[quote=@Vilageidiotx]
I was in that generation of people who started paying attention to politics in the Bush years. Like a lot of people from conservative backgrounds at that time, I identified as a libertarian for a while, and voted libertarian in 2008.

My process of moving to the left was driven by my experience, and the experiences of those I grew up around, in the aftermath of the recession, so I would consider that to be the formative factor in my political opinions. The social stuff seems secondary imho, though I'm sure that's largely because as a white straight dude I didn't have much invested in the social justice movement to get into it, and I'm not nearly autistic enough for white nationalism.
[/quote]

The parallels here are uncanny. I became political during the Bush years as well and also came from a conservative background. But I became your typical 'college liberal' though that meant something different back in those days. There was a lot less blue hair and Tumblr didn't even exist. I was strongly opposed to the religious right, which had just swept Bush to power a second time. Most of my political activities during that time was largely oriented around fighting for gay marriage. (Victory!)

I can't say that I even moved right. I still support all the things I supported when I was young. I just happen to believe in a number of conservative moral and economical principles as well. Somewhere during all of this I encountered a libertarian who became a mentor of mine and convinced me of the truth of a number of the libertarian positions. The recession had a tremendous effect on me and I re-thought a number of my positions and took a much closer look at both globalization and immigration (which I had previously seen as purely a force for good) as well as automation. In some ways I became more liberal (for example I support universal basic income) but in others I abandoned the purely libertarian position and begin to oppose open borders and free trade agreements (though I don't oppose every open border or every trade agreement).

In the end I became the Frankenstein monster of politics, both far left and far right simultaneously lol.

Anyway, I shall cut this wall of text short but the parallels were interesting.