Posted on 12/31/2012 5:55:26 AM PST by FrogMom
It was New Year's Eve and the year 1998 was drawing to a close and as usual, FrogDad and I were staying home to avoid drunken revelry. We'd been married for almost 28 years and were Conservative empty nesters. He'd retired in 1994 after 24 years in the military.
I was on the internet through dial-up on my MODEM, intending to look for a game to play while FrogDad watched TV. I already hated TV and wasn't able to sit and watch it any more. I saw predictability, filth and propaganda where most others saw entertainment and news. My entertainment was generally reading science fiction, police stories, and historical novels such as The Pillars of the Earth. I had a firm budget to use at the book store.
I had cancelled my news magazines since they tended, like TV, to crap on the Country and I refused to give them any more money. Our small newspaper had local news and announcements but I had noticed that there was usually no Conservative point of view in the editorials and, as far as I was concerned, it was on life-support. I was, without realizing it, a boycott neophyte.
Bill Clinton was President and I hated his guts. I'd disliked him the first time I saw him on television. My first thought was, "Snake oil. He is selling snake oil." I turned out to be correct and could NOT wrap my head around the publically-expressed love for the patently corrupt and debauched man nor his pack of sycophants. I'd watched his antics for four years with disgust.
The House had voted to impeach Clinton but none of the media were covering it in any detail, something that absolutely appalled me. People seemed to think he was impeached about "a personal matter", but I had gleaned that it was really about denying another their rights, suborning perjury and being a thug.
I was depressed for the United States, almost totally lacking in accurate news and information. Working for a Defense Contractor, there were limitations to what I could say at work, no one seemed to discuss the slide of entertainment, news, or the President.
Online, I had recently discovered the Drudge Report and would read some articles there every day. He seemed more honest, to me, than any other news source. I was spelunking through his list of links and, although I had avoided discussion sites or blogs because they weren't "real news", went to one called Free Republic.
As I read the posted articles, re-covering some of the articles I'd seen at Drudge, I discovered a rich vein of something more precious than gold. Something that was food to a starving person. Something that was water in an information Sahara Desert - the comments about the articles. I clicked from article to article, reading comments and after a while realized I had tears running down my cheeks. Oh thank you, God, THESE people see things the way I do! I am NOT alone!
I signed up that night.
After a while, people started asking me where I got my information because I seemed to know "stuff" before they did. In far more detail than they did. More importantly, in more accurate detail than they did. The most recent example of this is a man who asked me privately, "What does it mean to ME if we go off the fiscal cliff?" And another who asked, "What do I need to do to prepare my family for what's coming?"
We have been through Y2K, planes flying into towers, a shuttle crash, iced tea, the blue dress, missile plans shared with China, and three general elections. We have shared garden tips, cooking tips, movie reviews, Prepper tips, and the deaths of online friends.
Through Free Republic, we became sign-carrying protesters during Election Hell Month in December 2000, traveling to Phoenix one weekend and to the Federal Building in Los Angeles another weekend.
Through Free Republic, we discovered what we really are, TEA partiers! We discovered we are much more normal than we ever thought.
Free Republic changed my life, and I suspect, the lives of others around me. Thank you, Jim Robinson, please know that I thank God for you.
Happy anniversary!
I’m with you! :-)
Happy Freeperversary! Nice post.
You are SO right! I have so many blessings I can't begin to count them, and I thank God every day.
Blessings to you and yours as we approach another year, and continue to make America great again!
Very well stated. Freerepublic saved the Republic in 2000.
I believe that without the protests organized on freerepublic, the Democrats would have stolen the election.
God bless you and freerepubic!
Lots of water over the spillway.
Back then some of us met in “chat room threads” or MS Chat. I was middle aged and trying to be erudite. Now I have ten grand kids and just try to avoid getting fat. Back then I was a captain of industry and now I’m retired and driving the wife to quilt shops and visiting grand kids all over the country.
The one constant is an academic class and a media cabal that are communist activists working 24/7 to destroy our nation as they have done since we allowed them to immigrate in the first half of the 20th century — and that includes one of my Grand Dads in the 1890s.
Say hi to your old man.
Happy anniversary!
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