It took a long time to get to where I am now. I grew up in a Republican family & could have easily fallen in line like my older siblings. But I looked at the world around me & saw the how toxic & contradictory their ideas were. Eventually I turned my back on them & became the independent progressive I am now. Nowadays when I express my hard-won beliefs I sometimes get called an "NPC" by people who can't do much more than repeat what they heard on Fox News or some Q-anon website. Yeah whatever, you conservative parrot.