The Road from Left to Right

by Anne Mason

Photo by Jared S. on Unsplash

An old friend of mine and I recently reconnected. She expressed fascination and curiosity about my shift in politics, my support for President Trump and more. Like many Trump supporters these days, I used to be a Democrat. I told her I’d try to put some of my thoughts and experiences down on paper to shed some light on my shift from Left to Right.

I grew up in Democratic campaign headquarters in the Chicago area. My father ran campaigns for local politicians in the area, as well as regional campaigns for national Democratic candidates. Our family photo albums show my dad with Teddy Kennedy, Birch Bayh and other politicians on the campaign trail. My dad was a fierce and loyal supporter of the party and particularly the Kennedy family whom he felt embodied the ideals of the party with Arthurian nobility.

I grew up without question that the Democrats were the good guys, and that the Republicans were bad. I also grew up in a Democratic county RFK called the most corrupt county in the US, and my father worked in East Chicago, IN, which ran on nepotism, political favors and corruption. To this day, whenever I read about the latest indictments in the news, I see names of my father’s associates and family friends. It was and apparently still is the culture there. It is how things work.

I grew up with the implicit understanding that the ends justified the means. That every politician had to get their hands dirty to stay in power. And that staying in power was critical to making sure the good guys won.

I voted Democrat in every election for every office all my life. The only debate I’d have with friends or family was over which Democrat to choose––until I got involved in the California state legislative process a few years ago to campaign against a series of medical mandates, as well as to protect educational choice.

I first got very actively involved in the fight against California’s bill SB277, which removed religious and personal belief exemptions from any vaccine in 2015. I won’t get into the details of vaccination here, as it’s too large a topic to cover, but you can get a sense of my perspective from articles I’ve written on the subject: Measles Scare Tactics Hurt Us All and Inside the Mind of the Vaccine Hesitant, as well as A Voice for Choice podcast series I participated in.

The experience opened my eyes, as did subsequent Spring Legislative sessions. The Democrat legislators paid lip service to their constituents, then voted against their concerns as if they didn’t exist. This was the case from the local level all the way up to the state, and crony nepotism loyalty was the unwritten code. When it looked like Dem sponsored bills would die in committee, they would postpone the votes, reshuffle the committees to their favor, then reconvene and pass it through.

The more we looked into it, the more we discovered the industry sponsorship behind the legislation––in our state as well as across the US. While most of us know both parties are sponsored by corporate interests, the most powerful industry by far––the Pharmaceutical Industry––sponsors the Dems. One of the ways Big Pharma increases revenue and profits is through state medical mandates, and the Democrat’s platform of Big Government and the Greater Good is the mechanism by which this is achieved.

Big Pharma writes the legislation and finds the state congresspeople to put their names on it. In turn, they fund their re-election campaigns. This has been happening rapidly all over the country. If you want to blow your mind, go to the National Vaccine Information Center advocacy page and scroll down to the “Action Needed Now” section and select “Expired” view on the right. It will display a staggeringly long list of bills Pharma has managed to pass through over the last several years in many states, as well as the bills they’ve got in now. Coupled with the release from liability for vaccine injury or death Pharma managed to push through in 1986, it’s a golden goose that keeps laying eggs.

My experience in California with Republican/Conservative legislators and elected officials was the exact opposite of my experience with the Dems. And pretty much all the activists I worked with reported the same. The Republicans engaged in actual discourse and reasonable debate, asking logical questions and listening to the concerns of their constituents. They called out the lack of justification for the various mandates and legislation in committee and floor hearings and they cited actual facts and numbers to back up their arguments. This was in stark contrast to the Dems who would play purely to emotion by holding press conferences with 7 year old cancer patients, bring in polio survivors in wheelchairs to testify before the committees, and present “epidemic modeling projections” to scare folks into believing a measles pandemic––the likes of which we’ve never seen––would suddenly hit if they didn’t pass this bill NOW! (Remind anyone of good old Professor Ferguson’s wildly inaccurate COVID-19 modeling predictions which has been used as justification for all the lockdowns and economic ruin throughout the developed world?)

I have always worked in business in the private sector, and I had always been a fiscal conservative. But like many of my generation, I thought the more meaningful social issues important to me were best represented by the Dems. I was wrong. When I took a closer look and examined what each party stood for, I realized that I was far more aligned with the Republicans. To me, self reliance, self responsibility and sovereignty of the individual are the cornerstones of a functioning and sustainable person, family, society.

The righteous sanctimony of the Left had actually begun to wear on me in 2008. Even though it would be years before I left the Left, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and the rest of MSNBC––at the time my standard go-to for news––started sounding more and more over the top in their sermonizing, virtue signaling, identity politics and celebration of victim culture.

I left the Democratic party before 2016, but it was the 2016 election and all that it revealed about the Left that sent me all the way over to the Right. I’ve liked Donald Trump since I saw him on the Ali G show before America really knew Sacha Baron Cohen’s shtick––when I was living in London in the 90s. Trump saw through it quickly and cut the interview short.


Trump had been publicly critical of the vaccine program for years before entering the race. For anyone who doesn’t know this yet, the vaccine schedule exploded since vaccine manufacturers were released from liability in 1986, and the CDC schedule now recommends 72 doses of vaccines by the time a child is 18 years old.

Auto immune disorders, cancer and autism rates have coincidentally exploded along the same timeline. Despite the relentless propaganda to depict vaccine critics as nutjobs, it doesn’t take a genius to wonder whether there is a connection. Trump has posed such questions, and when Jake Tapper asked about it in the Republican primary debates, Trump confirmed that he had concerns about the schedule and whether it’s connected to the autism epidemic.

His stance on trade, the economy, Common Core, educational choice, the Paris Accord, immigration and more all seemed to make sense to me. Having lived in hyper-regulated Marin County, California for years, I had grown weary of the priority of ENVIRONMENT over business (and I write that as someone who gardens biodynamically and has always been very conscious about living in harmony with the environment as much as reasonably possible.) I find the whole immigration controversy contrived. We’re a country. We have borders. Like any other country’s borders, they need to be crossed legally.

The media and the Left’s demonization of Trump leading up to the election spun way out of control, and in the process, identity politics and victim culture took over the extreme Left like some kind of syndrome. The intolerance of the supposedly tolerant group of Liberal friends I had was off the charts. I’ve lost long time friends and been on the receiving end of a lot of hate and shaming attempts simply because I supported Trump.

Trump Derangement Syndrome appears to be a real thing. The media has done a remarkable job at convincing many folks that Trump is the Devil incarnate, and it’s astounding to me. The guy is a former Democrat from New York who has managed a number of successful businesses over the course of his life in a few different industries. The notion that he was suddenly going to turn into Hitler at 70 years old is absurd. And the last 3 1/2 years of his presidency are proof of that, if anyone needs it. Yet the derangement is still in full swing, and remarkably to me, the media and those left on the Left are blaming the COVID lockdown economic ruin, the BLM riots and every bad thing that ever happens on the guy.

Following the 2016 election, I got more involved in Conservative groups and the Republican party on a local level. I campaigned for Travis Allen, a former Republican CA Assemblyman turned gubernatorial candidate running against Gavin Newsom. (He was also a former Democrat.) Through that, I met more and more lifelong Conservatives in California––some of the most politically literate, sensible and kind people I’ve ever known, and more and more younger Conservatives who had recently left the Left.

There is a growing movement in the SF Bay Area of folks my age and younger from companies like Google and other Silicon Valley companies who have rejected the extreme policies of the Left––along with the rapidly increasing tech company and platform censorship of Conservative figures and ideas––and until the COVID lockdown world, had been formally organizing and meeting up. The WalkAway movement, founded by gay New Yorker and former liberal Brandon Straka, was growing rapidly before the COVID lockdowns/BLM riots and has now grown exponentially since the business districts in the Democrat run cities/states have been transformed into ghost towns––many businesses already closed permanently, some continuing to be fined or their utilities shut off for non compliance with the shut down orders, and residents being criminalized for not adhering to the mask mandates.

Because of my involvement fighting against medical mandates in California, it became clear to me that the Globalist/Democrat agenda would attempt to use medical fascism on a broader and broader scale to achieve its goals––across the US and beyond. I didn’t anticipate the rapid ease with which they could implement it––as illustrated by the gobsmacking compliance with the egregious COVID lockdowns and mandates in the Democrat strongholds, but we had still been making preparations to move our family out of California before COVID.

The new Stasi citizenry brigade.

We are now terribly grateful to have moved to a particularly Republican stronghold of a Republican state. USA flags wave proudly at almost every house. Veterans like my husband are appreciated and honored with reserved parking spaces and military discounts everywhere we go. Kindness, respect, regard, tolerance, inclusivity and generosity are what we have found in our new community. There is a common sense I find here that is largely missing in the SF Bay Area, and it is the same common sense I found in the minority Conservatives I’d meet back there.

I believe one of the most insidious threats to freedom is political correctness. When folks are afraid to say the wrong thing, they become increasingly afraid to call out absurdity and nonsense––and illogical policies, regulations, and intrusive violations on our basic freedoms can be ushered in and transform our world irreparably. I see this happening on a grand scale in places like the SF Bay Area. And since he entered the race before becoming president, I’ve regarded President Trump’s very politically incorrect manner of speaking and tweeting the necessary antidote.

The folks in my new community are not afraid to speak their truth for fear of being politically incorrect. That doesn’t result in racist, sexist, homophobic epithets, contrary to what the social justice brigade preaches. It results in people calling a spade a spade, speaking up for what they feel to be right, applying their common sense to what they will and won’t accept––and above all, judging a person by their character, and not the color of their skin or the way they look.

That’s probably why Conservatives/Republicans voted for and will vote again for Donald Trump, even though many didn’t and still don’t like his style, his manner, his trappings. In this day and age, I find folks who vote Republican much more accepting of folks’ differences and appearances. I find the Republicans able to get past the superficial aspects and hone in on the core of a person in assessing their character, while the Democrats seem unable to see anything BUT race, gender, sexual orientation and the trappings––or lack thereof––of material wealth.

Which of those groups would you rather spend your time with?

4 thoughts on “The Road from Left to Right

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  1. not exactly sure why the aim if this piece seems to be explaining why you “switched” sides and furthering the narrative that sides actually exist. both sides are illusions of one hierarchical power over structure called colonial government… when I hear people who support medical freedom supporting Trump I think “wow the wires have gotten crossed for sure.” would like to discuss as written word is tough to birth a real heartcentered interaction.

    1. Thanks for reading and commenting, Kelli.

      Well, I believe we’re living in the Maya, the illusion. And sure, what you’re speaking to is another level of the illusion. But sometimes you gotta pick a side. That is, if you want to exert influence on more immediate, material things like legislation. I had actually gone from registered Dem to registered as an Independent to registered as a Libertarian. Until I was asked to consider taking on a role in a partisan (GOP) organization I was already working with which required that I be registered Republican for at least a year. I realized at that point that I was not committing fully, because, sure, any semi conscious person sees the game, sees that both sides are bought, sees that we live in an inverted totalitarianism under the pretense of democracy. But one can see outside the illusion and still try to work effectively within it. One can see the big picture and still act within the little picture. When it comes to medical freedom and specifically vaccines, there’s no question who to vote for. While we live in an incredibly medicalized society and culture, and while most folks––Right or Left––are bought into it pretty completely, the strategy of “Greater Good” and medical mandates aligns with the Dem platform. And in my years of state legislative experience, the Republicans would vote against mandates, while the Dems are so bought and paid for by Pharma that it’s a foregone conclusion they will push medical fascism to the end. It’s also not hard to see the divide now between Red and Blue states in terms of mask and vaccine mandates in the time of Covid.

      As for your comment about my support of Trump, that’s not as related to my point above. As I said in the article, I’ve always liked Trump. Long before I switched political affiliations. I like Trump because he’s smart, he’s a critical thinker, he is an unconventional thinker, and he’s so politically incorrect. I believe that what Trump has done for humanity is more on a consciousness level even more than material, political. Trump taught people how to escape the prison of political correctness, how to speak, act and behave against code. That’s far bigger than you might think. I believe he’s been instrumental in raising our consciousness. I actually consider Trump to be the Shepherd of the Mayan Prophecies.

      No, I don’t believe my wires are crossed. But you may not be able to follow them:)

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