As for why I was listening to conservative talk radio (🤢) in the first place, that’s all the play at my job. I usually tune it out but can’t use earbuds for safety reasons and I’m not high enough on the totem pole to change the station. I won’t specifiy the exact program because I believe it’s regional.
I’ve been excited for Alex Garland’s Civil War for months now. A24’s been killing their drama films recently and it’s been refreshing having what I thought was an unapologetically left-leaning major media studio who’s found success through authentic, grassroots support. After hearing what felt like four ad reads for the movie in an hour and knowing that means A24 paid money - gave direct financial support - to a show that, amongst other things, spends hours a day promoting bigotry, Russian propaganda, and J6 apologetism, has ruined it for me.
Am I just overreacting here?
It was definitely a journey and I know lots of things had an influence. Probably some that I didn’t even recognize were impacting me in the moment.
I can tell you that friends made a large difference. No one has more influence on you than someone that actually cares about you. So having several friends that cared about me despite my warped viewpoint was probably a fundamental fulcrum for shifting my views.
I also had the opportunity to befriend a lot of people who are often “othered” in conservative circles. It becomes a lot harder to accept someone painting a group in a negative light, when you actually know people that clearly don’t fit that narrative. It forced me to question the narrative.
Finally though, I think it was me starting to recognize the hypocrisy. An obvious one is that Christianity is strongly tied into the culture, but nothing about modern conservatism exemplifies “love your neighbor as yourself”. Another big point of hypocrisy for me was when Trump was made the candidate in 2016. I’m old enough to remember that one of the large talking points made against Bill Clinton in the 1992 election was a lack of character. And I just couldn’t comprehend how character was so important to the Republicans then, but clearly wasn’t an issue for their current candidate. Character and integrity are important attributes to me, and in retrospect Trump’s candidacy was really a final straw for me.
As for why I moved towards socialism specifically? Largely because I don’t believe capitalism scales well, and the free market leads to too many competing priorities that basically boil down to the Prisoner’s Dilemma (the best outcome for the individual versus the best outcome for the group). I think there has to be an authority external to the market who can intervene when advancements are clearly coming at the expense of the society.