After seeing other threads in which people talk about waking up in the comments, I thought I’d make a post on just that. Would be interesting to see each members story on here and see if a particular event woke you up. Here’s mine:
I used to think that the government officials were just stupid and needed to be shown things in order to operate more efficiently. I used to think that in general, most of them wanted what was best for this country and it’s citizens. Boy was I wrong.
Back in the late 90’s I believe, I attended a second amendment sisters rally. It was a counter rally to the million mom march in DC that day. A friend and I held up a huge sign all day that read “Criminals love gun control, it gives them a safe work environment “ After the rally we all marched down towards the MMM rally with them heckling us all the way. I encountered some very deranged women that day who held no value over their own lives. I literally tried to have a conversation with a woman who said she would rather be raped and killed herself than to have her neighbor defend her with a firearm. I was literally stunned by this statement and speechless. I knew our conversation was over at that point.
What changed me that day though was that I was handed a libertarian newspaper by someone. One of the main articles exposed the inside connection to the Oklahoma City bombing and why it was done. When I read the details of that story a light bulb went off in my head and I had a paradigm shift. From that day on I knew most of our government hates us, wants to destroy our livelihood and freedom, and has nothing but contempt for us. From then on I researched all I could and became more awake everyday. I know I would have eventually awakened from something else, maybe 9/11, but I’m glad it happened so many years ago now.
What’s your story?
Third grade music class the principal came on the loudspeaker and announced JFK had been shot, third grade so it didn't make sense to me. But caused me to begin paying attention.
Realized later LBJ was corrupt, newspapers here in Texas printed stories of election frauds and milk scandals and frauds with Braniff airlines, Tonkin Gulf and his mis-handling of the Liberty incident, LBJ caused that.
Then got to hischool and first year the Feds bused in kids from a black school they closed down about 12 miles away, suddenly all we did was fight and riot, academics dropped like a rock. So the Draft was waiting on us and protests seemed in order, by then we knew it was a PC war, not a good fight.
For me it wasn't any single thing, it was noticing that wherever you looked government was corrupt and intent on lying, controlling, creating Evil.
I remember after JFK was shot, maybe a few months later when I was nine, my Uncle (Momma's Brother) came down to visit us for a few days. He had been in the NAVY, he joined the NAVY in 1938 to get away from the farm. His Destroyer was sunk by a German sub while escorting ships to Britain, a few months before Pearl Harbor. Ship was the U.S.S. Reuben James.
He survived obviously, but many of his Friends did not. I remember him sitting in my Momma's kitchen telling us about that, and my Momma argued with him, said he was lying because FDR did not put us in War prior to Pearl Harbor. She believed FDR was a near Saint, and was not going to believe he violated the Neutrality Act by escorting ships past the theoretical war zone limits. But my Uncle was laughing at her, making her ever more angry.
And she argued with him about being sunk, too, she accused him of lying again and said FDR would have told the public if that had happened, that he must have been sunk after Pearl Harbor and was confused or lying.
That stuck in my mind because my Momma was angry and hostile, wasn't like her at all and I knew she loved her Brother so it stuck. When I was able to research it myself I discovered my Uncle was correct, my Momma was wrong and THAT stuck in my mind too. She refused to believe Truth because her President lied to her.
FDR did a lot of shady/illegal things, but I only discovered that all later.
So by the age of 15 or so I was aware my government lied and did terrible things behind the lies. Then the busing and riots began, so there I was, awake and sorry to know stuff I knew while at the same time determined to know more.
We didn't know the extent of it, not close to knowing the nature of the Enemy in detail. We thought it was just crooked politicians, we were still Rubes with little clue how pervasive and Evil was this monster. But we knew of corruptions, LBJ then Nixon who wasn't much compared to the Real Crooks, Carter who was a yuge mess, but then Reagan was a ray of Hope.
We tried after the fall of the USSR to end the military-industrial complex, who we thought was the main enemy, by supporting Perot but we didn't understand it was already too late to depend on simple politics. We didn't realize how thoroughly corrupt was media and academics, we thought we were just fighting politicians.
Some of us have been struggling against this for decades and decades, tilting at windmills over and over again, with zero real hope until Trump.
I so very much Hope Trump is not finished, he represents decades of tears for some of us.
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_USS_Reuben_James_DD245.html