Long ago, a friend once observed that all of History is divisible into two phases:
It’s not altogether fair, of course. When I was five, I licked the bumper of our Buick on a freezing day in Michigan. I didn’t ask “What could it hurt?” because the thought never occurred to me. I knew frost was water and I was thirsty so it seemed like a good idea to me and nobody had ever warned me that there would be Unforeseen Consequences. I could genuinely say (once my tongue stopped bleeding) “How was I supposed to know?”
The thing is, such experiences are granted us so that the next time somebody triple dog dares us to do something that stupid, we remember the past and don’t fall for the triple dog dare like this kid:
Another great advantage our species has is that we can hand down the accumulated experiences of millions of people in the form of traditions, science, history, and other forms of learning. The inability to do this is why fish still fall for the same simple tricks Cro-Magnon Man used 30,000 years ago to catch them. Fish aren’t just dumb, they’re dumb. They can’t talk to each other and say, “My mom ate a worm and there was a hook inside and she got yanked out of the water and we never saw her again.” Smart and reliable people can help others benefit from experiences they never had themselves and we can learn from each other.
Or, we can spitefully and stupidly refuse to listen to smart and reliable people out of brain-dead culture war spite. You know, like this:
BREAKING: “I WAS DUPED!” Three-time Trump voter goes VIRAL after publicly turning on MAGA – says she sacrificed “friendships, jobs and family” for Trump only to suffer “betrayal after betrayal!”
This one has to hurt.
Lucy Riles isn’t a Democrat who suddenly discovered she dislikes Donald Trump. She says she’s a lifelong Republican who voted for Trump THREE TIMES, spent an “embarrassing amount of money” on MAGA merchandise and traveled to Trump rallies and Washington to support him.
Now the writer and mother of four has had enough.
“I was duped,” Riles wrote in a post that’s racked up more than 125,000 views. “The past 14 months have been betrayal after betrayal.
‘It sucks admitting I got it wrong.”
She hasn’t suddenly become a liberal. In fact, she specifically says she’s NOT claiming Kamala Harris would have been better.
But she has reached a conclusion that would have been heresy in MAGA world not long ago:
“Trump is a politician, a glorified snake oil salesman. He is not God nor should he be worshipped as one.”
And Riles was very specific about what finally broke her loyalty to Trump:
“Trump is now attempting to bully his base into supporting another reckless foreign war, ignore the Epstein files and now, accept data centers or else you want to be ‘backwards and poor,’” she wrote.
Then came the line that probably explains why her post is spreading so quickly:
“I’ve never been in an emotionally abusive relationship … and I’m not about to start now.” Ouch.
One viral Republican doesn’t prove that MAGA is collapsing, and Riles clearly hasn’t become a Democrat, but it does suggest a pattern that the ice, no pun intended, is cracking all over the place.
The post is fascinating because Riles hasn’t switched teams. She still calls herself a Republican. She’s documenting the moment when loyalty to Trump finally collided with what she believes in.
Riles spent the money, bought the merch, traveled to the rallies, sacrificed relationships and voted for Trump three times.
After all the money, rallies, votes and personal sacrifices, Riles sums up the experience simply:
“I was duped.”
The problem with the “I was duped” thing is not that you were stupid or ignorant. I will be charitable and assume you were.
The problem is that for the next ten years you kept laughing at and gloating over and slandering all the people who weren’t stupid and ignorant, who knew what Trump was from the get-go, and who tried to warn you while you spat in their faces.
That you now look them in the eye and lie to them that you were helpless to know anything when they remember a decade of conversations in which they tried to warn you while you mocked them and shit all over them is why it’s impossible to take you seriously as you marinate in self-pity and expect them to dance attendance on your precious feels.
I mean, goody for you for turning on Trump and all. But until you can demonstrate a whiff of empathy for anybody but yourself, don’t expect applause for saying, in effect, “I’m as selfish as I ever was and I still passionately support the GOP crime syndicate that protects Trump, but he has finally hurt me enough that I am adding him to the long list of scapegoats I blame for the stupid, selfish choices I will keep making. I still think care for the common good is woke and the least of these are vermin, and I still reserve empathy solely to myself and a tiny circle of those I see as extensions of myself.”
Advertisement
7 Responses
Mark, you’ve used that word, “empathy” again! Don’t you know Bishop Barron has said empathy is bad? (Sarcasm)
Speaking as a lifelong deep red state R party member who voted for this con man twice…
There are multiple stages of understanding: first, realizing we were duped into supporting someone who doesn’t represent “family values” or Christianity in any respect,
Second, realizing the R team and their backers consistently suck up to the con man and justify all his administration’s actions, no matter how unconstitutional or un-christian, thereby implying they only care about power, “winning”, and the trappings of office (substantial trappings, these days)and, realizing the other guys on the R team support a lot of unchristian ideas about the poor and immigrants, and warfare, for instance.
Third stage is realization that wealthy, powerful, global corporate entities have driven the R and D buses for years, but it’s increased dramatically (or perhaps just made more visible/legal?) in the wake of the Citizens United decision in 2009. We’re dealing with two sides of Caesar’s coin, one side blue and one side red. There’s a lot of irony and cynicism in this stage, which are useful, but can be a trap.
Stage four to me, is the development and use of the agency we have as individuals to build something new. I’m not sure what that is. Maybe it’s just really participating in the system, as it is, as Christians? In any case, it’s going to take more effort than pinning a precious feet pin on our lapels.
Many in my tribe are on the way to stage 1, many have reached stage 1. Each stage is a big step, for different reasons. Each step may take years, and many have a foot on multiple steps at once.
I’m not a D team member, nor do I support abortion… but I’m giving them a protest vote, up and down the line. This won’t make much difference here in my state, but I’m not going to encourage the current executive and enablers, directly or indirectly.
I am amused by people saying that they were duped. Trump is an obvious con artist and liar. Any honest person with a normal IQ can see this. Why did they believe him in the first place?
William, in cases like mine, it was holding-your-nose-and-voting, assuming getting power was more important than electing someone with character….assuming the party would represent my interests… only to find out, the party is only interested in power used on behalf of corporate and international PAC interests. To name a few: an unregulated marketplace governing AI, a Unitary Executive, warfare for economic benefit of a few, extracting resources from other countries (to fuel these projects), undermining international order and nations, and, of course, various layers of corporate and personal grift.
The unfortunate thing is, team Blue is like Pepsi compared to Coke… They’ll both rot your teeth and give you diabetes while enriching shareholders.
Yes, the Democrats are hardly ideal, but the Republicans under Trump are downright toxic. Trump is an obvious con artist, liar and sociopath. Did you not see this? The GOP is owned by the billionaires and cares nothing about the common good.
I used to be a Republican, but they left me. I did not leave them. I liked the GOP better when they were snotty country club types. Now, they seem to be a collection of semi literate rednecks. No thanks.
Oh, bull. I’ll take semi-literate rednecks over the GOP any day of the week. People like you looking down their noses and sneering at the people whom the elites have deliberately kept poor and under-educated are one of the big reasons people still fall for Republicans: They’re at least willing to put *some* effort (however little) into pretending to think people from West Virginia are, you know, people.
You can’t spend all your time sneering and hurling insults at people, and then act surprised when they don’t listen to your “warnings.” That is a huge part of the Republican playbook: Go to poor people and say “Look how the Radical Left™ hates you and thinks you’re stupid.” And Leftists, being constitutionally incapable of seeing people less educated than themselves as fully human, do the rest of the Republicans’ work for them.
As if Trump doesn’t famously own multiple country clubs.
I used to think that people were getting better, not worse.
I’m reminded of a vision I read about decades ago in which the seer saw that good and evil would become far more pronounced and evident. She saw multitudes traveling a wide and easy path, but an ever widening fissure opened up in the center forcing humans to either choose comfort and stay on the easy path, or choose the rocky, thorny side. Those who chose the easy path found out suddenly that it led to the abyss.
Domine ut videam.
Trump throws the MAGA semi literate rednecks (they worship ignorance) some culture war crumbs like beating up transgenders, while he picks their pockets. It’s all about making the billionaires even richer and Jim Bob and Bubba don’t even see it. Are they really that stupid?