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.”
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.
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.
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.
They won’t. Most European countries are just like the US. Only 5 or 6 years behind. It’s full of stupid emotional ppl who want simple solutions to difficult problems. They want to be able blame all their problems on someone else. Friedrich Merz, Macron, Keir Starmer are all versions of centrist democrats in their respective countries and all they’re doing are leaving the public pissed off. All it would take is a charismatic right winger to come in and I guarantee things would look exactly the same as the US
No country in Europe has the idiotic power concentration that the US has… maybe Hungary has/had it but Orban was kicked out and the new government has an absolute majority to roll things back and make them more. We’ll see how that goes, but the start looks promising. All countries in Europe have more than (de facto) two parties and many form coalitions… within the EU they are all somewhat dependent on other countries even. Most people and parties here still have the skill to make compromises. Also on average people here are more sceptical of shit that is spun around on “social” media and there’s a mostly functional press landscape with far fewer billionaires involved than in the US. No offense, but what you claim sounds like you have zero clue about Europe… I guess I know which side of the pond you’re from.
I live in Germany genius. I get to see first hand how your all easily scared and vote against your best interest all because of those “mmigrants”. The AFD continue to get more and more votes every year. Italy voted in a facist sympathizer and Spain has nostalgia for Franco. You’re thinking is exactly why things are getting worse. You have this holier than thou arrogance that makes you think you can never slip back into facism. And I get to watch all the same talking points ppl said about trump never getting elected get repeated while the population votes more and more right wing nuts in.
Living in France, Germany, and Spain has taught me you Europeans are all just as stupid, naive, and arrogant as Americans. The funniest part is all my german friends say most of Europe is 5 years away from looking exactly like the US
Edit: also European arrogance is honestly worse. American arrogance is from more of a place of ignorance/propaganda and white supremacy. European arrogance is more smug/vain but also comes from white supremacy
Wait until actual diversity approaches.
Well you can take the American out of the US, but you can’t… never mind.
I would ask in what way I claimed I was “holier than thou”, but frankly I don’t care. I would also ask what media you consume, because it’s clearly not giving you a differentiated picture. But you and your friends sound like the whiny, defeatist lefties (probably pretty young too), that are exactly why things sound like they are getting worse, leading to cozy self-imposed surrender, so again I don’t care. Luckily I am seeing a growing number of people and organizations that are analyzing mistakes and creating ideas for the future and acting on them, which is why I am positive that Europe will not look like that failed state across the Atlantic in 5 years at all… I never claimed that we can never slide back into facism and I don’t claim it will be a linear path, but as long as there’s enough people doing effective shit against facism, which includes getting people out of those bubbles and welcoming them when they made it out, maybe even analyze how they got dragged into the right-wing narrative in the first place and getting active against those root causes as well, I’m hopeful. The doom-scrolling whiners that run away as soon as things get a bit uncomfortable won’t help, but I don’t see those being the majority.
Edit: Yeah, yeah, everything is white supremacy in the end… leftist folks have been sounding like broken records for years, having nothing to offer except pearl-clutching and online-outrage. That won’t improve things, hasn’t worked so far, won’t work going forward.
Im in my mid 30s and my friends range from their 60’s to their 20’s. Plus Im a black dude. If theres one thing i can easily recognize its white arrogance and you’re embarrassing need to sweep it under the rug is reminiscent of America. Europe is LITERALLY the home of white supremacy and you went around the world ransacking thE globe yet somehow you think it just magically ended after WW2.
Youre probably one of those city folks who never venture out into the country side and see the ignorance and hatred of those in rural communities who feel left behind. You yourself exist in a thought bubble because you probably only surround yourself with those that agree with you. Germany thought the Social Democrats would never work with the AFD but look what happened.
You can fight all you want but the biggest issue in american politics isnt leftist giving up. Its centrist siding with facist and thats exactly what’s happening across Europe. You can be as hopeful as you want but as long as right wing politicians stoke the fans of hatred vs immigrants and ppl keep falling for it you’re screwed. Id honestly say you’re dumber because you can see the playbook playing in real time in America but you all keep falling for it. Imagine supporting the National Front, UK conservatives, AFD, or FDI after you saw what Trump was doing. Yet here we are
Yes here we are… still whining and misdiagnosing the root causes, and playing the “people who lived on the same continent of where you are now ages ago did bad things so you inherited guilt and must always be wrong”. Exactly the divisive playbook that will not get anyone anywhere good. This is getting dull, have a good one and greetings from the country side (admittedly not the very poor and left-behind kind).
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.
“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.
My god, the clarity! Sadly, the people able to see it and recognize their error is vanishingly small. Most just seem to double down on their error and make excuses to justify their position.
All the things Trump is going was laid out in Project 2025. I was begging people to read it and all of my mouth breathing friend just ignored me. I really don’t have friends anymore and I am OK with that. This dumb fuck claiming he did know Trump would do this just ignored the warns because he thought Trump was only going to fuck the libertards. So the leopard eats his face and he cries.
Trump himself said he’d never heard of it, which for some was apparently all the evidence they needed, regardless of all of the other giant, glaring warning signs.
Imagine having a brain that, without question, believes the words of a lifelong grifter, prolific liar, felon, rapist, and pedophile.
Yeah, there’s no coming back from that kind of brain damage.
Actually Trump said he never read it, which was a rare instance of Trump telling the Truth.
This does not mean that someone didn’t give him a tl;dr and he said, “New Jim Crow?! Sign me up!”
Yeah I was laughed at and told to stop believing the liberal media’s lies.
Thing is, I went to that site several times before the election, and throughout the summer of 2024 was a big “Apply Now” link at the top in the upper right. If you clicked it, it asked you if you wanted a career with the new Trump administration and invited you to submit your resume, especially if your area of experience pertained to any of the Project 2025 policy objectives. This is an article with a screenshot of that front page in the summer of 2024.
So when people threw that shit at me, my immediate response was, “So you haven’t applied for a job with the planned administration? Because Project 2025 is taking Trump administration applications right now.”
And they’d shut the fuck up, which was always the desired effect. I don’t know if they ever went and saw it for themselves, but they could have if they’d looked. It was always there.
Note: I went back to archive.org to see if they still have what I am talking about, but the only available archived versions of the page are from earlier in 2024 when the big red “Apply Now” button led to hiring for Project 2025 itself. Anything that would show the changed version I’m talking about has now been removed and the blue links all go to a redirect, not an archived page. The Library of Congress has it, but the archived site can only be accessed in-person, so it’s pretty clear the administration has cleared it from the net themselves.
He only cares because he lost his job.
Fuck 'im!
Too dumb and self centered to be part of a functioning democracy.
Hope he gets to analyze the structural integrity of the tiny home he retires in.
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
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.
In Judaism, you’ve got to meaingfully atone in order to be forgiven.
It’s supposed to work that way in Christianity too, but nobody treats it like that. It’s so goddamn stupid.
In catholicism you have to repeat a silly little verse 10-15 times…
What kind of work have you done against the damage caused?
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.
Glad to see an “investment” tab on the official whitehouse page.
At least America isn’t hiding it anymore. In a sense, it’s a little freeing.
It’s easy to say “Fuck America” now, even as an American.
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.
Not the same thing. And truth.com isn’t Truth Social. You made me wonder if it was worse than I realized, but I just loaded it and it’s some bs that isn’t his platform.
Fuck these Nazi fucks
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.
“…until he got into office this third term”… Yeah, the brainwashing is still in there. I don’t think this reform is going to stick.
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.
They do it to spite. You could have stopped there.
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.
Disillusioned by the subprime crisis?
That shit was driven by republican action and deliberate inaction.
Republican regulators prevented states from trying to crack down on predatory lenders and congress refused to impose oversight and pushed deregulation. The Bush administration allowed banks to begin “super leveraging”, iow they could lend even more than before yet have less in reserve, so when the crash happened there was no cushion. The repeal of the Glass-Stegall act got the ball rolling on creating these mega-banks that doubled down on bad lending, bought and sold bad loans, and then they all needed bailouts.
Republican deregulation and refusal to engage in oversight by both dems and repubs caused the crash.
I assume ‘disillusioned with the Democrat party’ after 2008 means the bank bailouts and lack of prosecution. Conservative brain is generally ok with businesses fucking the economy over, but they expect (at least ideologically) that companies will fail when that happens. Not their company, but nebulous companies that don’t employ them or their friends.
TBH, I would have liked to see a lot more fraud cases come out of 2008. I would have liked to see banks get ‘right sized’ so there’s no more “too big to fail.”
hahaha fuck them
