In high school, when I was only starting to wake up to the mere notion that there was more to life out there than just this insular stuff I was doing. So I was a "USA! USA!" kinda gal. I think I did it because everybody else did and it seemed the proper thing to do - "America, love it or leave it." Mindless, really. I mean, when you're 14 and 15, it seemed to me, a rah-rah-rah-America kind of person was really the only thing to be. You didn't question, and it didn't even occur to you that anything could EVER be wrong. Your country was perfect! In the mid-60s, it was possible still to be wistfully remembering the Kennedy years, before we shifted through LBJ who started with the nation's sympathy after JFK's assassination, but then with Vietnam blowing up, and student unrest and women's marches and the draft and civil rights issues particularly acute in the Black community - all forcing people into the streets with marches and protests. Then came Nixon and Watergate and this widely-documented national disillusionment that set in. And meanwhile, whatever fleeting thoughts I gave to anything like politics went only so far as student elections for Pep Club officers early in high school. I soon moved a little more toward the left, later in high school, and found myself working on two unsuccessful campaigns: the Student Coalition for Humphrey-Muskie and the first Tom Bradley campaign for L.A. Mayor (he won on his second attempt). As I moved on to college I continued leaning leftward.
And sometimes it's where you're from, and who your parents talked about, at the dinner table. My dad was conservative and MAN did he love ronald reagan. My mother mainly just talked back to the television all the time - kept up a running commentary throughout whatever the news was. We watched the NBC Nightly News every evening while eating dinner. I liked that ritual. Found it increasingly interesting and compelling. And as time went on, it started to dawn on me that stuff my father approved of - I didn't agree with. Like ronald reagan.
LONG-WINDED way of saying that one shouldn't necessarily jump to suspicion, mistrust, or condemnation when saying Hillary was once a Goldwater girl or worked on something related to the Nixon campaign against Kennedy. All that means is that she's capable of evolving. All that means is that she won't stay static, as her experience through life has shaped, reshaped, and leavened her thinking. All that means is that she will be flexible, not rigid. All that means is that she won't be one of those who decided they knew what was good years ago and By Crackey if it was good then, it's good now. Cuz things change. Things CHANGE. And you either respond to it and evolve with it yourself, or die (or get left behind and become irrelevant). I think time must have moving parts. Because it can't stand still.
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