I Could’ve Been MAGA

Growing up in white suburbia, learning fear, and choosing to unlearn it

(To be clear, this indoctrination was not from my family - they probably gave me the tools I needed to not end up MAGA. It was the rest of the world I grew up in.)

I grew up in MAGA country before MAGA had merch. Back when it didn’t need a slogan because it was just the air. White-bread suburbia. Perfect lawns. Flags on porches. And a dead silence around anything that challenged the story. I was surrounded by white people and systematically trained—quietly, casually, relentlessly—to fear everyone else.

No one said the words out loud. That’s how you know it was real. There was a code. You didn’t say, “Black people go there.” You said, “I don’t go to Sesame Place. They bus them in.” Everyone knew exactly who “they” were. If a Black person walked down my street, it wasn’t curiosity—it was panic. Why were they here? They didn’t belong. And if they didn’t belong, the only explanation was crime. That was the logic. That was the lesson.

I was fed statistics like weapons—13% of the population, 37% of the prison system—stripped of history, stripped of context, presented as proof that the fear was justified. I heard a Philadelphia police officer say Black people “live like animals.” No one gasped. No one pushed back. It landed like a weather report. Just information. This was how African Americans were discussed. Every other minority got their own folder of warnings, stereotypes, and horror stories. The message was always the same: us versus them. And “us” was under siege.

I wasn’t raised with guns, but growing up in Pennsylvania I was absolutely gun-adjacent. Friends had rifles. We all had BB guns. Guns were normal. Fear was normal. Being gay was the worst thing you could be called. Worse than stupid. Worse than cruel. And everyone—everyone—was trying to take something from you. Your job. Your neighborhood. Your country. Fear wasn’t an accident. It was the soundtrack.

This is how you make a MAGA voter.

So when people ask how someone raised inside that system ends up on the far left, they act like it’s a mystery. It’s not.

I did the work.

I asked questions. Not the safe ones. Not the whisper-it-in-the-basement questions white people ask each other. I asked the ones you’re not supposed to ask—out loud—to the people who actually live with the consequences. At Sears, I once asked a Black coworker why there needed to be a Black Entertainment Network. “We don’t have a White Entertainment Network.” He laughed in my face. I deserved it. Then he explained, patiently, that almost every channel already was the White Entertainment Network. He pointed out that we even had Country Music Television—white identity with a fiddle—long before Beyoncé ever released Cowboy Carter.

When it came to LGBTQ people, I was clueless and cruel in the way ignorance always is. In college there was a group—I think it was called the Open Door Club—and even though friends supported it, I treated it like something shameful. I casually used the F-slur in a song I wrote. Didn’t blink. Didn’t care. My brother had to sing those words in public. I only felt shame years later. It took my sister telling me the word was offensive for it to even register. I honestly thought it just meant “gay.” And even then, I still believed gay was wrong—religion, culture, and nonstop homophobia drilling it into my head.

Work blew the whole thing apart. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who didn’t look like me, didn’t live like me, and didn’t have the luxury of ignorance. I kept asking stupid questions. Those led to more questions. Then books. Then more books. Then history. Then the unavoidable truth: racism in America isn’t a glitch. It’s the operating system. Designed. Maintained. Enforced around white supremacist ideas.

These weren’t theories anymore. These were my friends. I heard their stories. I saw the damage up close. This isn’t about being “soft.” You don’t radicalize left by being fragile. You radicalize left by seeing the truth and refusing to unsee it. And even then, the programming never fully leaves. That fear still hums in the background. That bias still whispers. Fighting it is labor. Constant labor. Labor MAGA people refuse to do. They call that strength. It’s not. It’s cowardice.

Here’s what really makes people uncomfortable: as a white man, I never had to change. I could have stayed exactly where I was. I could have kept believing Black people were criminals, gay people were sinners, Muslims were evil. And my life would’ve been fine. Better than fine.

I remember thinking Rodney King deserved what happened to him if he broke the law. In my white suburban brain, cops were heroes. You comply, you live. End of story. I didn’t know what police were doing. The Black community knew. I didn’t—because I didn’t have to. Until I chose to learn.

If I hadn’t, I’d be MAGA. Easily. Effortlessly. I’d be saying Renée Good and Alex Pretti “crossed a line.” I’d be saying ICE is just doing its job. If someone gets hurt—or killed—that’s on them. I wouldn’t care about deportations. I wouldn’t care if citizens got swept up. They wouldn’t be coming for me. Minneapolis could burn to the ground tomorrow and my life wouldn’t change one inch. Every immigrant could be deported and in that alternate universe I’d probably think America was finally “fixed.”

Nothing Trump does hurts me as a white, heterosexual, Christian man. Nothing. (Don’t tell them I’m an atheist.)

That’s the point.

In that version of my life, I’d be flying Trump flags and wearing a MAGA hat proudly—because everything I was taught growing up was whispered. Trump didn’t invent the hatred. He just gave it a microphone and told people they were brave for using it.

What still breaks my brain is this: I was raised on Indiana Jones and punk rock. Both were crystal clear about one thing—Nazis are bad. Full stop. And yet here we are, watching January 6 rioters throw Nazi salutes, pardoned by Trump, and suddenly we’re pretending that line was never there.

I was naïve to think my upbringing wasn’t already soaked in Nazi logic. I didn’t even touch the antisemitism that floated around like background noise when I was a kid. Today, people feel safe being Nazis in public. And if you resist them, you’re the problem.

Most people never escape the world I grew up in. They stay in white bubbles. They don’t question. They don’t read. They don’t listen. And they don’t change.

People love to quote Niemöller, but they miss the point. That poem assumes a villain who comes from the outside. MAGA is the villain. MAGA is the “they.” Why would they speak out? They’re building the country they want. You can’t scare them with “you’re next.” They’re not next. Everyone else is.

So you can’t educate them. You can’t shame them. You can’t scare them into empathy. What’s left?

Outnumbering them. And that’s where the dread sets in. Protests feel symbolic. The actions that matter—voting, organizing, relentless pressure—barely happen. There have to be more of us. Right? So how did we end up here? Are we not showing up? Or are there just more of them than we’re willing to admit?

That’s what scares me.

I’m grateful I escaped that alternate universe. Even though it would be easier not to care. Even though I could sit back and let it all collapse without my life changing much at all.

If it comes down to it, I’d rather die protecting the people I love than live comfortably inside a MAGA America.

Take it easy,

James