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I'm a decade older than you. Born in 1980. My first political memory is being for Dukakis when I was 7. Not that I really remember why, but I remember my uncle saying he was for Bush Sr. and me very stringently insisting that I was for Dukakis. I remember the first Gulf War, and how even in elementary school I felt awful about it and identified and empathized with the people killed by our bombs.
In fifth grade I asked for and received a subscription to Newsweek. In sixth grade we watched Clinton's inauguration in class. And I remember being so disgusted over the impeachment thing, and especially disgusted by Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America or whatever it was. And, like you, I remember the 90s as the good old days. We had the best music then too. :) Woot grunge alternative!
A very important thing for me in so many ways - the winter that I was 9 my mother and I read all the books in the local library on the Holocaust. I particularly remember For Those I Loved by Martin Gray and a thick white hardback titled Treblinka. Later that year my mother got me into Big Brother Big Sister because she didn't know what to do with me. It's not like the other nine year olds would talk to me about mussulmen and how the Sonderkommando would break the necks of the children who survived the gassing, and I got pretty depressed. I'd look up in the sky on a beautiful day and I'd imagine the smoke curling from the crematoriums.
I could never be a Republican. Not when "Witness" was seared into my nine year old brain. Not when the nightmares that their ideology leads to haunted me from childhood on.
In 6th grade I did a research report on escapes from camps in WWII, and in 8th grade I did another project on WWII. And I've kept reading about Nazi Germany ever since.
So when it came here, I recognized it. At least when I was old enough - I'm sure there were signs in the 80s but I was just a baby, and in the 90s Rush Limbaugh was just getting started (I watched a few episodes of his TV show when I was 13) and the fascists seemed fairly marginalized. But in the days after 9/11, with the bombing of Afghanistan and the Patriot Act - I saw it as clear as day.
It was very helpful to read about your experiences with your family and friends. No one in my immediate family is political or religious and my mother never put any restrictions on the media I could consume, so I have always felt free to come to my own opinions and beliefs and have always been very independent minded. As a result, I find it hard to empathize with people who are indoctrinated and I tend to judge them harshly. I am trying to work on that.
As far as being a big D Democrat - to me it's just a default because the Republicans are worse. I'll vote Democrat as a way to vote against Republicans, but it's not like my heart is in it or like I identify with the party or anything. I have spent my life learning about the world and then thinking and feeling deeply about what I learned, and I've created my own sense of morality and my own philosophy. I am pro-freedom, pro-equality, pro-life in the sense that I think everyone should have health care and education and shelter and enough to eat and a computer and an internet connection, and I want the planet to continue to be able to support life. I know, I'm quite the radical. And so, while I do find like-minded people here at DU and plenty of information and viewpoints and things to chew on and think about and turn over, I don't identify with the Democratic party so much as it's just that it's the slightly less evil option.
I am very very definitely pro OWS though! :)
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