I Was Right, and I Hate What It’s Turned Me Into

I need to say something ugly out loud… I was right about this administration, and I fucking hate that I was right.

I hate that every warning, every fear, every “this is going to get worse” turned out not to be dramatic or alarmist, but dead-on. I hate that the cruelty was the point. I hate that the corruption was obvious. I hate that the division wasn’t some unfortunate side effect of bad leadership, but the entire strategy. I hate most of all that the people who helped usher this shit in still want to act like the rest of us are overreacting.

No. Absolutely not.

This administration is the worst thing I’ve seen politically in my lifetime, not just because of policy, not just because of the endless lies, the shameless incompetence, the chest-thumping ignorance, the casual dehumanization, or the constant effort to drag this country backward under the banner of patriotism and “family values.” It’s the worst because of what it has done to people. It has given the absolute ugliest parts of this country a microphone, a permission slip, and a fan club. It has made cruelty feel normal. It has made stupidity feel righteous. It has made bigotry feel emboldened. It has turned every interaction into a moral sorting exercise where you find yourself wondering whether the person smiling at you through conversation also voted to strip someone else of their rights and then went home feeling great about it.

I am so tired of pretending that this is normal disagreement. I’m tired of pretending this is just politics. I’m tired of pretending that a vote is some abstract little civic preference that exists in a vacuum and says nothing about someone’s values. Bullshit. At a certain point, what you support says exactly who you are. If you looked at the open cruelty, the corruption, the authoritarian posturing, the Christian nationalist fever dream bullshit, the attacks on vulnerable people, the sneering contempt for anyone outside your little approved category of humanity, and you said, “Yes, that’s my guy,” then I learned something about you. Maybe not everything, but enough.

That has changed my life in ways I didn’t expect.

I don’t want to be social anymore. I don’t want to make new friends. I don’t want to go out and perform normalcy with people I don’t trust. I don’t want to sit at a dinner table wondering who in the room quietly voted for this and now wants to talk about weather, vacations, and fucking sourdough starter like we’re all still operating from the same basic moral reality. I don’t want to smile politely at people whose worldview has made this country meaner, dumber, crueler, and more dangerous and then be told I’m the one making things “too political.”

Too political? We are way past that.

What I feel now is bigger than political disagreement. It’s grief. It’s disgust. It’s disillusionment. It’s the bizarre, miserable experience of realizing that some of the people you used to love, laugh with, celebrate with, and trust are perfectly comfortable voting for a movement built on resentment, prejudice, grievance, and the active suffering of other people. Then they want absolution for it. They want to ring your doorbell and say, “Don’t let politics ruin friendships,” as if politics is just a quirky hobby and not the thing determining who gets dignity, who gets safety, who gets healthcare, who gets rights, who gets targeted, and who gets erased.

I’ve lost “friends” over this, and I’m not sorry.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I’m sorry that they turned out to be exactly who they are. I’m sorry I had to find out this way. I’m sorry that people I once cared about turned out to be the kind of people who could look at all of this and still choose it. But I am not sorry for cutting them off. I am not sorry for unfriending people who showed me that their comfort matters more than anyone else’s humanity. I am not sorry for deciding that “keeping the peace” is overrated when the peace being protected belongs exclusively to the people causing the damage.

No, I don’t miss those people!

I miss having a social life. I miss feeling open. I miss going out and being excited to connect with people instead of instinctively bracing for disappointment. I miss not feeling like every friendship has an invisible ideological landmine buried under it. I miss believing that most people were basically decent, even if we disagreed. I miss the version of myself that still had more curiosity than contempt. I miss not being suspicious. I miss not being angry all the time.

I’m having the hardest time admitting that this has changed me, and not in ways I like.

I am meaner in my head than I used to be. I am colder. I am less patient. I am less generous. My empathy has taken a beating. There was a time when bad news would hit me in the chest and I’d feel horror, sadness, concern, compassion. Now I sometimes feel numb. Or detached. Or so emotionally fried that the reaction that comes out is inappropriate, ugly, and almost unrecognizable to me. It’s like my brain got so overloaded with outrage and dread and disbelief that something shorted out. I don’t like admitting that. I don’t like seeing myself become the kind of person who can react to awful things with a shrug, a bitter laugh, or a blank stare because I have nothing left to give. But that’s what this era has done. It has eroded me.

It has made me feel like I’m losing parts of myself I actually valued.

I used to think of myself as somebody with a pretty reliable supply of empathy. Somebody who cared. Somebody who could find nuance, make room for complexity, believe in people’s better instincts. Now I feel like I’m running on fumes and spite. I feel like my emotional range has narrowed into rage, disgust, and exhaustion. Sometimes I don’t even care enough to fight that. Sometimes I’m too tired to be horrified. Too cynical to be shocked. Too disgusted to be compassionate. It’s not who I want to be, but it is who I’ve been becoming in real time while this administration and the people who support it keep grinding away at every last nerve ending.

It’s time for damage control. Not just the damage this administration does externally, but the damage it does internally. The way it colonizes your thoughts. The way it hijacks your nervous system. The way it can make you hate people you used to love and distrust people you haven’t even met yet. The way it can make the whole world feel contaminated by one giant, stupid, malicious political infection. The way it can make you stop wanting community because community no longer feels safe, or honest, or even possible.

I blame the people who voted for it.

I blame the ones who saw the hatred and called it strength. I blame the ones who heard the lies and decided truth was optional. I blame the ones who wrapped themselves in religion while cheering on cruelty and calling it morality. I blame the ones who want to be offended when they’re judged for a vote that helped make all of this possible. If you cast a vote for stupidity, corruption, division, and open contempt for other human beings, then you don’t get to complain that some of us no longer want you in our homes, our circles, or our lives.

You don’t get to help build the fire and then complain that it’s hot in here.

Maybe someday things will settle. Maybe this country will claw its way back toward some version of sanity. Maybe enough people will finally get sick of the grift, the cruelty, the ugliness, the stupidity, and the endless culture-war sludge being pumped into every corner of public life. Maybe there will be room again for friendship that doesn’t require moral compromise. Maybe I’ll feel softer again. Maybe I’ll want to go out more. Maybe I’ll trust people more easily. Maybe I’ll stop feeling like every Republican in my orbit is a walking reminder of how this all happened.

I’m not there right now.

Right now, I’m angry. Right now, I’m disappointed. Right now, I feel alienated from people I used to know and alienated from parts of myself I used to like. Right now, I feel like this administration has poisoned the social atmosphere so thoroughly that even ordinary life feels harder, uglier, and more exhausting than it should. Right now, I don’t have the energy to fake respect for people who voted to make the world worse and then expect me to keep passing the fucking potato salad.

So yes, I was right about this administration. I was right about the damage. I was right about the toxicity. I was right about the ugliness. I was right about the division. I was right about the way it would drag the worst people into the light and make them feel invincible.

I hate that I was right.

Being right hasn’t felt satisfying. It has felt lonely. It has felt corrosive. It has felt like watching a slow-motion collapse while people around me insisted it was fine, or funny, or necessary, or patriotic. It has felt like mourning the country, mourning friendships, and mourning my own capacity to keep caring in the same way I used to.

I don’t know if that’s the part we ever get back.

I know this much… I’m done pretending this didn’t cost me anything. I’m done pretending this is just a disagreement over tax policy or gas prices or whatever bullshit excuse people use to sanitize what they supported. I’m done pretending that losing respect for people who voted for cruelty is somehow a personal failing on my part. And I’m definitely done feeling guilty for cutting loose the people who helped drag us here.

If that makes me divisive, fine.

This administration did not just divide the country. It exposed it. Some of us are still trying to figure out how to live with what we’re experiencing.

Xoxo, AB 💅💄💋