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.”
Most of the comments in this thread show exactly why Europe needs to get away from the US as far as possible, even if they do vote differently next time. Everything is set up to be polarizing, nothing has more than two options… democrat/republican, left/right, good/bad, winner/loosers, popular/unpopular, smart/dumb, ingroup/outgroup… and once you’re pigeon-holed you can’t ever be rehabilitated, because the other side won’t let you. Come to think of it, that seems like a side-effect of internalized consumerism, “Broken? No need fixing, just get a new one!”. Combined with American individualism, staging and making a huge fuss about themselves, plus the lefty urge to feel intellectually and/or morally superior (while chanting slogans against hierarchies and classism LOL) they will never be able to reconcile and just swing back and forth between political extremes ad infinitum. That country is a lost cause for at least my lifetime, we need to find allies that can deal with grey areas and know how to fix things, including relationships.
I’m sick of sharing a planet with cave people
What are the odds this dude votes for Vance in 2028?
I promise they didn’t stop believing terrible things. Don’t consider these assholes “the good ones” or the ones “that converted”. They hate people who aren’t like them. They’re probably racist (I don’t know that). They’re probably bigots against other religions (especially from Brown places). They just found out that the asshole they worshipped doesn’t give a shit about them. They didn’t become good people with positive values.
People like this think politics are like their Jesus cult - if you repent then all is forgiven. Sorry dipshit, this is real life. You don’t get a pass for apologizing and pinky promising that you’ll never do it again. Fuck you. Go actually do something to work off the damage you’ve caused. It will never be enough of course, because the damage is catastrophic, but at least then you should be able to eventually earn a modicum of forgiveness.
What kind of work have you done against the damage caused?
In Judaism, you’ve got to meaingfully atone in order to be forgiven.
Sorry, not buying this at all. They knew Trump was a fraud and didn’t care. It only got real when they got butt fucked without lube.
Running to the Democratic Party is not going to solve the problem even if it is a slightly saner choice. As long as we openly allow the wealthy to lie and manipulate people en masse there will be no real improvement.
No, they’re really that stupid. That’s why we have a problem with fundamentalist christians sending money to grifters in the USA. THEY ARE AS DUMB AS FUCKING ROCKS!
Idk man… They stopped consuming any conservative news. I think they’ll be fine.
You ever checked out Whitehouse.gov? That is not Fox but you could have fooled me reading it. This is the official line people. You can’t escape from Fox by turning it off anymore.
They are not going to be fine because they are no where near deprogramming themselves to a lifetime of garbage, but I do appreciate your hopefulness.
You ever checked out Whitehouse.gov?
No one has ever visited it except to criticize what’s happening there. I loaded it for the first time a month or two ago when they launched their new propaganda campaign to see how blatant it was. I imagine Tea Party shitheads loaded it while Obama was in office. No one is loading it daily to find out what’s going on. And if anyone is, they are braindead morons (I think there’s a venn diagram here with maga shitheads).
How about they visit Truth.com the website owned (wish this wasn’t real) by Trump to get all their news about the administration. Do you think owning a fucking propaganda outlet would be a conflict of interest as the President.
Don’t worry his words are echoed onto to every major platform. There is no escape.
Well, I don’t think they’re going to stop consuming all news. I’m sure they’ll switch to liberal sources atleast.
They’ll be back. They’ll vote Republican. They can’t learn.
I get why you are frustrated with them. We’ve been burned so many times.
But, I think this type of attitude makes some people push harder into MAGA. I feel that most people don’t vote red because they believe in it, they do it to spite people on the left who talk down to them.
I think this type of attitude makes some people push harder into MAGA
Nice try, FBI
I don’t see why we have to be so mean to each other. Even here on Lemmy, where we all are on the left, we do it to each other.
They do it to spite. You could have stopped there.
You know, it’s great that they woke up at all, late as they are. Two less trump supporters, and if they can spread their story they might bring a few of their friends and neighbors along with them. Give them a place to vent their discontent without being shunned by “liberals” or brainwashed in maga echo chambers.
But I had to laugh at this:
Ron, who served in the military for 25 years, said the 2008 housing market crash left him “really disillusioned with the Democratic Party.”
Obama didn’t even take office until 2009. What a dumbass.
Title should read “i am dumb as a rock” instead.
Yes, I think we need to give them and others a soft landing spot where they can save at least a little face. We should help them lean into the narrative that “Trump lied and tricked his supporters into thinking he had virtuous, selfless objectives.” The more we scold them for not seeing what we’ve been screaming for over a decade, the more likely they will dig their heels in just to save face.
Cognitive dissonance is a very powerful drug.
Yeah exactly, it would be extremely counterproductive to give these people no way out
Sucks to suck
Typical myopic stance. “I had no idea it was bad until it started to impact me.” The complete and total lack of empathy from people is a core problem I don’t care what political side you are on. How can you be so selfish to not think about impactful others around you? Do you live on an island of one? Are your fellow citizens nothing to you?
Social media has allowed us to slip even more into a solipsist mindset.
Zero forgiveness. Ignorance in this day and age should be made a felony.
Fuck them.
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.
Lol that’s how far I got and just fucking Roflcoptered…like how fucking dumb can you be…
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.
Never been on Reddit or Facebook?
like how fucking dumb can you be…
Apparently dumb enough to repeatedly vote for a lifelong grifter rapist felon pedophile.
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.).
Yes. the way Obama and his administration dealt with that crash was poorly thought out (to be charitable), but I really don’t think from what I read, this guy was that nuanced in his thinking. Probably more along the lines of “Democrats are bad therefore this is their fault.”
Fuck these Nazi fucks
I know we gotta support people ammending their mistakes and all, but it’s hard when he speaks like “Now we can turn the ship around and fix everything.”
ICE already killed people, they aren’t getting revived.
We can reverse his monetary problems at most and he talks as if that’s the entire thing.
