FWIW, I was a lifelong conservative Republican but in recent years have slowly become a liberal independent (leaning very much Democratic) because of A) the gradual takeover of the GOP by fact-scorning white nationalists who used to be banished to the fringes of the party; and B) what I've experienced and seen in life over the decades, which has made me much more sympathetic to others who didn't get the breaks that I and my ancestors did.

As just one, powerful example: Go visit the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis sometime, at the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. They have life-changing exhibits about the Jim Crow system; about the civil rights era — which I remember from childhood; and especially about slavery. I was fighting back not just tears but sobs. Twenty years ago I scoffed at the idea of reparations for African Americans; now I'm very much open to the idea because of the corrosive compound-interest effect of what was done to their ancestors. To be sure, neither I nor my forebears kept people enslaved, AFAIK — in fact, one of my ancestors was crippled in the Union Army, according to family lore — but all we whites are still benefiting from what was done to the A-As. (Yeah, yeah, I know, other minorities were treated badly too, including some of my recent ancestors; none, none, were treated as badly as enslaved Africans and their descendants.)

That's just one example. I could go on ....