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“Once upon a time you dressed so fineThrew the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?People call say 'beware doll, you're bound to fall'You thought they were all kidding youYou used to laugh aboutEverybody that was hanging outNow you don't talk so loudNow you don't seem so proudAbout having to be scrounging your next mealHow does it feel?” - Bob DylanI’ve listened to Bob Dylan’s anthem of alienation, Like a Rolling Stone, so many times throughout my life, but it’s never hit home quite the way it does now as I’ve been exiled by almost everyone I once knew. How does it feel, Bob Dylan asks? It feels like tumbling through space with no place to land. It feels like being trapped in a nightmare. It feels like nothing I’ve ever gone through before.But it’s too late to turn back now. It’s full steam ahead. Yes, I am a California Liberal voting for Donald J. Trump. Why am I doing it? Why was I willing to destroy my so-called “career,” end friendships overnight, and lose any status I’ve attained in the past 30 years I’ve been online, which, granted, isn’t saying much? The answer is easy. I couldn’t do the other thing.For many of us, 2020 was like Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We all had the same idea all at once, but we didn’t understand it. We might have come from everywhere, but we all ended up in the same place.For some, it was the government’s authoritarian crackdown on masks and lockdowns. For others, it was the lies about COVID. But for me, it was suddenly seeing that unseen hands were manipulating us as a form of social control. It sounds paranoid. I’ll grant you that. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was very much inside the insular feedback loop of the Left. I genuinely believed everything they said on CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times. They turned on a dime from COVID hysteria to “systemic racism,” which allowed millions to pour into the streets - the largest protest in American history - amid a global pandemic that had closed schools, churches, and businesses. What was going on?None of us knew. They wouldn’t tell us anything they did not think we needed to know. As I was crying out on Twitter about how crazy things were getting on the Left, Neera Tanden DM’d me. “You’ve changed,” she said. I was worried Biden would not win because the protests were too violent. By then, I was finding my news on the Right, where they weren’t as afraid to post videos about what was happening on the streets.I told Neera Tanden that Trump would benefit from the public's desire for law and order. She told me to keep quiet until after the election. I told her I couldn’t do that, but it did strike me as odd that such a high-level Democrat would care what I thought. But that’s how it is on the Left. No one is allowed to stray from the mandated narrative.Even now, most people I know on the Left have no idea how bad it got. That’s why they don’t understand the comparisons to January 6th. They only saw one violent riot but they saw it over and over again, yet more proof of social control.It wasn’t until Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times after exposing their unwillingness to publish the truth about what was happening on the streets for fear it was racist even just to report on it, that I realized I had to separate myself from the hive mind whose sole mission was to support the Democrats. And that’s how it went for the rest of the year. It was “don’t ask, don’t tell” for a once-mighty movement that now cowered in fear.But for many of us, it was the summer when we stopped trusting our institutions and our legacy media to tell us the truth about anything. Everything that happened in 2020 was designed to push Trump out of power. I watched them all but rig the 2020 election using the same unseen hands. I walked away from that election no longer a registered Democrat for the first time in my life.But that would only be the beginning. The Democrats had the White House, and they had four years to show America they really were the better side, the side that cared about all of us. Instead, whatever fundamentalist cult had overtaken the Left now spread throughout our government. Biden took his role seriously, using equity for policy and staffing his administration mostly with women, women of color, and members of the LGBTQIA lobby.And in so doing, he neglected to address the core problem for the Democrats, one that began back in 2008, the crisis that sparked the Fourth Turning. The Wall Street meltdown and subsequent bailout of the banks to the tune of $700 billion. Two populist movements that threatened the government meant a pivot to what Vivek Ramaswamy calls “woke capitalism.” Focus on identity politics and woke ideology, and they get to do whatever they want to the people of the United States.They ignored the problem until it exploded in 2016 with Trump’s win. They failed to address the urgent needs of the people and instead went to war on Trump. Now, here we are, all of these years later, and the Democrats still can’t even see the problem, let alone address it.Instead of unity, we got division. Instead of hope, we got despair. Instead of freedom, the Biden administration and the FBI began censoring speech on social media platforms. Maybe none of that would have been bad enough to make me a Trump supporter, but it meant I could never vote blue no matter who, ever again, and worse, we now had an even bigger problem to deal with. Could we ever win an election against this unprecedented alignment of power?I never thought I would vote for Republicans, but that is exactly what I have done, largely due to the embrace of “gender-affirming care” for minor children who cannot consent and the lack of protection for female athletes to compete fairly. Even now, there are no women, no feminists, no “girl dads” in the Democratic Party. They are too afraid of the activists. So it has to be up to those of us who do have the guts to stand up to them and who are strong enough to survive their attacks.That was when I knew I had to throw whatever power I had as an American citizen and political activist online into voting for the Republicans. But still, I was not quite ready to cross the Trump line. BraveheartIt was the humiliation of a former president when they raided Mar-a-Lago, with the whole world watching, that was the last straw for me. It seemed there were no limits to what they could do to Trump, and all of the legacy press and their obedient voters would go along with it, believing any wild fantasy they manifested.Trump might be selling nuclear secrets to North Korea. Trump might pull out a machine gun and spray the FBI with bullets like Al Pacino in Scarface.It just got worse from there. The indictments, the Civil trials, the felony conviction - none of the cases were even legit. Here is Megyn Kelly running them down on the All In podcast:And that was how I transformed from a lonely, shut-in I’m-with-her Democrat into a MAGA meme on X.Now, I am left wondering why I wouldn’t vote for Trump. Why wouldn’t I do the one thing I know that could end this madness? I know that the minute he wins and he shows them all that he’s not a dictator and he’s not Hitler and the world won’t stop turning on its axis, all of this will finally end, and we can get back to some kind of normal life. In This House, We BelieveWhen I began spending time in MAGA world, watching Trump rallies and hanging out with Trump supporters, at least online, I got to know them well. When I reported back to the Left's fear bunker, I tried to explain it to them. I tried to humanize those we’d all been conditioned to hate.I remember seeing pictures of the faces contorted by hate when schools were ordered to allow Black students to attend — and no, you freaks, I’m not comparing them; I’m just saying that hate is hate, dehumanization is dehumanization, and people always feel justified doing it, and history always condemns them. Always. But they would not listen to me. They would scream at me, attack me, shun me, try to destroy my business. Even just being kind - practicing what they preached - was crossing a forbidden line. The attacks against Trump supporters began right around 2015 when Trump’s warnings about the border were interpreted as Hitler-esque racism. That is what justified punching, kicking, spitting on, and, in some cases, even killing Trump supporters. What is their solution to the “MAGA problem” anyway? Gulags? Concentration camps? Re-education camps? Just exile them to the outer regions and forbid them from participating in the thriving new economy online or in our elections? Why am I a California liberal voting for Trump? I wake up in a cold sweat every night, and panic runs through me. What have I done? But then I remember I couldn’t do the other thing. The Case for TrumpI would have voted for Trump just on the lawfare alone, but a funny thing happened in the past few months. Trump built an unprecedented alliance with RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nicole Shanahan, and Elon Musk. It was more than I could ever imagine would be on offer in an American election. Trump’s choice of JD Vance might be the best of all. He chose a running mate who isn’t just window-dressing like poor Tim Walz but a strong leader in his own right.I’m not getting my hopes up, considering that the powerful people who now control our government have turned to corruption just to cling to power. What won’t they do to stop Trump and drag the unprepared Kamala Harris over the finish line?But it doesn’t really matter. They might win the battle. They won’t win the war. I am so proud to be an American today. I finally know why. I know that “Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” That’s the wild beauty, the untamed spirit of the American experiment.It really does look like a brighter future for the kind of America I want to fight for. And suddenly, I feel grateful for the founders who built this crazy people-run government. It was built for moments like this when we all must come together and prove that yes, this is a Republic, and yes, we can keep it.Trump’s gift is that he doesn’t preach from on high. He makes us all feel like we’re on the same journey, sharing the same space, all one family. How does he still manage to do that after all he’s been through? I don’t know, but I do know that’s the kind of leader, the kind of “dad energy” America needs. Donald Trump isn’t perfect, but then, neither am I. But I know he loves this country, no matter how many lies they tell about him. He’s changed everything, this “Gray Champion” of the Fourth Turning. And we’re not going back. //end This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe