I'm in a bit of a unique position. Coming from a conservative background I've had a chance to see information-spinning from two different vantage points now, and I think that's what unsettles some here who want to claim I was never a conservative, because that's the thing - I recognize what they're doing and I can name what they're doing. They're used to their opposing viewpoints coming from longtime liberal posters such as yourself, but not too often from someone who used to be
one of them. Not only was I one of them, but I was a member of probably one of the largest conservative online forums out there. That was really brought home to me this morning when I saw an old
photoshop job which put John Kerry and Jane Fonda in the same photograph, and I thought,
I remember that... and going through that 2004 election with that forum, and the vitriol that I was surrounded by was so commonplace, so normal to me that I didn't see it as being out of the ordinary.
We all understood the same language, and I was fluent in it. I'd grown up in it. The dangers of secularism. The threat to the social order. Creeping communism. Godless secularism. Cloward-Piven. Gramsci. Delphi Method. New World Order. Illuminati. LOTS Treaty. The U.N. The Antichrist. The Clintons. Whitewater. The Clinton Body Count. Hillary's health care plan. Kerry and the Swiftboat veterans, Jane Fonda and THAT photo. Then just when things couldn't get any worse: The End of The World As We Know It: Obama. And in all that I've only scratched the surface - I could write a book. I listened to conservative talk radio, read only conservative websites, watched only FOX news... I was surrounded by and supported by everything and everyone who thought like me. So that's why I understand how impossible it is to get through that barrier. It's built high and thick, and each brick is mortared in place with a solid layer of confirmation bias.