(Apologies for the rambling nature of this, it is my first diary, so please be gentle ;-]. Feel free to critique though.)
Well, here I am, having been on DK for a while now, never having written a diary, and suddenly I see that I have a hide button where once there were only a rec button, showing I have TU status, how'd that happen? I can guess it's due to the whole Traitor Joe fracas in which I have been anything but shy regarding my feelings, but thank you all for this. I know this will be fleeting, but I suppose this is the best opportunity to tell all of you a bit about myself & how I got here. There's a lot I'm not very proud of, but I like to think that I couldn't have come to where I am without going through it, so bear with me.
Born and raised in Indiana (and that's as much personal info as I'm comfortable with giving, don't want to be droogie'd;-) ), I started off as a Clinton voter in 91. That was my first vote the year I turned 18, but it was more of an anti-Bush41 vote than anything else. Bush41 raised taxes after his "read my lips" comment, so he had to go in my opinion. A year or two later, I discovered Rush Limbaugh while in college, and thought I had found my political messiah. Here was a guy who preached self-sufficiency, independence, and personal responsibility among other things that sounded great, but I always was hesitant about calling myself a Republican for one simple reason: I had been an atheist since my senior year of high school, and even then I saw that the religious right had a strong hold on the Republican party, too strong for my taste. But I thought that their economic stances made up for the religious nuttery.
It only took a few years and attendance at some young Republican events for me to however realize the inherent religious nuttery at the heart of the Republican party, as well as its inherent racism. (One of the College Reps joked with me that he had put a "Run, Jesse, Run!" bumper sticker on the FRONT of his car while Jackson was running for POTUS. That was the beginning of the end of my flirtation with the Rethugs.) So I went from the Rethugs to what I thought was the party that combined my economic views with a healthy allowance for personal freedom, the Libertarians. They had some good points about bringing government in line with what I saw were it's constitutional limitations, convincing me to vote Libertarian during Clinton's re-election bid. Then the impeachment fiasco hit & believe it or not, I was for impeachment. I bought the line that Clinton had lied under oath, which was certainly worse than a misdemeanor if not a high crime. All the while, I was still a Limbaugh listener, but found myself increasingly turning him off when he got in my opinion too far right. I honestly don't remember who I voted for in the Gore/Bu$h election other than to say it wasn't for Bu$h, if that shows how energized I was regarding the election. To my shame, however, I swallowed every lie the right spewed out about the Florida mess, only realizing how much I had been had in the last couple of years. Then came 9/11...
I woke up to my alarm clock telling the news of what was happening, and I thought I was dreaming until I came out into the living room and saw the towers burning live on TV. I sat transfixed in front of the screen for the entire day, pausing only to make frantic cellphone calls to my friend whom I had helped move to New Jersey for a NYC job less than a month prior (She was OK, but still is a bit shaken over it.). I was filled with anger, fear and rage: Who had done this, and how could we get them for what they had done? When the news cam that it was bin Laden's group and that they had safe haven in Afghanistan, I was all for the invasion, still am in all honesty. What I was (and still am) against was the utter ineptitude of it, letting the Taliban get away cleanly and letting bin Laden hole up wherever he is. With that quagmire accomplished, the war drums started beating for Iraq, and even in my Limbaugh-induced haze, I could see that Iraq had zero to do with 9/11. After hearing Limbaugh make another bald-faced lie equating the two on my way back to work from lunch, I turned him off and haven't listened to hate radio since. So began my journey from dittoland to here.
I began to do some looking on the net for alternative news sources and with unknowing help from my lefty buddy, discovered DK among other places, found Michael Moore and while I don't agree with him 100%, I do support him. I created a DK account (#117019 for those who care), and mostly lurked, commenting here & there, but never writing a diary because by the time I had an idea, somebody else had already written something that I largely agreed with, so I rec'd it & moved on. I voted straight Dem both in the midterms & in this election, but something about the current Lieberman/Nader kerfuffles really got me steamed & I just let loose. I guess I have a lot of folk that agree with me because that's how I got TU status. I doubt I'll even use the HRs, somehow knowing that they're there makes me less likely to actually use them, however weird that sounds. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask in a comment & I'll do my best to answer them, assuming they don't compromise my identity.