What Happened to Me?

I loved that debate! I love it when the camera stays on McCain’s face when Obama’s talking and he makes all of his weird faces. It would be hard watching that as an undecided voter. In order to really focus on the issues, I would have to listen to it with no picture. Anyway…

Dawn asked me what happened to make me change from a conservative to a liberal and this article about William F. Buckley’s son, Christopher, and his endorsement of Barack Obama and subsequent resignation from the National Review has me thinking even more.

The short answer that I gave Dawn was something like, “I have higher self-esteem now,” and I’d really like to think it’s something deep like that, but, really, I think Bryan hit the nail on the head when I asked him what he thinks changed and he said, “Well, you’re old now.”

He’s right. It’s oldness. It manifests itself in a couple of different ways, but it’s oldness. I never really cared about politics before, but now I do because I’m old and I have old-people interests. Like politics. And when I started looking at the issues, as old people are wont to do, I became a liberal.

I used to just vote for the candidate that my dad and my pastor voted for. You know, because I have those issues. What if I died and God was all, “So. ‘Abby’ is it? Is that what you go by down there? Says here you voted for Kerry in ’04, is that right? Even after you saw those unfortunate wind-surfing pictures? I’m sorry, but Jesus’ blood doesn’t cover that sin.” And I’d stammer and blush and cry and it would just be a terrible way to begin my afterlife. And don’t get me started about my dad. You can actually feel the heart attack coming when we talk politics, which I do not ever bring up with him.

Mostly, though, the oldness manifests itself in ways that have more to do with boring things like worrying about money thingies. We have more education, but less money than we did 8 years ago. And that shit just ain’t right.

And my views on God have changed, too. I think Jesus is a liberal. That thought used to be way in the back of my head, way back when I worked at the Christian bookstore and those WWJD bracelets were invented. Oh, you didn’t know I used to work at a Christian bookstore? Yes, I did. For years. In fact, I used to go to a Pentecostal Christian church. It was my innoculation against everything that went wrong in my parents’ lives. I was the perfect receptacle for the “God-shaped hole” speech. Except, pentecostalism is kind of weird never quite fit. A lot of pentecostals believe that if you don’t speak in tongues, God doesn’t hear your prayers. That never came from the pulpit (my pastor was amazing, exceptional even; he didn’t even have a pulpit because that’s how hip he was), but it did come from people in the church. That, and the whole what-sin-have-you-not-confessed-that-gave-your-baby-a-birth-defect issue. Anyway, I’ve never spoken in tongues and, in fact, I was always quite perplexed and distracted by it when it happened in my presence. It’s very distracting. Seriously, go youtube it and tell me you can get your prayer on with people doing that around you. Maybe it was just the devil distracting me. I don’t think so, though, because usually when the devil wants to distract me he uses p0rn. And booze.

I also went to a regular old kind of church. And that was ok for a while, but then we moved and, well, I don’t really like going to church all that much. It’s because of all of my filthy sin. Oh, and the people. I’m not very comfortable around church people. When I was a brand-new Christian, excited about this fancy easy-peasy protection against all of the evil in the world, I thought I would like Christian people, but that was because I didn’t know any. Here’s how naive I was: Shortly after hearing the “God-shaped hole” speech, I got a job at a Christian bookstore and expressed to my manager something along the lines of, “Oh my goodness, it must be so awesome working with Christians and…and…waiting on Christians, and well golly, it just must be a swell work environment.” I may not remember exactly what I said, but I’ll never forget the look on that manager’s face as he slowly put his cap on his pen, pushed his glasses up his nose, sighed, looked me in the eye and said, “Let me tell you something about Christians. They’re just people.” He shook his head slowly, rubbed his temples and said, “They’re all just human people.” And I thought, “Yeah, really swell human people!”

Anyway, I was a conservative and now I’m not. It’s because I’m old and because of cults. Or Jesus. Or the unchurched. Or the undead. Or the unpaid. I can’t remember where I was going with this, but I think I mean to say that people just change. And I have no pocket change. And now I’m voting for change. The end.