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.”
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.
Absolutely.
These people, for all intents and purposes, are traitors to our nation. These weren’t gullible fools falling for a sweet talking politician in a single election before learning from their mistake through experience. It has been over a decade and it’s really no secret who and what Trump is.
These people have been, and many still are, committed to hurting others. Ignorance is not an excuse.
I personally view them as dangerous enemies and, as you said, MAGA needs to be forcibly cut out of this society and absolutely no concessions should be made in the process. We made that mistake after the Civil War and we’re still paying for it.
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.
What does it mean to be MAGA? Would you support a law that brought criminal charges for anyone who voted Republican in 2024?
No, you bring criminal charges and or fines against people that disseminate intolerant/hateful rhetoric. Is blasting the misogyny of the manosphere worth it if you might face 6 months in jail or a $1000 - $3000 fine? How about a year in jail for preaching hate against immigrants encouraging the government to round them up and incarcerate them when they show up for their court appointments as the follow the LEGAL process for entry/amnesty? This isn’t about how people vote. This is about letting hate spread. Letting hate spread is how DJT made it to the primary.
That would be somewhere in the order of 60 million people in prison, I’m not interested in that personally even if it was viable. It’s not about dishing out collective punishment to half the country as vengeance, it’s about forcing them to be gracious losers going forward so we can move forward without their malfeasance. Not every Nazi was jailed for being a Nazi when the Third Reich was in power, even if they probably deserved it, but denazification was still largely successful because their platform was no longer accepted in polite society.
And that’s both what it would mean to be MAGA and when all this would apply. Publicly disseminating the talking points, displaying the regalia, starting neo-MAGA political action, after their theoretical crushing defeat in the future. I wish that defeat meant “in the polls” but I have no hope that anything less than an armed conflict will dislodge them from power at this point. Part of why I think these drastic and frankly undemocratic measures would be necessary to prevent relapse.
It means you punish people for publicly posting MAGA related shit and inciting hate against others because of their race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation.
Germany punishes Nazis through strict legal frameworks, notably Section 86a of the Criminal Code, which outlaws the public display of unconstitutional symbols, including swastikas, SS runes, and Hitler salutes. Offenders face up to three years in prison or heavy fines, and the dissemination of Nazi propaganda is permanently illegal.
What others are telling you, yes, but it also means you prosecute crimes being carried out according to the laws that are already on the books.
MAGA is no longer a valid political movement, it is a criminal organization, and this is easily proven by the crimes it commits in lockstep with this administration.
We have laws, we have a Constitution. The insurection clause, emoluments clause, term limits, ethics rules, the Hatch Act, the list is endless of the laws we already have that this administration pretends doesn’t exist.
We can also address the changes in law – like Citizens United and and the Fox News lawsuits permitting propaganda to be legally called news and even the recent Callais decision – that permit the current situation to flourish unchecked, and restore our courts to working order.
So you can unclutch your pearls now. There is no need whatsoever to criminalize voters or voting when the time comes that we choose to prosecute actual crimes and actual criminals, and there never was. Criminalizing votes is something MAGA does, and is doing even now: add that to the long list of projections of their own deeds onto the demonized left. We lefties want everyone to vote in genuinely free and fair elections.
If we simply prosecute the criminals for the crimes taking place brazenly in the open right now, there won’t even be a MAGA left.
But we might not even have to do much of that. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was passed last summer, the one that absolutely fucking GUTS healthcare across the country, especially for rural people like farmers who rely on the ACA (Obamacare) and subsidized clinics and hospitals, was written so that the deepest cuts would not take effect until after the 2026 midterms.
Next year, when MAGA folks who are left in healthcare deserts without doctors, clinics, hospitals, or meds and are already paying triple the costs for gas and the basics of living finally realize their orange savior does not give a shit about them and the demonized Dems had nothing to do with it, there may well be fewer MAGA left to prosecute: at least some are already planning to leave the country. Never forget that Qatar not only gave Trump his own plane, they also host the bank account where he parked the proceeds from his sale of Venezuelan oil.
As for the ones that are left . . .