I was born in Detroit in 1987, and I grew up in Northville, a Detroit suburb. 

My dad had his own graphic design business; my mom was office manager for a doctor.

I had a great childhood. I was an only child. I wasn’t spoiled, but I was privileged. I didn’t want for anything. At the same time, my parents instilled a very strong work ethic in me.

While I was raised to value intelligence and being accomplished, I was also raised to value beauty and male attention. I grew up obsessed with being pretty.

There was no politics in our house growing up. I didn’t know which way my parents leaned politically until well into my adulthood. Sometimes my mom would say racist things about people of color. My father was always really quiet. He would call out my mom for saying something racist, but now and then he would say something racist as well. 

I was pretty desensitized to it; since they were my parents, I thought talking like that was normal.

I went to public school until I entered a private Catholic girls high school in metro Detroit. My school had a large Chaldean population — Christians who emigrated from Iraq. My mom didn’t like that; she would say, why are all these Middle Eastern people going to that school?

I started to think about politics when I was in college, at Western Michigan University. It all started when I got a job as a nanny for a very wealthy family. This was serious wealth; they had a 20,000 square foot home, and I had my own separate quarters. I also worked at a bar they owned. I admired their lifestyle a lot, especially at 19 years old. I wanted that life. I also worked at a sports bar they owned. I ended up working for/living with them for six years. I even went on vacations with them.

During the 2008 presidential election campaign, the father pointed out that it was the first time I could vote. I said I wasn’t voting, that I didn’t know anything about politics. So he set out to politicize me. He was very Republican.

One time he asked me how I felt about gay marriage. Now, I had done musical theater from the time I was a kid all through high school. Many of those in the productions were gay, so I was very used to that community. So I said I had no problem with gay marriage. He said, “What about the Bible?” I said I didn’t see how that was relevant. 

I felt if two people loved each other they should have the same rights as everyone else.

He didn’t argue the point, but he used it to frame his main theory. He told me, “When you’re younger you’re a Democrat because you want a better world for everyone. But when you’re older, you’ll learn. You’ll get smarter and you’ll become a Republican when you learn how the world really works. When it comes to having money in your pocket, it will make sense to be a Republican.”

We had a discussion one time about my use of Michigan’s Bridges card — it’s the state’s version of food stamps. I qualified for it based on my income, so I got $250 a month for food. The father scolded me. He said I was making too much, that I was taking advantage of the system. This was while he was paying me under the table as a nanny and only paying me $20 every two weeks for my work at the bar (I made most of my money from tips). I was too young at the time to realize he was gaslighting me. 

As a result of his influence, I voted for John McCain in the 2008 election. I felt a sense of superiority that I hadn’t voted for Obama. All my friends voted for him, and I felt it proved they didn’t understand how the world actually worked. I thought to myself, “All you losers are so brainwashed you voted for Obama even though you didn’t know why. Was it just because he was Black?”

I graduated from college in 2010, and I worked for the family until 2012. I was working and dating, not really caring about, or understanding, politics. I loved watching Fox News, and I voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, but my knowledge never got deeper than regurgitated talking points.

The ‘Perfect Candidate’ Comes Along

When Trump was running for president In 2016, I was dating a guy who was MAGA. He was very wealthy, very successful, very charming. At that time, a lot of my sense of self worth came from men. I was also very attracted to my boyfriend’s elitist attitude. My thinking went like this: The more elite and wealthy and confident the man was, if he chose me to be with him, that must mean I was amazing.

I was similarly influenced by the owner of a multi-level marketing company where I worked. He was a major Republican, very vocal about his politics. I really admired him, and wanted to be accepted into his inner circle.

With that attitude, Trump was the perfect candidate for me. I thought he was this incredible person: a billionaire, everything I admired. I loved how he spoke, I loved his charisma. I loved his whole spiel about draining the swamp. He was so masterful at painting a picture of a corrupt government, of a system in which everything was going wrong. And he was the one who was going to fix it. 

Trump created the feeling that you were part of something bigger, something that nobody else saw. I loved feeling like he was going to save us all. I was MAGA all the way.

We had Fox on all the time. The rest of my information came from my boyfriend, his family, and a couple of my aunts who are very, very Republican. When I told them I was going to vote for Trump, they sunk their hooks in me, talking about conspiracy theories, how Democrats were evil, etc.

So I was primed to loath Hillary Clinton. I knew nothing about her except that she was Bill’s wife and he had cheated on her with Monica Lewinsky. But I believed everything I was told about the Clintons being rapists and human traffickers, how she murdered American soldiers in Benghazi (although I had no idea what happened there), about her emails, all the things she was supposedly hiding. I developed a deep hatred for that woman. I cheered Trump when he said we couldn’t elect a criminal as president.

Most of my friends were Democrats, and they could not understand it. They tried to argue and negotiate with me, but I discounted everything they said as stupid. I told them, “You don’t understand the big picture, you’re being fed a bunch of lies.”

I wholeheartedly believed Trump when he said racist things. I knew nothing of the many sexual assault accusations against him. I did hear about the “grab ‘em by the pussy” remark, but after having worked at a sports bar for six years, I had heard everything under the sun. I didn’t care how he talked about women; I just wanted him to run the country.

The first couple of years Trump was in office, I went back to not paying much attention to politics. I was so privileged; no policy change had ever affected me personally. 

I had an overall positive feeling about him. I was very proud of him meeting with Kim Jong-Un. I thought, “Damn, he’s a great diplomat.”

Covid — and QAnon

When Covid hit in 2020, I was living with a new boyfriend, who was very apathetic, totally non-political. As we quarantined together, I started paying a lot more attention to politics — and especially to Trump. For the first time, policy was affecting me. I knew people who had died from Covid. I began closely following what Trump was saying and doing about the pandemic. 

When he said Covid would disappear by Easter of 2020, I believed him. I thought to myself, he knows more than me. When he talked about injecting bleach, I laughed it off, telling my boyfriend he didn’t actually mean that. But then people started going to the hospital because they were injecting bleach. “Wow,” I thought, “people are believing him. Trump needs to be more careful about what he says.” But that never happened. 

Trump’s blatant disrespect for Dr. Fauci really bothered me, and further fed my doubts about him and MAGA. I’m smart, well educated, I believe in science. I trust people who have gotten the training to become an expert in their field. So I trusted Fauci. I empathized with him; I felt his frustration every time he spoke. Meanwhile, the president consistently undermined him at every turn. “You are not a scientist,” I said to Trump while watching him on TV doing this. “Allow the man to speak.”

Meanwhile, around the spring or summer of 2020, I started hearing about QAnon on Facebook and other social media. I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m easily seduced by a good conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories make you feel you’re part of something bigger. I believed Q was an elite person in Trump’s inner circle. I believed Democrats were trafficking children in Wayfair cabinets. 

Sometime around the fall of 2020, one of my aunts told me there were underground networks of Democrats — including Hillary Clinton — who were drinking children’s blood under a pizza parlor in Washington, DC. I thought, “Okay, this has gone too far. Hillary Clinton is not drinking children’s blood.” I still believed there was human trafficking going on, though.

Then my aunt started talking about The New World Order, that Trump was the only one who could protect us from elites who were going to take over the world. This struck me as so outlandish, that the veil started to lift. I started seeing things with different eyes. I even stopped believing the Wayfair conspiracy theory. 

I was still MAGA, but not for much longer. I fully broke away when I saw the consequences of Trump’s making fun of people for wearing masks. I saw how he emboldened people to act horribly, like wearing masks with holes in them as some sort of childish, dumb, ugly protest. I watched people yelling at people in the grocery store, at the workers, for wearing masks, treating them like garbage. And these were all Trump supporters. I thought, this is a pandemic, for goodness sake. I saw similar ignorance and hate and defiance among some of my aunts and uncles because that’s how their leader was acting. I decided I didn’t want to be a part of it. 

As the November 2020 election approached, I didn’t know how I was going to vote until the last minute. Something clicked for me as I watched a Trump rally right before the election. He was making fun of the small crowd at a Joe Biden rally. I thought, you idiot, of course his numbers are small, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. Biden had told people they should only come to his rallies if they felt safe. I said to myself, the president is supposed to protect us, unify us, keep us safe. Trump wasn’t doing any of that. That was the last straw for me; I voted for Biden. 

So I was no longer MAGA and I had voted for Biden, but oddly enough I still wanted Trump to win. I still believed there were wealthy elites pulling the strings behind the scenes, and I wanted to believe that Trump would save us from them.

My Reawakening

After the election, one of my aunts was sending me videos of poll workers supposedly switching ballots, stuff like that. I had an initial feeling of, “Oh wow, is this true?” But then I followed the challenges and the lawsuits, saw that he lost at every turn, and I decided the whole idea that the election was stolen was bogus. Trump lost,and he was being a big baby about it. That was another nail in the coffin for me.

The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol made me sick. It was awful. That was the final nail in the coffin. I believed the mark of a good president was to protect and unify, especially during times of crisis. I was watching him doing the opposite. 

I fully walked away from QAnon after the election too. A lot of QAnon theories didn’t pan out. It was like waiting for the shoe to drop, and it never did. I remember thinking, “Where’s Q? What’s going on? Why aren’t they saying anything?” That just faded away; I was a little ashamed of ever having fallen for it.

I watched a documentary about Trump called Unfit. That began my feeling that I had been manipulated into supporting MAGA.

In mid-2021 I resumed a project I had begun during Covid: a fantasy novel about a witch in a past life. I did a lot of research, and learned about the Salem witch trials, about religion, about patriarchy. I read about Constantine and the Council of Nicaea (a 4th century assembly that decided Jesus was divine, not human). 

I did a lot of research. I watched every documentary and listened to every podcast I could find about religious cults, witchcraft, patriarchal societies.  I learned that so many of the women who were prosecuted for being witches were widows of wealthy men. The local government was accusing them of being witches so it could take their property. That really pissed me off. I read Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), a 15th-century treatise on how to prosecute witches, written by a man who hated women. It made me realize how powerful men have always been, and how scared they are of women. 

I learned there used to be matriarchal societies in the world. I watched the documentary Bad Faith, about Christian Nationalism.

My research opened my eyes to what I had been. I realized, “Wow, I’ve been brainwashed. I’ve been a misogynist against myself.” I realized I had voted for and been an active part of contributing to misogyny. I was the person who would make fun of feminists. I used to think, “Of course women aren’t equal to men.” Now I look at us as the freaking creators of life. That totally switched things for me.

My intellectual discoveries led to a big shift in how I perceived myself and my own worth. I had always dated wealthy men with big houses, cleaned and cooked for them. That was my value. Then I had another realization: “Why do I have to wait to meet a man who has a big house? Why can’t I build my dream house? Why can’t I provide this life for myself?” That had never occurred to me while I was in MAGA.

A lot of women in MAGA believe their value comes from being chosen and getting approval from the men in their lives. And they don’t feel empowered to give themselves what they want out of life. I think the majority convinced themselves that’s what they want, and that keeps them very submissive. MAGA today emboldens them to embrace that even more so. 

A huge reason for my awakening was my switch to a wide variety of news sources. I started watching ABC News, Reuters, AP, the BBC, CNN, CBS, NPR. I still watch Fox, to keep a finger on MAGA’s pulse. 

I love going to FactCheck.org. I discovered I enjoy reading and researching bills proposed in Congress, and seeing who voted for what.

I realized I’ve had an internalized racism, particularly about undocumented immigrants. After educating myself I’ve gained empathy. I don’t agree with calling them “illegals” — no human being is illegal. I learned they pay over $100 billion in taxes every year. 

Looking back on my time in MAGA, I think about how I loved Trump, but there was always something — a thread tugging at me — questioning whether it all felt right. It’s really easy to ignore when you’re surrounded by others who confirm what you believe. When I was alone during the pandemic I was able to follow that thread, and follow it safely, because there was no one around to tell me I was stupid or dumb.

There’s an animated movie called The Croods that I think offers a lesson for people in MAGA. It’s set in the Stone Age, and it’s about a family that lives in a cave. Even though the cave is dark and nasty, the father tries to keep his kids from leaving the cave to explore the outside world, because he wants to keep them safe. His daughter does go outside to explore, and discovers there’s a huge, wonderful world out there, full of beautiful (and some bad) things. A lot of people in MAGA are like the father in the film. MAGA is familiar to them, it makes them feel safe — even if something in them says, “This doesn’t feel right.” But the effort to leave that cave requires climbing an emotional mountain, and a lot of people don’t have the resources to do that. 

I think of my aunts, who keep themselves safe in their ignorance and their hate. One aunt posted pictures on Facebook that supposedly were three different mansions where Kamala Harris grew up. A quick bit of research showed they were fakes. When I gave her the facts, she attacked me: “Oh, you’re so smart, Courtney. When I was your age I thought I was so smart.”

I love them, and I will keep engaging them with facts — and lots of questions. I think that’s an effective way to approach people in MAGA: ask as many questions as possible. Hopefully that can lead them to a place where they are open to hearing another perspective.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                 —November 2024