C. S. Lewis describes the protagonist in The Man Who Was Thursday's relationship with the antag roughly like this. "He was coward enough to be frightened of force, but not coward enough to worship it." That's basically my relationship with the left.

I grew up in Massachusetts, so I became conservative initially through disgust at the excesses of the dems. I'm not proud of this, I'm sure if I grew up in RepublicTown USA I'd have started out a dem, basic smartypants contrianism. Like so many who fancied ourselves prodigies (I got a 1600 on my SAT, I read Calvin and Hobbes, Encyclopedia Brown, etc.)I regarded myself basically as a defender of a bastion of truth from a sea of fools.

Moving to college, however, I started seeing over the walls a different class of liberal, the Uruk Hai, if you will. I could never join them, but I deeply wanted to understand them. Why are the worst filled with passionate intensity? What was this movement that could only speak in irony? Why were the John Stewarts the real leaders, not the politicians? What's up with the left?

The reverse question was also demanding my attention. Why were my Right buddies so dreadful? Shouldn't these racists, these homophobes, these uneducated plebes be on the other side? Hard to defend truth alongside someone who wouldn't know it if it throttled him.

The task was impossible, I feared. The rank and file didn't understand themselves, and I wasn't confident that their existed a second tier. (As a conservative, I was super familiar with the "You are under the control of evil masters" meme, and it was rubbish when applied to us, so I figured it wouldn't be any better aimed at the left. Just Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin repurposed).

When President Bush took over I was ready for a golden age. Watching how the successfully elected conservative politicians fared against the Left was an eye opener. When Congressional Democrats, and then President Obama took over I thought that the Darkest Timeline had come, and once again the results were a revelation. I had been surprised twice, I took stock.

I watched Yes Minister around this time, and had my first realization. This was comedy, sure, but not really. This explained the Obama/Bush paradox. They, and their whole stable of fellow politicians, hadn't had the power to change anything, who did? Sir Humphrey. Not incarnate and hilarious, of course, but my experience in the corporate world had given me plenty of examples of the power of the rank and file to influence the bosses. I didn't quite articulate it, but I understood that the unelected G10+'s must be running the show.

I encountered Less Wrong at some point, and became familiar with the notion of dissolving a question. From there it was a brief hop to Moldbug's site (forget which post took me exactly, hang around long enough and you'll see mention of it on here). His open letter and introduction series took many of my own realizations and slotted them together into a cohesive framework, which made sense of the world.