Why I Became A Democrat

This is the Story of my Awakening...

March 25, 2025

In 2016 Donald Trump was elected as the United States President. Sadly at that time I never considered politics important or that I needed to vote because my electoral college always votes Republican in Kansas. I was a registered Republican at the time but never voted in an election. I did not pay much attention to his first term and how his policies impacted the American people. I was more focused on getting married and having kids, but unfortunately his policies would not escape me. 

In 2020 we went through the COVID pandemic. In the beginning I was optimistic of the response and the willingness of the American people to work together, but something happened. I noticed a complete shift from the willingness to participate in battling this foreign virus to complete opposition. Social media turned into a battle ground where hate filled messages were being thrown at the very people trying to save lives. I was living in a dystopian. Every day I came into work to care for the very people that so may said were not actually dying. Being farther from the situation now I realize the American people were under attack with Russian propaganda. Donald Trump was trying to control the narrative. I do not know what he had to gain politically by undermining science and not stopping the spread of an infectious disease through the use of masks, but many of these propagandas are still believed by the American people to this day: that mask do not help prevent the spread of respiratory viruses, that not as many people died as they say, they died of something else other than COVID, and the COVID vaccine was actually going to hurt you. I do believe some of the opposition coming from Republicans may have come from mandates for closing businesses to stop the spread of infection. Was this the right thing for the government to do at the time? I can't say for sure. 

I do know however that I worked in one of the most populated parts of the state at the time of COVID. Where I worked we kept track of how many lives we could not save. Within a fairly short amount of time we had more than 100 deaths. This was only one hospital and one unit, this did not include other units in the hospital or other hospitals in the area. These deaths were from COVID despite propaganda saying they died from something else. Seeing that many people die definitely impacted my mental health, but so did the lies that were being circulated around which caused close family members to spew hatred at me and tell me that what I was experiencing was a lie. It was hard to understand. A political party that so deeply believes they're the party of Jesus yet spew hatred so quickly. In fact, when I confronted these family members about what they said to me recently they completely deny it. What I was seeing was not the same thing that the media was saying or social media. My whole reality collapsed. I realized things were not what they had seemed. I was told that the Catholic Church that I believed in was of God, but was God of evil and vitrial?     

With my world collapsing I seeped into a depression. Earlier on in the pandemic I had experienced a panic attack, so thankfully I was already on anxiety/depression medications. It was so incredibly difficult to see "Godly" people be so hateful and inconsiderate of others. I tried to wrap my head around it. During that time I spent a lot of time in the Bible reading. This was not a common practice for me as a Catholic. Usually I would just show up at Mass and listen to what the sermons were and what the Priest had to say. With the hate filled rhetoric coming from the Catholic Church I did not feel like I could trust attending services there. I started on a journey of rediscovering what my faith was through reading the Bible on my own. God revealed to me that he is LOVE and that he has already delivered us from salvation. The Catholic Church is rooted deeply in shame tactics and works to earn God's love. Now this perspective may be different within the Catholic Church if you were not raised in the Church or also may not have had the parents and upbringing that I had. However, if you do any sort of search online you will see that I am not alone in my experience. 

It took me several months to dig myself out of depression. I worked so hard on trying to understand what was happening to me. I had to go through lots of self-reflection. I hadn't ever heard of the term before, but as I became more aware of what was happening to me, I realized I was going through deconstruction, “a crisis of Christian faith that leads to either a reevaluation of Christianity or sometimes a total abandonment of Christianity.” This deconstruction journey extends beyond my faith but in all parts of my life. I've come to realize that there are many key areas of my life that I have been ill-informed about and told lies (more on that in future posts). I've had some of my close contacts assume I'm no longer a Godly/religious person, but the reality is I'm following God's lead and I believe he's put me right where he needs me, fighting the fascism and evil that has been spreading through the United States. This moment in time that we are living in is monumental. This time is not a time to stay silent. This is my story.

Sources:

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/07/11/when-catholic-guilt-gets-way-catholic-faith 

https://catholicgentleman.com/2014/10/make-work-act-worship/ 

https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/state/kansas/ 

https://www.kdhe.ks.gov/2165/Data 

https://careynieuwhof.com/five-real-reasons-young-people-are-deconstructing-their-faith/#:~:text=Christian%20deconstruction%20is%20the%20process%20by%20which,or%20sometimes%20a%20total%20abandonment%20of%20Christianity.%E2%80%9D