This is an opinion column.

I was naive, gullible. I had it all wrong.

I was brainwashed in America.

It took recent events to make me see the error of my ways. And a writer named Paul – no last name given – who told me to “Wake up!”

Which is different, I take it, from being woke.

“Alabama is a conservative state….so how about reporting conservative news?” he said. At first I was taken aback by his way of using a series of dots of varying lengths to separate sentences. I thought it a code. But I came to see it was all a pep talk.

“Trump won because the people you work for lost their people…they came over to thr (sic) “Right” side…All you need to do is print he (sic) facts, not what you think, but the real facts….The Nation is no longerthe (sic) laugh of the world….you survive through strength,not (sic) being the problem…C’mon fellow, you can do it…”

I wanted to say he had me all wrong, that I value the Constitution and the rule of law. I hate corruption and love my country and its loftiest ideals: equality, a land of opportunity, a refuge for huddled masses. Is that not conservative?

But I realized I’d been hoodwinked. Not by Paul, but by my past, It started in preschool.

Remember that guy who wrote how he learned everything he needed to know in kindergarten? What a schmuck.

In kindergarten you learn to share and play fair, to say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody (and to take naps in the afternoon). You go into time out if you hit people or call them names.

I can’t believe America bought that book. But it came out in a softer time: The Reagan era.

I can’t just blame kindergarten. I was brainwashed on Sundays, too.

In the days after (and before) America was great, Sunday school teachers made us sing songs about Jesus, and how he loves “all the children of the world.” Even Canadians and Mexicans.

They told us to love our neighbors, even if we didn’t particularly like them. They told us we were all God’s children. Which made me think I had too many brothers and sisters.

They told us God loved everybody. So I started thinking of God as love and love as God. But I know better now.

I know now that all that is metaphor, except for the Bible, which is literal and not metaphor, except for a few parts like when Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to trot through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. That made me laugh when I was a kid. Because a camel can’t fit through a needle.

I understand now that the do-not-lie-steal-kill-commit-adultery-honor-the-Sabbath parts of the Ten Commandments are more like Suggestions. They have invisible asterisks that allow us to break them when convenient.

The Alabama Legislature is considering a bill that would require all public schools to display the 10 Commandments, along with their proper historical context. Context must mean they’ll put the asterisks on there.

Those guys are always thinking about God. And of women. They allowed 10 minutes of discussion yesterday before passing a bill that finally defines what a woman is.

They should spend another 10 minutes defining a man, because that had me confused, too.

I was told character makes the man, and that manhood is the defeat of childhood narcissism, but that seems silly now. I was told it was less than manly to carry a weapon to a fight. I was told real men (or women for that matter) fight for those who can’t fight for themselves. I was told they punch up instead of down.

I’m the schmuck, now.

I just wish I had gone through the re-education earlier. I might have become ambassador to Greenland.

I could have been on the right side.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner for AL.com.