Of Politics and Youth

It’s an old cliché that those who are liberal in youth become conservative with age. In my case I have become more tolerant, lenient, even some would say, more liberal in the ten years since my nineteenth birthday. Hopefully I can make a turn right soon; no one wants wake up at forty realizing that they are living in an organic farming commune in Vermont. I suppose that there are worse things in life than folk singing and groovy drum circles – though this image has long been my vision of purgatory. I believe firmly that though political beliefs can change it is a far tougher for people themselves to change. In my case they go hand in hand.

I went a little (or a lot) to the left in recent years. It was a big leap to go from that sweater-vest wearing, national review reading, insufferably pretentious teenager I was ten long years ago. As a young man I beat a few brows, always favored the sucker punch in debate, and was as complete a party man as my penny loafers would indicate. Being the resident little old man with a teenager’s complexion and the brooding sense of self-importance of a middle-aged man was extremely difficult work for a high school kid.

On the outside, I am sure a lot hasn’t changed. Internally, I feel like my eighteen-year-old self is a curious relic, someone to smirk at in a bemused way, not sure if I am embarrassed of immensely proud. It was so easy then to be absolutely sure in absolutes – I thought I knew who I was at eighteen more than I certainly do now. The gradually process of adulthood has brought more insecurity, doubt, and fear (not in the physical sense), and these things have challenged and molded me into someone different. Now my life is an altered version of that former self. I think I am stronger, certainly more aware, and far less ambitious and self-absorbed (at times this is subject to debate).

I am positive that education had something to do with this. Education can easily change your opinions, but I think it rarely changes who you are internally. For that you need a personal crisis. When your very emotional being, your soul, is challenged to the edge of civility, that’s when you realize the stuff you’re made of. I don’t think I felt grown up until very recently when I looked around and saw so much that didn’t really matter but knew exactly, for the first time in my life, what things really did.

The point in all of this was that when I was a younger man, I believed in political parties and issue politics. Now I don’t. A recent New York Times/CBS poll of the political trends in young people showed that only twenty-five percent of those ages 17-29 identified themselves as Republicans. By the time they’re forty I think these numbers will even out a little. When I was at the lower end of this demographic (now I’m at the very top!), I identified myself as a big R Republican. Now, I don’t agree with most of the party platform. I can say this now without any guilt or sense of disloyalty. My party and I are in a separation period – some day we might file the papers but not just today.

Though I know it is wickedly condescending to say, I actually feel sorry for red meat voters. These are the people who drink the cool-aid of party ideology and don’t realize that the entire game of national politics is one designed to manipulate their passions. I think this is why elected officials feed off the young – why they recruit idealists to work for them and then destroy their humanity sometimes through corruption, but more often, through simple apathy. When you see the wheels of government spinning in the mud of ego and petty corruptions, working hard but hardly making any difference, it’s easy to lose your faith in a system, especially one run by so many loud, boorish, and unimpressive people. Not to mention stupid - I have always been amazed how people confuse a base level of manipulative ability with genius or cunning - especially in politics.

My political evolution, I think, has mirrored an internal personal change, as it was apt to do. I am still embarrassed to some degree by reminders of my nineteen-year-old self. When I am around my parents, who don’t believe in personal change, or when I meet someone, a long lost acquaintance, one who knew me then but has no interest in getting to know me now, this feeling is more acute. They usually say something like “you just haven’t changed at all.” I just smirk. It’s a lot easier, and more polite, so do so than to tell someone how wrong they really are.