got to Berkeley I became more moderate politically and loosened up a LOT on my former ascetic views on sexuality.

I started to question my religious and epistemological views after cracking open a book on the philosophy of religion. Further research in theology led me to my apostasy and firm acceptance of atheism.

Being exposed to new thoughts, ideas, cultures, and people in a more liberal setting, I realized how much of a smug little jackass I was at age 14. Over time I grew to realize how horrifying my original meritocratic disdain was, and how that same disdain was actually implemented as a matter of public policy by right-wingers.

I was skeptical of investing in infrastructure, but discussions with economists and those who knew their history better than I did taught me the importance of government spending as a matter of investment. Not only was it ethically incumbent on us to build a better society through good governmental management, it is entirely possible because it's been done before and is still existent... we just don't pay attention to the successful socialized institutions.

After graduating I started studying politics and history while working towards medicine. It was at this point that I realized the idea that "With enough guts, hard work, and sheer force of willpower, success is inevitable!" is a simplistic myth driven home by too many Disney Movies and shounen animes. Everyone's success is built upon the security, structure, and resources that a functioning and healthy society provides.

Became much more left-wing, but I still consider myself a moderate because 1) I favor cautious, incremental changes and 2) the term "left-wing" is meaningless in America, since the Overton Window has been pulled so far to the right.

Currently believe that bottom-up changes are the best way to go about implementing change, by maintaining open and honest discussion across the aisle. It was the insularity of my personal views and the whole "political talk is impolite" culture we have that allowed such toxic viewpoints to fester in me in the first place. Seeing Conservatives talk and act now is an embarrassing reminder of who I was when I was a high school Freshman/Sophomore: I had believed that success was only a matter of personal will and natural talent, and it simply became a horrible corollary that failure must be the result of laziness and incompetence, and that those who were poor were undeserving of aid. When I say that fiscal conservativism is an adolescent worldview, I mean that literally... it was MY worldview as an adolescent.

[HisDivineShadow]

[Despanan]

I was surprised by that too, given his views on homosexuality and the fact that WTR had some Yuri in it towards the end.

Btw: I've been meaning to apologize for telling you not to write that into the comic a few years ago Mim. At the time I saw it as adding unnecessary complications to the plot - but I think it may have been latent homophobia on my part actually.

So yeah, sorry about that. I was kind of an idiot back then.

[Phantomgrift]