I don’t remember thinking a lot about politics growing up, but in Northern Michigan, not thinking about politics means you likely absorb a great deal of Being a Republican energy and probably become one yourself, at a young age, though you probably don’t understand what that truly means. My family is Catholic and pretty conservative, in the sense that they center a lot of their morality and values on religion and tradition. My parents weren’t especially forthcoming about their politics, and it wasn’t immediately clear to me the way politics could have real effects on our day-to-day lives.
