This was an interesting read on social media by someone who left MAGA.

To Democrats who reject anyone who ever voted for Trump, and are skeptical about the morality of those leaving now: hear me out.

Some of them genuinely don’t give a shit about other people and are only mad now that gas prices are up. They suck.

But for some others who left, it’s not quite that simple.

I voted for Trump twice (2016 & 2020). I’ll tell you how I got both in and out of MAGA, and if you want to believe I’m a shitty person after that, you’re free to do so.

I was raised in a religion where my entire self-worth for all of eternity depended on obeying church leaders and compliance with the rules without question. My value as a human being wasn’t something I inherently had. It was something I had to earn, and could lose.
Permanantly.

And it was my parents who taught me that Democrats were evil. Not social media or any other source. My parents at the dinner table, in the car, woven into daily life, Sunday school and every other moment of childhood. It was constant.

They also taught me that the USA was divinely chosen, that our freedoms were God given and uniquely ours, that we were the only ones who had freedom, and that the people who threatened those freedoms and God’s plan had a name: Democrats.

This wasn’t a political opinion I formed. It was handed to me before I had the tools to question it, fused completely with my religion, my family, my sense of right and wrong, and my eternal worth as a soul.

Republicanism, faith, and moral goodness weren’t separate things in my world. They were the same thing.

So when I voted for Trump, it wasn’t ignorance or cruelty. It was the only framework I had ever been given to understand the world.

Here’s something else you should know: conservative media is extraordinarily effective. I followed enough of it to tell you exactly how it paints a skewed picture, especially around social issues to make it seem that conservatives are the ones with the moral compass, the protectors of children, the tolerant ones, etc. I can go into details in another post if anyone cares to hear.

Leaving that behind wasn’t a single decision. It started because I moved from Utah to Texas for grad school and suddenly found myself around people I didn’t know, and people I wanted to make a good impression on. I didn’t want to publicize my political views, so I quietly unfollowed nearly all of the political pages I’d been consuming. I thought nothing of it at the time, but it changed everything.

Without the constant feed of social media, stepping outside the social bubble of Utah, and personal life changes that put me at odds with religion, I started meeting new people, and slowly learned my worldview wasn’t as accurate as I once thought it was. And that was psychologically unsettling

By the 2024 election, I couldnt bring myself to vote for Trump, but my social programming was still strong enough to keep me from siding with democrats. Plus I lived in a deep red area, so I sat it out.

So long story short: for many of us, leaving MAGA meant rewriting our entire identity and sense of self-worth. It’s not like changing your mind about a tax policy. It’s dismantling the foundation of who you were told you are by the people who you loved the most.

When you reject someone still climbing out, you may be pushing away someone doing the hardest psychological work of their life, often in isolation, often still surrounded by everyone they love who thinks they’re the one going wrong.

Many of us aren’t just leaving one cult, but multiple at once. If you study up on cult dynamics, it’s not as easy as flipping a switch.

The likelihood of anyone getting this far is slim. If you did, hi. 

 thanks for coming to my ted talk.

@crunchcat.supremeow