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A while ago, I posted a thread in GBS asking people what their first bad opinions were. It was a fun GBS thread, mostly focusing on people's first experiences with smoking weed or listening to Rage Against the Machine. But I wanted to present it to D&D, and ask when, and how, we first were attracted to bad political ideologies. Its not always the ideologies that are bad, but the juvenile understanding of them. So what was the first bad political ideology you picked up on, why did you like it, what was the catalyst for its appeal, and what have you gained from your initial exposure, even when your outlook has matured?
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Jun 3, 2016 01:45
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i got into libertarianism through radley balko's "gently caress the police" reporting
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Jun 3, 2016 01:48
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The worst political opinions I ever really had was around sophomore through junior year of college (2005-2006), when I had recently switched to a finance major and was convinced that more "extreme" liberals just didn't understand the complexities of the economy and business. But even then I never really became libertarian or anything and still considered myself liberal; I just tended to reflexively dismiss anything to the left of the Democratic Party on the basis of having seen some dumb college activists or whatever. Even during high school I was just a very stereotypical liberal and thought that books making fun of conservatives were the best thing ever.
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Jun 3, 2016 01:54
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For me, my first bad political ideology was my third bad ideology over all. My first foray as a teenager was into hippie mysticism, followed by existentialism. Half way between 15 and 16, my existentialism segued into a resistance philosophy, helped along by Public Enemy. Imagine a 15 year old living in Lake Oswego, Oregon, a couple months after being able to ride the bus on their own, reading "No Exit" and listening to "It Takes a Nation of Million to Hold Us Back" on cassette, and that is pretty much exactly what I was. It kind of snowballed, learning about Native American and black history, and every leftist and environmental cause kind of getting smooshed together into my brain into a heroic story of resistance against fascist mainstream culture. Even though it was silly in retrospect, I am glad I had some type of exposure to the idea of oppression and oppressed people. Even if the hero worship I had for the Noble Lakota was treating them as an other, it is probably good that I cared. Later on, when I found that there was middle class white people who grew up never having a "my culture was evil" experience, I was surprised and wondered how they could have ever grown up without that doubt.
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Jun 3, 2016 01:56
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I was super salty about not getting into the top tier UC schools spring of my senior year and whined about affirmative action Thankfully I grew the gently caress up instead of blaming my failures on black and Latino people
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Jun 3, 2016 01:59
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"Why do black people keep going on about race?"  gently caress I was a stupid teenager.
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Jun 3, 2016 02:25
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i thought bill maher was funny
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Jun 3, 2016 02:31
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Far-left internationalism while I was a teenager for me, with a strong anti-American bend Probably got some converts zeal going on now. I just wanted to live in Star Trek 
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Jun 3, 2016 02:35
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I used to be a libertarian, and then fell into the trap of Enlightenment thought. Now I have good opinions.
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Jun 3, 2016 02:52
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In high school I thought it would be a great idea to go find an Animal Liberation Front cell.
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Jun 3, 2016 03:01
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furiouskoala posted:I used to be a libertarian, and then fell into the trap of Enlightenment thought. Now I have good opinions. How did you fall into enlightenment thought? Did you get a used paperback of the basic writings of either Descartes or Locke at a used book store for one dollar?
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Jun 3, 2016 03:02
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I thought white people weren't all bad.
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Jun 3, 2016 03:03
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Fojar38 posted:Far-left internationalism while I was a teenager for me, with a strong anti-American bend I maybe could have just made this thread with a two option poll, "I was a teenage Libertarian/Socialist"
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Jun 3, 2016 03:03
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I had some opinions about guns in my teenage years. I was required by a couple classes to communicate these views, one to the state governor to pass my government class and another on a web page to pass my HTML class. The latter has been wiped clean from the internet. I'm crossing my fingers the former was never officially filed into some cabinet or database.
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Jun 3, 2016 03:07
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Freakazoid_ posted:I had some opinions about guns in my teenage years. I was required by a couple classes to communicate these views, one to the state governor to pass my government class So you had to give a presentation to the governor to pass a class? Like, he had to come there personally? And listen to a 16 year old lecture him about ARE GUNS? The closest I came to that (pre political awareness days) was when the state Attorney General (who would later be the governor) came to our class to talk about the history of democracy, and I corrected him on the date of the Norman conquest. (He said 1016!)
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Jun 3, 2016 03:19
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I was very much in favor of capital punishment in high school because it "made sense". I ended up writing two research papers on it both sophomore and senior years out of laziness. Somehow, I held this opinion right along with the usual dumb teenage rebellious hatred of "the government". Freshman year of college, I had to write a research paper again, and chose the same topic. However, there were a lot more requirements about sources and such, including incorporating data from Gallup polls. I thought it was weird that there was such a sharp divide in opinions on it along racial lines, looked into that, and came across a lot of stuff on who capital punishment in the US is so hosed up. So hey, at least one liberal arts professor has managed to change a freshman's mind simply by requiring varied sources.
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Jun 3, 2016 03:44
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glowing-fish posted:So you had to give a presentation to the governor to pass a class? Like, he had to come there personally? And listen to a 16 year old lecture him about ARE GUNS? lol not quite. Just send a well written email and get a response from the governor himself and not like his secretary. I did get a response from then WA governor Gary Locke, but it was a month after graduation. I was allowed to pass on time because I shotgunned it to a few state senate/house reps and got a couple responses, which the teacher allowed pretty much at the last month when he realized he was dealing with a lot of procrastinating students plus a lot of procrastinating representatives.
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Jun 3, 2016 03:47
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I was chanting "four more years!" at a Reagan rally. I was 4, but still that's pretty fuckin shameful.
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Jun 3, 2016 04:19
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my first job was in a hospice when i was 16 and it impacted me so deeply that for a while i was into voluntary euthanasia up to the point of literal death panels. now i make sure i have a dnr
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Jun 3, 2016 04:27
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NADER 2000 That's it though. 
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Jun 3, 2016 04:34
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I went through the obligatory libertarian phase. Also, I voted for Joe Lieberman in 2006
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Jun 3, 2016 04:43
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I thought that the media actually had a liberal bias, and that FOXNEWS was the only place to get "The Real News."
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Jun 3, 2016 04:59
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I was a teenage Christian Conservative.
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Jun 3, 2016 05:02
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I had two authors, P.J. O'Rourke and C.S. Lewis. I agreed with them on everything. I forget how.
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Jun 3, 2016 05:16
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loving let me count the ways -Libertarian (just gently caress me) -Climate Change denier (This one I'm not ashamed of because my community was very much dial-a-good-cause; they'd find something to suss out and use as An Important Life Lesson, ask us for cash and then gently caress off never to be heard from again. I was a frustrated teenager who had his own issues, so I believed it was yet another fad that would pass. And it even sorta did.) -rear end in a top hat Atheist (I have mellowed out considerably since then, though even back then I thought Maher went too far up his rear end in his Religulous ending speech) -Anti-protest (I have BOOTSTRAPS parents)
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Jun 3, 2016 05:20
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I went to a private middle and high school run by libertarians distantly affiliated with the Heritage Foundation and I figured out by 8th grade or so that it was a lovely ideology for suckers and saw the light of left-liberalism.  Ragnar34 posted:I had two authors, P.J. O'Rourke and C.S. Lewis. I agreed with them on everything. I forget how. Aha jesus. I read LotR in like 6th grade and decided it was dumb and boring
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Jun 3, 2016 05:22
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spoon0042 posted:NADER 2000 I voted for Nader in 2000, when I was 21 years old. But by that time, it was a lot more reasonable of a political decision than the type of things I believed five years previously.
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Jun 3, 2016 05:23
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I was all about Ron Paul for about 3 months in 2007 because he talked about legalizing drugs (which I had never done) and gay marriage legalization. Luckily, Something Awful was there to point out how terrible he is, and I pretty quickly settled into being a big ol' lefty. I'm still not entirely sure how I got to be as far left as I am, because my dad is a solid Republican and my mom is one of those people who like to come across as independent (though she's definitely more liberal than conservative these days). I blame this website, my religion, and growing up in a liberal college town. I distinctly remember being annoyed that my parents voted for Bush in 2004, and that was when I was 13.
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Jun 3, 2016 05:40
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Yoshifan823 posted:I'm still not entirely sure how I got to be as far left as I am, because my dad is a solid Republican and my mom is one of those people who like to come across as independent (though she's definitely more liberal than conservative these days). On the other side of this coin, part of why I became an "actual leftist" and came to dislike liberals is that my dad is an extreme fervent liberal and I came to notice that his views weren't really any more well thought out that those of conservatives. This isn't to say that the things liberals and conservatives believe are remotely the same (liberal beliefs are obviously still better, mainly because they come from a more moral basis), but I noticed that he (and the liberal blogs and pundits he would read) seemed to care more about owning conservatives than actually evaluating and defining their own beliefs.
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Jun 3, 2016 06:23
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I was furious when Gerhard Schröder's SPD defeated Helmut Kohl's Union in the 1998 Bundestag elections and replaced him as chancellor after 16 years. I was 10 at the time, averse to change, grew up in deeply conservative Bavaria (even though most of my family voted Greens) and Kohl had been the only chancellor I'd ever known. I still dislike Schröder, though for other reasons, and now I see why it's maybe a good thing for a chancellor to be replaced after 16 long years
System Metternich fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 06:46
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For a while I thought socialism in one country was a laudable goal.
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Jun 3, 2016 06:49
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I carried a copy of 1984 around in middle school, praying for a teacher to call me out on it as being too adult or anti-establishment or something. Of course, when I was actually sent to the discipline office for not standing up for the pledge of allegiance I was too chickenshit to follow through, but I sure was indignant about it! Being a teenager under GWB was bad, I can't imagine what it'll be like for all the little left-wing 13-year-olds if Trump gets elected.
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Jun 3, 2016 06:50
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liberalism and all that went with it until about six years agocomes along bort posted:For a while I thought socialism in one country was a laudable goal. yes but what was your bad opinion
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Jun 3, 2016 07:51
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I voted for George W. Bush in 2004
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Jun 3, 2016 08:08
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Homework Explainer posted:yes but what was your bad opinion I think he's saying that there's either a global revolution or none at all
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Jun 3, 2016 08:29
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Jagchosis posted:i thought bill maher was funny
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Jun 3, 2016 08:36
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I had a brief flirtation with Fascism in my early teens. In my late teens and university years I dropped that and got heavily into Objectivism. This was my own pathetic teenage rebellion, having been raised in an extremely left-wing family. I used to get into family arguments about whether all taxation was theft, and whether the poor had a right to free healthcare. Through all this my mum just used to shake her head and tell me that once I grew up, entered the real world and got a real job, I'd realise what a monstrous pit of despair capitalism is and abandon naive and childish ideas about self-interest being best for everyone. Christmas dinner conversation got a lot easier after I realised my parents were right.
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Jun 3, 2016 08:56
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I was a Dawkins-style atheist in my mid teens, with the associated islamophobia
exmarx fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 09:08
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I was never a massively extreme atheist, but I definitely got caught up in the whole Dawkins/Hitchens wave of new atheism, of evangelical atheism, which was probably really boring for other people but I didn't really get into the Islamophobic elements of it, Islam never really seemed any more or less bad that other religions. I'm still an atheist but I'm much less interested in telling other people. In my late teens it was fair to say my political ideas were under-developed & what I lacked in knowledge I made up in fervour for shall we say more extreme left-wing ideas. Never quite went as far as being a Tankie, but I had some strong apologia for Lenin & especially Trotsky, & lamented how surely Trotsky would have lead the USSR to utopia. Obviously reading a lot of history books about the USSR did a lot for pushing me back from that stance, such is the curse of knowing more. Other than that, I very briefly thought liberalism was OK but Tony Blair really did his darnedest to remove that error from me.
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Jun 3, 2016 10:36
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I thought we should bring back colonialism, an opinion based on a mixture of starry-eyed naivety, a passion for 19th century literature and an understanding of technology as derived from strategy games. Then someone gave me a copy of King Leopold's Ghost.
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Jun 3, 2016 10:55
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