Speaker 1: The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists in this country is going.
Speaker 1: Through the rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred.
Speaker 3: If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
not because I put my hand on a book and
made a wish.
Speaker 1: And working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth,
Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2: On the show today, I'm going to be speaking with
three people who escaped MAGA. They voted for Trump, they
supported MAGA, they identified with the Make America Great Again movement,
and now they're out and they're kind of blowing the
whistle and they're talking about why they were wrong, what
they were thinking, and how we might be able to
approach some of these people if we want to go there.
And so I'm interested. You know, you know, Stephen Hassen
is a cult expert. He's an ex mooney. He wrote
a whole book called the Cult of Trump, and I
think it's straight up a cult. It's the identity of
the group and the leader. It's an authoritarian model. I
will take care of you, and I will solve all
your problems and distrust everybody else. So it's an information silo,
and you live in an alternate reality, and you're spending
all your money and your time and your resources to
support the great leader. I mean, that's just straight up cult.
But I'm going to talk to some ex magas on
the show today. Now you may hear in my voice
it's a little bit raspy. Natalie got sick three days ago,
and when you share a house and oxygen with someone,
there's a fair chance that you're going to get sick
as well. And so yesterday, oh joy, Now I've got
the symptoms that she had. I feel okay, but my
voice is a little scratchy and a tad sketchy. Just
bear with me, okay, I'm and do my best for you.
Before I get to my calls, let me share an
article that was published in The Daily Beast a while back.
It's titled January sixth, Convict tells the truth about Trump
He's a cult boss. The article says, this actual truth
has erupted on truth social It came on Monday, and again.
This was last year after Donald Trump posted a compound falsehood.
He posted American Justice sixty nine year old grandma with
cancer given more prison time for walking inside US capital
than Hunter Biden for sharing classified documents with foreign regimes
and multi million dollar bribery schemes. Trump endorsed the lies
with one word horrible. But then that same grandma with cancer,
who is actually seventy, came right at him and she posted,
please don't be using me for anything. I'm not a
victim of January sixth. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty.
Hashtag stop the spin, Pamela Hemphill of Idaho wrote on
the platform. She added that Trump should not compare her
to the current president's son. He didn't try to attack
the capital, she tweeted. Himp Hill says that until three
months ago, she was under the spell of what she
calls the Trump cult. She attended the January sixth rally
as a self appointed citizen journalist and videographer after her
brother gave her a plane ticket to Washington. He was
trying to lift her spear's She fought breast cancer, she said.
My brother calls says Hey, you, since you're going to
start chemotherapy, why don't you go see Trump and video
record that. I said I couldn't afford it, but he said,
I'll give it to you for a Christmas present. Three
days after Christmas, Hemphill announced on Facebook she was going
to Washington. It's not going to be a fun Trump
rally that has planned for January sixth. She said, it's
a war, and war is in all caps. She added,
the fight for America is real. Show up. I don't
need to hear your excuses. We have no second chances.
If millions, and I mean millions show up, we may
have a chance find a way. That New Year's Eve,
a friend posted on Facebook what Hemphill says was just
a joke photo of her holding a plastic rifle. Happy
New Year on my way to Washington January wherey sixth,
the caption read. Hempell later said she had not realized
how lost she had become. She said, you don't see
it as a cult. When you're in it, you don't
recognize it. She said she still had forty stitches from
her breast surgery when she was caught up in the
rush into the Capitol building. She credits one of the
cops with saving her from serious injury. A combination of
excitement and pain medication caused her to then urge the
crowd to go on in. She said, this is your house,
your house, she can be heard saying on her own video.
The next morning, she flew back to Boise. She was
home eight months later when FBI agents arrived at her
door and arrested her. They were nothing like the jack
booted Feds of far right fictions. She said. The FBI
were really good to me. They just have procedures. It's
what they do. The agents agreed to let her just
sit down and collect herself. I said, I got a
vape for a minute here. I'm nervous. I've never been
in jail in my life. After Hemphill pleaded guilty to
invading the capital, she was sentenced to sixty days in prison.
In mid July of last year, she paid two months
rent in advance and surrendered at the federal prison in Dublin, California.
Hemphill says the sixty days felt like an eternity. She
said she had deepening doubts that the election had really
been stolen. She said, I was starting to see things.
I was back and forth, not knowing what to believe.
But trump Ism kept its hold on her until she
was back home and family members began speaking hard truth
to her, just as she had two alcoholics and drug
abusers before she retired as a substance abuse counselor. She recalled,
they told me, Pam, you're in a cult. You really
need to get out of that. We really care about you,
but this is a cult. You're trapped in a cult.
She began to see the Trump who had been there
all along. She recalled, I started seeing the narcissistic behavior
and I said, wait, wait, this is gaslighting. This is
not true. She began to listen to what her gun
had been telling her. I never liked how he talked
to people anyway. She said. He's rude. He's very mean
to people. She discerned the truth about fake news. She said,
tell everybody it's fake news, and they don't listen to
that news. She became angry when Representative Marjorie Taylor Green
out of Georgia and others spoke of her as a victim.
She said, what's happened is they're using me like a victim.
I'm not a victim. I pleaded guilty because I was
guilty period. I mean I was trespassing. I had a choice.
I could have left. And she was disturbed by the
ongoing Trump mania, all those flags with his picture on
it and T shirt. She said, it's like, wait, you guys,
this is getting a little weird. In the meantime, other
January sixth participants and their supporters were bombarding Hemphill with
texts and tweets. She recalled, They were just telling me
all their victimness gas lighting, and I started saying, wait, wait, wait,
you guys. The officers were nice to me. I don't
see what you're talking about. I started hearing all their lies,
their stories. I said, wait, it doesn't look like the
police started anything. In April of twenty twenty three, Hemphill
finally broke the spell. She told herself what her family
had been telling her. I said, this is it, Pam,
this is a cult. This face it, back away one
hundred percent. Those still deep in the cult were fury,
She said. I started debunking them, and they got mad
at me, and they started getting more mad at me
and started a smear campaign on me that I was
a Fed agent, that I was Antifa, just silly children,
high school stuff. She was exiled from January sixth, Twitter spaces,
she started one of her own that filled with people
who wielded the best weapon against a cult. Facts, She said.
She came to understand how she and others became members
of the Trump cult. She said, it's called love bombing.
He's a rescuer trying to save the world, you know.
On Monday, Hempill responded to Trump with facts on truth
social and it was not because she favors any of
the other presidential candidates. Too bad, we don't have a
black woman running, she said. And again this was before
Kamala Harris. Over the last fifteen years, we've talked a
lot with people who have escaped cults and have insider knowledge,
and cults can exist far beyond religions. Yes, there can
be political cults, and there are others, you know, like
the wellness industry cults. You'll find some kind of hardcore
people there. It's just one of those things that applies
in so many ways. And I'm interested in the stories
of people who were there and got out, and we're
going to talk to them today. I've got Jeff on
the line. Jeff are you there, I'm here. Tell me
about yourself. I guess we start with your backgrounds. What
were the precursors to MAGA for you?
Speaker 4: Well, I go back a long way. I first started
voting for Ronald Reagan back in nineteen eighty because I
was kind of taken in by his charisma, if you
want to call it that. And I thought he seemed
like a really good person, a good hearted person, and
I still believe that. But I think he was very
misguided on economics. And also I come from you know,
I wasn't born a Republican, but I come from a
Republican family. So it's it's just one of those natural
things that it seems like, well, everybody in my family's
a Republican, so I must be too.
Speaker 2: I was a Reagan guy. I mean I was relatively young.
Let's see, I graduated high school in nineteen eighty six.
But I was part of that. You know, he was polished,
and he was smooth, and he was you know, Hollywood,
so he knew how to string sentences together and be
charismatic and all the catchwords freedom, American exceptionalism. And it
was only afterwards when I looked back and saw things
like the AIDS crisis and his abysmal handling of it,
and the debts and the greedy eighties that I really
looked through the looking glass. The other way was that.
Speaker 4: You absolutely And what I was just thinking is I
saw all of those things and I didn't like them,
and yet I was able to overlook them. And I can't.
I'm almost embarrassed to say that, but I saw the
flaws and I just ignored them.
Speaker 2: Okay, well tell me about your mindset. In twenty sixteen,
pre election, Donald Trump is running. He's supposedly the outsider,
beholden to no one, and he's going to come and
just fix it. He's going to be the hero that
saves us all. Were you thinking that?
Speaker 4: I don't know if I would go that far, But
by twenty sixteen I was already starting to kind of
doubt my mindset. I have a lot of friends who
leaned very far left, and they were very good as
far as we had a lot of conversations and there
was never any you know, no harsh words or anything,
but they were really beginning to win me over. But
the problem I had at that time, and I'm embarrassed
to say this too, I did not like Hillary because
I blamed ben Ghazi on her, and I don't even
know if that's correct or not, but that's I had
been for many years. I listened to Rush Limbaugh and
Sean Hannity and Glenn Back and all of those nuts,
and I think I was buying a lot of things
that they were saying. So by the time the election
came around again, I hate to admit this, but I
ended up voting for Trump in twenty sixteen, and I
regret it a lot, but almost immediately I realized that
was a very bad move.
Speaker 2: I'm going to back up. I was in radio. This
was nineteen ninety four ninety five. I would work the
morning show and then by the time it was I
was ready to drive home, Rush Limbaugh and his monologue
would come on the radio, so it was like one o'clock,
and I remember I would be calm at the beginning
of the drive, and by the time I got home,
after fifteen seventeen minutes of him getting worked up and
me getting worked up, I thought, this whole country's going
to hell in a handbasket. Were you that way? Did
he ramp you up?
Speaker 4: Absolutely? I can remember at one point in time thinking
that what is wrong with these liberals? Can they not
see the light? It's so obvious.
Speaker 2: I like what you said about how your liberal friends
didn't treat you like a Nazi. And in the age
of the Internet, we're seeing the death of discourse and
people say, well, we can disagree on what kind of
coffee we like, in our favorite color, and whether we're
dog people or cat people, but we can't disagree on
our values. And on the surface, I totally get that,
I really understand, but it's a conversation stopper. I mean,
do we want to change minds? So when you were
essentially you were Maga before Trump, you weren't an evil person.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, I would go along with that.
Speaker 2: Right, you loved your family, you wanted everybody to win.
You you know, you weren't a bigot. I mean I'm
projecting here, but I'm looking for you to validate you
were a person who genuinely wanted good things.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I feel like I've always kind of rooted for the underdog.
And you know, there's never been any kind of group
of people that I hated or even disliked. I'm very
sociable and enjoy everyone's company, and I remember correctly I
think it was. Will Rogers has said I never met
a man I couldn't learn something from.
Speaker 2: Were you a Christian and did Christianity inform your political viewpoint?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 4: I grew up again as much as a Republican household
and a Christian or Baptist household, And I don't know
if that had a strong influence other than the fact
that virtually everyone I knew at that time in that
religion they were also conservative Republicans. So I don't know why,
but they do tend to coalesce, don't they.
Speaker 2: Who was it who was talking about how travel is
one of the best cures for bigotry, And I think
this can be true when traveling out of our own circle.
If we're always looking at people from a distance, the
different from a distance, it's a whole lot easier to
be bigoted against them, isn't it.
Speaker 4: That's absolutely true when you.
Speaker 2: Look at Maga now Christians who are supporting a person
who is the antithesis of the best teachings of Christ
and what looks to be just a day by day
cognitive decline, the culture of cruelty. When you look at
all this and you see his supporters in the fact
that it's even a race. Do you have opinions about
this when you're sitting over coffee with your people and
what kind of things are you saying?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's surreal. When I look at the situation, it
boggles my mind. I cannot understand how people can put
those things together and they can look at this con man,
convicted criminal and think he's some kind of god fearing man.
Speaker 2: I will make a confession to you, Jeff, I can
usually find one redeeming quality in someone they love their
children or something. I mean, if I'm really stretching, I
look at Donald Trump and I got nothing. I cannot fight.
Is he kind?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Is he smart?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Does he have a charitable heart?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Does he seem to genuinely love his wife and children
and honor that relationship? And how does he speak about
them in public? I mean, over and over and I
can't find anything, Jeff, Am I a bad person?
Speaker 4: I can't. I can't think of.
Speaker 3: Like you.
Speaker 4: I cannot find a single redeeming quality with that man.
Speaker 2: Well, do you have any other observations having that look
inside the culture? Are there any other observations Like I'm
hoping that our callers can maybe teach us about the mindset,
get us in the machine, let us see the gears turning,
you know, can you help us out.
Speaker 4: The only thing that I would maybe add is that
having been on both sides of this fence, it really
I think it helps open your minds a little bit,
and I think that it I don't think I would.
I would obviously feel the same way if I had
been on the left side the whole time, but having
been on the other side, I can see this from
both points of view, and that's that's one of the
reasons that I think the more the more people, the
more conservatives that we can have these good conversations with,
if they can open their minds and step back and
look at this thing without the blinders on, I think
they're going to have a whole new respective like I did.
Speaker 2: Do you have an opinion about strategy?
Speaker 4: All of my tactics up to this point have not
worked very well, because it seems like I've never met
a group of people that seems I hate to generalize,
but they seem to have their heels dug in so firmly.
The Republican Party today is just not what it used
to be. In fact, as far as I'm concerned it
doesn't exist anymore. It's now the Maga Party, the Party
of Trump, because his followers are loyal to him and
not the country or the constitution, And in my opinion,
that makes it more of a cult of personality. And
the people who are in a cult, they're the last
ones to know they're in a cult. If you look
at Heaven's Gate Branch, Davidians and Wicco People's Temple and Jonestown,
none of those people would admit or even realize they
were in a cult. They would follow their leader to
the gates of hell, and Maga really now is no different.
In fact, January sixth, I think is a perfect example
of that. I think it checks all the boxes of
being a cult. The leader is always right, criticism of
the leader is persecution, regardless of how harmful it is.
The leader's behavior is always justified, and the leader has
the exclusive franchise to the truth. So I think the
only way out of a cult is to recognize that
you're in one. I'm glad I did.
Speaker 2: Well. You are proof that somebody can be extricated. You
know that people can reason their way. There's a saying
out there that says that you can't reason someone out
of something they never reasoned themselves into in the first place.
I think that's crap. I think you reasoned your way
out right.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's true. That is true.
Speaker 2: Jeff, you are much appreciated. Thanks for giving us a
few minutes of your insight into MAGA culture. I'm glad
you escaped, and I appreciate you listening and participating that.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Two more perspectives, and just a second, I've got Jessica.
She said she was pretty much motivated by fear and
an analytical mind who managed to reason his way out.
How did that happen? We've got more. Next, a little
patriotic music as we talk about ex magas on the broadcast.
It all right, enough of that bullshit. I do not
go in for that, you know, the horns and the
everybody stands up with handover heart. It just feels so
manufactured to me, you know, sort of this cheaply bought patriotism.
That doesn't that just feels fake anyway, Sorry about that.
Continuing with my raspy voice, a conversation about former magas Jessica. Jessica,
you're with me, Yeah, you were a make America great
Trump voting. I don't know, I describe yourself instead of
me sort of grasping at it. What were you like?
Speaker 5: Oh, unfortunately, I us a Make America Great Again Trump's
supporter for a few years. I was raised in a Mormon,
pretty Christian nationalist, conservative household, and that just stuck with me. Sorry,
that is my kid.
Speaker 2: That's okay, no problem. I mean she can, she can
join the call, that's all good.
Speaker 5: And I was raised to be afraid of socialism, which
is any government program that conservatives don't like, and to
be afraid of gun control and be afraid of abortion,
and be afraid of the rise of specularism. For me,
being a Trump supporter.
Speaker 3: Was really a.
Speaker 5: Fair response. Mormonism is interesting because Christian nationalism is really
baked into the doctrine of Mormonism. In the Book of Mormon,
it actually says that if the people in America stop
worshiping God, then they will be swept off the face
of the earth. So that was just an added level
of fear.
Speaker 2: And you draw a circle around something I find interesting.
Correct me if I'm wrong, But Mormons are pretty cool
with Christians, like we're all in the same club where
Christians consider Mormonism of false faith. Am I close?
Speaker 5: Yes, Oh, it drives us crazy because Mormons do believe
in Jesus. They just believe that all the other Christian
faiths have like lost truths over the last two thousand years,
and that Joseph Smith had to bring some of that
truth back through the Book of Mormon, through the doctrine
and Covenant of the Revelations. And so Christians are totally
consider themselves Mormon. And then sorry, I'm mixed out by words.
Mormons totally consider themselves Christians, but other Christians are like,
watch with this, Joseph Smith, stop that you guys aren't
real Christians.
Speaker 2: The Mormon faith is an authoritarian culture, male domint so
here comes a dominant male, right, an alpha male type.
Donald Trump? Was that part of the reason you responded.
Speaker 5: I'm sure that probably had something to do with it.
It would have been more of a like subconscious thing
for me, Like I knew that Donald Trump wasn't a
good person. I knew that he was a jerk. My
parents actually never voted for him because they could see
through him. But I went with him because I thought
he was like sticking it to the lib sort of thing.
I thought it was like a good thing that he
was being loud and obnoxious and not politically correct, and
so I didn't really care that he was a bad
person until January sixth, when I realized how bad of
the person he was.
Speaker 2: Well, hang on, help me understand that it was it
that he was a jerk just to the people you
didn't like. So, hey, you know, you got break some
eggs if you want an omelet. And he's you know,
he's hating on the right people kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, i'd say that. I thought that the liberals,
the leftists, the trans people, the atheists what they deserved
to be hated on because they were ruining the country.
Speaker 2: So if you hadn't met me on the street, I
would have been like the evil enemy.
Speaker 5: I mean I would have been nice. In fact, I
served a Mormon mission and I met atheists and stuff,
and i'd try to be like, oh really, oh why
don't you want to have gone in your lives sort
of thing. So I wouldn't have been one of the
Trump supporters who would have gone up and yelled in
your face or anything like I just thought you were wrong.
Speaker 2: It's funny. When I was in the faith, I knew
evolution was wrong, but I'd never taken an evolutionary biology class.
I knew socialism is wrong, but I couldn't define it communism, etc.
And I'm not saying I'm an advocate. I'm just saying
I was an opponent and ignorant, Like I don't know
what it is, but I know it's crap. Were you
the same way?
Speaker 5: I actually did believe in evolution, which is kind of
funny Mormons are They like try to say science can
fit in with our religion even though it can't really,
And so like in Mormonism, it's okay to believe in evolution,
it's okay to believe in an old Earth. So like
I believed in evolution, but I also believe that God
just created humans and like maybe he did.
Speaker 3: It through evolution.
Speaker 5: For socialism, like, yeah, I didn't really know what socialism was.
I basically thought it was taxes that I didn't like.
Speaker 2: Socialism is Russia. They want to make us the Soviet Union.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So January sixth, all of a sudden things started to shake.
What happened on January.
Speaker 5: Wake up to the news that the capital has been
stormed and stuff, and like Oh, he's stupid people. Why
would they do that? And making conservatives look bad. I
was so mad and Donald Trump just started saying like,
the election's been stolen and we can't let this happen.
And I realized that he wasn't pro democracy, and so
I'd realized that he was a jerk before and that
he was I realized he wasn't a great person, but
I thought he was the man for the job. But
then when he went after like actual freedoms and democracy,
I was like, Okay, I was wrong about him. I
need to rethink this. So I did, and I was
still a conservative for a while after that. I just
wasn't supporting Trump after that.
Speaker 2: So what year are we talking about.
Speaker 5: Twenty I guess January sixth, twenty twenty one. By the
end of Want to Anyone, I was shifting more progressive.
It kind of took that whole year to think things through.
Speaker 2: Did did that affect your relationships.
Speaker 5: That my family and friends have? I mean, no one's
like cut me off or anything. There are some people
who I have a harder time talking to now, but
I haven't actually lost any friends or family over this,
which I know I've been I'm very privileged in that regard.
I'm like a full blown liberal atheist. Now I left
Mormonism as well, and like people still talk to me,
So that's great.
Speaker 2: So that's a parallel track, right, You deconstructed Mormonism and
you were deconstructing Trump cult at the same time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, two cults at the same time, baby, I mean
that much.
Speaker 2: Your autograph, that's remarkable.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you.
Speaker 2: Did this result in any identity problems?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Who am I after all this time? This sea change
in my life? What are my values?
Speaker 5: I mean?
Speaker 2: Did you have to go out of MAGA? Did you
have to go issue by issue and sort of reintroduce
yourself to the things that matter.
Speaker 5: The biggest identity crisis for me was leaving Mormonism conservativism
like that wasn't that big a deal for me to
change politically, But leaving Mormonism after twenty five years was insane.
It was so hard. And I'm sure you know what
that's like, leaving Christianity, so your entire identity is gone.
Speaker 2: What do you think people get wrong about MAGA? Those
of us on the outside looking in? And I might
have I don't know if i'd have been one when
I was a conservative, but I was a I mean,
I was a Ronald Reagan Rush Limbaugh kind of guy.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. What do you think we on
the outside may need to know about the culture that
we get wrong? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So Trump is mean and some of his followers are mean,
but I think most of them aren't mean. They're just
scared and they see their way of life like being
challenged as we get more progressive than as science shows
us things that we didn't think before. But I think
most people who support Trump aren't actually jerks. It's one
thing I'd say, And it is a lot about fear,
and also just they're very sheltered. They just don't know
any trans people or even any atheists. They just maybe
haven't met very many minorities, and so it's hard to
try to get along with them. But also like it's
hard because I look back on myself and I thought
that I was a nice person. I thought that I
was a good person. But then I looked back at
myself and I'm like, oh my god, I was a jerk.
How could I think that way.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about patriotism, love of country. That's a different
word when you're in maga and when you're out. I'm
not opposed to love of country patriotism in its purest form.
I have a problem with jingoism and blind nationalism, but
love of country. Has your perception on that word patriotism changed?
Speaker 4: It has.
Speaker 5: I actually have a really hard time now with like
the national anthem and sporting events and stuff, just because
when I used to sing the national anthem, I'm actually
a vocalist, so I would sing it for sport events
and other things. When I used to do that, I
was like, America is the best, and you know, God
and all in country and all this stuff. And now
when I listen to it, son, I'm like, I'm cringing inside.
And I don't want to be that way because I
do love my country, but it reminds me of who.
Speaker 3: I used to be.
Speaker 5: I really appreciate that the Harris Walls ticket and all
their conventions and stuff, that they're like incorporating patriotism into
it to be like, hey, Democrats, undecided, we love our
country too. You know, Trump and his people don't have
a monopoly on that.
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King Junior had vehement criticisms about this country
racial inequities and oppression, etc. And some would argue, and
I would include myself, that he was one of the
greatest patriots. Right, if you truly love your country, you
wanted to achieve the best version of itself.
Speaker 5: Definitely, Jessica.
Speaker 2: It's interesting too that years ago, when I saw an
American flag, like my perception of it has changed because
I've seen it sort of weaponized. Like if fifteen years
ago i'd have seen somebody who had a car antenna
had a little flag on it, I'd be like, oh, okay,
and that's nice. And now when I see one, I
start to immediately make assumptions about that person, like who
they are, and what their position is on Trump, and
whether or not they're pro gun or nationalized healthcare, and
how they feel about foreign policy and Israel. And I
start to just add all that. I feel like our
perception of the American flag has totally been kind of perverted.
Is the word. I don't know. Do you relate to
that at all?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I see what you're saying there. I think it's
the same thing for me. If I see someone driving
down the road with a flag on their truck, then
I definitely think that they probably support certain things and
think a certain way, and that makes me sad that
I think that, but it's just kind of how it is.
Speaker 2: Well, how you doing these days? You're on the other
side where you at?
Speaker 5: I'm doing really well. It's us about two years of
political and especially religious deconstruction to kind of get out
of the cave, I guess into the light if I
can wax metaphorical. But I'm doing really well. I'm happy
with where I'm at. I still feel like I'm lacking
some community and the fact that I don't go to
church anymore. So like if I went, they would all
be like, Hi, how are you. Oh, so good to
see you, Jessica. You know, they wouldn't be mean, But
I don't want to go to church, and so I
never see them. But I just have such a love
for everyone now, more so than I did as a Christian.
You know, Jesus says to love everyone, But when you
have this feeling of oh but they're trans, Oh but
they're gay, Oh but they're not a Christian or a
Mormon like me, that gets in the way. And now
I can just love people and as people, and I
really appreciate that.
Speaker 2: You're amazing. I so appreciate this sort of inside out look. Jessica.
Thanks for reaching out and sort of volunteering your time.
And I hear your baby girl in the background, so
go take care of your child, and thanks for talking
to us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2: Still to come. I've got a guy named Ethan who
has an interesting take on how conspiracy theories tie into MAGA.
Thinking we'll talk to him next. I am talking on
the show today to people who were once in Trump cult.
They were magiz, but they are magiz no more. I've
got Ethan on the line. Ethan, are you there.
Speaker 3: Yep, I'm here. How's it going for you?
Speaker 2: I'm good. We're talking MAGA and ex MAGA, and you
reached out and said you might have a story for us,
So I guess I'll start your back at square one.
Speaker 3: So to give a little bit of background on the
Maugas stuff, I mean, I'm only twenty six years old.
So this election that's coming up later this year, it's
only the third election I've ever voted in, or well,
presidential election, if we're going by that first one I
voted in. It was back in twenty sixteen, so I
voted for Trump in that one, and then I voted
Republican in the midterms in twenty eighteen, and I graduated
college in twenty twenty, and so I had a lot
more free time on my hands. I was pretty bogged
down in college. I didn't have time to really research
and look into politics for myself. So as soon as
I graduated in twenty twenty, I had all that free
time to really, you know, break away from what my
family was telling me. In college, and before that, pretty
much all my political information was getting funneled through my
family and the people that they listened to, a lot
of people like Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, all
those conservative talk radio host figures. But as soon as
I graduated college in twenty twenty, I had so much
more time to actually kind of dig in to this
stuff for myself. And I started to see that, you know,
the Conservative Republican Party, it really didn't represent what my
family was telling me that they represented. It would kind
of go on and on about how much they're for
freedom of speech and all that, and I started to
find that, you know, they're really more of a party
about traditional speech than free speech, and so that made
me step back. I went neutral, and so I did
not vote in the election that year. A couple of
years later, as I dug into it more and I'm
going to just glott over this part but then backtrack
and go into more detail, because the conclusion of this
is that, I mean, by twenty twenty two, after I
had really dug into both sides, both conservative and liberal. Yeah,
I voted liberal in the twenty twenty two midterms. Of course,
I'm planning to vote for Harris.
Speaker 2: Well if I can. I want to get in your
head back before. Can you describe yourself back then? What
were you thinking? What were you like?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So ironically, it's actually good that you are backtracking
to that because that also ties into the wider web
that I'm kind of seeing connected to Trump Is' specifically, So,
I was born with some sort of unknown condition. I'm
not sure what it is. I've talked to doctors about it.
It's not schizophrenia, it's not anything schizotyple But basically, just
to give a brief explanation for it, I do have
like all sorts of strange and bizarre like abnormal century
experiences and stuff like that. Like basically, where if I
was less skeptical, I would be calling them like paranormal experiences.
So the point in me bringing that up is I
was a very spiritual kid, you know. I had all
these experiences and believed in all this spiritual stuff even
up to the age of around twenty one twenty two.
I can't remember exactly, but that was pretty much my
entire life and definitely my entire childhood, and my family's
largely spiritual as well. So it wasn't just us, the
Glenn Beck and the Rushman in vall to Sean Hanny,
the Mark Levin. I mean, certainly those types of figures
were there, but there was also this wider net of
information or misinformation that we were really into, like Coast
to Coast AM, which would usually come on after Mark Levin,
same same channel. From what I remember listening to it
when I was maybe like eleven years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if I made Coast to Coast was wacky.
I mean that was art Bell. They were talking about
aliens and UFOs and the Illuminati and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: You were into that, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and we
we were definitely into all that. Those were my beliefs
as well. So like my family, my parents believed in
all that stuff. You know, the reptilians, they're being faces
on the far side of the moon, like the whole shebang,
the entire you think, take the conspiracy theories all the
way out to the edge, and that's where we were,
and that's where I was that when I was a kid,
and not even just a kid, like I was saying
up to i'member the exact age, but only a few
years ago, you know, the early twenties. And then I
kind of deconstructed myself out of it. So yeah, really,
back then, my whole mindset was not just a conservative one.
It was really I was living in this world where
there was all this stuff around every corner. You know,
there were aliens walking among us, there was a global
elite controlling the world. And given my condition that I
was born with, you know, these sorts of quote unquote
paranormal experiences that I had in my mind and in
my parents' mind, this was a gift, right, This was
like something that was given to me. I was born
with it, and I had to be careful with this
information that I was getting from my experiences. And if
I wasn't careful, there was like this government that would
lock me away or do this or that you know,
now you start to think of like Andrew Tait and
all those guys, you know, like the Matrix, there's like this,
it's real a lead out there where if if you
share too much of the quote unquote truth, somebody out there,
they're going to be watching you and they're going to
take you down. That was kind of a whole mentality
that I grew up in and my family still holds
to that mentality. So in a very very simplified way,
that would be my answer as to what the mindset was.
But there's definitely a lot more steps to it. I
could just go on and on and on about.
Speaker 2: So I mean what I call this QAnon, I mean,
were you a queue?
Speaker 3: I was not a qu but I was further than that.
I was probably more extreme than that, not in the
sense that I wanted to do harm like what I
at least here about from a lot of the que drops,
it seems like they're actually wanting to engage in more
like physical action, violence and stuff like that. So I'd
never had that mindset. But in terms of just the
pure ideology, yeah, my idea is my beliefs. They were
definitely a lot crazier. If I had known about Q
and on when I was a kid, I would have
read those and been like, Okay, yeah, old news. That's
just that's a regular Tuesday. To me, it's nothing weird.
It's nothing bizarre. My ideas are far more bizarre than that.
Speaker 2: Ethan, were you a religious person, I.
Speaker 3: Would somewhat describe myself as religious. Really, the term I
used was spiritual. Typically, when I use the term religious,
I kind of define that as more doc trinle, like
they adhere to a specific doctrine, you know, the Bible,
the Kuran, so on and so forth. Spiritual, as I
use the term, it's more not doctrinal, but more like personal.
You see everything in the universe as being some sort
of personified thing. So you look at a tree and
there there's a spirit in that tree. There's a life
force in the tree, kind of manifesting the tree. Or
you look at the earth, there's an earth spirit. Or
you look at the stars. You know every star has
a life force or this or that, So you kind
of over personify everything, so it's more personal.
Speaker 2: Did you admire even worship Donald Trump?
Speaker 3: No? I, ironically I never got that far. I'm not
quite sure why. Maybe ironically that was only one benefit
of the fact that it went so far out with
the conspiratorial and spiritual thinking that I was just way
too out there to see Donald Trump as anything significant,
Like he didn't really look like a big blip on
the radar to me. It was just like he was
this one small figure in this entire beast universe of
all this wacky stuff going on, and so I never
really saw a reason to worship that or even praise that.
In my mind, I just saw him as like, Okay,
we need to vote for him so that we can
have freedom and that the quote unquote truth can get
out and it's not going to be demonized. Because again,
going back to my whole childhood mindset and my family mindset,
that was the big thing. You know, there's this global elite,
and if people like me aren't careful, we're gonna speak
the quote unquote truth, and we're gonna get arrested for it,
we're gonna get tortured for it, we're gonna get killed
for it, and so on my mind, Trump was a
necessary stepping stone to getting us out of that world.
Speaker 2: Ethan, if I was to ask you at the age
of eighteen sixteen, I don't care to describe the Libs
a liberal. What was your perception?
Speaker 3: I would say they're deeply corrupt in that they're very biased,
they don't care about freem of speech, and they're not
as accepting as the Republicans. I would describe Republicans and
conservatives as being more open to different viewpoints. And then
I would say that liberals are the opposite, that they're intolerant.
They want to shut down opposing viewpoints, especially if those
viewpoints are very controversial, where if they are seeking a
harsh truth, you know, they wouldn't be so willing to
engage in that harshness, even if it is the truth.
That was kind of my general thinking about them back then.
Speaker 2: Did you buy into the one world government? You know,
the liberals want to dismantle the United States for a
sort of a global cabal thing.
Speaker 3: I had a very interesting relationship with that idea because
that was one where, for some reason, my parents thought
as more of a problem than me. So here's the
difference with my parents. They saw the one world government
as an inherently problematic idea, meaning whether it was a
one wolf government with corrupt leaders or with benevolent leaders,
they just thought like the entire model was corrupt, that
there was no way that any type of one wolf
government would ever be a good model. You know, even
things like the United Nations are not necessarily good. In
my mind though, even as a kid, I saw the
whole one world government conspiracy as bad in the sense that, okay,
we would have these corrupt elites rolling over us, rolling
over every nation, dictating what everybody and every nation should do,
and so on my mind that was bad. But I
never really had any animosity towards the notion of a
unified world government in general. I thought that back could
be good, whereas my family thought, no, it's just one
through and through. You gotta throw it away. It'd be
a new world order no matter which direction we go
with it. So the whole idea has just got to
be thrown out.
Speaker 2: Ethan, do you want to tell me how the domino
started to fall for you?
Speaker 3: So basically I started looking back and analyzing all my
ideas and kind of saying, okay, looking at each one individually,
can this simply be told or can I actually show
something for whether empirically or even just intangibly, see a
thing like in a math class. You know, you don't
have empirical demonstrations, just like the professor just asked, you,
can you go up to the board and demonstrate to
us that this formula works or this equation works. So
there is such a thing as intangibled demonstrations as well.
And so I was kind of just going back through
all my ideas and after myself, is there something to
show for each of these or can I just tell
people about it? And I ended up throwing out the
majority of my ideas because they can only be told
rather than shown in any sort of way. And I
kept about like five categories of ideas where yeah, I
kind of looked at it and I could show something
for it. And I sat back and looked at those
five categories and I saw that, okay, three of them
are actually like my biggest categories of ideas, like the
most quote unquote out there. You'd call crazy or something
like that. But when I would sit down and discuss
these ideas with professors, you know, it was those five
categories where they'd be like, yeah, no, those actually have
some academic rigor you can write papers about some of
those ideas, or really even all of them. And yet
three of those five that had some academic rigor. They
were the three biggest. So I found out that evan
or having the capability to show something for your work,
it does not discriminate again, crazy ideas. It's not about
which ideas are crazy. It's just about which ideas have
something to show for themselves, something external to your claim.
Speaker 2: I remember when I was in the faith and we
would posit something that they thought sounded insane. They would
call us crazy, but we thought that was a feature,
not a bug, right, I think it was it. I
heard a scientist say once that the mindset is you know,
they said Albert Einstein was crazy. They call me crazy.
So I'm like Einstein, right, right.
Speaker 3: And I love that idea too, because my parents will
often bring that one up. That look, guys like Einstein
were called crazy and they proved everybody wrong. And I said,
so back up, wait a minute. Nine out of one
hundred people, if you count Einstein in that hundred, ninety
nine of those people, yeah, they had crazy ideas like Einstein,
but they had nothing to show for those ideas. The
reason why Einstein was both crazy and right is because
he was the one guy out of the analogous hundred
who had something to show for his craziness. It wasn't
just him being crazy, it was the universe being crazy, right,
the universe back to up right.
Speaker 2: I find it interesting what I had expected, and I
think it all ties together when we talk about make
America great again, the Trump cult or culture, but conspiracy theories,
end of the world type stuff, the illuminati, the Deep States,
They're coming for your children, They're drinking the blood of babies,
and those types of things. It all ties into the culture.
So as you escaped, you weren't necessarily a worshiper of
Donald Trump. You found it was more of a transactional thing, like,
if I'm going to get the country that's more free,
he's the option. That's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 3: You. Yeah, it is transactional. That's certainly what drove my
election for Trump in twenty sixteen. Is that. Yeah, in
my mind and in my parents' mind, you know, I
have these ideas. I was this quote unquote gift, and
I had to be careful that I didn't elect somebody
who would do away with me in whatever sense they
would choose to. And he would keep the country safe
and he would make sure that doesn't happen. And not
just that it wouldn't happen to me, but that it
wouldn't happen to other people out there. They wouldn't get
innocently condemned or anything like that. So yeah, in that sense,
it was very much transactional. But then the second comment
that I wanted to add also goes back to the
common sense thing. And this is another thing that I've
noticed which is really big in the MAGA culture. So
this kind of tackle of the heart of your question here,
which is I've noticed that pretty much every person I've
talked to who is in MAGA. It's rare that I'll
talk to a group of people and get a one
hundred percent distancy on something, because of course people are
so varied. But somehow with this I have noticed at
least anecdotally a one consistency, and that every MAGA person
I talk to things that common sense equals evidence. They
think that validity equals evidence, and they don't understand the
difference between an idea of being valid and the idea
of being evidential. And if you don't mind real quick,
could I use like an example that I typically like
to use to highlight what that difference exactly means. And
why it's so problematic with MAGA thinking yeah, please do Okay,
we learn in middle school that the reason that the
sky is warm colored at sunrise or sunset is because
longer wavelengths of light, like red and orange light, they
don't scatter in the atmosphere as easily as cooler colors
of light do. So, now that the light's coming in
at a longer angle, you know, at sunrise or sunset,
it's only the longer wavelengths of light that are really
going to be able to make it through all that atmosphere.
And so we see the reds and the oranges and
the yellows more. Now, given that, so we know that
that's true. But here's where this gets kind of funny
is I could make an argument that therefore, if all
that light is having to go through more and more atmosphere,
then what if we say that the light's getting refracted
like a straw in a glasse. You know, you see
the straw, it looks bent, and that refraction gets exponentially
more severe as the sun goes down at sunset more
or you know, if it's earlier at sunrise, it just
the refraction gets deeper and deeper until eventually you could
say the angle of the sunlight is so refracted that
it looks like the sun is gone. It looks like
it's beneath the horizon, but it's not. It's still up there.
And so night time's and illusion, and so look, I've
just come up with a model earned argument that basically
argues for Flatter that night time's and illusion that the
sun is actually still up above, but we don't see
it up above at night time because the life is
getting refracted by this middle school fact that we all learn.
And there's no contradictions what I just said. There's no
identity breaks or inconsistencies, and why I said it's a
very valid model. There's nothing logically wrong with it. But
the reason why the model is still wrong is because
validity is not enough. You have to have something to
show for the idea. It's not enough to just come
up with an argument that has airtight logic and it's
valid and it's uncontradictory and it's consistent. Like, that's not
good enough because if you think that's good enough, you
could become a flatter. They're so flatter or are not
stupid people? There are people coming up with all sorts
of valid models, and they don't see the difference between
validity and evidence. From outside of CAMAGA, I've found that
one hundred percent of the time, all the people I've
talked to anecdotally and MAGA, they're the same exact way
come up with all these valid models. There's logical reasoning.
They can give you an argument down a narrative which
has no contradiction, no inconsistencies, and so they're like, look, there,
there it is. There's nothing illogical about what I just said.
There's nothing wrong with the narrative I just gave you
about whether it be the Trump assassination or trans people
in schools or any of that. They can give you
a perfectly consistent narrative, and they think that the consistency
and the validity is enough. So they think that common
sense is enough, that an idea of making sense is enough,
because they don't realize that evidence is validity plus more.
It's not just validity. I really think that's an important
distinction that people need to learn. I think maybe that's
one failure of our education system is that we never
learned that difference between validity and evidence, and that was
the big difference and distinction that made all the dominoes
fall for me, so to speak, that you know, it
does not matter how much something makes sense. It matters
how much there is to be shown. And things can
be shown for boring ideas, they can be shown for
crazy ideas and big ideas too. It doesn't matter. Just
bring something to the table to show people what you're
saying instead of just claiming it. And I think we
just we need to somehow build that into our education system.
I don't know what that's going to look like. I
think if we can somehow build that question and all
the surrounding questions into our education system, I don't know,
maybe that'd be one way to really decrease the spread
of misinformation in our society. Because I really think this
whole Maga movement, it's just one circle of misinformation among many, many,
many others that I've seen connected through this web. And
the main thing connecting the entire web of misinformation is
this fact that all the people in these circles and
in this web, they think validity is enough, and they
need to learn that it just isn't.
Speaker 2: My subjective take is that I'm hearing you speak, and
I hear an analytical mind and then when I see,
you know, the daily show, go out and interview people
at Trump Rowley's, I am not hearing analytical minds, so
that you know, you may have had a leg up,
but I'm so thankful for you and your perspective. You've
got a lot of good stuff to say, a window
into Trump's support magat culture, and I think a lot
of really good information about how that thinking works. Ethan,
You're much appreciated.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I definitely appreciate the condos.
Speaker 2: That is about all I can swing. I'm going to
go and hit some cold medicine and put a dog
in my lap and catch some Z's ghost stories is
next week. I should be one hundred percent for that.
Going to be a lot of fun as we get
into the October Halloween spirit. Thanks to my callers, Thanks
for listening. I'll catch you later.
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