Covert Mission in MAGA Territory

I tried to make the title sound cool. Really, I'm just staying at my parents' house for three weeks. It struck me that most people don't know what it's like not to live in a political vacuum. I do. Intensely so.

I grew up in a house where my mom bounced political parties and church-hopped from my first days (and first baptisms) at the Methodist Church, to the Lutheran kids choir, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, an unnamed church my mother later claimed was a "cult," to Baptist, to Evangelical, to leaving that Evangelical church because it wasn't Evangelical enough, to church-planting new churches without buildings, to...to...to... My dad, on the other hand is a former public-school biology teacher with no interest in religion, but all the confrontational tools of a box of Kleenex left out in the rain. So we church-hopped, took membership classes, prayed the Sinner's Prayer, sang the Doxology, prayed the Lord’s Prayer, drank Bin 27 Port in the 3rd grade, grape juice in the 9th grade, could have communion, couldn't have communion, sang from hymnals, rocked out to alternative Christian bands, and attended new-age revivals with merch and take-home materials to "give to your friends."

The Author dressed for Easter

Politically my mother bounced as well. For most of my childhood she sided with the liberals, and a clear demarcation divided the town via Peabody Street—classrooms without walls, new-age music, and drum circles to the east, logging, trailer parks, and most of the churches on the west. We lived on Peabody Street, so it's no wonder she waffled. By the 9th grade Mom had left her 95 theses on the door of St. Andrews and we were shuffling religions yet again, when I started attending the big Bible Church on the hill alone, where my high school friends went to youth group. The pastor was hip, had a ponytail, would later denounce everything he taught us, and took us snowboarding with little nighttime supervision every New Years. My high school history department all went to church there and sat with us in the back, letting us take two and three helpings of communion bread and snorting at us when our stomachs growled.

And for the best things I learned there, the boys I kissed, and the things I lost that I probably wasn't supposed to, my mother found a church home, too, and with it a more conservative point of view. Her political party changed almost immediately and every day after school I listened to Dr. Laura on the Bose while I did my homework, and a replay of that afternoon's episode of Rush Limbaugh. And when my honors English teachers sent home books she didn't like, like Briar Rose by Jane Yolen, she wrote to the school board to pull me from the unit or request that they remove the curriculum. There was a lot of school board calls to pull me or pull books.

Anderson Cooper, Channel One News

Back then we had Channel One, a 12-minute news show at the beginning of class. It was hosted by a young Anderson Cooper and Lisa Ling, but mom thought it was giving us subliminal messages, so my sibling and I spent that time in the hallway with a book. Pulling, pulling, pulling.

I agreed with everything. I wanted all the conservative stuff, the usual niceties of an exacting family, a handsome, hardworking husband with no peripheral vision, to stay at home and raise children, and always, always fight against abortion. It was always about abortion. And by the 12th grade when George Bush ran for President I gave him my vote.

The Author begins to find herself…

But then I discovered life. I discovered a sex life and punk rock. I discovered Howard Zinn and college coursework, the world in a few-thousand pages that I'd never seen before. An entire life that I'd been told up until that point was "sin," I embraced, inhaled, did a little bouncing myself. Freedom.

Over the years I waffled a little, too, concerned when I had babies that maybe I should lean into the conservative side of myself and raise them in the same old-fashioned way I'd been raised. Maybe don't ban books, but just don't bring them home. No swearing. Church on Sundays, Mars Hill in fact. Like clockwork. But then they grew, and I relaxed - no, I remembered. And I raised my kids to read, grow, learn, love, see, and question everything, but good questions, interested questions. An auntie helped teach all of us to love better and more, and showed us what it means to be an advocate.

Meeting the Atlantic Ocean for the first time

We moved to the East Coast 2 years ago, from little white, sheltered Montana (that we did love) to 20 minutes from New York City. Our kids' best friends are immigrants from every corner of the Earth, speak every language, believe every religion, and vote every which way. We can hop on a train now to see art, and culture, and go to protests in New York and Washington DC. And we never looked back. But we did visit "home,” and it's not easy.

I went to my mother's church on Sunday. I like the pastor there, but we don't agree on much. The sermon was about protecting widows, lest "they learn to be idle...but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things they ought not." Felt like a good time to leave, but I stayed. The rest of the sermon covered respect for your elders, no matter what. No boundaries. No confrontation. No truthfulness. Just smile and give them what they need. And on the one hand I know there is some truth to respecting elders in general, respecting someone who birthed and/or raised you. But doing so no-holds-bard I cannot do. And maybe you can't either, and I hope this little chat gives you space to honor that. Here's my version.

I've been staying with my parents for three weeks, going home on Thursday, in close quarters with my four kids. In my mother's fridge is a package of ivermectin apple-flavored horse paste, meant to treat parasites in large farm animals. She makes homemade hydroxychloroquine, a prescription medicine meant for treating lupus, from an internet recipe and keeps it in the freezer. Both of these were promoted by the anti-vaxx movement, via Fox News and major right-wing media outlets, as methods of treating and staving off the coronavirus. Five years later, she still takes them daily, telling me stories of friends' husbands who were "kidnapped and killed" in the intensive care unit during the lockdowns. She knows people who were "kidnapped and killed;" I don’t know any.

N is for Noah, by Ken Ham

My 8-year-old, Calvin, came to me this morning and said she read him a bedtime story about Noah, which I have no problem with. He knows the story; he's been to Sunday school most of his life. But the version they read talked about God coming back to punish the Earth by burning it up, because he promised never to flood it again. Calvin said it made him scared and he didn't want to read the book anymore. I talked to him about how God loves, not hates. How we don't burn down our friends' houses to teach them a lesson. The book didn’t used to bother him, but now he’s confused, and rightly so.

We've prepped our kids a lot for these visits. Talked to them about speaking their mind or just saying "no thank you" when they're uncomfortable. If they don't want to watch Pilgrim's Progress before bed, that's okay. If they find a Mike Huckabee "Kids Guide" about the "Courage of Donald Trump" slid in amongst their comic books, to just quietly throw it away. If she starts talking about how 9/11, and the Titanic, and Oppenheimer were all faked, how RFK and Elon are going to track our brainwaves through smartwatches and Bluetooth headphones, how 5G and Wi-Fi caused brain cancer in a long list of her friends I've never met, then breathe in, breathe out, and don't feel pressed to participate in the conversation. Even if she's an all-of-a-sudden JK Rowling fan.

Former Republican Michigan state Sen. Pat Colbeck discusses his allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election with Rep. Bob Phalen, R-Lindsay, during a meeting of the "ad hoc election integrity committee" in Helena Tuesday - Montana Free Press

This has been my whole adult life, and really encouraged us to move farther away for our mental health, no matter how much I love my family. Because there's a darker side to the MAGA stuff, and it came to a head on January 6th. I knew about plans for the 6th long before they ever happened, though I did my best not to pay attention. Lots of "Just you wait, it'll be a day for the history books," and "big things are going to happen." Like always, I didn't ask. If I'd asked I'd have discovered my mom was a part of a "club" of right-wing extremists in our county. If I'd asked I'd learn she'd been going door-to-door with the Montana Election Integrity Project, a freedom-fighting coalition making sure voters in the 2020 election were, indeed, alive. If I'd asked I would've found out she'd been invited to the Capitol on January 6th with a group of her "friends." I didn't ask, and thank God she didn't go.

Today it's a lot of "just you wait, the economy is about to do something amazing," or "just you wait, you're going to find out about Tom Hanks," or "just you wait, Starlink is going to change everything." I've been waiting for a very long time. I've been waiting since Y2K, sitting in a house full of dry goods and canned beans for the end of the world (that time around). I've been waiting surrounded by healing crystals and grounding mats (for earthing). I’ve been waiting through talks of Medbeds, and birtherism, and Pizzagate, and the “murder” of Andrew Breitbart. I’ve been waiting surrounded by "Make America Great Again" stickers, hats, and pamphlets.

Thursday we go home, back to personal space and thoughtful expression of our own views, which we've stifled for our own mental health during this visit. A lot of people ask why we even do it, and it goes back to the family stuff. I don't live in a vacuum. I'm surrounded by friends and family from the most extreme right-wing end of politics and religion, to the farthest-reaching views on the left, and everything in between. I've heard every modern conspiracy theory since the early 1990s, and I've convinced no one of anything, with evidence or otherwise.

My kids are prepped and worldly enough, down to my 6-year-old, to know that colors, faiths, languages, countries of origin, what have you, are just part of this beautiful life we live, and without all of us we'd walk around like "vanilla pudding” (their words, not mine). Do I wish things were different in my family? Yes. Do I wish I could talk to my mom and tell her the truth? Yes. Do I wish I had the relationship it seems like everyone else talks about? You bet I do. But I have something, and I won't let go of it because I love my mom, and I’ll never give up on her coming back to life. Because she’s smart, and loving, and talented, and worthy of a life of truth and honesty from the people around her. Will she get there? I don’t know.

If that's you, too, then I hope you know you're not alone. You can love your family and be hurt by them, or worried for them, or utterly confused by their choices. Like loving a family member with an addiction, you can want them to change with all your heart, but they won't until they're ready. And you get to decide if you want to wait or not.

You do you.

Thanks, friends.

Ellie is an author, editor, and owner of Red Pencil Transcripts, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City.