Change of tune

Hi all, thought I'd share something and see if anyone else has had anything like the same experience.

I used to class myself as an 'anarchist'. I believed in direction action, that government was essentialy a bad thing and that people should be allowed more or less to govern themselves.

About a year back I changed my mind. After being involved a great deal in grassroots movements, I began to be disillusioned. Everyone around me seemed to be into the whole sloganeering thing, and doing things that they thought were making a difference but in reality weren't achieving very much at all. On top of that, most of the people around me seemed to be very much into it for how they thought it made them look.

I got out of it, read a lot of political theory, did a lot of thinking and reassessing of the world and my own ideals. I'm now more or less at the opposite end of the spectrum - I believe in small, democraticaly elected government by the people for the people: essentially, republicanism a la Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson. I think that a lot of smaller 'anarchist' movements do a lot of damage to themselves through some of the stuff described above, while being at the same time difficult for a large portion of the public to relate to (even though I still agree with some of their principles) and unable to take into account or consider opposite views - basically, close minded.

Anyone else had any experiences like this, entire turn-arounds of their own viewpoints? How and why, and what do you believe now?

Actually, I find my views becoming a bit more authoritarian as I talk politics with people.  The average American is simply idiotic.  We have a massive 4-5 TRILLION dollar debt, but we can't raise taxes or cut SS, Medicare or welfare.  In short, anything that might actually solve the problem is pretty much off the table. Further, I suspect that a good portion of the reason that we Americans cannot find work is that we've priced ourselves out of most labor markets between wages (we get $7.25 at minimum, and in places like India that type of coin attracts college grads) and crazy-tier regulations on working conditions and required benefits. I wish we could appoint someone to be a dictator who could do those kinds of unpopular but necessary things so we don't end up collapsing like the Weimar republic or Zimbabwe.  No one can even get nominated if they say stuff like that -- the American public in general demands that their ears get tickled, not that they get reality.