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.”
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