I was born in Indianapolis in 1992, and grew up in New Castle, a rural area about an hour to the east. My parents are both well educated with masters degrees. While my father worked, my mom homeschooled my brother and me since the public school in our area wasn’t performing well at the time.

Being homeschooled was very isolating for me. People on the right love to talk about how the left lives in an echo chamber. Well, you’re not going to find a stronger echo chamber than in some of these homeschooling communities.

My mom did a great job getting us caught up academically, and by the time I was high school age, I was ready to go back to public school.

My parents didn’t talk about politics with us, but I definitely absorbed their beliefs. The background noise of my childhood was Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. Mom and dad watched a lot of Fox, and I would hear Rush Limbaugh while we were driving in the car. 

I went to college at Ball State; it was my first time being around people who held different political beliefs. I would clash with other students at times; being a conservative Republican on campus didn’t go down very well.

Around this time, the term “Social Justice Warrior” became popular on the internet; it was the precursor to “woke.” Conservatives didn’t like the purity testing, the scolding, people freaking out when you disagreed with them. That created an atmosphere where you wanted to mock these people. Commentators I followed — Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder — were producing a lot of anti-SJW content. 

I graduated with a BS in psychology shortly before Donald Trump started his first campaign in 2015. I was primed for the picking for MAGA. I was anti-SJW and getting riled up by the internet pundits. At the same time, I didn’t like the Republican Party because I felt it never got anything done.

I was a hard-liner on immigration and felt the mainstream Republican Party had accomplished nothing on it. And I hated how Republican representatives were so strait-laced and traditional. I didn’t feel they were authentic. I didn’t like any of the Republicans running for president; none of them had charisma, and I didn’t think any of them would get anything done. I was tired of all the proper channels. I wanted to see change.

I had never seen the establishment solving problems. When Barack Obama was president, a lot of economic gains didn’t touch rural areas like ours. 

I wasn’t a big fan of Hillary Clinton; I didn’t like that a lot of factories left during her husband’s presidency. And she always came across as egotistical and elitist, a career politician — the embodiment of the establishment. With her, it felt like she was saying, “I’m better than you. I’m looking down my nose at you, the ‘deplorables.’” 

I briefly considered Bernie Sanders; he was also an outsider. But after Bernie got snubbed by the DNC, I realized there wasn’t going to be any change unless something dramatic happened.

That’s when I started looking at Trump. While I felt Clinton was saying “I’m better than you,” Trump was saying, “I’m just like you.”

The people I followed online got me amped up for Trump, who at first was the underdog. I wanted the establishment people gone. I was pretty active in the online sphere. I had a Twitter account, and boosted creators I liked. 

When Trump won the election, I thought, “The US is saved, because he’s going to drain the swamp and handle immigration.”

When he filled his cabinet with rich people, I wondered if we were just trading the swamp of the government for the swamp of corporations. But I figured I would give him some time. 

When he imposed his Muslim ban, I thought it made sense to ban people from countries with high amounts of terrorism. But I had no clue what I was talking about.

Soon, I saw stories about American citizens not being able to return because of the ban. I realized it had been executed poorly. It was ridiculous. 

I was stressed out and irritated working a call center job at the time. The news added to that irritation because it was a non-stop firehose of Trump’s antics. I stopped paying attention to politics for a long stretch.

The US assassination of the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Jan. 2020 snapped me back to attention. I thought, “Hang on — I bashed Obama for being the drone strike president, and Trump had promised on the campaign trail that he would end foreign conflicts. Why are we doing this?” I was really tired of us bombing people in Middle Eastern countries.

Then Covid hit. Trump said, “It’s just going to go away on its own like a miracle.” That’s not how pandemics work. Then he talked about looking into cures using UV rays and bleach, and he started going after Anthony Fauci. Freezer trucks filled with corpses were lined up outside hospitals, and people in MAGA were saying, “My body, my choice” as an argument against getting vaccinated. I couldn’t believe it; I mean, you can catch Covid, but you’re not going to catch a pregnancy. 

When George Floyd was murdered, I was appalled by the racism I was hearing from MAGA. People on the right were putting out all this “He was no angel” crap. That didn’t make it acceptable for him to be killed by a cop.

Then I started hearing a lot more sexism coming from MAGA. Pundits were talking about how women needed to be in the home. One pundit said women shouldn’t be in STEM fields. That got a lot of likes. This was counter to what I grew up with around conservatives. My grandpa encouraged women in the family to go into medicine. After the science denialism around Covid and the racism around George Floyd, the burst of sexism made me realize I was in the wrong place.

I stopped watching Fox and following right-wing pundits. I started searching for alternative sources of information on YouTube. I found some left-leaning pundits. I started watching Kyle Kalinsky’s Secular Talk and hbomberguy. I realized they were making a lot more sense than the feverish cacophony of madness coming from the right.

I broke with MAGA in the summer of 2020. I started getting more informed, learning more about historical context. I became more knowledgeable about where we are and why we’re here.

I voted for Joe Biden in 2020; he was the first Democrat I ever voted for. I voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. I’m now firmly somewhere on the left politically. 

There’s always going to be a little part of me that’s disappointed with myself: why didn’t I see through the misinformation?  But I wasn’t in a good place when I was in MAGA; I wasn’t happy. And I know lots of educated people, including doctors and nurses, who got sucked into it. I fell into MAGA in large part because of a multibillion-dollar, decades-long disinformation campaign. 

Sometimes I’ll engage with MAGA people online and try to have a conversation. I’ll ask questions: “Where did you get your information from? Are you aware of this fact? What are you basing your opinion on?”

Sometimes I’ll start with something not as spicy for average Americans, like Ukraine. I’ll ask people if they’re aware of the Budapest Accords, and our obligation to defend Ukraine. I’ll ask, “Do you think we should abandon an ally?”

The point isn’t to convert people; it’s to plant seeds of doubt. Propaganda is designed to bypass our logical faculties and get us to act against our better angels, and I have come to understand that propaganda’s greatest enemy is curiosity. Propaganda’s whole point is to kill curiosity about any information outside your bubble.

I don’t see people in MAGA as evil. I have some sympathy for those who are asking questions about what’s going on now, with the push towards authoritarianism, deporting US citizens, etc. 

I find some solace in history. I look at places like Ukraine and Poland, which had popular revolutions that overthrew authoritarian governments. What we’re facing is not unique and Trump’s regime is making a lot of mistakes.

                                                                                                                                                                                   —May 2025