With tiny steps across the line

At eighteen I probably registered as a Democrat because, after all, I didn't know anyone who was anything else, and to a young person without much knowledge of history, the Democrats were regarded as not being responsible for the Vietnam War. That conflict had ended in disaster for everybody only a year before, and, growing up in the locus of opposition to it, I had allowed the rhetoric surrounding it to shape my perceptions.

But then I noticed that Jimmy Carter was taking advantage of the peculiar post-pardon atmosphere to push ideas even I thought were impractical if not actually wrong, and I wound up one of the few people in Berserkeley to vote for Jerry ("I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln") Ford. After four more years had passed, I had learned: a) Jimmy Carter was an ineffectual loon, b) most Republicans were more libertarian if not more liberal than most Democrats, and c) party affiliation only mattered on Primary Election Day. So in support of some would-be state legislator whom I have long since forgotten, in 1980 I re-registered as a Republican.

Not a person who embraces change swiftly, I didn't feel like a Reagan supporter at least until his second term, if ever. I never liked Bush and his party-loyal country-club ways. I thought Dole was all right but he hadn't a chance against Clinton's charisma. Bush's kid had as governor of Texas developed a reputation as someone who works across the aisle, and he reportedly had strong personal skills, and was a lot more attractive than that dour son of a corrupt senator from Tennessee; but the Presidency was water far too deep and far too hot for him, and I only voted for him again because I believed in staying the course and besides, when Kerry came out ahead in the Iowa caucuses, it was apparent that the two-faced machine that runs our country had already decided Kerry would be the Democrat fall-guy and so my interest in matters Presidential lagged.

They remain lagged, in that I don't think of GWB as the WPE (not yet: Buchanan, the first Johnson, Harding and Carter are still in contention for my vote, with Carter leading in terms of disastrous consequences in the modern era). Watching the Republican party evolve and turn away from those of its core principles that I care about has also elicited a slow reaction in me. I tend to be patient. Brain-dead ideas such as Constitutional amendments to outlaw flag-burning or abortion or gay marriage don't get my dander up because they are expressions of political fashion and rabble-rousing and have slim to no chance of ever getting enacted. I still believe that a country cannot support humanitarian principles if it is not also prosperous, and so I approve of lowered taxes and deregulation and so on as a general rule. I am also confused, frankly, as to what good reasons people might have to loosen up our laws regarding immigration (which are already much more liberal than in, say, Mexico). So I remained a Republican. But the threads got thinner and thinner. Recent debacles that led to the well-deserved mid-term pounding stretched them unto breaking.

I decided this morning, after facts came to light as to the treatment by our current government of an American citizen who has been proven only to be an ignorant punk: to hell with them. The party that allowed and enabled all this shit can no longer have my name in its lists. I trust the Democrats even less, so they can't have me either. I submitted the form and am now Decline To State.

What factors influence our political associations and loyalties? Many of us like to believe we are all rational beings and that our political expressions grow out of processing our own unique wisdom and insight. But we're wrong. Mostly we are influenced by the people around us. Someone in Orange County and someone in San Francisco may agree about everything - but the former is far less likely to join a left-leaning party. Well, I read the news and so on, but it doesn't often sink in. I have to give credit for this final straw to flesh and blood.