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I was raised a Conservative Christian. I ditched the Conservativism in 2002/2003, and the Christianity around 2004, and went atheist and deep blue on pretty much everything but guns; I actually left the country for Canada under Bush because I was deep into blue tribe conspiracy theories about 9/11 and stolen elections, among other things. I came back to the states in the Obama years, but stayed deep blue. When the Feminist blast-wave hit my position in ~2013 IIRC, I was initially very concerned and highly engaged and all gung-ho for Social Justice. It took a couple months of actually paying attention for that bubble to pop.
"SOCIAL JUSTICE NOW!"
"Social Justice is vitally important, but some misguided people are doing it wrong, they need to stop that!"
"They aren't stopping, they need to be stopped, guys this isn't the way"
"Wait, why are all the people around me cheering the bad people on and shouting at me, this is crazy, what the fuck is going on"
"Either I'm going crazy, or 90% of my social class has gone abruptly crazy, and I can't tell which"
"Nope, it's them. They're betraying True Liberalism, which we must fight for."
That played out over about three or so months, and I came across Slate Star Codex while trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. I started limping my way back to Christianity around then, but still identified as deep Blue for another couple years, thinking that Social Justice was just a temporary aberration which could be rolled back or corrected. I spent a long time arguing against the Zunger thesis and in favor of Scott's niceness, community and civilization, until eventually I realized that I was losing those arguments because Scott was wrong and Zunger was straightforwardly correct. That destroyed what was left of my allegiance to Blue Tribe, and I've been moving Red ever since.
Thanks, I had no idea about the Early Life part, and only remembered your post-bush moving-to-canada stories.
You've been writing for a long time, is there any chance you still have like 2005 era blog comments? It would be really interesting to see old-you's perspective on events I hardly remember.
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