Politics these days have become so divided and divisive that it’s become the norm to view the other side of the aisle as “the enemy”. People are being told to “pick a side” and that there’s no room for middle ground. We here at Phetasy believe that there are a lot more people in the middle than politicians and the media would have us believe.
We’re collecting stories from the ever growing number of people who are finding themselves Politically Homeless and posting them here on Substack. If you have moved from conservative to liberal, or liberal to conservative, if you feel you’ve stayed in the same place and your party has swerved drastically away from you, if you had a moment that awakened you to the insanity and hypocrisy on both sides, if you keep your mouth shut anytime a political topic comes up because you’re afraid your opinion will cause you to lose friends or your job, you’re not as alone as you might think.
Our goal is to shine a light on people’s earnest, individual experiences and show them they’re not alone.
Some letters have been edited for clarity and brevity. If you’re politically homeless and would like to share your story, please email us at iampoliticallyhomeless@gmail.com. All submissions will remain anonymous.
Letter 85:
March 6th, 2024
Well, you said a few a days ago you still want to hear from us, so here goes! I am currently a suburban woman in Metro NYC, and I will likely begrudgingly vote for Trump.
I originally registered to vote in 1999 as a Republican because I’d just taken US politics, and from what we learned in class (although it stopped before 1994) I agreed with the classic definition of Republicans. I didn’t follow politics at all, and my dad was a Republican so I figured sure why not (my mom was an green card holder who always maintained her Irish citizenship so she could never vote).
I went to college that fall, and didn’t pay much attention until the Bush v Gore election the next year (which I did not vote in - I would’ve voted Gore, but I was in college in MA and I was a NY State resident). After I graduated and moved to MA full-time I registered as a Democrat for the 2004 election to make sure that would never be repeated.
I’ve only ever voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. I was excited to vote for both Obama and Hillary Clinton. I was quite sad the day after the 2016 election. I don’t think I ever even voted for any Republican candidates until 2020 when I voted for the NY State GOP candidates out of anger over the lockdowns.
I did vote for Biden in 2020, but if a non Trump GOP candidate had been the Republican nominee I may have voted for him or her. Hard to tell without knowing who it would’ve been.
I switched my party registration to Republican in Sept/Oct 2021 when I realized I could never vote for Kathy Hochul, the toddler masker; I’d kept my registration Democrat until then so I could vote against Cuomo twice, but then he resigned in Aug 2021.
I never thought Biden would be this incompetent. I thought he’d surround himself with enough of the old Obama administration that it would be fine, but I have no idea who’s currently running the show. It’s not the president himself. So many of the administration’s policies have been absolute disasters, to how they leaned even harder into the lockdowns, the vaccine mandates, the crisis at the border which is now having a real impact in my home community of Rockland County and NYC where I work.
Just looking at what happened at Laken Riley last week - I’m a very serious runner (I’m running the NYC Half in a little over a week!) and I deserve to be able to run in my community without being afraid. According to the AP, women should just be afraid to run alone and that’s just unacceptable. It’s paternalistic and cowardly to say that’s the reason she died, not because the murderer never should’ve been here in the first place. The Rockland County hotel that the local officials prevented the NYC migrants from moving to? That’s like 2 miles from me, and across the street from my running trail. No, I don’t want unvetted strange men with no jobs wandering around my trail.
Speaking of bring a serious runner, by definition that means I’m a *female* athlete. In 2017, I was 4 minutes and change from qualifying to the Boston Marathon in my age / gender category. The men’s qualifying time was 3:10:00. And this administration is pretending there’s no athletic differences between men and women? That’s a hard no from me. Do you know how hard I tried to try to shave off that last 5 mins? So hard I got injured about 3 days before the race I was planning on BQing. I averaged 40 miles a week for the 4 months prior to that. Yet a trans women who just decides to identify as female can waltz in and use the women’s qualifying time? The trans woman’s life might be harder than mine, but that’s not what the point of fair competition in sports is about. Sports doesn’t care about your feelings - pretty famously I might add.
I thought I’d keep my Republican registration into 2024 to be able to vote for DeSantis in the primaries, but unfortunately he dropped out. I feel like we’re back facing what South Park accurately described as “a Douche and a Turd Sandwich” back in 2004. My complaints of Trump now aren’t that much different than they were in 2016. He’s intellectually incurious, too obsessed with his own popularity to the expense of anything else, too old, and to his supporters he can do no wrong - it’s cult-like. However, after living under 4 years of his presidency I don’t think democracy is under threat, nor do I think my life got worse in those 4 years (up until March 15, 2020, but being that the Democrats fell in love with the lockdowns they would’ve done the same thing).
It’s beyond parody that the same people who think “Trump is a threat to Democracy” are the same ones that instituted and cheerlead some of the most egregious First Amendment violations in the last few years. The policies of the Biden White House led to me personally having true information deleted from Twitter because it went against their COVID narratives. I know you’re familiar with the Supreme Court case covering this.
I’m also very pro choice, but that alone isn’t the basis of my vote. Personally I don’t think there should be any guardrails against abortion as I trust women to do what’s right for themselves and their families. But one of the things I’ve learned from my anti-lockdown friends is that opinion is not widely held - it’s widely reviled. Sometimes you have to compromise, as much as you don’t like to. I think the Democrats made a mistake in pushing from “Safe, Legal and Rare” to “Shout Your Abortion” because we’re seeing one extreme in some states (40 weeks) and another in some other states (6 weeks or less). Neither party can step in and do the right thing - to compromise - even though that’s what the majority of the country wants.
Speaking of my views on abortion, for the record I’ve NEVER been cancelled, blocked, shunned or de friended for it by my conservative friends, but I cannot say the same thing for my Democratic friends with what I’ve expressed to be my opinions on lockdowns, vaccine mandates, trans women in sports, censorship and if any of them find out I’ll vote for Trump that certainly too.
I hope this isn’t too much, and my anger at the Democrats is greater because I feel betrayed by them. I didn’t leave the left, the left left me. The hypocrisy is also just STAGGERING. Leaving alone the COVID hypocrisy, for a party that pushes back against the narrative that married parents who graduate are in the best position to raise their children with the importance on the nuclear family and buying a home, almost to a PERSON every one I know from college has made sure that this would be the case in their personal lives. The only small exceptions I know are a girl friend who isn’t legally married but has been with her partner for 10 years and are raising their children together (so for all intents and purposes common law married), and another who didn’t find a boyfriend/ husband in time so she got sperm donor and is raising the child with the assistance of her loving and very involved nearby family. They love their kids, they work very hard to provide for them, send them to good schools, teach them manners and how to behave, believe in the power of education and post very adorable photos of the family online. Family values are not something to be sneered at, especially when quite obviously so many Democrats practice that in their own lives.
Sincerely,
Politically Homeless
I Didn’t Leave the Left, the Left Left Me - Politically Homeless