I honestly did not believe it to be possible, after years of disappointment, frustration, and diminishing esteem for the country, to actually be able to consider the possibility of hope and pride for the future of the United States. I think I owe gratitude to Donald Trump for this, though I don’t think he would be pleased.

I used to have an overwhelmingly positive view of the country. The sources to which I was exposed in my childhood were only too eager to teach a romanticized view of the country. Outside of any recent politicians who were not registered Republicans, speaking ill of any of the leaders of the country, especially the founders, was unacceptable. Past despicable actions of the country were sanitized to obscure wrongdoing, often shifting blame to the victims. Because of this dogmatic view of the history of the United States, my deconstruction of this view caused much pain and anger in me. In waking to the criminal behavior endemic in the country, I began to lose hope or pride in its existence. Cynicism and nihilism grew in me as I saw wrongdoing after wrongdoing presented plainly by less-biased history books, documentaries, and historians.

There are moments in history where I can recall stumbling from the path presented to me by my Republican heritage. I believed that my views were based on justice, fairness, and love, but those who claimed to represent me and espouse those views kept doing things that seemed hateful, cruel, and criminal — and worse, they kept getting away with it. Meanwhile, the people who opposed my views kept talking about love, were behaving with more empathy, and kept holding each other accountable to a high standard. With each successive exposure to these contrary views, I felt increasingly fraudulent when I claimed the moral superiority of my views.

President Bush was the first President for whom I could vote, and I earnestly did twice, believing he was being honest when he said a long-term occupation was noble and necessary to prevent terrorist activities from ever happening again on U.S. soil. I didn’t believe the accusations of torture of Iraqi detainees because President Bush said both that no such torture was happening and that it could never be categorized as torture because the U.S. doesn’t torture people. I thought the installing of the TSA in airports was an acceptable discomfort because it kept us safe, even if I couldn’t exactly pinpoint how. When the Occupy Wall Street movement occurred, I sided with the billionaires, because I believed that Republicans were just and fair and would obviously tax oligarchs the proper amount they owed. When the DMCA was signed into law, I sided with the companies because I believed they were only seeking fair compensation for the artists and would never exploit the law to harm their customers.

Each time I defended these events I felt a little dirty, a little ashamed to hear myself speak. Why did saying something right and good make me feel so weird and bad?

President Obama’s election was so different from President Bush’s. People were happy, but not happy like I’d seen when Bush got two terms. There wasn’t the same level of vindictiveness or a lusting for vengeance that I felt when Bush was put into office. People seemed to just be glad and hopeful that things could get better for them — not through long-term mazes of events that could one day conclude in making their life better like the trickle-down economics policies of the Republican platform, but through laws and actions that would directly affect their daily lives. What people were asking of President Obama wasn’t to punish people for living differently than themselves but just for same level of rights others already enjoyed. The things voters asked of President Obama were things that directly matched what I saw as good and just, but I found myself having to be opposed to them because he was a Democrat and I as a Republican was duty-bound to oppose him.

For eight years I had to ignore the cognitive dissonance, holding fast to President Obama’s bad decisions and purposefully ignoring his most fondly-regarded choices. I saw the birther claims Trump made as credible and worried that President Obama was perhaps a secret Muslim, trying to overthrow the government and Christianity. I believed his Affordable Care Act was going to be a tragedy because private healthcare was obviously always a superior choice; Republicans told me so. Throughout all this I had to restrict all the thoughts of how empathy, love, caring for others, thinking of the poor first, contributing what you have to help others in need, sharing and pooling resources freely — ideals that the Democrats kept talking about and the Republicans kept vilifying — were precisely the sorts of ideals recorded in the Bible being attributed to Jesus, the deity of Christianity, the belief system the Republicans claimed as their own.

Trump changed everything for me. He was already awful before he was elected, but his time as President was filled with many more egregious flaws that threatened the stability of the country and the safety of its citizens: bungling the management of the Black Lives Matter protests, fomenting panic in the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, encouraging injustice and dismantling of hard-fought rights through his choices for Supreme Court judges, embarrassing the country in front of its allies as well as its adversaries, and eventually attempting a coup to overthrow the U.S. government to put himself in place as permanent dictator. Each one of these should have lost him all favor among his constituents, those who cried out for truth and justice and morality, but instead his supporters rallied around him more. The flag, already tarnished through my years of learning of the country’s history, now became stained by the bigoted and racist Republicans who seemed to be growing in number, reputation, and strength.

I began to feel deep shame in being an American. I could only see the terror the country caused, both to those outside its borders and to those born and living within. The level of inhumanity Trump’s cabinet and his supporters across state governments was reaching levels I thought impossible from a good and decent country, which led me to conclude that the United States was neither good nor decent. The flag became a symbol of hatred, racism, and bigotry, and those who chose to bear its image gave me unease because I saw it as a tacit approval of the worst behaviors of the President. I fantasized about fleeing the country and then grew despondent when I worried that nobody would want to accept me, stained as I was by my U.S. citizenship. How could any other country know if I could be trusted when I wasn’t certain how much I could trust my own neighbors?

As much as I appreciated the surprising number of progressive actions President Biden took during his time in office, I had serious doubts that he was going to be re-elected. I grew even more despondent after watching the disastrous debate where his cognitive decline became extremely apparent. A numbness had creeped into my mind, a coping tool to prevent me from falling into a chasm of anxiety. Would the United States be able to survive another Trump term? Would anyone be able to save us from ourselves, and what level of misery would that salvation bring?

But then President Biden chose to not seek re-election.

My fears had been that from all the news media’s normalization of Trump’s terrible behavior, as well as many of my neighbors in Oklahoma brazenly displaying their support of Trump, that there were nearly no decent people left in the United States, and that I was watching the country fall to fascism, Christian nationalism, and deeply back into its history of racism and persecution of minorities; but now I think I’m incredibly incorrect in my assumptions. People seem to be coming alive across the country to do whatever they can to not have Trump return and to prevent regressive policies from encroaching further in our lives, even perhaps pushing back hard against the ones that returned. It’s frustrating that it took us all losing ground in progress across so many areas of our lives to finally wake up and start fighting back again, but I am so happy to see the action to fight back against this tyranny. The outpouring of support to prevent Donald Trump from further damaging this country has stirred national pride in me that has not been there for nearly a decade. I feel hope. I feel there is a chance things might turn out okay.

I’m not fully satisfied with Harris and Walz: they aren’t outspoken about the genocide in Palestine, climate change is largely forgotten in their messaging, and they’re way too happy to talk about the oil, gas, and war machines ruining our future. The difference for me is that I honestly wasn’t sure if there was any chance any of those could even be considered at some point in the future, never mind all the other very important things that Harris and Walz have addressed. Electing these two offers chances for progress that were essentially non-existent before, including the tough issues they’ve been hesitant to discuss during this the election campaign.

Kamala Harris stepped up and made a fool out of Donald Trump in their debate. I think she can get elected. I think she might be able to do even more for the country than what President Biden managed. I think things might turn out better than I expected. I have many hopes and worries about the future, but I know one thing for certain: she has my vote.

Thanks, Donald.