How I became a democrat

Every now and again you find an author who at once reminds you of the commonality of human experience and the exquisite beauty in it.  Michael Cunningham is one of those authors, as are Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates and John Irving. But perhaps the best I’ve read so far – a surprise in meandering bookstore shopping – is Elliot Perlman.

With phrasing like, “you would love the way he sees you,” he at once writes a compelling story and delivers the poetic near truths that our romantic selves imagine real. Near truths about ourselves and the capacity of those we love.

For years, I’ve struggled to explain the drastic change in my political views. Without a single clarifying event or a moment of realization, I was faced with nearly believing that I’m simply a contrarian who prefers whichever viewpoint is currently out of power.

Reading Seven Types of Ambiguity on a long plane ride, I started to think about the why again…

Whatever vestiges of middle-class sensibilities have stayed with Simon, and there are many, it is not these that keep him from Angelique. It is you. The myth of you. So please, don’t laugh at him or Angelique. You have, perhaps become shy around empathy. It makes you uncomfortable now. You can live without it in the elaborately designed artifice that surrounds the swimming pool Simon and I have say by. You really do live without it. Perhaps people ought to feel with more imagination.

These words explain it all in a way. How a once didactic Republican, who held on to the party line throughout a half-decade on an overwhelmingly liberal campus, let herself evolve to a libertarian, abandoning the oughts of social issues and then woke up one day a Democratic, screaming enthusiastically at a John Edwards rally. 

I grew up surrounded by an elaborately designed artifice. One grounded in organized religion. Held up by sermons and Sunday school classes that leveled pronouncements before we even realized they could have been questions. Enabled by an all-white small town high school where no one had all that much more or less than anyone else and no shared tragedy or struggle really touched us.  Delivered by parents careful to shelter us from the quiet desperation of their own lives.

I had no reason to feel with any imagination. It was easy to construct and believe that people who were on welfare, who did drugs, who committed crimes, who wanted and waited, were fundamentally different than me. Easy to accept that they were lazy or selfish or cruel. Where would empathy grow when all the answers were so easily defined in my carefully constructed world?

Welcome to college. Liberals hissed passionately from risers of desks in seemingly every classroom. Professors derided social conservatism as bigotry and foolishness. Everywhere, from flyers to coffee shop conversation, liberal was the presumptive right.

But, I already had my religion, my dogmatic belief system. In the face of their privileged, theoretical politicking, what was I to do but dig in and be a strong voice for the other side?

Which isn’t to say that I didn’t change, that I didn’t evolve my beliefs with everything I learned. From my first gay friends and classmates to a powerful professor who had lived the civil rights movement first hand, I quickly got to asking the questions that I hadn’t realized were up for debate.

Still, I am a stubborn soul. And, college is ethereal and fleeting and not the place to ground real world politics, but rather inspire esoteric debate. I compromised to libertarian, releasing my hold on the Moral Oughts, but holding strong to boot straps and personal responsibility and other myths of state.

Then came Chicago. In many ways the first real place I ever lived. Full of every type of economic, racial and social inequity. Peopled by friends and strangers living authentic and confusing lives. A place where the smartest, most well spoken person you met in a day might be holding out a tattered coffee cup and begging for change.

I wonder how many round trips on the El train it takes to start really feeling with imagination. To give name to all the advantages you started with – from health to intellect to middle income parents to good teachers to white skin to … it’s an unending list.

To realize that even presuming that everyone can or should do it on their own is a conceit of privilege, a denial of even the basic tenets of community. To imagine that we might know what’s right in someone else’s bedroom or relationship or body … almost impossible to reconcile.

The cliché is that if  you’re not a democrat when you’re young, you don’t have a heart; if you’re not a republican when you’re old, you don’t have a brain.

It strikes me – that in my experience anyway – the ability to think deeply and fairly; to understand the world beyond my own experience in it, are mature traits. It’s easy when you’re young to make pronouncements. To judge and decry.

Empathy, feeling with imagination – in a life well lived, these are how we grow.

Comments

[Douglas Nerad]

I often wonder about my own path to the current beliefs I have. I don't know if I could trace them so clearly.

I think if I had to pick an idea that did affect me politically, though, it's the idea of inclusive versus exclusive. Modern Republicans are exclusive; you will go far if you are a white christian male with aspirations of being rich and think because of your current state you are better than others. People who are different are shunned and/or feared. Modern Democrats are generally inclusive; diversity is encouraged, there's a recognition that everyone deserves a fair shake at life, and that we're all in this together.

Both parties have their problems. I think political correctness is left wing facism, for example (something I encountered often at OU, actually). Still, I would rather live in an inclusive community than an exclusive society.

I have heard the cliche of youths being a Democrat and adults being Republicans. I've never really bought into it. I think people of all ages, but youth in particular, are idealists. Republicans often think conservatism isn't an ideal but it is; they want their own utopian worlds to exist.

Blah blah blah. I'll stop now because otherwise I won't stop. It's always thought provoking to read your posts, though, so keep it up!

[Paul Vogt]

Hey,

Enjoyed your blog, I was at OU at the same time. You've come a long way to becoming a liberal, I was raised like you too in grosse pointe, rep capitol of the world. Well now it's all about haves and have nots. kinda sad... Best of luck Paul Vogt