Happened on election night, odd as that might sound. I was one mother-fucker of a Left-leaning Democrat who was full bore into the Bernie camp from square one and I couldn't have even explained why at the time if someone pressed me on it, but I hated Donald Trump. The media spat fire about it all the time, all my friends spat fire about it, I just took it in stride that they all knew what they were talking about and hopped on the bandwagon even though I didn't know the first thing about him. The orange man was just bad.
I laughed during every debate and tuned in religiously just to see him make an ass of himself, and I cheered Bernie Sanders on right to the bitter end, even though I didn't know a damn thing about any of his policies. Again: Friends all said it, media said it, so the Socialist must be good. I didn't even remotely question any of it, not for an instant, and even once he was shoved off to the wayside, not a single bone in my body believed Trump would win. I didn't like Hillary at all, but I knew we'd have to buckle in and get ready for that presidency. Besides, the last Clinton Administration wasn't so bad, right? That's what they all told us.
It wasn't until right there on election night that I'd sat there with one of my oldest friends: This nice, little old lady who'd never hurt a fly and spent all of her life dedicated to saving animals and self-publishing children's books. She never said a word about politics the entire election cycle, never voiced any sort of opinion, never joined any discussions, but I'll never forget sitting there laughing at the screen as I waited to watch Trump "lose" the election one state at a time. She turned to the TV with a smile and just said, "I hope Trump wins."
The kindest person I'll ever meet in my entire life just matter-of-factly, in the sweetest, old-lady voice you can imagine, belted that right out and absolutely floored me. I had no ability to reconcile that. It didn't make any sense to me, but I was desperate to know why someone that kind-hearted was saddling up with someone who's supposedly such a racist pig. And she told me. She spent the whole night explaining her position, Trump's position, and why damned near everything the media's been feeding me was just an absolute lie.
I don't even remember saying anything, I just listened to her the entire night, and by the time the last states started to flip Red, I was begging for a Trump presidency. I stopped watching television, I stopped watching movies, my entire hobby for the vast majority of November of 2016 all the way through 2017 was spent just trying to figure out what the Hell else I'd been taking as an "absolute fact" for all of this time. I read every book I could think to find, tore through every news outlet and Twitter account and documentary I could get my hands on, and went through hundreds of thousands of government documents just to try and make sense of it all and figure out who was full of shit and who actually knew what they were talking about.
I probably still don't know a goddamned thing, but my political views have shifted violently compared to what they were two years ago, and I can't even begin to fathom how they'd ever revert back, again.
I lost a lot of friends along the way for going against the "Group Think"--just about all of them, actually--but I'm still holding out hope that maybe one of these days they'll have the same sort of experience I did. Either way, short of picking up a Soviet flag and marching down to Starbucks with a Communist Manifesto, I was just about the most (pre-Social Justice) Left-leaning Democrat you were ever likely to meet, but now I'll be voting Republican for the rest of my life because I am pissed that I was lied to for so long.
