by Don Hall

"So, have you always been a Republican?"

"Nah. I wasn't really political in my twenties."

"So something happened? What changed your mind?"

I was out and about, getting some sun, strolling—yes, strolling at a time and space in the world when strolling is in the same category as riding a Big Wheel—and talking to strangers on the Las Vegas Strip. He was a guy who seemed about my age, wearing a "Let's Go, Brandon" t-shirt, coming out of Treasure Island and looking around at the place in the way that someone who has come here to vacation and lose his house payment on a solo weekend. I laughed at his shirt. That started a conversation in the shade.

The way I describe my political affiliation these days is as a Classic Liberal which seems to align with anyone labeling themselves as a Fiscal Republican—both seeming to eschew the insane extreme ideologies while generally agreeing with the philosophies of Left and Right. I find far more of my GenX brethren to adopt this practice than either the generation prior or the two following.

"Nothing really changed my mind. My ex-wife was super liberal. I mean, that bitch was crazy and never stopped talking about all of her causes. Drove me nuts. I guess when we divorced, I started looking at the other side of things."

"I get that. What's with the shirt, though?"

"Oh," and he laughed. "That's just to piss off the kids."

"And your ex-wife?"

"If I ever saw her, yeah. I mean, fuck her, you know?"

When Jordan Peterson hit the news back in 2016, I found him interesting. Prior to his stance on the Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (Bill C-16), passed by the Parliament of Canada to introduce "gender identity and expression" as prohibited grounds for discrimination, his work was clearly clinical rather than political. By the time I had heard of him, he was already seen by the Left as hopelessly rightwing, by the Right as hopelessly leftwing, and a cultish figure for the same young guys taken in by the work of Ayn Rand.

Self described as a "Classic British Liberal" I was interested to see how he went from his first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, which combines psychology, mythology, religion, literature, philosophy and neuroscience to analyze systems of belief and meaning to the kind of figure you quote to 'piss of the kids.'

I'll confess I didn't wade very deep in the pool because this cat has hundreds of hours of what those same kids call 'content' and I have trashy streaming stuff to watch but I did take a day or two checking him out. What I surmise is that before his criticism of the Canadian government's push to effectively make the refusal to adhere to preferred pronouns as discriminatory practice, he was sort of like a Joseph Campbell but definitively on the left side of the fence. Then the videos surface of him arguing and being attacked by trans-activists hellbent on shutting him up.

My thumbnail conclusion was that his move to the right occurred as response to the insanity of the extreme left. These activists branded him a Nazi, it royally pissed him off, and he slowly shifted right to 'piss of the kids.' After time wearing his very Canadian version of a 'Let's Go, Brandon' t-shirt, the concept creep gradually shifted him to the right end of the bizarre cult of Libertarianism (which is a bit like Scientology if it was a political party).

Since coming to Vegas, certain friends and former acquaintances in Chicago have openly wondered why I am suddenly so vocally critical of the woke, cancel culture, the attempt to eliminate basic biology in our terms for one another, and my full-throated defense of free speech in all quarters. One person texted me "When did you become a Nazi?"

So, I asked myself "When did I become a Nazi?"

Chicago, 2016. She was an up and coming performer who routinely turned to me for advice. As a veteran in the field, I felt it was both my responsibility to be of help and my pleasure. She was raw but talented and truly excited about her future. I loaned her money, befriended her son (they both called me his ’second father’) and supported her when things turned sour in a relationship and she had a miscarriage. We became friends.

After some time, we drifted apart and she began to hang with a different crowd. When I decided that She had drunk a bit too much of the critical race theory and had become someone I simply didn’t want to hear from anymore, I decided to do the simplest thing possible—unfriend her on Facebook. I sent her a personal email to let her know why and wished her the best.

Two days later, the shit hit the fan. She had gone on a two-day tirade about what a racist, sexist piece of shit I was while I had her blocked on social media. She casually enlisted ex-girlfriends and a few notables who never liked me to begin with and, in my absence, trashed me with a vitriol only reserved for Guy Fieri and Pearl Jam. When I contacted her, she assured me none of the trolling and pitchforks would have been necessary if I had only called her.

Unfortunately, I thought that fighting back was the right move. I was wrong. The more I defended myself, the louder the online pillory. The more I went on the offensive, the more I cemented their framing of me as aggressive and toxic. People whom I worked with would tell me in confidence that She was batshit and that I was fighting the good fight but in public, my friends had knees of cream cheese and were so terrified She might come after them, they stayed silent.

Prior to this silly scuffle, I had told Her that I was white, therefore I was racist by default. I was all-in with the concepts of intersectionality and the tenets of critical theory. I was considered to be 'an ally' by many in the arts community, the guy who called out the overwhelming whiteness of public radio and the theatrical community. I was living with a Marxist and had a friendship with Bill Ayers. In terms not widely adopted for years laters, I was 'Woke AF.'

After this mêlée of pettiness, I started to question the concepts behind her indoctrination a bit more critically. I became skeptical when I read about another white man brought down and dove in a bit more thoroughly into the stories. I read a lot about the ideas I had been so in favor of just months before. I found the abuses of those ideas writ large. I saw patterns of cancellation that resembled my experience.

I became a Nazi to 'piss off the kids' who had pissed me off.

No, I'm not a freaking Nazi or even remotely conservative. The term changed sometime ago and any question of the tactics behind BLM or MeToo was received as the question of someone obviously in-line with the Nazi party. It's the new linguistic game being played by the Rage Profiteers of the modern age and anyone who gets in their way becomes a target.

In my final days in Chicago, I was considered to be somewhere near the alt-right end of the spectrum. During my three years in Vegas, I'd guess I'm seen as a centrist. I'm moving to Kansas where I'll be seen as a full-on libtard. Few of my core beliefs—equal protection under the law, protection of free speech, universal healthcare, free college, funding public education equitably, and legalizing all recreational drugs—have changed. The framing based on location and personal experience has shifted.

This reflection makes me wonder about the ideological labels we embrace or are placed upon us. Is it a belief based on knowledge or a personal grievance expanded into a philosophy? Did David Mamet go from über-liberal to arch-conservative because he grew older, got richer, or had some personal experienced that started as annoyance and slowly became a radical transformation of his ideas?

The questions are accomplishing something I believe we all need these days—curiosity about my fellow citizens rather than condemnation. When I see someone openly advocating for defunding the police, instead of assuming they're too stupid to see how adversely that affects the urban, black communities they are striving to aid, I stop and try to find out what happened to them personally that solidified that position. When I encounter someone still in thrall with the Big Lie regarding the last presidential election, in lieu of rolling my eyes and deciding they're to ignorant to even bother, I'll attempt to find out what specifically happened to them that nudged them over to complete moron territory.

My guess is that an awful lot of people adopt these extreme ideologies to piss someone in their lives off because they felt wronged.