What Radicalized You?

If we're born into a way of belief, can we ever sort our way through and eventually out? Or are we stuck for life?

I have a few early memories: falling on a grate in the shag carpet in the upstairs hallway, being chased by a neighbor in a Halloween costume, sitting atop my father’s shoulders in a crowd of shouting people, eye level to placards and signs with bloodied babies on them.

I was a born Republican, raised to the rhythms of the January March for Life, the sneering sarcasm of Russ Limbaugh and a never ending chorus of white cassette tapes crying the End Times. We were red, white, and blue, standing in the frigid temperatures watching reenactments of Washington crossing the Delaware near where my mother was born, near where I was born too. We knew the story of the American Revolution and lived in the lands of our country’s birth, her independence, her flag, her bell, her hall where the Declaration was signed. Other kids have The Alamo, Freedom’s Trail, or nothing at all, I was raised in the republic. There was nothing more central to our identity than God, homeschooling, and republicanism.

I was a born radical.

I’m not sure my father thought through the implications of not giving us social security numbers, and I hated him for it all through my teens, when my friends were getting jobs, driver’s licenses, and preparing for college.

I was ineligible to vote until I procured a SSN, at age 21, and then the world became real and accessible, my oyster. I could drive a car with a license and insurance, I could get a job, I could go to college, I could live on my own. I could also vote, but I didn’t. I was too busy slurping the salty mantle released from its prison shell.

When, finally, it occurred to me that I could vote and should, it was 2008, I was a month away from turning 28. I drove in a car with four others from my church to press the lever or fill in the blank or color a circle, or however it was one was supposed to vote—I didn’t know. The car was—except me—vocally unanimous: we were Christians, Barak Obama was evil, a snake, a Muslim, a baby killer, our vote would be for McCain.

I don’t know what happened, though, when I moved behind that plastic shield, when it was only myself, a black marker, and a sheet of cardstock.

My vote. My vote.

I voted for Obama.

I believed myself, the evidence I had not seen of Obama being a snake, the freedom of religion in America to worship whoever you wanted, the facts that under democratic administrations fewer abortions occur, more children are fed, that if there were higher taxes as a result, it was only because there were more federal programs helping more people to get the food and shelter they needed. I believed myself and the message of HOPE that felt real to me, far more real than the angry, ranting, arrogance of the “Moral Majority.”

I held my breath on the way home, a short drive, terrified the whole time that someone would verify, ask us all if we followed through. No one did. Why would they? We had agreed. Unanimously. Without question, without doubt, without objection. We were Christians. There was only one choice.

We forgot, though, didn’t we? The power of the individual, the point of the revolution, the ingrained belief and universal permission to be radical, to dissent, to do it differently. We forgot that no matter which way the tide turns, however much they lie to us, gaslight us, telling us the other side is a snake, evil, when it is just you and the black marker, you can be whoever you want to be.

To The Monsters, We’re the Monsters, a quote from Station Eleven, collaged by me =)

I see it happening before my eyes once again. The marriage of Christianity with Republicanism, the belief that only the GOP holds the keys to morality in the United States, complicated ideals being distilled to talking points and gotcha moments, and to vote or act against the Right is wrong, to choose siding with the devil, the demonic, in liege with evil. These are the words coming out of Christian influencers and podcasters and the mouths of pastors. They are not mincing them.

They want you to be terrified to make a different choice.

But I think there is nothing more powerful in the world than a person who believes what they see and not what they don’t see.

Nothing more beautiful than a person who—despite their upbringing, despite their family of origin, despite the other four people in the car, and even the possibility that maybe they’re getting it wrong—makes the only decision they know they can live with.

Nothing more beautiful than a person who refuses to be gaslit, lied to, ridiculed, or pandered to, but who can stand in the fullness of who they are and what they know to be true and say, “I choose different.”

Your vote is your vote and I won’t ridicule you for it.

The day after 2024’s presidential election, when I was shell-shocked and sad, a friend came over and told me she’d voted for Trump. I didn’t even feel surprised. I just listened to her reasons why, asked her how she was feeling about it the day before as she walked into the booth and how she felt about it now. I asked if she would have done differently, and she asked me the same. I will never, ever, ever try to make someone believe that simply because I have voted this way, they must also.

But I will say, “You are the only one in charge of you.” Not your church. Not your pastor. Not your group of friends. Not your parents. Not your spouse. Not the Christian lady influencer. Not the Christian bro podcaster. Not your readers if you’re a writer. Not your coworkers. Not your kids. Not your neighbors.

Not even the you you were last year or ten years ago or even the you you were born to be.

And that’s true freedom.

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