An Open Letter to MAGA

You know what the Trump campaign is about to do. Please; don't do this.

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To all those who continue to support the MAGA movement, who intend to vote for Donald J. Trump, to all those who would consider supporting his plans going forward:

As someone who was once in your shoes, I urge you not to support this man or this movement any further. That man, nor that movement, does not serve you, nor your loved ones, nor this country; MAGA only exists to serve its leader and its leadership, and in the end that is all that will be served by their madness.

Now, I realize it may be hard to believe that I was in your shoes, as I tend to wear some very different shoes now, but I was.

In November 2020, I was at my parents’ house watching Fox News, agonizing over every return with bated breath. I saw the results coming in from Pennsylvania; like you, I thought this seemed like a sure victory for Trump. And when Pennsylvania went to Biden, like you, I was urged to be angry, and thus thought it was “stolen” somehow.

I saw the legal challenges being made, and felt the best thing to do was to let the legal process play out. When those challenges were dismissed for lack of evidence, like you, I was urged to believe that there was some sort of “grand conspiracy”. Had I been in the Washington D.C. area on January 6, I don’t know what I would have done. I might have joined with the rioters in storming the Capitol, such was the fervor that conservative politicians and media had whipped us into. There but for the grace of G-d.

January 6 changed all of us. For the majority of us in America, it was a horrifying moment when our great experiment - our democracy - held on by the slimmest of threads. For many Republicans, though, it was the beginning of what MAGA has become today. The “stolen election” became the original sin, the betrayal that could never be forgiven. Every act committed by MAGA since - every disgrace since - every betrayal of democracy since - has had as its justification the “stolen election”, that since it was done to us, we were justified in any retaliatory action.

But this “stolen election” was a lie. It was an illusion crafted by Donald Trump and his team of lawyers and aides, with the help of conservative media such as Fox News and OAN and conservative talk radio, to convince all of us - dupe all of us - into believing the election was stolen. Believing as we did that this election had been stolen, that the republic was under threat, we would believe every word from the mouth of MAGA, and act as his loyal soldiers in his demolition of America.

The evidence that MAGA created this Big Lie is overwhelming. The preponderance of evidence against Trump and his co-conspirators, the judgments against Fox News and the like, demonstrate this convincingly. They lied to me; they lied to you. And it worked because it was a lie we wanted to believe.

Consider the effects of this trauma. It separated us as MAGA from our fellow Americans, a separation of reality. We believed what we believed, and they believed what they believed. And as a result of this separation, MAGA was free to lie to get what they wanted. Many of the statements that have come out of the MAGA camp no longer have a basis in reality, and in some cases are designed to deliberately thumb a proverbial nose at reality, in order to get what they want from us. Consider that Trump has claimed that children are receiving gender-affirming care at school without parental consent; that legal Haitian migrants are eating dogs and cats; and that abortion clinics can and do legally murder babies after birth. All of these statements are absurd even on the surface and easily dismissed with even the slightest examination, yet how many people within the MAGA movement accept these words unquestioningly?

I was lucky. I realize it may sound strange to you that me being trans is lucky, but in many ways I am lucky to be trans. Among other things, it meant a questioning of everything I held dear, to find out what was true and what was not, and what was important and what was not. And, quite clearly, the Republican claims that the 2020 election was stolen were definitely not true, as are many of their actions stemming from that. That transition - that discernment - pulled me away from the echo chamber that is conservative media and politics, away from the Big Lie.

Which brings us to the next Big Lie already building: the 2024 election. Already, the MAGA movement is crafting the illusion that this coming election is fraudulent, that the Democrats are stealing the election. Evidence of this is the flooding of Republican-backed polls to skew polling numbers and the actions MAGA faithful are taking to disrupt the voting process, from attempting voting fraud to accosting poll workers to attempting to canvas in polling locations. Trump himself has begun to cast doubt on the process as well, raging at imagined slights in the voting process.

I assure you, this claim from MAGA that the election is being stolen by the Left is illusion. Donald Trump has never admitted fair defeat in any election, going back to the first primaries in 2016. Trump, and MAGA leadership, want you as angry as you were four years ago, in order to use that anger for their purposes.

Please, let peace prevail; let the process play out. Vote for who you will, though I would beg you not to vote for Trump, for all the above I’ve presented. On election night and after, I would suggest a more neutral news site such as CNN, rather than Fox News or NewsMax. Legal actions will no doubt play out; view these dispassionately, rather than taking action, and avoid the MAGA calls to action in these times.

Finally, explore America. America is not a piece of land but the people that form it, and we become stronger with every migrant welcomed into our country. We are every group of people, every race, every gender, every creed, every experience, coming together on the promise that together we are far more than we are alone. Thus do we form the motto “E Pluribus Unum” - Out of Many, One. One thing the last few years have shown me is just how varied, how diverse, America is, and how beautiful America is in this diversity. In our history and in our experiences, we are our triumphs as well as our tragedies, our finest hours as well as our disgraces.

The MAGA movement’s actions, both overt and suggested, threaten to throw this election - and the country - into disgrace.

And, regardless of its outcome, history will not forgive the MAGA movement for this.