Your First Political Impressions In Life

I had an interesting conversation with friends the other night, and thought it would be fun to do here too.

Basically, how old were you, and what events do you remember, as your earliest impression of politics?

For me it was when I was in grade school and Nixon resigned. I remember the war, and the draft, and worrying if my older brother would be sent to Vietnam. I remember not worrying so much that he would be killed. I worried he would be captured and tortured and I didn’t understand why the government would do that to him, or my family. Then hearing the President had been involved in a break in at Watergate, and was resigning. I thought that the republicans were lying, cheating, killing assholes.

Second half of the question is, do you think you are still basing your political beliefs on what you first thought as a child?

I would say yes. I’ve grown to see the dems have their issues too, but I see them as very different issues. I see dems love to use the “I am smarter than you, therefore I know what is good for you” approach. Irritating, a bit dangerous even, but no match for a republican saying “I’m armed, and God is on my side.”

 

mine a are a bit more impressionistic. I remember asking my parents who the NDP were, and they didn't want to talk about it.

Later I remember moving to the US and cheering for Bush/Quayle in a failed attempt to fit in.

The Canadian kid never fits in.

I did cling to right wing ideals for a long time, and still do in certain areas, like gun rights (I think the constitution is clear on individual ownership but I believe registration and regulation is necessary), abortion (I don't think a fetus has a right to its mother's resources and the government has no business in a woman's womb), an others.

Although I appear to be a pinko, most of my positions were arrived at using a conservative pattern of thought. Does it go back to cheering for Bush? I don't think so. It definitely doesn't go back to asking about NDP lawn signs.

 

Yeah, in conversation with friends, the pattern seems to be that when there was something big happening as a child, the first impressions last longer. Absent a big event, or a perceived big event, there is more intellectual searching for a foundation.

 

makes sense...

 

I remember when I was around six or seven years old, waking up from my bed at bed time and seeing George Bush Sr. making a speech on TV and I told my mother along the lines of, "I don't like him. He is a bad man." I dunno, for some reason I remember that moment in time every once in a while. I remember sensing that there was something not right about G H B... something about the way he talked and moved his eyes just didn't match well and it was off putting. He seemed like a salesmen to me trying to push something that simply isn't true. That's not just me superimposing what I believe now on what I experienced before. That is how I remember it.

I guess being a kid, you're less tolerant of the BS, and are more open to seeing things as they truly are because you haven't yet been indoctrinated. I always try to go back to that state of mind.


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And ya, what you say does make sense. I do see that a lot. Maybe that's partly why there is so much disagreement.

 

john major got the blame

 

I remember casting my first ballot in a mock municipal election held at my elementary school in grade 5. I voted for a lady whom I would never vote for as an adult, as she is a neo-conservative - but it was my first impressions of how the electoral process works. That was also the year when the 1995 Quebec referendum was held, so I remember watching as the votes came in on tv in the evening and anticipating that the vote would be a NON.

I attended a French school in my youth, so we were always politically engaged.

I started a riot at school once, by rousing up a crowd of kids and eventually the whole school banded together - us as children chanting and rallying up against the administration. The school principal came to speak to us and told us how ashamed she was of us, she started crying and said we acted like animals. I was in grade 6. *shrugs* the French have been tearing up cobblestone street since Louis XIV.

I think I was exposed to an early view of the political world. The French-Canadian school system focuses on exemplifying cultural diversity. Being raised Catholic, I was aware and made conscious of a number of social injustices - one of the reasons why I asked my parents to allow me to altar serve at my church when I saw that only boys were doing it.

Stuff like that.

 

yeah def, I agree about pre-indoctrination time. Kids look to the adults to make things right.

I hadn't thought about this before but all my friends mentioned a bad experience as memoriable, like as kids we just trust, and our impressions are formed by the politicians who are the first to break that trust.

 

September 11 2001.

I was out playing on my bike before that.
Damn, I miss that bike.

 

Kewl, you rebel you! My partner's son was running for president of his 5th grade last year. He was working one night on how to get people to vote for him, and he brilliantly came up with the slogan "Free pizza every day." It blew me away. He reasoned that it was what everyone wanted and he was doing exactly what adult politicians do: promise something that everyone wants with no real hope of being able to do it.

I can't say he was wrong.

 

Yeah 9/11, the day the fairy tale ended. Good point.

 

Hahaha. That is adorable.

 

Not the point I was making.
But, hey ho, never mind.

 

Sorry odon, I misread, I thought you meant playtime was over. What did you mean?

 

No problem.
I can see why you would say that.
I guess my play time was over.
Lots of people are stil politicaly asleep...their "fairytale" or perhaps more fair to say their same paradigm is ongoing.
My personal paradigm changed that day.
Thankfully.
But, I do still miss being oblivious to pretty much everything political around me.

 

I was thinking about this the other day. I remember in 1988 when Bush 1 was running against Dukakis, there was a little boy in my neighborhood that road my school bus, Daniel Hall. We would get into heated debates (and of course neither of us 7 year olds knew what the fuck we were talking about, just repeating our parents and we didn't know why.) I guess at the time I was for Bush 1 because my parents were (actually, my dad has never voted and my mother has been brainwashed by a "church" and has had to be admitted into a mental institution). He and I would yell at each other so much that we would turn beat red. I also remember when I was 5 my dad making fun of Wrinkles Reagan and for some warped reason (that my parents did not teach me) I told my father that he can't say that because you have to have respect for the president. Wow, I wonder what else my public school tried to lie to me about?? LOL.

Those were my first experiences.

 

And the things the schools never taught at all, like the difference between debating an issue and selling a product.

 

My very first concious recollection of anything political that made me aware/care was the assination of JFK at the age of about 7. It was all over the TV. Everyone around me was upset and emotional and I knew something huge had happened.

I don't think I cared much for politics until in 1972 (?) when I campaigned for McGovern. I worked at the local headquarters, wrote uncountable (is that a real word?) handwritten letters to those on the fence, I was that annoying person who went door to door and knocked asking who you were voting for handing out McGovern pamphlets, and smoked pot with the lawyer that ran the whole show. *

* I also did him in the back seat of my parents 1964 Chevy Impala. Does that count for anything?

 

Spreading the love counts more than you realize, hannah.

 

lol hannah you sound like a hoot.

whereabouts are you in maine? That's my favorite state.