Last October, Ron, a 55-year-old construction analyst for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), was furloughed for 43 days as the Trump administration took a sledgehammer to federal agencies’ budgets under the Department of Government Efficiency, an initiative led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
“We voted for Trump, not realizing that he was going to slam as hard as he did, but it was on day one when he sat down, right after inauguration, and started signing those executive orders and just trashed us federal employees, it was a kick in the teeth,” Ron said.
“If people would just listen and research and do something other than just listen to Fox News, we may all be better off, but it’s going to take an open mind and an ability to say, ‘I made a mistake,’ because once you say you made a mistake, you can turn the ship around,” said Chrissey Kelley, 50, a stay-at-home mom.
Speaking out against MAGA cost the Kelleys relationships with friends and family members who support Trump, but in sharing their story, they hope to inspire others having doubts about the GOP.
“It’s okay to be wrong. You made a mistake, it was a bad choice, but it’s not the end of the world. We can fix it. We just got to ride it out and hold strong and support each other through it,” Ron said.
. . . Chrissey said she became a Republican as soon as she started voting.
“You were just a conservative. There was no thought behind it. You listen to Fox News, and you listen to conservative outlets, and you’re spoon-fed,” Chrissey said.
Ron, who served in the military for 25 years, said the 2008 housing market crash left him “really disillusioned with the Democratic Party.”
When he couldn’t find work in Detroit, he moved to Georgia. He supported Republicans because he associated them with bigger spending on defense.
Ron said he supported Trump with donations, bumper stickers and the “whole nine yards” of MAGA.
“I bought into the lie about the stolen election and all that, and I thought January 6 insurrectionists were actually patriots,” Ron said.
“I just remember being content with thinking that he was what we needed, and he was going to drain the swamp in Washington until he got into office this third term, and realizing that I was dumb as a rock, and I believed everything that I was spoon fed.”
. . . “Just watching the policies of what’s happening in our world today unfold one by one by one, I just started drawing up very different conclusions and found out that I was clueless, and most people are today, but now I’m awake and looking at it for what it is, and I cannot believe that he had my support,” Chrissey said.
“It’s lie after lie after lie.”
Ron said he now votes for Democrats, and Chrissey said she considers herself an Independent but has voted for Democrats three times now, something she “never thought in my entire life” would happen.
“The road we’re headed down now, if we don’t turn this truck around, we’re so close to going off the edge of the cliff that we need to stick together,” Ron said.
“We need to put our country back together. It might take decades, but don’t give up. We need to be vocal. Stay strong, and follow our laws and Constitution, and hold strong with our values, not the values that the MAGA claims that we have, but the values that we’ve had in the past 250 years from the founding of the country til Joe Biden’s era.”
I knew the leopard was eating people’s faces, but it wasnt until it started eating my face that i realised what an idiot i was.
Everyone kept telling me they ate people’s faces. They told me this for 8 years. But despite there being documented evidence and first hand witness accounts, I didn’t think it was that bad until they started eating mine.
Never, ever, underestimate Americans ability to turn lemonade into lemons.
the 2008 housing market crash left him “really disillusioned with the Democratic Party.”
So the last year of Bush’s second term. What a fucking idiot.
This disillusionment may refer to the D response to the 2008 crash (Obama’s first term, too big to fail, doubling down on Bush’s TARP, Tea Party, etc.).
Lol that’s how far I got and just fucking Roflcoptered…like how fucking dumb can you be…
Never been on Reddit or Facebook?
Republicans spend their term(s) wrecking the economy, then some people get pissed when the Democrats get control and don’t push the emergency “fix everything right now” button.
like how fucking dumb can you be…
Apparently dumb enough to repeatedly vote for a lifelong grifter rapist felon pedophile.
Dude the Republican party has never cared about you, the last recession was caused by Bush and the Republican party. Trump has always been a fuckup. You’re still idiots, I don’t care if it took a mountain of bad things to happen for you to realize you might be wrong…
like goddamn, you want a cookie or something?
If these morons really wanted to do some good they’d shut the fuck up, stop forming opinions, and stop voting. Encourage their peers to do the same.They’ve clearly demonstrated that they’re too fucking stupid to participate in the democratic process.
Six million Democrats sat out the last election, they have taken your words to heart
I DON’T CARE
IT’S TOO LATE
YOU FUCKING TOOLS DID THE SAME THING WITH BUSH JR
YOU WILL DO ALL THIS AGAIN BECAUSE YOU ARE IDIOTS
None of this means anything. These people do not learn from mistakes. That is abundantly clear at this point. And in the unlikely scenario that this one actually did, they are such a vanishingly small percentage that it really just doesn’t matter. The vast majority of conservative voters that actually are turning on Trump will NEVER, EVER, EVEN UNDER PAIN OF DEATH, vote for anything other than Republicans.
That’s how cults work.
Well, they did learn from their mistakes. Most of the time these stories are like ‘it affects me now so I’m against it now’, but these people took that selfish starting point and unpacked all the fox propaganda and how it all happened
It is a cult; but some people leave cults
I get that we all have to be really sceptical of ‘reformed’ Magas. Most of them will just be rats fleeing the sinking ship, with no actual reflection or admitted culpability
But at the same time, I’ve marched with a block of skinhead ex-nazis who were violently opposed to racism now. People do change sometimes - people are able to unpick the propaganda they once bought into and grow
So scepticism, absolutely. But a life-long condemnation of anyone who ever bought into Fox News, without exception, is not the way to go
Being dumb must hurt as much as it is blissful.
And will continue to vote republikkkan down the ballot every time…
It’s heartbreaking that they only ditch maga when it negatively affects them, but yet wildly cheer maga when it negatively affects their fellow Americans.
These people are traitors and I’m done trying to pretend they’re not.
Liberals vote so even the people they don’t like can have a good education and healthcare and social safety nets in case they get fired/laid off/hurt.
Conservatives vote to hurt others, which inevitably hurts themselves too.
They are traitors to their nation because they don’t care about the wellbeing of their nation and their fellow citizens.
“It’s okay to be wrong. You made a mistake, it was a bad choice, but it’s not the end of the world."
Uhm about that …
That soon? I was with him until “follow our laws”; the onion of stupidity has many layers to peel away, and most of us will weep the whole time.
I mean, I’ll take the win. They owned up to it, are voting Democratic now, etc.
Can’t unring a bell but at least they’re somewhat atoning. Easy to be angry still and I don’t blame people for that but again, can’t fix the past. Maybe their story will inspire a few others to leave the cult.
I’m glad they’re moving in the right direction. Their loss of family and friends needs to be addressed so they don’t ever go back.
But I’m scared that it’s not enough. It seems like they are against Trump but are they against other Republicans and their policies? Are they going to be critical of Democrats too? Because we’ve got big problems that neither big tent party are addressing and these two people seem to be about sixty years behind the curve.
Yeah I don’t understand all the negativity towards folks like this. Yes they made a monstrous mistake that may be unfixable but I’d rather have people that can see their failures and are willing to change any day of the week. I’ve made multiple mistakes in my youth that I learned from and became a better person. And folks like this are better equipped at helping others to see the light that are in the same boat.
Believe me we are going to need as many people as we can to see the empires has no clothes (but I literally never want to see him naked…I’m gonna vomit)
I don’t understand all the negativity towards folks like this.
Skepticism whether they’ve “changed their ways” or just rejected the one person who hurt them.
These are people who were totally down with draining the swamp of all its career politicians and bureaucrats, right up until they were the bureaucrat being drained. They were down with storming the Capitol so only real American votes would be counted. Article bravely stays away from racism. The whole “be a conservative like everyone else” and “vote for Trump like everyone else” vibe suggests they’ll be ready to vote for the next demagogue who promises them easy solutions to intractable problems.
There’s no indication in the text that they have suddenly discovered empathy, only that they’ve learned small government policies cost them their government job. Maybe that’s just the way the article was written, but I don’t think empathy is something one just discovers at middle age.
They were down with storming the Capitol so only real American votes would be counted.
Exactly. I will NEVER hold hands and sing Kumbaya with someone who condoned erasing my vote. They are my enemy forever.
And it’s a rare damn thing to find a conservative who condemns Jan6 and doesn’t try to excuse it as a simple “protest”. If that day had really gone their way, not a single fucking one would have stood up and spoken against it. Fuck them.
The problem is that elections have consequences. Big ones. Ones you can’t take back, ones you can’t undo. People have died. People have lost everything. People have been hurt in ways that there will never be any amends for, or any possible. People saw this coming and begged people for a decade to see reason, and they were ignored. These were their countrymen, their families, their people and they did it anyway. There are real, tangible consequences to these votes, this isn’t some abstract ideological game. These people have actively turned the wolves on their neighbours, and that’s not a “mistake” that’s easy to forgive. If your brother killed your son while you were screaming for him to stop the car, would you ever be able to forgive him? To trust his judgment ever again?
It’s a privilege to be one of the ones who were not so directly hurt by them. To be able to welcome their change of heart and offer them grace. Don’t ask those who don’t have that privilege to do it.
To trust his judgment ever again?
This is the big one for me.
This wasn’t a confusing thing. Like you said, it’s not abstract. This whole experience has probably been the most clearly definable political thing in the history of our nation. To make this kind of mistake with that in mind I have to assume they either have brain damage or pure, unadulterated hate toward their fellow Americans. And the consequences are generational. Decades to claw back. We will live the rest of our lives with some of these consequences.
Why…how, would I ever trust them with anything important ever again? They simply cannot handle the responsibility as functional adults.
Because they haven’t really learned anything. They just know Trump is awful, but as soon as MAGAs try to slip back to being Republicans again, and pretend MAGA never happened, these people will race back to it. They don’t think Republican policies are bad, just Trump.
If only these people had figured it out after his first term. Oh wait, they weren’t harmed personally in his first term.
If someone said, “I was dumb, I didn’t know he was going to cut off aid to starving people, didn’t know he was going to send masked thugs into the streets to beat, kill, kidnap and disappear innocent people, didn’t know he was going to start wars, didn’t know he was going to betray all our allies and destroy any remaining drop of goodwill toward the US in the world, … etc”
Then I’d say, “yes, you were dumb, very fucking dumb, exceedingly dumb, but welcome to humanity. Some things are permanently ruined because you were so fucking dumb but now let’s start picking up the pieces and try to create a better system than the one that allowed someone like trump to gain so much power.”
But it’s never that. It’s always, “I didn’t know he was going to hurt MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Conservatism can be summed up in a single word, repeated ad infinitum.
“ME”
I expected the haters to dogpile on them - and rightfully so - but it’s also important to recognize that we’re in a little progressive bubble in here, and the majority of voting americans barely disagree with them.
Yes they got their share of being f*ked by trump policies and incompetence but that’s not the only thing they talked about. They talked about being in the cult. They called out Fox News. They said they “woke” up! *gasp*. And to cap off their newly minted vows to Satan, they actually voted Democrat! *shrieking*
Hell some of you fuckers haven’t even gone that far!
No, I kid, I kid. I’m just saying this is not the “They tooked mah jorb, but I still support ‘im”, this is a ‘holy shit we’re the baddies’ - in very early stages.
You want they should get violently assaulted, they should wear sandwich boards declaring their complete idiocy, they should never feel joy or contentment again - I get it. But in reality, that’s not going to happen. What might happen is they tell their new church friends or whatever that they have revised their opinion of foxnews and that’s progress.
Slow, slllooowww progress, but they did it themselves. And a lot of their former cultmates don’t have that in ‘em.
Hollow words from white fools following hate who never thought the hate would effect them.
Honestly, I doubt they’ve learned anything.
So I have zero fucks to give for you. None.
Cheap words, motherfuckers.
“The road we’re headed down now, if we don’t turn this truck around, we’re so close to going off the edge of the cliff that we need to stick together,” Ron said.
There’s no sticking together. We’re already off the cliff. You don’t automagically fix the damage thats been done. You don’t unkill the millions dead from your choices. You don’t unsteal the data stolen from multiple gov agencies on all citizens. You don’t unfuck the climate from it’s tipping point. You can’t vote out a dictator. You’re human trash without redemption. Whatever happens next you must own with a smile, even if its death.
There’s no sticking together.
Yup. There’s no sticking together with people that condoned erasing our votes and systematically oppressing minorities.
These are trash humans and I don’t stick with trash.
It’s always “Not MY face!”
It’s never about actual values or morals or rights or principles. It’s never about concern for family, friends, neighbors, fellow citizens.
It’s always “This isn’t working out for ME.”
Maybe it’s the nature of the news business. Maybe there are some who are changing their minds more quietly, who don’t get profiled in the news.
