How to Change Your Own Mind
I used to be a Republican. Here's a light-hearted look at my political shift, along with some quotes from Varsity Blues, just to keep things interesting.
If you know me now, and didn’t know me before 2016, you’d probably think I was always like this: a rage-filled, bleeding heart, pride flag flying, climate obsessed, composting and recycling Democrat. And you’d be super wrong (except for the flag part).
I mean, for fucks sake, I grew up in Cashmere. My hometown doesn’t have a single stoplight and boasts a population of just around 2,000 residents. Of course I was a Republican. Did I know why I was a Republican? Nope. Did I really know what liberal v. conservative meant? Not really. Did I get a kick out of telling my liberal friends at college that I voted for Bush? Hell yes I did. Was I a Republican just to standout and be different? Maybe.
But let me fast forward to this summer, when my parents very rudely told me that I couldn’t keep storing my boxes of shit at their house (how dare they) and ambushed me at a family dinner with my own belongings. As if I had the space in my Range Rover for these plastic tubs (I did).
I got the tubs home and down into the basement of Stellstone - which is the name of our house - and started to go through them. I shit you not: these tubs held everything from my baby book and a lock of my baby hair (creepy AF, Mom) to newspaper articles about the Gonzaga basketball team from the early 2000’s. A random smattering of my life from birth to college was contained within cheap plastic.
Instead of throwing it all out, like I had threatened when first confronted with this shit, I started to go through it. And that is when I stumbled across a college essay that will haunt me for all of eternity and quite frankly, I’m not sure why I’m even bringing it up. Maybe I need to come clean. This next part is super embarrassing, so be nice to me.
The topic for the essay was what we loved about America. I took the opportunity to talk about how people in Cashmere had improperly judged me because of my last name, assuming I was a snob because my family had money (something a snob would say), and went on to say something about how I was treated worse than the Mexicans. God fucking damnit. When I tell you that I suck, I mean it. What was I even talking about?! I know I’m self-possessed but this was a whole other level of my own bullshit. Apparently, I was a snob and a racist?! Fun. Chill. Love this for me.
The essay did, however, make some good points. I spoke about how isolated I felt at Gonzaga, surrounded by students who grew up in big cities. Being from a small town, these people had no idea what my American experience was like. They had grown up under street lights. I had grown up under stars. They had expensive prep schools. I had pep rallies. When my Mom was taken to the hospital for a migraine, the school secretary knew about it before I even got there because she lived around the corner from us and she cared. We didn’t lock our doors. As kids, we roamed around the orchards and hills, playing outside.
They were outraged by the treatment of migrant workers, but had no idea of the pressures on family farms, what an H2A visa was, or how wage costs were putting generational farms out of business. Likewise, because I had never lived in a city with smog, I didn’t know anything about climate change. There wasn’t much crime in my town, so I had no opinion on policing.
From birth to high school graduation, I knew only of the troubles facing rural America, which were often romanticized. Farmers trying to make ends meet. Family hunting trips to fill their freezers for the winter.
But we’re so much more than struggle. It’s a way of life that few get to experience, and I’m so grateful that I’m in that minority. My small-town American upbringing was like something out of a movie. It was like Varsity Blues come to life.
Playing football at West Canaan may have been the opportunity of your lifetime, but I don't want your life!
So you can imagine my shock when I got to Gonzaga and found out that not very many of us were Republicans. And before that, I wasn’t sure I’d even ever met a Democrat. I’m not kidding.
It was 2004. The school paper tapped myself and Ronny Turiaf to stand in front of the Bing Crosby Student Center and rally people to our political party. I was trying to get out the vote for a war-mongering imbecile, and Ronny Turiaf, one of the most beloved Zags of all time, was campaigning for an unrealistically rich, east coast billionaire. Ronny and I had just been in a commercial together for the University so we had a good rapport. We joked all day about how we each had the better candidate and at one point, he threw me over his shoulder and carried me to the nearby dumpster, pretending to stuff me inside of it for voting for Bush.
A few hours in, he realized that I wasn’t joking around, and that I was truly a Republican. I just remember a look of horror on his face. He said to me, “Lindsey. This can’t be.” Within those kind eyes was a layer of sadness. Like I’d disappointed him. But we stayed friends and he never brought it up again.
College was like that. We’d come back from a party, plop down on the couch, turn on Comedy Central and watch John Stewart absolutely drag politicians. He’d have some hilarious and, come to find out, mostly true monologue about the war in Iraq, the racism of it all, and how Cheney was using it to gain personal power and we’d laugh. My liberal friends would be laughing because they thought it was hilarious how he could deeply cut into the Republican idiocy, and us conservatives would be laughing because of the sheer lunacy of believing such a wild conspiracy theory. Back then, it wasn’t a line in the sand that couldn’t be crossed. It was just a bunch of college students listening to John Stewart’s comedy routine.
But then I went to law school and found myself in an even smaller collection of conservative voters. The 2008 election was during my 2L year and it was me and a bunch of white LDS men (some of them are still my friends) supporting John McCain. It was at this moment that I did my first bit of self-reflection on my politics. If all of the professors I respect, and most of my friends are over there gleefully yelling “Yes We Can” in support of a very handsome candidate, then what am I doing over here with Sarah Palin?
Good moonin, boys! Good moonin! I have been up since the crack of dawn and I had to *ass* you a question.
Can she really see Russia from her front porch?
There were a few female professors that I really looked up to. We were at an event and I ended up drinking martinis with one such badass, discussing the light-hearted issue of abortion, as one does. A male student was trying to challenge her views on the topic when she decided to cut the shit and absolutely destroy this young man. She launched into a well-developed, logical and carefully researched speech about how abortion is racist, classist, and meant almost solely as a tool to keep a certain section of the population poor and distracted so they can’t rise up. And I’ll never forget it. When a brilliant human being speaks, you should listen. When a law professor is citing cases and specific incidents to back up her point, you should listen. it was a chip in my resolve.
Discussions like this made me take a step back mostly because of how I was viewing the world. I was a “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” moderate until I found out that you can’t really, in practice, have your cake and eat it too. Taxes pay for social services and if the social issues aren’t close to being fixed, then we need the money to fix them. Hence: taxes. But that was the rub - I didn’t know how bad the social issues were because they weren’t affecting me. Me - a socioeconomically privileged white woman who grew up in a lovely little town.
I mean, look. Listen. Your daddy was a no-talent pussy, but at least he listened!
Martin Luther King Jr. fixed racism.
Feminism was holding us back from being seen as equals because of all the shouting.
Poverty is mostly a result of laziness - pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
We don’t need unions because we have standards of pay and safety that are already too expensive, which is why everything is made in China.
Trickle down economics eventually reaches the bottom and everyone benefits.
Right? …Right?
You got to be the dumbest smart kid I know.
If you hold these beliefs, then you might think that we can keep taxes low because the government doesn’t need to be spending money on social services. If that’s the case, then fiscally conservative voting practices make sense. And further, if the social issues were minor, then the tax issue was more pressing and as such, I needed to vote Republican and prioritize my fiscal conservative views.
In America, we have laws. Laws against killing, laws against stealing. And it is just accepted that as a member of American society, you will live by these laws. In West Canaan, Texas, there is another society which has it's own laws. Football is a way of life.
But then I took a class on how cities would change the zoning laws in historically black neighborhoods so that only multi-family housing could be built, and the only commercial businesses allowed were liquor, stripping, gambling and the like. Essentially, changing a thriving neighborhood into something much different. HOAs had covenants barring persons of color from buying homes, and lenders charged higher interest rates for Black or Latino borrowers. Chip.
And then I found out that your male bosses and even clients are going to think you can’t tie your shoe because you have a vagina. This one I got to experience first-hand. Super un-fun. Chip.
Ladies, shut up and hold on to your nipples!
And then I learned that billionaire CEOs will buy politicians to do their bidding through lobbyists, cutting regulations and taking out anyone standing in the way of a larger profit margin so they can buy their super yacht. These are the same assholes who made sure the minimum wage didn’t increase along with inflation so poor people stay poor. Chip.
Slowly but surely, one snowflake at a time, my views started to melt away. The social issues are not fixed. Arguably, the social issues are getting worse. And if the social issues aren’t fixed (like I previously figured they were), then tax issues are not more important.
But all this makes it sound like I really sat down and thought it all through. Had some sort of pro and con list. As if I’m some very intentional human being. I assure you, I am not. Changing political parties simply came down to the 2016 ballot. I wanted a woman in the White House and I happen to really like Hillary Clinton, and your boy D. Trump seemed (seems) like he’s probably the least qualified person on the planet for this particular job, what with the raping and pillaging and all the grabbing of the pussies. So, I switched my registration and got to experience losing the election three cycles in a row (two because of Obama and one because of Trump).
I say all this because, look. It’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to admit you were wrong, or didn’t have all of the information, or knew you were wrong and decided to die on that hill anyway - which I have never ever done. Ever. Today. So far.
Also, aren’t I supposed to get more conservative as I age? Am I doing this wrong?
Now, we go out there and we half-ass it because we're scared, all we're left with is an excuse. We're always gonna wonder. But, we go out there and we give it absolutely everything... that's heroic. Let's be heroes!
Like Mox from the cinematic classic, Varsity Blues, said: let’s be heroes. Register to vote. Vote based on the issues closest to your heart, and then sit back and watch the map on CNN get red and then blue and then, oddly, purple in places, for a few days until we’ve all collectively lost our minds, and hope that come January, no one tries to overthrow the capital again.
Stay difficult and remember to question authority.
You did great, Feather. I love the way you express your thoughts 🫣and feelings. You make me proud to call you MY Granddaughter . Love, love love you.🥰❤️❤️
I feel that being able to evolve is a favorable and admirable trait. I hope that this ability to assess and reset never leaves you.