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.”
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My favorite part was when he said they lost their home in the housing collapse, blamed Dems, and then voted Republican because....of spending on defence.
Defence spending doesn't help the housing market but you do you. At least they finally woke up.
Even NOW they still can't understand that the deregulation of banks which directly caused the 2008 collapse, was entirely Bush's policies... if anything Obama's bailout probably saved his home
The deregulation of the banks started under Clinton and was finished under Bush Jr. It was unfortunately not only a GOP thing.
Some observers have persuasively argued that the Glass-Steagall act, which Clinton famously repealed, was already moot by the time he repealed it, that the banking business had figured out legal workarounds for all the activities it was intended to prevent.
The point being, not to excuse Clinton or any political party, but to recognize that the creeping greed of finance isn't something that can be blamed on one or two actors. It's built in to the incentives, the values, the culture.
So you don't repeal it you update it to fix the holes.
I think Republicans controlled the Congress when it happened. I guess Clinton could refuse to sign it.
Well..... maybe but it sure did enrich the motherfuckers who created the crash in the first place.
Well, he's at the beginning of his unlearning journey, hopefully he continues to go further.
Gas prices caused the 2008 collapse. The real estate market is what hurt the rich people, so that's what we still hear about.
It was rich people that caused the collapse, not gas prices. Banks gave out variable interest rate loans, which are risky and predatory, to people that didn't have the credit/income to afford houses. The banks then turned all of those variable rate home loans into housing related securities, which let investors in those programs earn interest on buying a tiny slice of the mortgages. Now the investors need the line to go up. What happens? Those variable rates on those mortgages get jacked up to make profit for the investors. Now Joe Schmoe can't afford his mortgage, defaults on the loan, and loses his house. What happens next? All of those variable rate loans had mortgage insurance, which pays the lender when the borrower defaults on the loan/mortgage. What happens next, the collapse of entities that insured those loans. What happens next? We, the fucking tax payers bail them the fuck out. What happens next? The rich greedy assholes find a new thing required for existence to turn into a commodity to squeeze us more; like healthcare.
What exactly are you smoking?
And how old were you in 2008?
Old enough to not get a passing grade in kindergarten, one assumes.
No, they didn't wake up.
They stuck with Trump through
Etc.
These people are still functionally sociopaths and fascists. They're just upset that now its affecting their wallets.
He's hurting the wrong people!!
I will still take 2 less Republican voters as a win.
Yeah I got pretty confused there. Wasn’t Bush president leading up to 2008 and the market crash? So it was the dems fault? Faux news has done an impressive brain rot.
Just like how Biden failed to prevent the spread of COVID in 2020.
Exactly. Though maybe one person doesn't remember who was president throughout 2020, lol.
The great recession started a year before Obama took office, but of course it is pinned to him.
Same as covid happened year before Biden but somehow it is Biden's fault.
Democrats always have to cleanup the shit Republicans make and get blamed for it.
Small government people when the government is military spending:
I remember talking to a winger about his defense contractor job. He was raging out about "government workers" wasting "his money", and so on. This was under Obama and he had just seen two people driving in a county truck on his way to work in the morning - he apparently seemed to think having more than one person doing that job was wasteful?
Anyway, I asked him, point blank - "but isn't YOUR job basically a government job?"
I thought the guy was going to pop a vein waving his arms around and yelling how it was the PRIVATE SECTOR, we have to WIN CONTRACTS with the big old mean government, and etc. I remain calm and ask: yeah, but if they are private sector, who are their customers? Are they going to sell weapons to our enemies? Why do you have to get a GOVERNMENT CLEARANCE for that job by the way?
I'm sure the guy is absolutely all-in on Donvict these days and still repeating bullshit mantras about "small government", etc. The guy had full-blown Obama Derangement Syndrome, that's for sure...
I used to work in a pretty right wing office as a government contractor. One day a couple people were standing around complaining about the government and one of the women said "the government has never created a single job". She was on a military base working as a government contracter. She was also in the national guard and engaged to an active duty sailor. I had to walk away at that point.
I don't think these people know what the "govment" even is, to be honest...
They just don't connect the dots...
Beyond "dumb as a rock" for this. People really just take whatever the fuck was is spoonfed to them. At least he did wake up, but by a miracle IMO.
A stupid person is stupid whether they're asleep or awake. These dipshits are clearly no exception.
wish idiots would stop voting for these leeches stealing tax money to enrich themselves and generally not giving a fuck about the population other than the megarich