Last night’s debate was a vindication for so many of us who have been shouting from the rooftops that not only is Joe Biden not fit to lead, but the Democrats and the media have been covering it up.
Trump came off as the stronger leader, puncturing the mass delusion perpetuated on the people of America by a biased media and a too-powerful Democratic coalition that has refused to relinquish power.
In May of 2019, I attended a Joe Biden fundraiser. It was obvious he was old, but he was mostly there. By November of 2020, I could see he was sliding into what looked like severe cognitive decline. Every time I’ve seen him on camera since then, it’s only gotten worse.
I barely recognize the person I was back in 2019. I felt as naive as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz before the twister upended my perception of reality. Not only am I a Trump supporter now, which in and of itself is hard to grasp. But I’m also a Swiftie. What happened?
A Dystopian Oz
In March of 2020, my one and only daughter was sent home to live out the last few months of her senior year at college. She would end up having her graduation on my balcony in Burbank. Everything shut down. Half of the restaurants would eventually go out of business.
No parties, funerals, church, movies, or school. The clouds rolled in, and the darkness came. But it would be a darkness that would never end.
After the Summer of protests and riots literally unmasked the lockdowns for what they were—social justice was more important than a global pandemic, said the experts—I followed the yellow brick road into the belly of the beast, where the curtain was pulled back, and reality revealed.
It would be easy to say that “what happened to me” was that I was isolated for too long and gravitated toward the wrong kind of people. That’s probably how my friends and family explain it. Or maybe they think I had some kind of mental breakdown, that the trauma of lockdowns broke my brain.
But that isn’t exactly how it went down. I didn’t become a Trump voter until they raided Mar-a-Lago. I didn’t become a Trump supporter until they indicted and convicted Trump. I still can’t believe they went that far just because they could not offer the American people something better.
I knew by 2020 that the media was selling a version of Trump that did not exist. I had no idea whether that delusion would ever be punctured. Maybe last night’s debate finally did it. The Trump that showed up there was the Trump I knew from the rallies.
Based on what I’d been told, Trump rallies were like Hitler rallies. They were angry. They were racists. They were bigots. They wanted to drag America back to the dark ages. But that wasn’t what I saw. I saw happy people having a good time just because they saw Trump speak.
How can that be, I wondered. They had everything taken from them. They had celebrities and politicians calling them the scum of the earth. They were disinvited from participating in our culture and our democracy. And you’d think that would have made them angry and bitter, yet there they were, dancing. To the Village People?
When I say I felt saved by Trump and MAGA, I can hear the gasps of shock and horror from my friends, but it’s true; at least, that’s how it felt to me four years ago. My daughter had moved out to New York, and two of my best friends had died. A climate of fear gripped the film industry, and suddenly, no one could talk about the truth. The only time I felt normal was watching a MAGA rally.
Even after Biden was in power, Trump still functioned more or less as a second president for the forgotten American, showing up where Biden wouldn’t, offering hope and optimism when Biden couldn’t.
It’s four years later, and not much has changed on my side. Culture is still a hollow-out wasteland; the effects of lockdowns persist in the minds of the young, and the Democrats have no endgame to deal with their “existential threat” other than to throw their enemies in jail. Unity never came. It seems like the Democrats needed us broken and afraid just to stay in power.
“My Name is Taylor, and I was born in 1989!”
When I hear those words by Taylor Swift at the beginning of her Eras tour, I see the faces of her fans - happy tears streaming down their faces as they jump up and down and scream wildly for their favorite pop star.
By the time the Eras tour rolled around, I realized I’d mostly stopped listening to music at all because of the great divide between the Left and the Right. I couldn’t stomach the mandated hatred that has consumed every corner of American culture. Nothing was safe from their constant need to separate themselves from half the country.
But Swift brought music back into my life. I’d almost forgotten how great it is to listen to music while walking or cleaning. She has built a “safe space” that is mostly politics-free, at least in her songwriting, which mostly focuses on universal girl-world problems.
It isn’t that she isn’t left-leaning; of course, she is, but not to an agonizing degree. I think it’s how traditional and wholesome she is that contrasts with the Caligula-like nature of what pop music has become, with every star having to sell overt sexuality. And now we see what has happened to Madonna and Britney Spears, who don’t have much left to sell now that their own sexuality has faded.
Maybe as culture moved so far to the Left, like the Weimar Germany Left, we feel the pendulum swing. What’s popular now is a woman like Taylor Swift, who reminds us of why we love romantic comedies. There’s an innocence there that hits different, as the kids say.
I noticed this dynamic at play with last year's Barbenheimer phenom. The invented mash-up of the two films had something traditional about the male/female binary, maybe something young people were starting to crave. This might explain the “tradwife” craze on TikTok.
And isn’t it funny that Trump, who is traditionally masculine, is at one end of the spectrum culturally, and the ultra-feminine Swift is at the other end, a different kind of gender binary but a binary all the same?
The quest for true love for Taylor Swift is the cornerstone of the Swiftie movement. That’s why when Travis Kelce took to the stage on Night 3 of the Eras tour, all her fans exploded with tears of joy.
Grown women were sobbing over it, and I was sobbing over it. Okay, maybe not sobbing, but certainly tearing up. We all like happy endings, something Hollywood refuses to give us anymore. We all like to see the princess rescued by the handsome prince, something Hollywood now shames us for.
A stadium full of women in love with Taylor Swift falling in love should be a celebration and appreciation of us women. With our big mushy hearts and our capacity for deep love, we are hard-wired to be great mothers.
Swifties are so in love with the Travis/Taylor love story they’re going to football school.
One of Taylor Swift’s best songs, the one that drew me into her music, is the epic breakup song All Too Well. It’s about the loss of innocence by an older man who chewed her up and spit her out, and some of us can relate.
She explains how she released the truncated version and was then pressured by her fans to release the ten-minute version, which is right up there with You Oughta Know by Alanis Morisette, Idiot Wind by Bob Dylan, and Layla by Eric Clapton.
Watching the Right cherry-pick one of the lines from the song when the entire crowd shouts “f*ck the patriarchy” like it was some rallying cry for feminists to hate men was as disappointing to me as what the media does to Trump day in and day out.
They got it wrong. They got Taylor wrong, and they got the Swifties wrong. Her fans shout every line of every song because they know every line of every song. They shout the loudest to the song All Too Well but not the patriarchy line; although that’s a fun one, it’s the infamous bridge.
The entire lyric is as follows, “He was tossing me the car keys — f*ck the patriarchy keychain lying on the ground.” She’s exposing a man who identifies as a male feminist for the virtue-signaling hypocrite he was.
It’s probably easier to “sour grapes” the Swiftie fandom, but do you really want to fight a culture war with a force of nature who boosted ratings at the Super Bowl to 150 million and is filling up stadiums all over the world?
Swift endorsed Biden in 2020, and perhaps she will do so again this year. So far, though, she is urging her followers to vote for the person who best represents them, which is the very definition of this country’s founding principles.
The Democrats try every day to drive a wedge between the Swiftie fandom and Trump. They want nothing more than to ensure every young girl growing up in America knows just one thing about the GOP: that they were mean to Taylor Swift.
Even Liz Cheney got in on it.
But I wouldn’t be so quick to cede that ground, not just for political reasons but because her music and concerts should be for everybody, no matter their beliefs. I think she knows that, which is why she doesn’t preach at the mic like Lady Gaga, Pink, or Green Day, and bless her for that.
And Liz Cheney can STFU.
Far Away, Yet So Close
I spent last weekend moving between Swift’s fandom and Trump’s ongoing presidential campaign, and I saw more similarities than differences. These are two people who have the magical ability to build movements.
Both have fans who shout out their shared lyrics or, in Trump’s case, “Build the Wall,” “USA,” and “We love you.” A personal interaction can be life-changing for their fans or supporters.
Trump’s visit to Philly included a video of a kid in a Trump wig and suit meeting the man himself. Trump, who is not the monster most people believe him to be, signed a $20 bill for the kid and wished him well. Tears streamed down the kid’s face as he met his idol.
There was no way that video would make the rounds on the Left because none of the stories that humanize Trump ever do.
But the people are passing it along like a well-kept secret. This has become their most powerful weapon — they know the real Trump, and no matter how much the mainstream press and the Democrats lie about him, they lose their credibility as more people uncover the truth.
The same goes for Taylor Swift. If I had never seen her concert for myself, I would never have known how welcoming she is. Sure, I get annoyed that little girls are sucked into the world of Pride because of the transgender contagion, but Swift keeps that mostly to a minimum.
Every night of the Eras Tour, Swift skips down the stage and hands one lucky fan her hat, which is signed. There’s not a dry eye in the house. No matter how many times you watch her do almost exactly the same thing, it’s always moving.
We need more rallies and concerts in our lives, not less. Let’s remember what it feels like to share the same space with other people to counter the enduring effects of lockdowns. And shame on those who believe culture belongs only to them. They are what is destroying this country.
The Way Out
Travis Kelce has also been under constant surveillance, and social media users have noticed that he liked an Instagram post with Sage Steele and Trump. That must mean he’s a Trump supporter, the Reddit users seethed. Of course, he’s a racist, and so is she. And on and on it went. But credit to Kelce for being unafraid to support Sage Steele anyway.
He also defended his teammate Harrison Butker after the Left attacked him over his speech at a Catholic university.
We can’t just live on politics and division. We all need culture, even those who pretend they’re fine without it. We need beauty. We need music. We need love. We need love stories. We need to be able to sit under one roof, shout lyrics or jump up and down, and dance to the same song, whether by the Village People or Taylor Swift.
Four years ago I received a package via UPS. I was grateful that it came in an unmarked cardboard box. It was a copy of Trump’s book, Our Journey Together. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d bought it, even the delivery guy. I packed it back up in its box and buried it deep in my closet, wondering what might happen if I was in a car accident and my family had to sift through my things. What would they think?
Four years later, I don’t really care. Living an honest life is far preferable to living a life of fear. But I would be remiss if I didn’t say thank you to all of you MAGA supporters who have welcomed me with open arms. To quote Taylor Swift, “I’ve had the time of my life fighting dragons with you.”
Our country is at a precarious tipping point, mainly due to a once-mighty empire that built a utopia they thought would last. They’re like the Royal Court of King Louis IX or the Romanovs before the revolution - with no ability to see just how much everything changed while they were busy clinging to the past.
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Donald Trump, Taylor Swift and Me