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.”
My favorite part was when he said they lost their home in the housing collapse, blamed Dems, and then voted Republican because…of spending on defence.
Defence spending doesn’t help the housing market but you do you. At least they finally woke up.
No, they didn’t wake up.
They stuck with Trump through
- Child rape and trafficking with Epstein
- The subsequent Epstein cover up
- Felonly fruad
- Jan 6th insurrection
- Being the most drone happy president in his first term
- Unyielding loyalty to Israel
- Alienating US allies
- Destroying US international standing
- Killing countless with mass defending and killing of social services and aid
- The clusterfuck that was his handling of Covid, or lack there of
- The Epstein memorial ballroom
- The Arch De Epstein
Etc.
These people are still functionally sociopaths and fascists. They’re just upset that now its affecting their wallets.
He’s hurting the wrong people!!
Even NOW they still can’t understand that the deregulation of banks which directly caused the 2008 collapse, was entirely Bush’s policies… if anything Obama’s bailout probably saved his home
The deregulation of the banks started under Clinton and was finished under Bush Jr. It was unfortunately not only a GOP thing.
Gas prices caused the 2008 collapse. The real estate market is what hurt the rich people, so that’s what we still hear about.
It was rich people that caused the collapse, not gas prices. Banks gave out variable interest rate loans, which are risky and predatory, to people that didn’t have the credit/income to afford houses. The banks then turned all of those variable rate home loans into housing related securities, which let investors in those programs earn interest on buying a tiny slice of the mortgages. Now the investors need the line to go up. What happens? Those variable rates on those mortgages get jacked up to make profit for the investors. Now Joe Schmoe can’t afford his mortgage, defaults on the loan, and loses his house. What happens next? All of those variable rate loans had mortgage insurance, which pays the lender when the borrower defaults on the loan/mortgage. What happens next, the collapse of entities that insured those loans. What happens next? We, the fucking tax payers bail them the fuck out. What happens next? The rich greedy assholes find a new thing required for existence to turn into a commodity to squeeze us more; like healthcare.
Yeah I got pretty confused there. Wasn’t Bush president leading up to 2008 and the market crash? Don’t was the dems fault? Faux news has done an impressive brain rot.
Just like how Biden caused COVID in 2020.
Small government people when the government is military spending:
I remember talking to a winger about his defense contractor job. He was raging out about “government workers” wasting “his money”, and so on. This was under Obama and he had just seen two people driving in a county truck on his way to work in the morning - he apparently seemed to think having more than one person doing that job was wasteful?
Anyway, I asked him, point blank - “but isn’t YOUR job basically a government job?”
I thought the guy was going to pop a vein waving his arms around and yelling how it was the PRIVATE SECTOR, we have to WIN CONTRACTS with the big old mean government, and etc. I remain calm and ask: yeah, but if they are private sector, who are their customers? Are they going to sell weapons to our enemies? Why do you have to get a GOVERNMENT CLEARANCE for that job by the way?
I’m sure the guy is absolutely all-in on Donvict these days and still repeating bullshit mantras about “small government”, etc. The guy had full-blown Obama Derangement Syndrome, that’s for sure…
wish idiots would stop voting for these leeches stealing tax money to enrich themselves and generally not giving a fuck about the population other than the megarich
Beyond “dumb as a rock” for this. People really just take whatever the fuck was is spoonfed to them. At least he did wake up, but by a miracle IMO.
He literally goes “this third term” at one point in the article. And that we need to go back to the morals this country had up until “Joe Biden’s term” He hasn’t learned a thing.
I was dumb as a rock
No you’re dumber than shit, and you’ve likely been dumber than shit your whole misbegotten existence.
‘I made a mistake’ people have spent their entire lives in prison for smoking weed and you think we should just turn around and continue to let you participate in society? Cuz you made an oopsie whoopsie and voted for what’s happening in the country and it’s just so happened to negatively affect you?
Fuck. That. Trump supporters are subhuman and their voting rights should be taken away.
hahaha fuck them
The stuff does scratch a certain itch, but I’m also moreso just so god damn tired of hearing about stupid fucking idiots that think they’re stupid fucking choice that they now regret is news
Oh, look who is having the day they voted for.
No sympathy. They voted for this piece of shit after the racism, misogyny, and pedophilia was all out in the open. It wasn’t a mistake until it hurt you personally. Fuck you Ron and Chrissey. You learned nothing, and chances are, you’ll vote for more of this in the future.
Part of the demagafication of America will need to include accepting those who want to reform.
And part of it will have to include criminalizing being MAGA and using the force of the state, including their monopoly on violence, against those who refuse.
Look at postwar Germany and Japan and what was required to culturally deprogram them from the warpath. It was quiet compared to the bloodshed of WWII but it was not pretty nor a particularly fine example of liberal values.
There should always be a peaceful path to redemption, yes, but there is no tearful “hugging it out” to solve this one. They either rejoin civil society on our terms, or they get punished.
What does it mean to criminalize MAGA? Making it illegal to vote Republican?
The republican party as it exists is essentially two parts organized crime syndicate and one part terrorist organization and should be disbanded entirely, but that’s a separate thing.
It should be illegal to be MAGA in the US the same way it’s illegal to be a Nazi in Germany.
Yeah — they caused a lot of damage and I’m not wasting pity on difficulty they’ve brought on themselves, but it’s an important & necessary step for them to do a 180⁰ so I’m glad to hear that and will happily accept their help/votes.
Words are cheap I want to see action from them otherwise I have no faith they have actually changed.
So they can start their racist, misogynistic, and homophobic intolerant bullshit all over again? No. Project 2025, figureheads like Trump, and movements like MAGA need to absolutely be stamped the fuck out. The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.
Tolerance is a social contract that they broke. I’m comfortable matching the intolerance 1:1.
It really doesn’t have to include them at all. They built the camps, we can just reuse them.
I don’t necessarily have sympathy for them, but they do say that they have voted for Dems since and that people need to stop watching Fox News. I obviously have no way of guaranteeing they never vote R ever again, but it seems like they learned at least a little. Is it enough? Probably not, but they apparently were willing to lose friends and family over this change. I’m sure there’s still a lot of distance between their politics and mine, but at a certain point we have to allow people to come out and say this. They’re publicly isolating and basically humiliating themselves to show people there’s a way out. I can’t offer that and someone needs to because there needs to be a viable path out of the Fox News pipeline. I’d love if everyone woke up tomorrow with the goal to bring about luxury gay space communism or whatever, but barring that, how do we expect the country to change for the better if we don’t allow people to change for the better? Even if what sparked that change isn’t what or when we would have liked. I’m not saying we have to like or forgive them, but they live here regardless so I’d rather too little too late than never at all.
Jesus dude, they’re barely on their road to recovery, and you want to alienate them for it? That’s not going to encourage good behavior you know. You’re just going to drive them away again.
I want nothing to do with the likes of anyone that voted Trump in the last election. They don’t care about others. They only care now, because they are the ones being hurt. I 100% believe they still don’t give a fuck about anyone that isn’t a white, cis-het believer in Christ.
You’re absolutely wrong about Trump! He’s a PILE of shit, not a piece.
He’s a diaper full of shit
Honestly though, What’s the point of wearing Depends if you can’t shit in them? /s
“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.
Absolutely astounding how Americans care NOTHING about anyone that is not themselves. The orange pedophile has literally been directly responsible for the slaughter of THOUSANDS and that fact does not even register with this piece of shit
We Americans have, unfortunately, a very individualist society. That sort of thinking prevents us from acting in the best interest of people who are not ourselves because we don’t see the immediate benefit to ourselves.
It’s extremely shortsighted, foolish, selfish, and the exact opposite of the message the dominant religion in the nation preaches. But it’s hard to shake that kind of cultural thinking. That journey took me a while, and I started in a more “advantageous” position (in regard to this topic) than some because my parents instilled a deep sense of compassion and a desire for truth, even if they themselves are still stuck as single-issue pro-life republicans.
Every individual who gets slapped out of their conservatism by personal consequences has a chance to end up breaking free and realizing how harmful myopic thought is, and I’m cheering for them even if they have a long way to go on their journey.
What is the most important step? The next one. Always the next step.
I wholeheartedly agree with you and wish you the best of luck in your journey
Oh look there are consequences for our actions and we’re still not through with the consequences oh no, fucking idiots.
Imagine working FOR the government and ever voting for the party of small government.
A government so small it can fit in my uterus.
I work for my county, I have coworkers who are proud that they don’t vote and don’t follow politics
WE. WORK. FOR. THE. GOVERNMENT! Go up the food chain from us a couple steps and our boss’, boss’, boss’ boss or something along those lines is an elected official! You’re basically passing up an opportunity to choose who your boss is, and those elections often end up happening on off years when there’s no presidential or other big election going on and even less people turn out to vote, so your vote really counts.
I’m GLAD these people FINALLY saw the Light and will STOP voting for
the SAME Politicians who KEEP putting them into This Mess!ONLY Donald J. Trump!“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.”
Acknowledging a mistake only works if you them stop making that mistake. And I’m not convinced these or similar people will do that.
How many red flags have they ignored? They didn’t give a shit about other people being screwed over by him. It was only when it affected them that they started to question. He worked for the Federal government and was still bashing the shit out of it. They ignored the January 6th riots. They voted for the this THREE times. This is all typical maga idiocy, and the reason why we’re in such a mess.
I mean, I guess it’s good they’re seeing reality now. But holy shit. And these stories are basically pointless. Anyone who hasn’t pulled their heads out of their asses by now won’t because of other people’s accounts like this. The only thing that will change their minds is personal hardships. And even then it’s a toss-up.
People consume media that is constantly lying to them, they are surrounded by people being fed the same lies, creating a feedback loop that suppresses any opposition. It’s even worse these days with social media and algorithms, they just constantly get fed the lies, the propaganda.
At least these people came around eventually. Lots of people dont think politics matters that much until it severely affects them. So its going to take that kick in the mouth, unfortunately. Even if they are still selfish in their change, at least it will help the masses.
Saying “I told you so” doesnt really help, people like this were truly misguided and deluded.
Boiling down the frustration of me and others in these situation to “you’re just saying I told you so” is facile. We’ve been down the path of “yay, good job on seeing the light! Go you! One of us gobble gobble!” far too many times. And it doesn’t do shit. Like I say, I guess it’s good they finally saw the light. But I’m not going to give this couple of proverbial medal or lavish them with praise for finally seeing the fucking obvious.
And like I say, relaying these stories doesn’t help either. At this point anyone maga who hasn’t realized the error of their ways can only learn through the direct consequence of their action. They won’t change their mind because some maga HUD employee three states over got screwed. That’s not how this works.
“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.
You made a mistake, it was a bad choice
how many times did they make this “mistake”?
Until they realized it was a mistake?
Let’s say someone moves to the UK from the US. They’ve figured out that you have to drive on the left side of the road instead of the right, but they didn’t know you can’t turn (left, not right) on a red light when there’s no traffic coming. So they do this several times.
A cop sees them do this and pulls them over. He informs them that this is illegal, and decides to be gracious and say, “since it’s your first mistake, I’m not going to write you up.”
Would you then pipe up from the back seat and say, “They actually turned on MANY red lights. They made this same mistake a lot of times!”
If people are going to change for the better, encourage that change. Don’t belittle them for not changing faster. We want people to be better.
Well that at least makes them more intelligent than most Trump voters. A very low bar. An extremely low bar if they still plan to vote for republicans.
Not sure I believe that’s true. They were NEVER going to change but were slapped in the face and directly impacted, They will not ever naturally care about other people. They don’t like trump because he hurt THEM. I bet they’re still perfectly ok with Alligator Alcatraz, because those people are getting what they deserve.
They’re not awake, they’re blindly voting ‘blue’ because ‘red’ hurt them.
They will not ever naturally care about other people.
I don’t know believe that. I don’t believe that empathy is some inherent trait that cannot be learned. People change, but momentum can be hard to overcome. They’ve just been handed an opportunity by having their momentum disrupted.
They’ve been slapped personally enough to realize MAGA was terrible. They’re already talking about having been fed their opinions. That’s important, it means they’re now reflecting and thinking. Those are important steps.
And they’re still more intelligent than the ones that have been repeatedly dick slapped and still gladly voting red. It’s not high praise to say their mildly smarter than a single digit IQ average Mega voter.
I’m right there with you, I don’t think they’ve truly learned anything. They’re just recoiling like dumb animals. But then not voting for more direct abuse is still an improvement I will take.
Bad news guys–dumb isn’t something you just wake up one day cured from.
Well . . . no, but being lied to your whole life can be.
Can be.
