It's funny that you claim to have all the fruits & nuts down in California, RickZ, for I had a lengthy discussion with noted California writer Burt Prelutsky on this very topic. He certainly ran off a list of noted imbecilic California politicians and Hollywood types and I certainly could not deny the forcefulness of his arguments. But then I had my share of Nimrods that could be cited as well. I began by noting that psychiatrist Jim "Baghdad Jim" McDermott has represented the Seattle inner city in congress for many years and usually receives about 80% of the vote and that is only when the GOP is foolish enough to put up a candidate. We also have Sen. Patty Murray who has the distinction of being voted the dumbest senator of all by DC staffers for seven years in a row. Of course in the case of Ms. Murray I am a bit biased as she is the spitting image of my ex-wife and they both live in the same town. Much of the insanity we suffer from here in Washington State has been due to the mass migration of Californians (although my 22 year old daughter, against my strong disapproval, just moved to San Francisco three months ago). I think Mr. Prelutsky and I finally agreed that there were clearly more fruits and nuts in California, but on a per capita basis, Washington was the clear winner. The recent initiative victories here on legalizing marijuana and same sex marriage would bear out that belief.
Though I do live only 20 miles from downtown Seattle, I try not to visit any more than forced to and for an occasional photographic journey. Regarding my passage from radical to rock rib conservative, I actually found it to be a cleansing action as I was able to see up close the hypocrisy of the left. In fact, hypocrisy and liberals/progressives/Socialists/Marxists go together like a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. Hypocrisy is engrained in the mindset of liberals. It is part of their DNA. Being that honesty and personal integrity I hold dear, moving to the right was an easy transformation for me.
Let me give you one illustrative example from my youth. On the one year anniversary of the shootings at Kent State, Joan Baez came to campus and set up shop at the student union to bask in the glory of the revolution and have her groupies lavish over her. I did take a few photographs of her at that time and on one of those days at the student union I began to listen to her proselytize, I became more and more enraged with the crap she was spewing and I really got into it with her. One of the crapola statements she made was that she was switching record companies and would soon be selling her records for $2.00 each to counter the capitalist system. In reality, she had been recording for Vanguard Records, a very fine company that charged $4.95 per record. Baez switched to A & M Records owned by Herb Alpert and her record prices increased to $6.98 per record.