Originally Posted by
rum dick
I actually was a Republican then. As for why I'm not anymore, picture a world where you're a Democrat and Johnny Depp is elected President as a Democrat. And he and his weird friends and family proceed to shit all over everything and all of the other democrats, except for Bernie (he's the Mitt Romney/Ben Sasse in that reality) do everything to enable Johnny's temper tantrums and his worst impulses including and especially being grossly subservient to him.
Now picture Johnny Depp legitimately losing re-election and then doing everything he could to ruin America's electoral system on the way out of town while also encouraging Americans to fight other Americans because he's mad about losing.
No way you'd still be a Democrat after that, right? In fact, you'd probably be thinking wtf is your party thinking nominating Johnny Drop to be their candidate for POTUS in the first place. Sure he's rich, popular and successful but wtf does he know about the world much less the USA.
I don't see a difference between a Donald Trump and a Johnny Depp.
As soon as a piece of shit coddled celebrity rapist took control of the GOP, I reevaluated my worldview and realized I was wrong about a good number of things. I made changes. And the last 4 years have only served to convince me I made the right choice to abandon my old party and my dumb way of thinking.
Tldr - when one party literally becomes Idiocracy, it's time to fucking bail on said party and never look back.
Nice to see that you hate Johnny Depp so much, but aside from that, I'm not getting a lot from the above.
We pretty much had the same identical conversation on NWP, circa 2007. I expressed some conservative viewpoint, you countered it with the exact opposite view, I said something about "liberals like you", and you replied that you were a Repubican.
I remember scratching my head and wondering how a "Republican" seemed to have so many views which aligned with the left.
Of course, back in those days, I was more concerned with whether Nado_Dave was really from Coronado or not, so I didn't put much further thought into it. But I do clearly remember having such an exchange.
Your little Depp alternate-universe story was cute, but it didn't mean much. If your deeply held political beliefs can be uprooted because they nominate one politician you hate, then those weren't your real beliefs in the first place. This is because politics are largely a reflection of your personality and worldview. That doesn't snap-change because you're temporarily unhappy with your party.
For example, let's say Republicans nominated Klaus Jewhater, a neo-Nazi, for President in 2024 to run against Kamala Harris.
I would be very disappointed in my party. I wouldn't vote for Klaus Jewhater. I might even leave the party completely, and join the libertarians or something.
However, you know what I wouldn't do? I wouldn't suddenly declare that all of my previously-held conservative views were wrong. I wouldn't suddenly be of the belief that higher taxes, identity politics, 9-month abortions, and 3-year-old trans women are all A-OK with me. I wouldn't be donating to the Minnesota Freedom Fund to bail out serial rapists.
I would still despise Klaus Jewhater and everything he stood for, but this wouldn't change my core beliefs of right and wrong.
If you really were Republican, don't you think it's possible that you weren't completely wrong for the first 40+ years of your life?
Can you tell us some of your conservative beliefs prior to 2016, and why they're different now?