“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus
This is a story of how I changed. How I could have been part of MAGA, but somehow along the way, I took another route in life.
Before I dig in too far, I don’t want to overplay this or misrepresent. I was NEVER a part of any MAGA movement, or proto-MAGA movement. I was a one-time conservative leaning youth who was lost and yearning for something more. Despite flirting with certain aspects of conservatism’s darker modern turn, I never committed to any movement or ideology as something never seemed right to me in my gut – even if I never understood what it was on the surface.
Very few who know me now would recognize me back then.
I campaigned for George W. Bush. I voted for Dubyah in my first presidential election. I worked a fundraiser for then–Vice President Cheney and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (the more things change, huh…. Yikes). I debated the College Democrats. I wrote letters to the editor for conservative causes. I was a conservative editorialist for the school newspaper.
Am I proud of what I wrote and did? Yes and no.
Yes, because I forged my writing voice in public, learning how to withstand criticism, how to build an argument, how to enter the arena and take a hit without leaving the arena. That part matters. It still serves me.
No, because when I reread old beliefs, or think about what I “stood” for, I sometimes cringe with embarrassment. I was nasty at times. Incendiary. I went after people. I mistook heat for light, and certainty for truth. I carried myself like someone who had the courage of conviction when, in reality, I was lost behind the eyes of a misguided man learning hard lessons.
I’ve learned a lot in the past 20 years. I’ve stepped into many rivers. None of them are the same. Neither am I.
The uncomfortable question I can’t shake
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my political philosophy journey. Partially because the American mood in 2026 feels like an deranged argument that never ends. But mostly because I can look back and see a version of myself that could have gone further down certain roads.
It could have been me. I could have been a part of MAGA. I was certainly trending that way. I attended one of the first Tea Party protests in Chicago. I even flirted with the Libertarian Party of Illinois. While I met some good people during that weird time in my life, it never quite felt right. Thankfully, I slowly turned away from it and began exploring a new road.
I think I began that journey because I had a simplistic notation in my head that convinced me I was superior to others. I knew more. I knew better. I’m anti-authoritarian! And who was the authority? Liberal scum! They ran the media, they ran the schools, and they indoctrinate yutes! I was better than all of them, and I knew it.
But more disturbingly, I likely felt and succumbed to the psychological ingredients inherent in all humanity: Identity, belonging, resentment, fear, pride. These ingredients can do us much harm because they often feel like “clarity.” Like “finally seeing the truth.” Like “being brave enough to say what everyone else is afraid to.”
While these feelings do not announce themselves as “evil,” if left unchecked, they can lead us down a path of maliciousness, hatred, and destruction. And this isn’t’ about “right” or “left” on the political spectrum. These ingredients can poison a mind regardless of where they stand, regardless of which path they choose to walk. It just so happened, I was looking down the road on the right. I think about that path often.
So why didn’t I walk that path? Why didn’t I become a worse version of myself?
I think there were many reasons. For one, I randomly discovered philosophy on a meandering walk through the local Barnes & Noble. My life would begin to take a more direct and intentional path toward self-improvement.
Another is I discovered meditation. I am by no means a meditation expert or even someone who does it consistently or faithfully. But what meditation did for me was show me that there is more inside me than I was allowing to show through because of the noise. When I meditated, I was allowing the debris in the water to settle, and when it did, the reflection I saw was all the clearer, and I was allowed to see what truly needed fixing.
But if I’m honest, the number one reason is my wife. She stuck with me when I’m not sure she should have. She saw me, the human being behind the posture. She didn’t confuse my beliefs with my worth. And because she didn’t treat me like a monster, I didn’t have to become one to justify my defensiveness and avoidances.
That’s the first paradox of changing your mind: people rarely change when they feel cornered. People change when they feel safe enough to be honest.
Changing your mind isn’t a software update—it’s a loss
People talk about “changing your mind” like it’s a simple swap: old fact out, new fact in. Like replacing a broken part on a car or kitchen sink.
But most of our beliefs are not just beliefs. They’re memberships. They’re connections. They’re bridges to a life where we feel justified and loved.
Our beliefs are friendships, media routines, group chats, rituals, inside jokes, identities. Beliefs are social glue that keeps our loneliness from showing. And that’s why facts alone often bounce off. Not because people are stupid, but because people are human.
In the article “Why Facts Don’t Change Minds,” the author bluntly states that people do not just defend ideas. They defend identities. And when identity is threatened, the mind responds like the body does. It goes into survival mode. Fight or flight kicks in, the body tightens up, bracing preparing to survive. In that frame, persuasion isn’t intellectual. It’s emotional and social. It’s survival.
This idea is illuminating because it explains something I’ve seen in others, and, painfully, in myself: Sometimes the belief isn’t even the point. The belief is the badge. The belief is how we signal, “These are my people.”
And if changing your mind means losing your people, your mind will do almost anything to keep you from changing.
Abraham Lincoln and the moral weight of growth
I’ve been inundating myself with the American Civil War over the past year. I was never really a Civil War kinda guy. It’s almost stereotypical. History buff loves him some US Civil War! But today’s American climate, and I don’t mean the weather, necessitates we understand what’s going on. Refreshing myself this time period has helped inform me about why we are where we are.
I have discovered U.S. Grant in all his forgotten majesty. But most importantly, I have relearned to admire Abraham Lincoln. He has to be the most studied and debated leader in American history. The Lost Cause narrative, dedicated to destroying Lincoln’s legacy, is a firm pillar of MAGAism. In fact, MAGA grew, in part, out of the old southern libertarian façade of “states rights.” More can be read here, here, and here – among many other articles and exposés on the movement.
When studying Lincoln, we in the modern era cannot do so with our modern lenses. We cannot interpret him using “presentism,” or judging people and events in the past by modern laws, modern morals, and modern standards. When doing so, we don’t end up making a more ethical case. We just end up being inaccurate with our assumptions.
As such, I choose to view Lincoln as a man who changed his mind regularly and often. He was above all a master politician, and politicians do not end up making many people happy. Was he racist? By today’s standards, probably. By yesteryear’s, no. Was he an abolitionist? By today’s standards yes. By yesteryear’s, no. But what he did was fight tooth and nail to save the Union and, in the process, destroy the peculiar institution that tore it apart. Along the way, he changed his mind, and that change, one could argue, helped get the morally correct result.
Lincoln didn’t start his presidency as an abolitionist “radical,” but the war pushed him in that direction step by step. At first, he framed the conflict mainly as a fight to save the Union, even exploring gradual, compensated emancipation and (for a time) colonization ideas rather than immediate freedom. But by September 22, 1862, he pivoted to a far sharper approach with the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he turned emancipation into official Union policy in the rebellion, explicitly tying it to Union victory and opening the door to Black enlistment, which transformed the war into a struggle against slavery itself. As the stakes became clearer, he pressed beyond a wartime measure toward permanence, championing the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery nationwide. And in his final public address (April 11, 1865), he went further still by publicly endorsing Black voting rights (at least for Black soldiers and the educated), a striking move for any national leader of the era. Taken together, the story arc is clear: Lincoln moved in office from cautious containment to using federal power to destroy slavery, arm the formerly enslaved as soldiers, and begin gesturing toward their political citizenship.
In fact, Frederick Douglass, one of the President’s sharpest critics at times, captured Lincoln’s growing radicalism as a real-time shift from caution to action. Douglass remembered that once emancipation became federal policy, “an immense gain” was that “the war for the Union [was] committed to the extinction of slavery,” even if it began as military necessity. Douglass also said he read the Emancipation Proclamation as more than a narrow legal document. Douglass “saw in its spirit a life and power far beyond its letter,” because it pointed toward slavery’s destruction wherever federal power could reach. And looking back on Lincoln’s evolution overall, Douglass praised him as “emphatically the black man’s President…the first to show any respect to their rights as men,” a blunt endorsement that Lincoln’s presidency moved—under pressure and persuasion—toward a far more transformative stance than where it started.
The lesson can be found in Lincoln’s own words: “I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” This is a moral demand that many, if not most, resist: The individual is responsible for their own evolution.
Not perfection. Evolution.
Wiser today than yesterday means we don’t get to freeze ourselves at a convenient moral snapshot. We don’t get to declare, “That’s just how I am,” as if identity is a prison we can’t renovate. We don’t get to worship consistency if consistency is only stubbornness wearing a suit.
This makes Winston Churchill’s line sting all the more painful because it’s close to truth: “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
Fanaticism isn’t only about extremism. It’s also about inflexibility, or the refusal to let new reality edit old scripts. It’s a fear of revision. And if we’re being honest, revision is humiliating.
To change your mind is to admit that your former self was wrong. To change your mind publicly is to admit your former self was wrong in front of everyone.
That’s why so many people would rather burn down relationships (or entire countries) than revise themselves. Pride is cheaper than transformation. Until it isn’t.
Facts alone didn’t change me; context helped
Mike Judge is the world’s least appreciated social commentator. Beavis & Butthead notwithstanding, I personally feel his masterpiece is King of the Hill. It’s subtle, yet hysterical, and socially poignant.
Hank Hill, the main character, is decent in the quiet, old-fashioned way. Hank believes the world works better when people keep their word, do honest work, treat others with respect, and live by standards that don’t change depending on who’s watching. His loyalty isn’t to a crowd or a vibe. Hank is loyal to his code. He always tries to do the right thing. He wants rules that apply to everyone, leaders who act with responsibility, and a community held together by duty, not drama.
That’s why, even though he’s a life-long Republican, he’d never fit comfortably with MAGA-style politics. It’s too performative, too shameless, too comfortable with cruelty, bullying, and bending reality for “our side.” Hank has a moral allergy to grifting and scapegoating, and he’d rather lose with integrity than win by being ugly. He’s stubborn, sure, but not closed-minded. If the facts are clear or he sees someone being treated unfairly, he can be moved, because truth matters more to him than pride.
This evolution is demonstrated in how Hank’s opinion on soccer changes over time. He once mocked soccer, saying it was invented by European women to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking. He hates soccer, but it’s because he doesn’t understand it. Years later, Hank took a job in Saudi Arabia as chief propane salesman. Over there, he finds himself not just liking it, but loving it! Part of the comedy is that he’s embarrassed by his own growth. His identity had a script, and soccer didn’t fit the script.
We laugh because we recognize ourselves.
Not necessarily about soccer, but about anything that threatens the story we tell about who we are: the kinds of people we respect, the kinds of people we mock, the kinds of things “we don’t do.”
Sometimes our mind changes before our ego gives permission.
And that the gap. There is space between what we now see and what we’re willing to admit. This gap is where a lot of people get stuck. They don’t just fear being wrong. They fear being seen becoming someone new.
If you want the punchline of my personal story, it’s this:
My mind didn’t change because someone “destroyed me with facts.” My mind changed because life slowly made my old explanations feel too small. Context did what arguments couldn’t. Over time, I met people who didn’t match my stereotypes. I watched outcomes that didn’t match my theories. I lived through experiences that made my certainty feel naive. I felt the cost of my own harshness.
And I was loved by someone who didn’t confuse my worst takes with my whole humanity.
The article I mentioned earlier, “Why Facts Don’t Change Minds,” offers a framework that feels true to my journey. The author believes people need safety, time, and relationships to reconsider a belief.
We need safety because if changing costs a person everything, they will cling harder to their beliefs, no matter how destructive. We need time because the psyche doesn’t like abrupt identity amputations. My own change took at least a decade, and I feel I’m still changing. Finally, we need relationships because we’re social creatures. We listen differently when the messenger matters. Diverse messengers we care about help us receive diverse perspectives.
And we must remember that when we engage with others, we need to be less about “winning” and more about creating conditions for change. This is described as (1) prioritizing relationships, (2) reducing public pressure, (3) being gradual, and (4) feeding better ideas instead of endlessly amplifying bad ones.
Not ironically, Lincoln implemented all of these in varying degrees, for what that’s worth.
I changed partially because people I respect didn’t treat me like a lost cause. They didn’t give me a humiliation ritual as the price of entry. They gave me room to evolve with dignity.
The question I eventually asked myself: Do I want truth, or do I want to be right?
Eventually, I determined I want the truth. Philosophy helped me understand that the truth shall set me free. Well, philosophy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Jonny Thompson, a philosopher I follow on social media, breaks it down spectacularly:
“Most people don’t actually want the truth. They want to be right. And if the truth gets in the way of being right, their minds will do something odd — they will lock down. And according to the philosopher Chris Ranalli, when this happens, we should start to call it indoctrination. In his work on social epistemology, Ranalli argues that indoctrination isn’t just about what you believe, but how that belief is sealed off from the rest of the world. It’s a psychological cage where the door in and out stays barred.”
That was where I could have ended up: Being indoctrinated. Being in a cage of my own doing. Thankfully, I chose truth. People don’t want truth because it’s a harsh teacher. The truth is rarely flattering or empowering. Truth is often humbling. Truth breaks the inflexible mind into pieces that are difficult to put back together.
People don’t want truth because it asks us to grieve:
- grieve the years we spent confident and wrong,
- grieve the harm we caused while calling it “strength,”
- grieve the relationships we narrowed into categories,
- grieve the self we might have become.
But that’s where freedom exists. On the other side of grieving lives strength. Through the broken shards that truth creates we can look into the reflection of someone stronger, someone who can look at themselves without hiding. We can see the person who we are meant to be – free and less corrupted. Someone wiser. Someone better.
And maybe that’s the most philosophical part of all this. The self is not a monument. Becoming oneself is a daily practice. The river moves. We move. The only real question is whether we move on purpose, or whether we let our need to be right crystalize us.
Because there is something worse than being wrong.
It’s being wrong forever out of fear of becoming the person the truth demands us to be.
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