I used to be a card-carrying member of a political party. When I voted along party lines, it was like having 50 million Americans who always agreed with me about who was good or bad, who was qualified or not, and what the only solution to a problem was.
I was fooling myself. There is no single person in the world with whom I agree about everything, let alone a group of people. But there I was, always nodding in agreement. I was fooling myself, and in hindsight, the way I acted made me look like a fool:
I divided America into “us” vs. “them”;
I participated in political arguments that ruined family occasions;
I thought of compromise as a loss and collaboration as a betrayal;
I supported free speech only when I agreed with what was being said;
I treated brilliant people like idiots based solely upon their political views;
I refused to watch, read or listen to media that challenged my viewpoints;
I believed every lie told to me as long as it supported things that I wanted to believe;
I searched for proof that I was right, but never searched for evidence that I was wrong;
I spread misinformation unwittingly or uncaringly because I was so eager to hurt political rivals;
I confused integrity with party loyalty, and as a result, distrusted the people most deserving of trust;
I assumed that everyone I met had the same beliefs as me (and I was shocked to learn otherwise);
I called people anti-American, even when these same men and women risked life and limb in support of our country;
I changed my mind in lockstep with my party, wavering between support or opposition, depending on who was in power;
I blamed one group for my problems and waited for another group to solve them, allowing myself to lapse into sickness and poverty; and
I dismissed any corruption allegations against my party as lies, and when those allegations were proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true, then I dismissed them as unimportant or irrelevant.
In short, I sacrificed my intelligence, my integrity and my identity because it spared me the pain of ever having to admit a mistake. It was addicting*.
Then, one day, it just happened. I’m not sure how, but I saw things differently. Today, I am not a political party. I am a person with his own experiences, ideas and moral code and there is no one exactly like me. I am sober from politics.
*I now see that addicting things result in anger, denial, double-standards, intolerance, contrarianism, trickery, intransigence, negligence and gaslighting.