{"id":1449980,"date":"2024-01-10T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-11T03:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1449980"},"modified":"2024-01-10T22:40:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-11T03:40:00","slug":"politics-is-so-confusing-right-now-dems-reps-have-switched-sides-now-half-of-voters-identify-independent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/politics-is-so-confusing-right-now-dems-reps-have-switched-sides-now-half-of-voters-identify-independent\/1449980\/","title":{"rendered":"“Politics Is So Confusing Right Now” – Dems & Reps Have Switched Sides & Now Half Of Voters Identify ‘Independent’"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Politics Is So Confusing Right Now” – Dems & Reps Have Switched Sides & Now Half Of Voters Identify ‘Independent’<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Peter Savodnik via The Free Press,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Great Scramble<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Democrats and Republicans have switched sides\u2014and nearly half of voters now call themselves independent. Peter Savodnik meets the politically homeless…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2016, Shelle Lichti voted for Donald Trump. She got tons of blowback from other gay people who thought she\u2019d betrayed them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She was 45 at the time, and she\u2019d been doing things her own way since she was 11, since she was adopted by the big Mennonite family in Missouri, and ran away, and came out, and became a trucker, hauling beef and pork across the American hinterland in a rainbow-painted eighteen-wheeler.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It had been tough being a woman. And a lesbian.<\/p>\n

But she\u2019d forged a new life for herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had built a portable home in the back of her truck\u2014with the kitchenette, the curtains, the warm little lights, the generator, and her bed on the lower bunk, and all her clothes, first-aid gear, and dry goods in the top bunk\u2014and she\u2019d traversed an array of politics and religions. (She was into Buddhism\u2014the calm, the focus. \u201cI choose to say I have faith, but I\u2019m not religious,\u201d Lichti said.) She liked to listen to audiobooks\u2014she was into Nora Roberts, the romance novelist\u2014and she loved to turn up Sia when she was \u201claying down some miles,\u201d which meant going for hours and hours, not stopping, pushing on to wherever she was going.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody is on their own ride,\u201d Lichti tells\u00a0The Free Press. \u201cWe have to respect that.\u201d (Jamie Kelter Davis for\u00a0The Free Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

What she had learned from riding around the country in her little home in her big rig was you never knew as much as you thought you did about other people. \u201cEverybody is on their own ride,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have to respect that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, she noticed the homophobia had waned, but it had gotten harder to make a living, mostly because of the influx of truckers, most of whom were from Somalia and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a problem with them\u2014they\u2019re out here making a living for their families,\u201d Lichti said. But with the new truckers, it was harder to get a raise. \u201cWhen I started\u201d\u2014in 1993\u2014\u201cI made 19 cents a mile. Now, I barely make double that.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Shelle Lichti works on her truck, The Rainbow Rider, on December 10, 2023 in Joliet, IL. (Jamie Kelter Davis for\u00a0The Free Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just Lichti who was struggling. It seemed to her like the country was falling apart. \u201cA lot of roadside motels and hotels look like crack houses,\u201d she said. \u201cNot enough people coming through.\u201d On top of that, she said, Main Streets everywhere had been devoured by Walmart, Costco, Amazon. \u201cThe billboards on Route 66\u201d\u2014the 2,500-mile highway connecting Chicago and Los Angeles\u2014\u201care mostly gone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, in June 2015, Trump announced his presidential bid, and the bluster, the fireworks, the who-gives-a-fuck about sticking to your talking points\u2014that was refreshing in the face of all the decline.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lot of her gay and lesbian friends thought she\u2019d gone crazy. \u201cI was like, \u2018If you want to unfriend me because of my beliefs, then you\u2019re no better than the people that hate on us,\u2019\u2009\u201d Lichti said.<\/p>\n

But after Trump got into office, Lichti started to see the world differently yet again. Trump seemed too nasty in his rhetoric, like a \u201ctoddler,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, she learned her son was transgender, and it seemed like a dangerous time to be trans or Muslim or Mexican. \u201cMy son\u2019s own twin brother has blown him off,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Then came Covid, George Floyd, the riots. And Trump didn\u2019t seem to make life any better for truckers, Lichti said. \u201cIt got even worse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

By Election Day 2020, she said, \u201cI wanted anybody but Trump.\u201d Lichti voted for Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

More than three years later, she doesn\u2019t know what to believe. She says she feels unmoored. She considers Biden a \u201cseat-filler.\u201d She doesn\u2019t care for Democrats. She kind of cares about climate change, and she\u2019s pro-choice, and she\u2019s heartbroken about the people dying in Ukraine and Gaza, but she doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s America\u2019s problem, and she can\u2019t stand the kids in the LGBTQ+ movement with their \u201c20 zillion acronyms.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she isn\u2019t a \u201cconservative\u201d or \u201cprogressive,\u201d and definitely not a Democrat or Republican.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOur society has made it to where we\u2019re supposed to fit in a certain mold,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of us, you know, well, it\u2019s like taking a plus-size girl and trying to squeeze me into a size 2. Just not gonna work.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Lichti rejects labels like \u201cDemocrat,\u201d \u201cRepublican,\u201d \u201cprogressive,\u201d and \u201cconservative.\u201d \u201cOur society has made it to where we\u2019re supposed to fit in a certain mold,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like taking a plus-size girl and trying to squeeze me into a size 2. Just not gonna work.\u201d (Jamie Kelter Davis for\u00a0The Free Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

Shelle Lichti is hardly alone.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nearly half of Americans now\u00a0identify<\/a>\u00a0as independent\u2014not necessarily because they\u2019re centrists, or moderates, but because neither party reflects their views.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, over the past several decades, the parties have switched places, leaving tens of millions of voters unsure about what they stand for or where they belong, Yuval Levin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of\u00a0A Time to Build<\/a><\/em>, about reviving the American Dream, told me.<\/p>\n

Levin described two axes in American political life\u2014one right-left, and the other insider-outsider. Traditionally, the party of the right has been the party of the inside\u2014the establishment\u2014and the left has fought for those on the outside\u2014the poor, the disenfranchised.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in the twenty-first century, they\u2019ve switched sides,\u201d he said. \u201cDemocrats are the elites, and Republicans feel like they\u2019re fighting the establishment.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

One way to think about it, said Michael Lind,\u00a0author of<\/a>\u00a0The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite<\/em>, was geographic: \u201cFrom Lincoln to Reagan, New England, the Upper Midwest and the Great Lakes, and the western states were the Republicans, and now they\u2019re the Democrats\u2014while the interior was all the Democrats, and now they\u2019re the Republicans.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This switch has \u201ccreated a huge amount of confusion, because it\u2019s happened without either party recognizing it,\u201d Levin added. \u201cRepublicans have gotten pretty comfortable with it, while Democrats are very uncomfortable being the insider party.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because it\u2019s \u201cpolitical suicide\u201d to acknowledge you\u2019re the party of the elite, Thomas Edsall, a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist who has reported on national politics for a half-century, told me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocrats\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0elite, but they can\u2019t say it,\u201d <\/strong>Edsall said.<\/p>\n

Consider that, in 2016, the\u00a0median home price<\/a>\u00a0of a Hillary Clinton voter was $640,000, while that of a Trump voter was $474,000. In 2018, Democrats\u00a0took control<\/a>\u00a0of the 10 wealthiest congressional districts in the country\u2014all of them on the coasts, mostly in New York and California. Of the top 50, they held 41.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, increasingly, Democrats recruit their future leaders\u2014their ideas\u2014from a handful of universities that cater to the American elite.<\/p>\n

From 2004 to 2016, 20 percent of all Democratic campaign staffers\u00a0came from<\/a>\u00a0seven universities: Harvard, Stanford, New York University, Berkeley, Georgetown, Columbia, and Yale. By contrast, the University of Texas, Austin; Ohio State University; and University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison provided the most Republican staffers.<\/p>\n

The reasons for the Great Scramble are legion and stretch back decades, if not longer: the breakup of the Democrats\u2019 New Deal coalition, the end of the Cold War, globalization, the internet, the decline of organized religion and the two-parent family, the forever wars, the opioid and fentanyl crises.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThings are definitely in flux,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>Michael Lind said.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

What I know for sure is that I first glimpsed it on Election Night 2022, at a \u201cvictory party\u201d in Phoenix for Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lake\u2019s supporters seemed to fall outside the old left-right construct. Racially, economically, ideologically\u2014they didn\u2019t fit the preconceived categories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My surprise was obvious when I interviewed a Latina in her fifties in an Iron Maiden t-shirt.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

How was it, I asked, that she supported a candidate who had run against more Latinos coming to America? Had she not seen Lake\u2019s campaign manager\u2019s \u201cracist tweet<\/a>\u201d a few weeks before?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s when she started lecturing me about \u201cgangbangers coming here\u201d and then \u201cBig Tech\u201d and \u201cBig Pharma,\u201d but also her friend\u2019s biracial daughter and Martin Luther King Jr., and why Washington should \u201cpump trillions\u201d into the rural parts of the country decimated by fentanyl and cheap overseas labor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our conversation wasn\u2019t that dissimilar to a conversation I had several months later with a Democratic bundler in Brentwood\u2014he\u2019s worth, I\u2019m told, about $400 million\u2014who was going on about how \u201cthe climate and AI are everything\u201d (he thought the former was the end of us, and the latter was our salvation), and how he was \u201cscared shitless about the gender stuff.\u201d When I asked him whether he\u2019d be supporting Biden in 2024, he said, \u201cOf course,\u201d but then he added, \u201cAs for the other fucktards\u201d\u2014he meant younger, more progressive, down-ballot Democrats\u2014\u201cno way, no can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were other weird signs:<\/strong> the Democratic poll, in November,\u00a0showing<\/a>\u00a0that the base of the party\u2014including blacks, Latinos, college women, and millennials\u2014prefers Trump to Biden; GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley\u00a0saying<\/a>\u00a0government shouldn\u2019t bar minors from transitioning; Senator John Fetterman, once lionized by progressives,\u00a0insisting<\/a>\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m not a progressive,\u201d while touting his support for Israel and calling for tougher border controls\u2014prompting Helen Qiu, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for New York City Council, to\u00a0call<\/a>\u00a0Fetterman a \u201cChristmas Miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Compounding our confusions about the Great Scramble is the language we use to talk about politics\u2014to describe the country we want to live in.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur language is impoverished, left over from the French Revolution, with us just saying \u2018right\u2019 and \u2018left\u2019 and what we think we mean by that,\u201d Oklahoma City attorney Jason Reese, who has spent 25 years in GOP politics, told me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, when he was a kid, Reese was a Reagan Republican. He believed in capitalism, and thought the Soviet Union was evil, and the unions, like liberals and high taxes, were a relic. His mom called him \u201cAlex P. Keaton,\u201d after the\u00a0Family Ties<\/em>\u00a0character.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But in 1992, just as conservatives were triumphing over everyone\u2014with the USSR now dead, and China and India embracing market economics, and the Democrats, under Bill Clinton, morphing into moderate Republicans\u2014the movement suffered its first shock. So did Reese.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoss Perot was the catalyst for this,\u201d he said, referring to the third-party candidate blamed by many Republicans for President George H.W. Bush\u2019s loss to Clinton. \u201cHe broke up that old Republican coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Perot who suggested there was a contradiction baked into Reagan\u2019s GOP: while the party embraced free trade and free markets, he argued those policies threatened working-class voters who had recently flocked to it.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perot was especially upset about the North American Free Trade Agreement, which, he\u00a0said<\/a>, would lead to a \u201cgiant sucking sound going south\u201d\u2014as blue-collar jobs moved from the United States to Mexico.<\/p>\n

That proved prophetic.<\/p>\n

Reese saw the political shift happen in his own extended family, in Kentucky and Texas. In the early 1990s, he said, they cared\u00a0a lot<\/em>\u00a0about abortion. By the 2010s, they were talking nonstop about jobs and immigration.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That colored his own thinking. Today, Reese said, he\u2019s an \u201ceconomic nationalist\u201d who backs tariffs and a higher minimum wage, and a \u201cforeign policy realist\u201d (meaning, no more wars unless they\u00a0must<\/em>\u00a0be fought), and he\u2019s skeptical of capital punishment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This confusion also extends to the left, which includes \u201cliberals\u201d and \u201cprogressives\u201d and people who believe in minimizing economic disparity and people who\u00a0think<\/a>\u00a0talking about economic disparity is racist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Obama was the \u201cperfect distillation of liberalism,\u201d Tyler Harper, a comparative literature professor at Bates College who has written on politics and identity, and supported Bernie Sanders\u2019 presidential bid, told me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cProgressives,\u201d Harper said, are the people who think racial identity reigns supreme and have no serious objection to capitalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re left-wing in any substantive sense at all,\u201d Harper said of progressives. He saw progressivism and \u201ccorporatism\u201d as \u201cnatural allies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exhibit A: the $8 billion U.S. companies\u00a0spend<\/a>\u00a0yearly on DEI training.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe desperately need a new vocabulary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That is how Priyanka Wolan feels\u2014unsure of how to describe herself or what she believes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had immigrated to the United States from India with her family when she was eight, and she had always leaned Democratic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that she doesn\u2019t know what she believes. She is definitely pro-choice, but she also wants to curb \u201cunauthorized immigration.\u201d She thinks the new gender politics is insane, but she believes strongly in defending civil liberties. And she\u2019s giving her four daughters a traditional homeschool education that includes Latin and classical music.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Priyanka Wolan first realized she wasn\u2019t on the left when she started homeschooling her daughters. (Jenna Schoenefeld for\u00a0The Free Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

The trouble is that all of these things do not fit together into one party or camp or label.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were having dinner at the house in the hills of Los Angeles that she and her husband, Alan, share with their daughters. My 9-year-old and hers had become friends in an after-school math program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe present-day conservative movement doesn\u2019t align with my life experience in the way I used to think the Democratic platform did, but the Democratic Party no longer aligns with that either,\u201d Wolan said.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time I realized I wasn\u2019t on the left was when I started homeschooling, and people were like, \u2018This isn\u2019t supporting public education, what\u2019s wrong with public education?\u2019\u2009\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s when I started to see, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m not falling into line.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

But then, in 2019, she started to feel the tug of identity politics, and it was like a whirlpool. She and Alan, who is Jewish and 18 years older, had always been \u201csparring partners.\u201d Now, it felt more personal, as if she, a \u201cbrown woman,\u201d were facing off against whiteness and the patriarchy.<\/p>\n

During the summer of 2020, \u201cit became really difficult for us to have a conversation,\u201d <\/strong>she said. He thought defunding the police was idiotic, and worried about illegal immigration and crime. \u201cI remember saying at one point,\u201d she continued, \u201c\u2009\u2018You know what, let\u2019s not talk politics. You\u2019re never going to understand me, because you\u2019re white, a man, privileged\u2019\u2014all the jargon.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Priyanka Wolan at her home in Los Angeles, CA. (Jenna Schoenefeld for\u00a0The Free Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

She added: \u201cAt one point, I remember my dad saying, \u2018You\u2019re not doing a service to yourself or your kids when you\u2019re constantly thinking in terms of your identity. We didn\u2019t come to America for you to think this way.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was other moms who made her rethink things, albeit unwittingly. They didn\u2019t approve of what she was teaching her girls: Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, the poetry of Robert Frost, Mozart sonatas.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the height of the decolonization narrative, people would say, \u2018Why are you teaching them this? This is the Western canon,\u2019\u2009\u201d Wolan, 42, said. She was surprised. She wanted her daughters, as she said, to \u201chave it all\u201d\u2014the most rigorous liberal-arts education that would not only get them into a top college but enable them to think critically.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t that her views had changed. She mostly believed in the same things she always had. \u201cI\u2019m liberal in the old sense of the word\u2014the not believing whatever you\u2019re told to believe,\u201d Wolan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I asked Wolan whether it was hard being politically homeless, whether it would be easier to join one of the available tribes, she half-smiled and said it wasn\u2019t so tough fending off criticisms of homeschooling or deciding who to vote for. (She can\u2019t vote for Biden again; she\u2019d probably vote for Vivek Ramaswamy, if he wins the GOP nomination.) The hard thing was getting comfortable with people knowing her husband supported a candidate who everyone she knew thought was evil.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want people knowing he was for Trump,\u201d Wolan said of Alan. \u201cIt took me a while to get to the point where I thought, \u2018You know what, he\u2019s allowed to have whatever opinions he wants.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Brian Lasher, a retired Navy commander and high-school history teacher in Erie, Pennsylvania, could not care less whether people know he plans to vote for Trump. Not that he\u2019s excited about it. He thinks Trump\u2019s \u201can asshole.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he has to vote\u2014he hasn\u2019t missed an election since he first voted, in 1980\u2014and he doesn\u2019t believe in voting for protest candidates. He wants his vote to count. (In 1992, he voted for Ross Perot. \u201cThat\u2019s a vote I regret,\u201d Lasher said. \u201cClinton is the best Democratic president of my lifetime.\u201d)<\/p>\n

His father came from a family of Calvin Coolidge Republicans\u2014\u201cHe refused to have an FDR dime in his pocket\u201d\u2014and his mother was religious and liberal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was raised Lutheran, and he is pro-life, but he thinks there need to be exceptions, and he is worried about inflation, and he thinks we have to stop illegal immigration\u2014\u201chuman trafficking is grotesque\u201d\u2014but he supports legal immigration\u2014\u201csome of the best students I\u2019ve had were immigrants\u201d\u2014and it is obvious the poles are warming, but it is also obvious we shouldn\u2019t do away with oil and gas. \u201cThat\u2019s just suicidal,\u201d Lasher, 62, told me.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the lockdowns, he\u2019d watched his students disappear into their screens. The school couldn\u2019t make them turn on their cameras, so almost all turned them off. Usually, he had no idea whether they were even there.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the \u201cinstitutional rot\u201d was everywhere, he said, and everything that came out of D.C. reflected as much\u2014not only the Covid protocols and deficit spending, but Russiagate, which he called \u201cbullshit,\u201d and the corruption. He meant the Clinton emails, the Hunter Biden pay-to-play thing, all of it.<\/p>\n

If it looks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now running for the White House as an independent, might win Pennsylvania, he\u2019ll vote for him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But generally he\u2019s pessimistic about things. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing extremes in both parties drive America toward an abyss,\u201d Lasher said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He recalled Christmas 2007. He was in Baghdad with the Navy, and he was at dinner in the mess hall at Saddam Hussein\u2019s old Republican Guard Palace, and General David Petraeus\u2019s chief chaplain was talking about the new \u201creligious reconciliation initiative.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lasher was asked to be the chaplain\u2019s note-taker, and the two of them spent the next six months hopscotching around Baghdad meeting Shiite and Sunni religious leaders talking about why they hated each other, and what could be done to stem the violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were at the house of a sheik, he was a Shiite, and he was explaining the differences between the Iranian Shiites and the Iraqi Shiites.\u201d The sheik said he was going to Iran in three weeks, and he asked, \u201cIs there some message you want me to deliver to the Iranians?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a moment, Lasher recalls saying, \u201cI told him to tell the Iranians that our symbol is the American eagle. In its talon are either arrows or the olive branch. The choice is theirs. \u2018Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.\u2019 He responded, \u2018Yes! Yes! This is what I have been preaching all my life. I will tell them this.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, after Iraq, after he came home, after the polarization and anger in America seemed to billow out of control, he would often remember that night in Baghdad, the competing forces.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have far more that brings us together than separates us,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes that\u2019s hard to remember. He wants to be hopeful. He\u2019s a big fan of Catherine Bowen\u2019s\u00a0Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention<\/a><\/em>. George Washington\u2019s \u201cFarewell Address<\/a>\u201d is his favorite speech.<\/p>\n

But those stories, those pieces of the sacred American past, feel far away. People no longer listen to each other, he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve tuned each other out.\u201d It\u2019s like everyone is shouting into a Tower of Babel, unaware of who they\u2019re shouting at, or what they\u2019re angry about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of that, I fault the media for,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re not being honest about the people they report on.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Rory Fleming, 23, is majoring in history at Yale University. He said college and Covid have pushed him politically to the right. (Christopher Capozziello for\u00a0The Free Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

Rory Fleming, a 23-year-old senior at Yale, agreed that no one really knows who they\u2019re screaming at.<\/p>\n

\u201cEver since 2016, it\u2019s been like whiplash,\u201d he told me.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2016, he was in high school, and he knew a lot of kids from Guatemala and Venezuela and Paraguay, and he understood why they felt targeted. He found Trump noxious.<\/p>\n

But then he got to Yale, which \u201chas been the opposite experience,\u201d Fleming said. \u201cIt\u2019s pushed me to the right.\u201d<\/p>\n

The big thing was Covid, the lockdowns, how the university went all in with masking and shutting down campus life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Fleming, just like Shelle Lichti, everything came into focus in the summer of 2020. That was when the upside-downness revealed itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI really felt that for the first time in July 2020, when my friend and I took this 45-day, cross-country road trip,\u201d he said. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNew York was shut down, and I remember getting to North Dakota, where there were \u2018no mask\u2019 signs everywhere.<\/strong> They were reacting against what they felt was authoritarianism, and they weren\u2019t wrong. There\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0something about the Democratic reaction that was authoritarian.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Rory Fleming thinks the United States needs to be strong, and he respected that Trump \u201ccarried a big stick.\u201d (Christopher Capozziello for\u00a0The Free Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

Post-whiplash, it was hard to know where he belonged.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fleming believes the government should be spearheading the \u201cgreen revolution\u201d\u2014starting with renewable projects in places like West Virginia\u2014and he is pro-choice, and pro-civil liberties, and he thinks the United States needs to be strong. \u201cThat was something I did respect about Trump\u2019s presidency,\u201d Fleming said. \u201cHe carried a big stick. We shouldn\u2019t have Houthi rebels with drones firing missiles in the Red Sea. Terrorists should fear the United States, and I don\u2019t think they are right now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He recalled his semester abroad, in Dublin, and being at a pub with friends, all foreigners, and someone making fun of the United States. \u201cI remember saying, \u2018You don\u2019t know how lucky you are that it\u2019s us, and not China or Russia running the world,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No one argued with that.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s confusing, Fleming said, is that so many Americans don\u2019t get this.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lichti agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolitics is so confusing right now,\u201d she said. \u201cThe people that stay in their camps, that pretend or don\u2019t know it\u2019s not confusing\u2014they\u2019re the ones who are\u00a0really\u00a0confused. For me, saying you\u2019re confused is being honest.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Peter Savodnik is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Read his last article, \u201cI Was Wrong About John Fetterman<\/a>,\u201d and \u200b\u200bfollow him on X (formerly Twitter)\u00a0@petersavodnik<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 01\/10\/2024 – 17:40<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/politics-so-confusing-right-now-dems-reps-have-switched-sides-now-half-voters-identify<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Politics Is So Confusing Right Now” – Dems & Reps Have Switched Sides & Now Half Of Voters Identify ‘Independent’ Authored by Peter Savodnik via…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1449980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1449980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1449980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1449980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1449980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}