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?

>>18

And when exactly has a non-mainstream candidate even gotten the nomination?  It's a nonstarter to suggest that some non-mainstream candidate (including Ron Paul, who I think should be our leader) is going to get close enough to the nomination to even worry the establishment.  If it were up to me, I'd make Ron Paul a dictator so that he could enact his plans and end the recession and put America back on track.  However unless he get appointed and we can stop Congress from running around like idiots and blocking necessary reforms at every turn, it's a zero.  Nothing would happen even IF Ron Paul could win the vote, which given the condition of the two major parties and the mainstream media is impossible in the first place. 

So what we have is a Democracy in which we can't reform the system because the oligarchy has fixed the game in favor of establishment candidates who are vetted to make sure that they won't do anything even if they win.