So I go to the University of Texas in Austin, a hotbed of liberal ideals in the very heart of a very conservative state. Now for the most part I'm a very apolitical person. I believe in what I believe in and I really dont give a rats ass about what you believe in, as long as you dont try to push you ideas on me (btw, I feel the same way about gays, of which we have quite a few of here in Austin). The thing that bugs me about this campus of Higher Learning that we've got here in Austin is that all of these "kids" that I go to school with are the most politicaly minded yahoos I've ever met. And when I say politically, I mean vehimetly political.
Now I don't know about most people, but when i was 19 years old, I barely knew my asshole from a hole in the ground (I have since learned the difference). I find it diffiuclt to believe that these kids have spent enough real time pondering what politics is, and what their perspective viewpoints really mean. It seems to me that there are two types of people here in Texas.
1) People who grew up with their parents ideals and rebeled against them. This could be a kid that grew up in a hippy family and rejected the happy-go-lucky life style of your average pot smoking hippy, or someone that grew up in a strictly conservative household and turned their back on the ridged, narrowminded views of his or her parents.
2) People that had certain beliefs showered down upon them, and those ideas truely took root.
Either way this seems like a bad way to get your political beliefs. I'll give you an example. Me. I was brought up in a rather conservative family. My father was in the Air Force for 26 years and voted strictly conservative on everything. When I became an adult (and contrary to popular belief this did not happen within the last week) I held to those beliefs for a while, but I had already understood that my views were different than others and that my views were not static. I also realized, and this is the important part, that my views were not the be all end all of views.
And lo-and-behold as I got older, my views have changed. I used to be VERY pro death penalty, but as I have grown older, and daresay wiser, I have come to the conclusion that the death penality is too final. There have been too many cases in the last few years where a death sentence has been overturned due to new technological advances that have cleared the accused. I won't go in to my views on everything, nor is this article about the death penalty, I'm just trying to make the point that my views have changed as I have grown up and seen the world a bit.
What boggles my poor weak mind, is how these kids I go to school with can be so cemented in their own beliefs. I always thought that college was a place to explore and discover new and exciting things (and hopfully not all of them having to do with sex and/or drugs) Unfortunatly, from what I've seen from the political side of the house is that these students have found a new idea and latched onto or found a group of like-minded people and latched onto them.
The worst thing is when these tools get into arguments about politics and all they can do is spout out mismatch quotes from their political heart throbs.
Now before I have to break out the flame retardent underpants (as if anyone will ever read this). I don't want people to think that I believe myself to be some political savant. I'm more like an idiot savant, and without too much of the savant part. I'm 30 and I still dont know shit. I have my beliefs, but my beliefs are hard won. I have lived with them for a few days, and have had most of them change over the course of my life as I have lived a bit.
So take it from your good ole buddy evilPidge, if your between the ages of 18 and 30, you don't know shit, and your beliefs are crap. The sooner you realize this, and start thinking for yourselves, the sooner you can one day claim not be a dumbass.
