When I Was a Commie

The old me from decades ago, the young me, would have loved seeing the degree to which leftist politics has become the universal article of faith among the media and in Pop Culture.

Back in the old days---and even until about ten years ago---I was very much a leftie. Moreover I was super politically minded, much more than most people my age, including even most of my friends who were also lefties then, and who are still lefties now.

Most of my cohort were too busy doing the practical life things, or just having fun and enjoying their youth, to get too concerned about politics in such detail. Even the ones active in party politics didn't suffer the angst I did worrying about elections, and wondering if the D-party would make ground or lose ground in the great long struggle against conservatives. It felt like a life-and-death struggle to me. My entire psychological health was at stake.

Activism was out of fashion when I was in college. It was not cool to care about anything that much. The leftie activist crowd was a tiny subculture on campus, looked on with pity by most kids who just wanted to do their own thing.

I was never a full-on communist. I knew the Soviet Union was not the model for us. But in the way American leftists are in general, I was sympathetic to communist philosophic ideals. I believed the ideals of communism were achievable within our liberal society if the American people just became aware of the problems, and embraced the correct values, the way Europeans had been doing for decades (and as many Europeans in their generosity of spirit never cease to remind us).

I would have loved the opportunity to be an activist like the kids today have on any campus across the country. I would have bought into the whole package. I would have joined in with the protests, and would have become one of those bold voices speaking out on behalf of all the important causes--anti-racism, feminism, rainbow pride, class warfare.  I would have leant my support to boycotts and pressure campaigns for corporations to adopt the proper symbolism in their marketing. I would happily have lived with the knowledge that giant tech corporations were actually on our side in the war, helping to eliminate the toxic voices in opposition to good social values. I would have pointed out that the media is still "right wing" because they tolerate a balance of voices by allowing conservatives to present their case.

Most especially I would be into all the save-the-planet causes. I'd be one of those dour folks who remind everyone how the human species is destroying the earth. I'd frown at jokes about recycling and bans on plastic straws.

When I was college in the Eighties, environmentalism was treated as a quaint legacy of the hippie era. In 1988, during my senior year, I took a class on environmental ethics from a professor in the earth sciences department and got "turned on" to things such as deep ecology. It was well-timed because for various reasons, at the end of the George H.W. Bush administration, environmentalism leapt out of obscurity to become a recognized cause again.  I was delighted with this development, and embraced being a "greenie" for much the Nineties, righteously announcing my views to anyone who would listen.

This perspective gives me a great deal of empathy and understanding with today's youth, which is being pulled into almost universal embrace of leftism through Pop Culture messaging, academic indoctrination, and above all, the desire to belong to the crowd. When one is young, it is the worth thing in the world to be ostracized or excluded. The left knows this principle very well.

There is a fragility in this, however.  My cohort was supposed to be conservative, and in many ways we are. But if I had to describe the center-of-gravity of the ideology of my high school and college classmates (at least I was last exposed to them on social media), I would say it is pretty much the one conveyed by the television show M*A*S*H, which in Colorado was shown every night after the evening news in reruns.

From this t.v. show above others we learned what it meant to be a decent person, and how this was reflected in politics. Conservatives are stupid idiots, we learned. They are almost another species from us, and thankfully they will fade away in time, being replaced by better characters with the right values. Even Major Hoolihan became a liberal by the end of show, having seen the light about feminism. There would have been no way for her to remain a sympathetic character to the audience without that migration.

I can't stand to watch returns of M*A*S*H at all now. It seems to be to be a constant drumbeat of cloying sentimental political messaging. Once you've been deprogrammed, you can never go back.

The pull of this ideology is so strong among my age group that it has pulled in many people who were conservatives back in the day---the people whom I did not understand at all. Former fundamentalist Christians who argued with me over my school newspaper editorials about evolution now are among the first to turn their Facebook profile images into multi-hued pride statements when the moment demands.

The old libertarian crowd---the Ayn Rand readers that I never felt connected to---have also found a way to embrace the suite of leftist ideologies, even as they cling nominally to their copies of Atlas Shrugged. My impression of their viewpoint is that first we need to get rid of racism/sexism/bigotry and heal the earth (because that's what science says), albeit keeping our eye on liberty as we do so. Then we can all rally around smaller government and "Go Galt." And above all we must legalize marijuana--a goal not unwelcome by the left, of course.

But who can blame them for wanting to be accepted as one of the crowd on social media? They were often nerdy outcasts back in the day. It must be feel good to be welcomed by the herd as allies in the war against the foul-mouthed Bad Man and his followers.

Thankfully when you get older, being ostracized by your former crowd doesn't hurt as much, if at all. It makes social media untenable, but one realizes that it is the price of thinking for oneself. To be honest, it would seem weird for me to be in synch with them. The most painful part was disconnecting from them one-by-one, but that is a process that is now pretty much complete.

Besides I know I'm not the only refugee from the old left. Already there are probably clandestine ones that I don't know about. Once you've been labeled the "bad guy" by the crowd, a certain freedom sets it.

Based on what I know about myself, and how my life has gone, I fully expect that in time there will be a stampede away from the current cult of crypto-communist-sympathy among my peers and even the younger generations. It seems unbreakable at the present hour, but things change. Oh, how they change.

By that time, whether this year or years from now, if I am still around, perhaps I will be in a very different place than I am now ideologically. I know I can never be a communist again. Given what I've seen so far, I'm doubtful at this point that I'll ever see scientific evidence and a coherent theory of atmospheric physics that would convince me that something dire is happening to earth because of human activity. But if anything has been constant, it is my ideological evolution over time. At that future moment, having evolved into whatever beliefs I will hold then, perhaps I will be unable to communicate with the refugees from the current left in words that would bring fellowship again, even as they will agree with the current me. But no doubt I'll be able to look back at the person I am right now and empathize with them.

One thing I know for certain from the old days, however, is how valuable it can be, when one is in the throes of ideology, to be on the losing end of a landslide electoral defeat. I look at many of today's young people and think how much they would gain from this type of experience. The worst thing that could happen to them longterm would be to win this election. Defeat---not narrow defeat, but a walloping unambiguous one---would build a lot of character for them in unexpected ways  It would be a true education. It is the kind of wisdom from my own youth that I would wish to share with them.