When and how did you figure out that American Conservatism was a scam?

I’ve been reading some columns by reformed Republican and former Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard columnist Max Boot where he urges people to vote a straight Democratic Party ticket this year.

I can relate slightly to Max Boot - I was active in the College Republicans and even had a leadership position on a conservative campus newspaper that spawned the career of one or two of today’s Republican pundits.

It’s a source of embarrassment to me to this day.

I was about twenty when I figured out the GOP is, at least at a national level, a colossal scam which largely operates by harnessing ethnonational and religious resentments in the service of deficit-funded tax cuts geared to benefit the wealthy. This became clear to me back in the 90’s, when members of the LGBT community, not “Globalists”, Latino immigrants, and Muslims, were actively presented by Republicans as subversive, scary forces. I can still remember how heavily opinion pieces about the insidious “gay agenda” were pushed by people who privately admitted to me they could care less about the issue but it was a good way to “scare up” the religious Christian vote.


Nowadays, I try to look at my conservatism as a youthful indiscretion.


When did you realize American Conservatism was a hateful scam?