I was so angry on 9/11 when I saw the buildings fall and all those people die. I was angry at the people who did it.

I still had faith in my party but at that time I honestly believed we were in this thing together.

They left me. I wanted to protect my family and the people I love and the Demcorats wanted to get rid of Bush. Their partisan rancor mattered more to them then we did. Their increasing craziness about Bush, the personal attacks and the bad behavior shamed me.

I wanted my party to be the party that came to the rescue, instead it was the party that flocked to see F911 and it was left to Bush to do what they lacked the courage to do.

They left a lot us and as far as I am concerned they can stay gone. I will never forgive the Democratic party.

Now we have the folks at the Democratic Underground slobbering all over themselves for the new book by Kitty what’s her face. Hundreds of children lay dead in Russia and all these idiots care about is whether Bush did drugs once upon a time and if they can use that or something else to destroy him.

Pathetic. I have lost all respect for them.

The completion of my journey came when I became acutely aware of the Bush bashing. How can anyone, in the face of a true enemy, turn their rage on their own people instead?

I could have written exactly that line, except that I confronted Bush bashing in myself.

For about 6 weeks after the attacks I found myself furiously angry with George Bush. I didn’t remotely blame him for the attacks. Instead I hated being lectured on “if we’re afraid the terrorists will win” and being told that if we didn’t get back on an airplane right away “the terrorists will win” (I was avidly following Mary Schiavo at the point, so I sure as hell didn’t want to be told my patriotism depended on handing my life over to United Airlines.)

I knew it was crazy. I kept saying to myself, “What is the matter with you?”

“Why are you angry at George Bush, the person who is trying to keep you alive?”

“Why aren’t you angry at Osama Bin Laden, the person who is trying to kill you?”

(Um . . . apparently I spent a lot of time addressing myself in the second person, which is probably One More Sign of what a wreck I was.)

All of this was conscious. I knew my anger at George Bush was a defense against the anguish and terror of 9-11.

Then one day my emotions righted themselves. My rage turned to Bin Laden, and my appreciation went to President Bush.

That’s the way it’s been ever since.

A few threads back I suddenly hit on an answer to the question Roger posed when I first joined this blog:

Did they change, or did I?

Did the Democrats change, or did I change?

And if I changed, how come they didn’t?

My answer was sparked by something Samuel said about the country shifting 5 points to the right.

It suddenly struck me that I had experienced the political equivalent of “bracket creep.”

I had been center-left, and a 5-point shift rightward meant I was now center-right.

I didn’t plan to leave the Democratic Party, or to stop being a liberal; I didn’t renounce my past, or convert to my future.

I just moved 5 points to the right, a process that took almost as many years, and then found I’d crossed a border I hadn’t realized was there.

I wanted to “sit with” this idea for a while, to see if it still felt right after a week or so.

It does.

I also have the answer to the second part of the question: why did I change while “they” didn’t?

The answer is that they did change.

The country as a whole has shifted 5 points to the right, I think. Or may have done so.

Certainly in my own house I now see that while I was shifting righward my husband was shifting rightward, too. But neither of us noticed.

It was easy to miss because my husband was always so much further to the left of me that a shift right still leaves him well inside the liberal camp.

Here’s something semi-interesting: I finally asked him how he thinks of himself.

He said, “I always thought of myself as ‘left-liberal.’”

I don’t know what left-liberal is, apart from the fact that it means he was neither a Marxist nor a socialist . . . but what’s interesting is that he spoke of this definition as if it were no longer operational.

I think that while I was moving from center-left to center-right, he was moving from left-liberal to liberal.

I’ve been seeing the signs of this ever since 9-11.

I mentioned he spends every night reading histories of WWII & its leaders; now he’s reading a diplomatic history of the Algerian war that is highly sympathetic to the complexities facing American and French leaders involved in that situation.

Meanwhile he’s become a devoted baseball fan and an avid rooter-for-the-U.S.-teams at the Olympics,

He’s a secular guy who’s gone back to church, only in his case the church is the Church of America.

It’s not that he wasn’t interested in baseball & the Olympics in the past; he was. But there’s an emotion now that wasn’t there before. I still remember him pulling for the Yankees to win the series just after 9-11, and he doesn’t even like the Yankees. He felt so bad for the team when they didn’t make it.

I could give more examples. Lots more.

Maybe it’s still too early to decide that this is the “answer,” so I’ll see what’s what over the next weeks.

But I’m pretty sure it is the answer, and I’m intensely grateful to Roger & to the commenters here for helping me figure it out.

Now I’m going to start looking for signs that other Americans have moved the same 5 points.

In the meantime, thanks, guys!

Love you!

A couple of months in the Vatican of Leftism, in the belly of the beast as it were (actually at the distal end of its GI tract), vaccinated me against its nonsense for life.

Oh my. All I can say is parallel journey for this citizen as well.

The basic shape and form of the change is similar, just the blips on the graph may differ.

The completion of my journey came when I became acutely aware of the Bush bashing. How can anyone, in the face of a true enemy, turn their rage on their own people instead?

We are fellow travellers.

I think my conversion was made complete by Michael Moore. I thought, My God is that what I sound like? and recoiled with horror.

Samuel:

It is simple my dear, extremes meet. And the Democrats have become every bit as extreme as the Aryan Brotherhood. In fact thay have a lot in common.

under the “Republican National Convention: Day 4, Part 2″ link. You’ll need either Real Player, or the Real Player Alternative codec installed.)

Thanks for the pointer Yehudit.

I have only one word for the “suffering” of the left: obscene.

The narcissism on the Left is obscene.

Hey, do you remember those idiots that snuck into the Democratic National Convention with the purpose of disrupting Kerry’s speech and make a scene so they could make some incoherent point?

No?

Oh yeah. Didn’t happen.

And yet there were three protestors that snuck into the GOP convention.

I don’t blame Bush for looking a little rattled. I’m sure he expected to be shot. Heck, so did I. I think the fact that he wasn’t says more about the competence of security, than of the other side’s desires.