I didn’t become politically aware until in my mid-thirties.
Saved myself a lot of grief, I think.
I became very politically aligned as a conservative at a very young age, which I attribute to the military environment I grew up in during the Sixties.
I spent the most divisive years of the Sixties and early Seventies (1967-1972) on military bases overseas in the Pacific, and I fiercely hero-worshiped my father and my friends fathers, and as such, took exception to the Peace Movement who vilified men like my father.
As an 11 year old kid, I was rooting for Nixon, and never looked back after that. I went through my own long-hair days as nearly every kid did during the Seventies, but I was very tuned in.