“My Journey As an American Voter”
By (you know my real name if you know me, otherwise you can read it as one human’s personal experiences over 40 years.)
(The following was written in July, 2025)
Why I am writing this:
I have always felt compelled to write down my thoughts and experiences, but this drive has always been fraught with difficulty and dangers, especially if it has to do with public issues. I’m an over-thinker and highly aware (I think) of people’s sensitivities, the way they think, they interpret, misinterpret, get triggered. However, I am also very aware of their strengths, their desire to find others who relate, their cultural and personal lenses, filters, and languages. In particular, I refrain from writing publicly because I don't want to hurt or embarrass anyone close to me or be “unprofessional”. I do believe it IS good to know and follow some cultural norms, keep some peace, be professional, and “read the room” so to speak, but it has also caused me a lot of suffering, because I feel a deep sense of relief when I am being completely honest in everything I do and say. I am one of those people who finds it really hard to stand by and say nothing when I strongly feel I have something to say. Luckily, I also believe in a healthy amount of restraint and personal sacrifice for the greater good. It’s a difficult but important balance to strike. I think the problem was that I had a hard time figuring out how to be honest while being tactful and loving without being emotional, and also allowing room for others to simply disagree without feeling personally attacked in any way.. Easier said than done! Especially in this day and age. So why am I writing this? I guess I feel I’ve reached a strong enough point in my life, where I can calmly share my views and story while loving my neighbor. I hold no resentment or hate or judgement in my heart. Discernment, yes, but not judgement. Honestly, I can only do this because of two reasons: First, because of my faith, and second because I’ve fully committed to the purpose I believe God has for me, which took me a loooooong time to accept. But it’s brought true clarity and strength of mind and spirit, the likes of which I have never felt before.
How I am going to write this:
To write down my whole life would take forever! Just as with anyone else, we are so complex, not just in the things that have happened externally (what we’ve done, what others have done to us, and how the world around has influenced us) but in particular, what has happened internally. As complex as we see our external lives and the world we live in, far more interesting is the vast and varying landscape of our internal life. That’s the part that fascinates me most about humans. As I get older, though, I am also starting to understand the serenity of simplicity. Trying to understand stillness and silence - my mind and heart are very busy things, and being alone and quiet are difficult things for me. I suppose our lives are a bit like the big bang theory - from a single simple point bursts an immense and increasingly complex universe, only to be brought back again to a single simple point when we die. Anyway! I am going to write this with a certain goal in mind: I want to show how my experiences and choices shaped me, and in particular how also my political understanding changed, in the hopes that is will shed real light on my current stances, which from an external point of view look drastically different than a few years ago, but internally make more sense from a core values point of view. I want to break through the noise of the media and the propaganda that attempts to divide us with fear and labels. I think in reality, there are far more people in the middle with mixed views and experiences, exhausted - exhausted, not only from trying to figure out the complexity of their own lives, internally and externally, their families, jobs, etc. but also the constant pressures of societal complexities and the frustration of how “politics” tries to permeate so many facets of our lives these days. Or is it just a personal issue for me? Or has it always been this way? Sometimes I don’t know! I sometimes hate that I care about it. In the past, I have tried to ignore it and not care, but that is also not a good idea for me. I wish I could live on a small farm away from everyone and everything, but for some reason, that is just not who I am. Maybe one day? But for now I have finally learned how to not let it control me. I also think we have to fight the forces in this world that constantly try to drive us apart and pit us against each other. I know what it sounds like to some people, but yes, I believe there are dark forces in this world. Call it what you will, (bad ideas, destructive ideas, jealousy, hate, self-glorification, lies, etc.) but I think their goal is division and destruction. And that’s what I’m trying to fight back against. Not other people. I can only love everyone, and hate the dark forces that try to destroy people and relationships. We all unfortunately hold the capacity to let these dark forces into us, and we have to also fight it from within. Maybe this is all a little too philosophical for some, but it’s truly how I think and what I have observed in my life.
An AI note: I am not AI nor is anything that I’m writing here done with AI! Does anyone else wonder whether everything they see and read online these days is all just AI and troll bots? I wish there was a law that stated anything made with AI has to have a visible water mark behind it at all times stating that it’s AI. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Also, I’m just a new small account and I’m already being followed by some nasty accounts that look like fake, hateful, inflammatory online bots. What the heck!? So I guess I will have to make community guidelines next.
A prayer:
Before I begin, I want to bless this writing with a prayer…Dear Lord, Jesus, please bless my writing with wisdom and truth, knowing that neither I nor this writing is perfect, I ask that you use me as an instrument of your love and peace, and that whatever I do, I may bring about goodness through it, knowing that I still have a lot to learn. Please bless the readers. Whatever difficulties and challenges they face in their lives, help them through it please. Whatever difficulties and changes they may find in reading, please help them through. Give them the graces, strength, love, healing, and understanding that their lives require.
Intro
This portion will be my personal story as an American voter, with a little background in my education and my spiritual and family life for context. Maybe it will help shed a little light for whoever needs it (and probably help me process everything too). But sadly, I have to leave out 95% of the rest of my life (more important things like friendship, music, growing up, travel, books, love, laughter, loss, choices made, pain, things done and not done, redemption…) What you should know, though, is that my personal and spiritual journey thus far cannot really be separated from this experience, it is all intricately woven together and most important to the evolution of my life, but for the sake of time and also because the details of those stories involve working through relationships (with self, God, and others) and deserve a more delicate approach. As I said I will leave a lot out, and save it for my personal journal. I will explain a little of it for the sake of context. I wrote the following story BEFORE everything you just read, back in March 2025, so if it has a different “vibe” or feel when you read, that is why. As I re-read the following, I just want to add a few notes. I’ve never thought there are any perfect places/societies on earth. I think we all have ideas and practices we can share with each other (some good and some bad), I am just recognizing and appreciating what I believe are really good and strong ideas for free societies and for human society in general. Obviously I’m incredibly lucky to live in this country, especially where I am within the country. But my number one allegiance is to God first and foremost, and believe we are all children of God.
(The following was written last March, 2025, with some edits in July)
Background:
At about 15, I went through a deep personal questioning of my Catholic faith and whether I actually believed what I was brought up to believe. I did not want to base my faith in blind acceptance or a superficial kind of undefined, unquestioned belief. But I wanted to really seek truth in all things, to engage the intellect as well as the soul. I wondered if this would be possible, as many messages in the world lead people to believe intellect, science, and the natural world cannot co-exist with faith in God, in Jesus. Shortly thereafter, I had what I can only describe as a deeply frightening spiritual encounter. I’ll let you interrupt that as you want and call it whatever you want, but the point is, ever since then, I have been keenly aware of God’s presence and in a constant existential spiritual battle in my mind, heart, and soul. I’ve gone through multiple evolutions of belief and some periods of spiritual darkness. That’s another story, but the bottom line is: I believe in God.
One of the first big worldly shocks I had when I was a young American, besides the Columbine shooting, was the same as every American: September 11, 2001. I cannot overstate how much this affected us. I was 17 years old, a senior in high school. It shook us to the very bone to watch those attacks and wonder if I’d have to watch my generation to go to war. Most people know what happened after that, but it’s important to mention, because we often forget how this dramatically changed the USA’s focus and political landscape. Books have been written about it, by people more studied on the subject than me.
When I went to college, some wise person told me “There is and will never be a good (political) party for the true believer (in Christ). You will always feel politically homeless.” Though I guess it made sense to me as an 18 year old, I didn’t realize at the time how deeply true this would turn out to be. Even the founding fathers of the United States seemed to recognize this basic truth, that when left to their own devices, governments (and arguably humans themselves and the institutions they create) have a tendency to move toward self-interest, self-preservation, corruption, and centralized power. Maybe it’s quick or maybe it even happens slowly and subtly, but it’s why the words “inalienable rights endowed by our Creator” are important and why the founders were very intentional to give as much power and freedom to the people as possible, starting with the freedom of speech and religion. Yes I am aware of the USA, the history of the puritans, and what society and life was like at that time. But I think the founders of this country got some really important and fundamental things right that would later help us bring about good changes in this country.
(*This is also important later on to the discussion, because belief in God and religious freedom is vital to understanding how America’s culture differs from other wealthy western countries, like Europe and Canada, which are far more likely to be secular and only culturally religious, rather than practicing. See chart here. I have also experienced this personally when I go to church in Germany, at least, the churches are pretty empty. The church I attend every Sunday at home is always full. Obviously not all Americans are religious, and for a while we started to see a decline in over the last 20 years, but the trend seems to be reversing course. Anyway, my point is that it’s an important part of our culture. And I think in America, separation of church and state is mostly to protect religious freedom, so that the state and politics don’t try to control, influence, or force churches and people to do things. For a long time, I thought it was the other way around, that churches shouldn’t influence politics, and that’s definitely true to a certain point, but now I believe it’s more so politics we don’t want trying to control our religious freedoms.)
Moving on, and back to my university years…Throughout college, I definitely became more liberalized and pulled “left”. Although, there has always been a stubborn part of me that resisted it. At least in my experience, I would say it’s true that, in general, public colleges in the United States have done their best to subtly indoctrinate students into leftist ideologies. Of course, it also depends on the field of study. My English professors were the most noticeable. It became pretty clear that sharing any conservative viewpoints would result in bad grades, so eventually you learn to write what the professor wants to hear in order to pass the class. Mostly this happened in my English classes, but it was true of other classes/professors too. One in particular, I remember we only read books chosen by the instructor that fit their world view, beliefs, and politics.
Interestingly, and maybe not surprising, my anthropology professors were much deeper, philosophical thinkers and open-minded. I suppose having lived and worked with such a variety of groups around the world, they developed an ear for listening to a variety of perspectives, cultures, and religious views. They may have had strong political views that rubbed off on us, but they were masterfully fair in class and never put down one group or belief system. I learned an extraordinary amount about evolution, mankind, history, and so many different societies around the world from those classes which opened my eyes and I don’t regret that education at all. It only deepened my love for humans. As you can imagine, most of my fellow anthropology students were hippie, liberal types with a deep love for travel, history, people, linguistics, the environment, and alternative music. I still have a huge soft spot in my heart for all of them. For goodness sake, I was one of them. After a while, I guess one inevitably starts to internalize the messages, some were really good and some were really not good. That was back in 2002-2005. And in 2005, I studied abroad and lived in Berlin for almost a year, which is the kind of experience that as you will see (or already know) clearly affected the rest of my life and I am so thankful for it.
Anyway, I always kept that shred of advice about being careful to not replace God with politics and other ideologies tucked deep within my heart. I remembered to maintain a healthy skepticism of the government and any industry that profits off of people, especially vulnerable or emotional people. And the little rebel voice inside me is constantly challenging and questioning the narratives, and trying to get to the truth. It absolutely hates being lied to and manipulated. That’s why there were always some clear-cut issues that the political left could never convince me of.
So, it’s really no surprise that I was registered as “independent” for most of my life (not republican or democrat), but I still primarily voted democrat, thinking that they might come around to the issues I strongly disagreed with them on. I was particularly excited to vote for Obama. Not that I was aware enough at the time of all of his policies, but he seemed so smart, well-intentioned, and well-spoken. Plus, having our first black president seemed like we reached a milestone of equality as a nation, and we could celebrate how far we’d come and make Martin Luther Kind Jr. (who I admired so much) dream come true. I have to laugh at myself now for admitting that, but I guarantee you that was what a lot of us were thinking. As a bonus, Germany seemed to approve, and after having lived there for a year and falling in love with the country, this tidbit was important to me.
Of course, becoming a mother also changed a lot of things for me - all for the better it turns out in the end. My kids and family are easily my greatest accomplishment. Growing up, messages and experiences I had surrounding the idea of starting a family were not positive for me. Again, a story for another day, but the liberal and leftist ideas that I was surrounded by (lies, I would call them now) only encouraged more fear about getting married and having children. There was a definite push to place career, self, “fun”, body image, and individual identity above family. Motherhood was generally looked down on in most of the liberal circles I was a part of. When I discovered I was pregnant, those internalized liberal and conservative voices inside me collided and battled it out. In the end, I listened to God’s voice and His example and chose to put my daughter’s life before mine and it was absolutely the best decision I’ve ever made. She is my everything and I would sacrifice anything for her. That experience has stuck with me and taught me a truth and a love I can never unlearn.
Like I said, there are unseen forces in this world that want to tear us apart and pit us against each other, even against the lives of our own children. And they will work on any side, left, right, up, down, wherever there is a crack or weak point. They will wedge themselves in, even in well-meaning people and groups.
Anyway, after getting married and some time learning to be a new mom and enjoying my sweet baby and overcoming the challenges of that too, I went back to graduate college in 2009 to become a German teacher. I took graduate classes, and worked as a teaching assistant, teaching German 101 to college kids, while working on a double masters. I met some really amazing, smart, interesting, and fun people there, including a good friend from Berlin. I both deeply loved and hated working at the university. Of course, you have the feeling of working, reading, learning, and thinking academically, which I loved. I loved all the conversations, the discussions, the lectures and literature, the creativity and getting to teach others German, meeting new people. But on the other hand, some harmful ideas and internalized fears started to seep back in. I was in my mid 20s and didn’t have any friends with kids. No strong peer group that surrounded me with positive messages of family. No one I could really relate to. Had I missed out on special experiences? on “the best years of my life”? Of course not, looking back now, I was so extremely blessed and lucky. People that loved and took care of me, healthy kids, my health. Family took me on amazing vacations. I had an intelligent, helpful, financially savvy husband who loved me and our family, who worked extremely hard to support our family, and who even cooked and cleaned. I was getting to continue my education, and was given opportunities I realize now others would give anything to have. I was blessed but I couldn’t fully appreciate it because I was stuck in a mind set. My saving graces were my husband's family and my family - who all helped keep me from falling off the edge. I wish I could have appreciated what I had back then. Sadly, I also distanced myself from one really good long time girlfriend, with the assumption that she probably didn’t want to hang out with me and a baby. I really regret that a lot and the assumptions I made. And had I known better, I would have looked to church as a further place of comfort where I could find other young mothers to build a community with.
However, practicing my faith was a different struggle. I felt so lonely and a little embarrassed going to church alone with my children. I didn’t have a spiritual partner to walk through life with and that created another very deep spiritual battle for me. To further complicate things, one of my brothers died suddenly during this time, which you can imagine was really hard on my side of the family. I wish I could go into it all, but…
Fast forward a year and I landed my first teaching position in December 2011, taking over for another teacher who left that high school suddenly. It was a stressful first year figuring out how to teach teenagers when you not only look really young, and you are also the sweet “nice” teacher. It was a unique, diverse school, and after a while, I finally started to really come into my own and find my confidence. I had a career I loved and my beautiful family with another baby on the way. Life was looking pretty good, just one or two little problems.
The first one was that even though I worked with amazing world language teachers, the school culture outside the department was in trouble. Diversity wasn’t the problem. I loved the diversity of the school. I didn’t realize this at the time, but it was the lack of unity, leadership, support for teachers, and clear rules for everyone, not just some. I have now come to realize that the more multicultural a school or society is, the more important it is to have a unifying vision everyone can rally behind that makes them all feel part of the team. There is of course so much beauty to be found in diverse cultures, families, histories, places, etc. etc. - I mean this is what I initially studied at the university! And YES! I am aware of all the history involved. But what I’ve come to realize is that it is UNITY that is actually our greatest strength, not diversity, as awesome and beautiful as that is too. Like, we need both. It’s a complex system of being unique and unified. Uniquely unified? Sounds like a good campaign slogan. If you ever wondered why “school spirit” was a thing in the US, I think this is it! It is the same as the American dream. You can come from anywhere, and be any color, have any religion, but there is one unifying dream that everyone can be a part of. When there is nothing that unites people, it seems that they will recede to their tribal instincts and fight with each other. I remember the school I was at did have one particular strong activist teacher/admin. I didn’t think negatively of it at the time (I guess my liberal education helped me accept and encourage it), but I now realize these were the things that parents now-a-days are very upset with. Things that cause division, disrespect parents, and are not academically focused, but rather politically driven, primarily but the left.
The second problem at that school was that I lived far away and getting kids to daycare on time, then to work across town, with a husband out of town a lot, and kids about to be on a different school schedule was logistically impossible. I wanted to work in the school district my kids would go to, where my husband went, which happens to be a really good school. This was evident immediately when I started working at this new school, in which I now feel very rooted in. How lucky was I!
End of background info! I hope that gives you some sense of my interests, struggles, and values, though I could go on and on about the other things happening throughout that time, but let’s move on!
Jump forward to 2016 - Trump 45:
*Disclaimer: This is what it “felt” like to me. So take all this with a grain of salt, please.
My life’s focus was not really on politics at the beginning of 2015. I was busy raising my kids, teaching German, doing family stuff, and finally getting to go back to Germany and share it with my students. I made some awesome new friends there in Germany, some of whom I love dearly and are close family friends now. I was loving getting to see the sights and enjoying the abundant, fresh, delicious, nutritious food (yes, it made that big of an impression on me as you will see later). I also loved much of the life-style in Germany, especially the active and social parts. I almost felt I could have moved there - was it just the magic of travel, novelty, adventure, great food and fewer responsibilities? Maybe. Probably? No doubt our incredible hosts made us feel like a million bucks! (or Euros, that is) When I got back home, I was focused on starting at my new school, being a good teacher and colleague, and trying to figure out how to start a German exchange program at my new school. As you can see, one of my core values is connecting people, cultures, and dare I say, unifying mankind?? At least, that’s what I hoped to do in my own little way.
Then, several months later, when I first heard a snippet of Trump on the radio running for president, (NPR to be exact), I immediately disliked him. I didn’t know him, maybe I knew of him, but I wasn’t someone who watched “The Apprentice”, or cared about anything celebrity- related. I hated celebrity worship culture (my biggest complaint about America, actually). He was sensational. He said wild things! Maybe that’s what I disliked most? He was super arrogant! Where were my politicians that gave eloquent speeches full of pretty promises they never intended to keep?! Where were the politicians that pretended to care, while spending money behind closed doors on who know what!? The “feel good” politicians, like Obama.
I almost didn’t believe Trump was running as a republican at first. He was some rich, democrat business man celebrity who’d had multiple wives, who went on Oprah and the Ellen DeGeneres show. This was not your usual republican. Who would go up against him? The she-devil herself, Hillary! Now this was a dilemma for Americans. Why would the democrats pick Hillary?! She is terrible! I despised her too! I disagreed with her on just about everything. And yet, I voted for her in 2016. When Trump won, I was devastated. Remember that bit I said about always feeling politically homeless?
Then the online and media backlash began, starting on Facebook, with liberal leftists and the mainstream media leading the charge and letting us know the world was coming to an end, kids and gays were going to start dying, the handmaid's tale would come true, there’d be slavery again, and we’d soon have a dictator... and I believed it all. I’m really quite ashamed now that I bought into the hysteria. So much for my reasonable, centered positions as an independent voter. Suddenly, I knew better than my parents, my uneducated “MAGA” family in the rural Midwest. Suddenly, as was confirmed by my more “educated friends”, I was morally superior and didn’t need to really listen to anyone who voted for Trump, because they were so ignorant and brainwashed by conspiracies. I mean, I have traveled the world. I’m more educated, and understand and care more deeply about my students, and "oppressed" populations. I work in public schools, and I’ve studied history, therefore I must be immune to the kind of propaganda others had fallen for, right? Right? I thought I was right. No, I KNEW I was right.
That is the problem. False moral superiority.
Okay, okay, if you know me, you know I could never really be very mean to anyone. I really do love other people so incredibly much, but these were the kinds of things in my head that were being confirmed by all the circles and media outlets I followed. Yeah, I hope you can see the problem with all of that kind of thinking. It’s not really thinking. It’s more like someone’s emotions and compassion being weaponized for faceless political gain. In 2016, America suddenly seemed to polarize way more than normal, which I can’t help but still kind of blame on Trump. Maybe we had been primed for it? I don’t know, but we started to recede into our echo chambers online and our “tribes”.
Despite the cautionary tale I was told all those years ago about not succumbing to identity politics, and maintaining a healthy amount of skepticism, I was starting to walk down that road. My saving graces were my faith and my family, but even that was about to be tested. When things settled down a bit, I regained some focus on my passion and joy of teaching German, planning for Germany, travel, family, etc. but there was definitely an undercurrent of leftist messages (propaganda I’d say now) coming through, especially with all the virtual signaling online - the black lives matter movement, “toxic” masculinity, and the rise of transgenderism. I was never extreme or anything like that, but I will say I was sympathetic to all those causes. Also, I recited this to my German friends and just how much I hated Trump. I was being honest with how I felt at the time, confident in my assessment. Oh how I would be humbled…
2020: The Covid shit storm
We all went through the trauma and confusion of the panic, so I don’t need to explain much there, but leading up to that year, I was starting to question a lot of things. I was still definitely “me” but some old demons started to come back and take new form. Again, I won’t go into detail about deeply personal battles, but I was questioning my faith and my marriage pretty hard. But there were a couple issues that the leftist/liberals could never convince me of. It was these issues that kept me from going off the deep end. Because of these social issues, I desperately looked for dissenting voices within the democratic party that criticized it from within. And I found them. These independent thinkers, but still leftist democrats at the time, would become really important later on. Actually, they would eventually leave the democrats and the mainstream media altogether, having become so annoyed at the inability to listen to reasonable criticism and concerns.
By the time we returned to school in fall 2020 and in 2021, I was doing what a few other teachers started to do, which was to ask students their pronouns. This is what the universities were doing as well. Trust me I know! I went back to finish up my masters (I still needed one more class) and I was forced to complete a DEI training that taught students to use various pronouns and trained them on sexual identities. It should have been eye-opening, but remember at the time, I thought I was “smart, cool, and progressive”. I was even given a “divers” “xer, xen, xem” poster by another German teacher to put up in my classroom. We were also given happy little rainbow flag stickers by the school to put on our classroom door to let kids know we were “allies” and this was a “safe place”. (I now realize this was just a trick to display political ideology. Where was the sticker with a cross on it to let Christian kids know they were safe?)
Actually, the school never addressed this new trend directly and when I asked about it, they refused to give any real guidance on the matter, besides “stick to the handbook”. I realize now, they were afraid to make any waves and didn’t want to upset either side. So it was left up to individual teachers to decide what to do. What I thought at the time was that it was that a pronoun was just a word, like a nickname, and words can’t hurt anyone, can they? If a student wants to be called a different name or pronoun, it doesn’t really matter, right? I mean language is just sounds we attribute things to, right?
I was about to learn a hard lesson.
I started to noticed a couple things in my students that seemed to not only be embarrassing this new trend, but convince other students as well. The curious anthropologist in me started to wake up and wonder why more and more kids were suddenly wanting to change genders and be called different things. If there’s one thing I think I’m good at, I think it’s noticing cultural trends and shifts. One of the “problems” with me, is that I will not sleep until I’ve gotten to the bottom of something I’ve become interested in. Until I’ve done a deep dive and researched every aspect of a question that is agonizing me. I noticed that many of the students that wanted to use different names and pronouns also struggled with mental health, trauma, and family issues. I had one girl so into this trend, she started bullying other kids, yelling at them trying to convince them that they too were a different gender. I realize now that she was yelling at them in order to try and convince herself. That her behavior was coming from pain. This later was confirmed, and it really made me start questioning everything. Was I really loving these kids by affirming them? Or was I really just protecting myself? I started having students ask me to keep it a secret from their parents. Red flags started going up everywhere. The saddest story, and the one that made the biggest, lasting impact on me was a student struggling with an identity crisis, and possible autism (though I didn’t know it at the time). I loved this brilliant student. She was wicked smart, funny, and seriously interested in German. I affirmed her name and pronouns without even second guessing myself. But my curiosity and research in the transgender trend started to open my eyes to the truth of what was actually happening. Of course, I didn’t want to listen to anyone on the political right about this - so I first found voices of adults who seemingly “transitioned” “sucessfully”. And then I started to discover testimonies of young people who detransitioned and explained the whole process and what they went through. It horrified me. The two most impactful videos were the following if you want to watch them:
Testimony from a detransitioner:
Discussion between two older trans people:
I started to realize that I could seriously be impacting, possibly harming my students, for life - and it scared me. I wasn’t the “caring” teacher helping her students, that I thought I was. I was just promoting an ideology and possibly encouraging kids to be lifelong medical patients. I started to realize that maybe, just maybe, some of my beliefs were actually helping faceless medical companies that profit off of vulnerable young people. This was my first wake up call. (I suddenly realized this was similar to another issue dear to my heart about the medical world using vulnerable people for profit. Won’t go into that debate!) But who could I tell about this? I suddenly knew exactly what would happen if I spoke up about it. The same thing that I did to others when I didn’t listen to criticism from the conservatives in my family. The same thing that happened to a lot of people who tried to speak up against a variety of issues, to anyone who even questioned the covid mandates, or the vaccines, or the masks. They were all vilified and many were censored. They got hateful backlash, losing friendships, and sometimes jobs. This was my first wake up call to the power the left held over speech and the media. If you questioned the narrative, you ran the risk of being “canceled” or having your name smeared, or labeled as dangerous. Here’s one of many examples…
Former liberal, black lives matter:
I started to regret voting for the democrats and wondered if there were others who were beginning to question the leftist narratives. I was not alone. Don’t get me wrong, I still loathed Trump and desperately wanted to see a different candidate win the primary. But gradually an awareness among some of us began to arise. We started seeing mainstream media and social media for what it was - a dispensary of bias sensational clickbait. So, like many, I went looking for other sources: podcasters, independent thinkers, notable ex-mainstream journalists, books. But most of all I was interested in listening to first hand accounts. Even Elon Musk, now just as hated as Trump, had gone from supporting Biden and democrats to buying Twitter because the censorship was so bad. I don’t love Elon, it’s true he says some “crazy” things sometimes, but I think he’s right about free speech and that the government should not be controlling social media. Eventually, social media outlets admitted that the government had asked them to censor its citizens, even if stories were true, had no hate speech, and didn’t violate any laws. I can tell you this was a huge shock to me. That just blatantly goes against the first amendment. I figured companies probably pushed an agenda, but to actually have the government secretly involved in censoring the most basic American right, was really eye-opening. Maybe it’s not so shocking to Europeans, but to an American it’s pretty much the worst. Who gets to decide what speech should be censored? You may be happy with limits and censoring people’s opinions you don’t like while your party is in control, but what if another party takes power and then decides to censor you? Will you be happy then?
Another influential ex-democrat that made a big impression on me was Tulsi Gabbard. Here is her story. This was before she endorsed Trump:
Lastly, and importantly, there came RFK. This one really hit home. Do you remember how I mentioned earlier that I loved the food and the healthier life-style in German? That wasn’t just a passing thought. That has been a core value that I have adopted and talked about ever since. I don’t think people realize how desperately I want our American food system to be overhauled and return to actual, real, healthy food. (It is probably my number one issue, after free speech and right to life, free of violence.) RFK actually talked and campaigned on this extremely important issue that literally every other politician has ignored throughout my life. The connection between health and our food. Once he endorsed Trump, the democrats tried to destroy him as well and scare people, trying to make him look like an anti-vaxxer. But here was someone finally talking about something I’ve been shouting about for years. Why are Americans so unhealthy? Why are we all on drugs? Why do we have such terrible food filled with toxic chemicals and sugar? Why is our soil depleted? Why do Europeans fear getting fat here? You can’t spend time in Europe and NOT notice. The problem is so glaringly obvious!
At this point, I realized the liberal left’s hold on me as a voter was over. The right, with all its problems, was at least speaking truth to me. I’d experienced too much first hand and learned too much, and couldn’t find anything to dispute what I now understand. Our country needed to get out of debt, off drugs, stop pushing lies, become healthier, become more pro-family, stop making race and gender the center of everything, and stop censoring free speech. We needed to stop making politics our false god. The problem? I really didn’t want to vote for Trump. I wished I could have voted for Tulsi Gabbard or RFK, but the democrats basically drove them out. The choice was between status quo, guaranteed censorship and managed decline or take a huge freaking chance and change the trajectory of the culture. In end, that is what I did. I may have put a checkmark next to Trump, but really, and I’m guessing this is true for a lot of people who voted for him, I voted for the other people he would bring on to start making big changes.
Will this turn out well? I have learned to humbly say I don’t know. But we weren’t offered a better alternative. I no longer deal in silly hypotheticals, but I truly believe the alternative (Kamala Harris) would have been way worse. So we are all just holding our breath hoping our big gamble pays off and that people around the globe (especially in Europe) will catch up to what we’ve had to deal with.
(Update July, 2025: I will try to come back and write an update about all that has happened between March and July 2025 and what I think about it, but I will need to save that for a different post! Thank you for reading. Wow! I am impressed you made it through all that! I am actually open to ideas and feedback that will help me improve it, no hateful feedback though, thanks! I may continue to edit and improve this writing overtime, but will try not to change the information too much.)