An example of each:
Gay Marriage was easy to move to being 100% behind, because the ONLY reason in earlier years to support things like civil unions - especially if it was on a federal level with all benefits of marriages being given to them, was because I did buy the argument that it was more possible to get the votes than gay marriage, where I assumed the power of churches would win out. (I had no problem with one idea that I had thought interesting which was to have the LEGAL (government) name for everything be CIVIL UNION, leaving the word MARRIAGE to not have a legal meaning, but a religious or personal meaning.)
As someone who strongly backed J Street and even an earlier organization that joined it years ago. My middle daughter's comment after attending a Jewish Voice for Peace convention was that the people her age she met there were people driven to the organization because they had seriously studied and believed what they were taught to be Jewish values and saw what Israel was doing to the Palestinians at a huge variance with that. When she said that, it brought back my own view that the reason for the huge anger in the 1960s/1970s Vietnam protests was in very real part coming from kids who grew up in the years after WWII who genuinely believed in the values they were taught America stood for -- and saw that this was not true with Vietnam.
With each war in Gaza, each time Israel increased the settlements in the West Bank, and each time I read in Haaretz or elsewhere of how life was made harder for Palestinians, I found that the comfortable liberal Zionist two state solution of JStreet seemed like it might just be a fiction. I have moved closer to my daughter's position - though I am hesitant to speak out in the Jewish community that I am very much a part of in Burlington, VT. On DU, unlike on almost all issues, this is an issue where people's positions might skew closer to my old position, than where I am now. Consider that when the US ABSTAINED when the rest of the UN Security Counsel voted for a resolution against the settlements, many here thought it was wrong -- and many even bought the ridiculous RW excuse that Obama/Kerry did it out of dislike of Netanyahu or disappointment that they did not preside over a comprehensive peace agreement. (In fact, the Kerry speech after it was an interesting bookend where he was willing to speak a hard truth that he knew was important - as he did early in his life in 1971.)
As to an OP, I don't think most people here are in the mood for reflections. There is too much happening each day - somethings where responses and actions are needed - others where DU acts as a place to event as we see events move further away from anything we ever thought would happen. Hard to believe that we are only about 2 years from when we all thought that Trump could not gain traction with his Birther past, his disgusting announcement speech and his comment on John McCain. That he did showed that a large portion of this country may be very different from our half of the country.
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