Raised with a very politically charged father, I just mimicked his beliefs, not understanding anything other than democrats bad. Once I reached my early teenage years I started to consider myself a classic libertarian because queer people should be allowed to live their lives and we should be allowed to smoke weed, but 'the government' shouldn't bother people.

Fast forward to moving out with my at the time partner and immediately hit with rent, work, bills, etc while not making much. I started questioning there and as the effects of the 'real world' started crunching down harder and harder I was sure that 'people' can't be trusted to not abuse others so might as well do something about it. Then Bernie Sanders started his campaign and I got sucked right in to being a demsoc.

Few years pass, still jaded from the DNC's actions in the 2016 elections, people are starting ironically/unironically joke about communism. And at this point I had been considering myself as a 'socialist' so it really didn't carry the scary vibes that alot of American conservatives and liberals accossiate it with. So I started looking into Marxism, reading about events, listening to reading podcasts such as Marx Madness, finally realizing that its not 'people' that was the problem before (see paragraph 2) but that it was Capitalism. And well.. A few years later I'm here on Lemmy.