Truespeak

As some of you may recall, I have a wingnut relative. For approximately the last year, we've been exchanging e-mails discussing what we think is wrong with the other's party. And after a year, I still don't understand him. What makes him think so much differently than me? Then I discovered advisorjim. advisorjim is a frequent contributor over at DailyKos where he writes a diary series called Confessions of a Former Dittohead. In these diaries he explains what it was like to be a conservative and helps to shed some light on the thought process involved. It's been quite enlightening and I would recommend it for anyone with a wingnut relative like mine. Hopefully advisorjim won't mind if I reprint his first entry in its entirety. I think it's worth reading.

It's high time I confronted the chubby, drug-addicted, martially challenged elephant in the room of my political past.  For the first 13 years of my politically active life I was a dittohead.  I know what it means to be the other side.

Now, when I say I was the other side I don't mean I was a Christine Todd Whitman Republican who just doesn't want to face reality.  I was the ruthless little snot you see scrawling graffiti on the bathroom walls of Power Line or Free Republic.

I was a member of the Shelby County Young Republicans.  I protested abortion clinics with Tennessee Right to Life.  I've called women whores.  When I was 18 I had a plan to stop the spread of AIDS that would have made Hitler proud.  In short, I was a `Lil Rushbo.

Over the years, much of the way I view the world has changed.  My best friend turned out to be gay, and I discovered that while it's easy to hate homosexuals, it's hard to hate "Scott".  

As for the abortion issue, that's a little more complicated.  When you're a right-wingnut you have this notion that Democratic women are ripping fully developed fetuses out of their bodies so they can resume their lives of alcoholism and debauchery.  I never met those women.  The women I met were abandoned by asshole boyfriends who refused to take paternity tests, and wouldn't assume financial responsibility for the child.  Faced with the prospect of raising a child on $5.15 / hour with no medical, many of these women made a decision that they later regretted.  But the answer to stopping abortion isn't making it illegal.  It's creating economic opportunity for women, holding dad's accountable, and providing people living below the poverty line with affordable heath insurance.

I have no intended audience for this diary.  I'm not trying to change anyone's mind about any particular issue.  I just want to write about how I got to where I am today because it's cathartic, and I've got a lot of things that I'm sorry about.

If you would like to read more from advisorjim, his other entries include:

How to Annoy a Conservative
Watching Them Make Sausage
Rush Limbaugh--Hypocrite
Firing AK-47s in the Glass House
Why We Hated Sean Hannity
The Whole Made Up Social Security Thing
Beating the Dead Horse
Why We Hated Clinton...So Very, Very Much
Love Story
...And Knowing Is Half the Battle
The Soft Racism of Personal Responsibility
The Expanding Mushroom Cloud of Democracy

As I read advisorjim's diaries, I'm surprised at how much he reminds me of my relative. Hopefully you'll enjoy these as much as I have.