Question for white male Dems

[lees1975]

46. A combination of those things.

My Dad was a WW2 Navy vet, native of West Virginia, who managed to finish college before the war, and afterward, came back as a trained AC mechanic who worked in a union shop for about 15 years before getting a civil service job maintaining AC equipment in the headquarters building at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona.

I had the benefit of being able to go to both college and graduate school, and became a teacher and then a school administrator. So I would say that education is a big part of what has helped me develop a sense of being American, and that has helped keep my politics straight as a Democrat. I was raised in a conservative, Evangelical church, and enrolled in a university and graduate school that were both affiliated with the same denomination, but where the theology and philosophy were totally different from the mysticism and folk religion preached in the small church where I grew up. At the time, the description of what happened to me was that I had "drifted into liberalism," now I say that understanding the core values of the Christian gospel--things like loving your neighbor, loving your enemies, being a peacemaker, practicing humility, valuing things like equality and integrity-- made me woke. I also saw, over the years, how the blending of religious superstition and mysticism with right wing politics has led most conservative Evangelicals into apostasy and misplaced loyalty.

So I guess that's life experience.