Political fatigue can be a door cracked open, but what comes through it depends on honesty. The former believers (cultists) who now wish to call themselves centrists will find no short road back to trust.
By Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
Brewminate
Introduction
There’s a new buzz spreading across social media, talk of a so-called “Purple Revolution.” It began when a TikTok user, Brian Murphy, posted a video announcing he was breaking with MAGA because he could no longer stomach the division it had created. His message went viral, inspiring a wave of comments from self-described former Trump supporters declaring they were ready to “unite” again and responses from the “blue” side of the spectrum welcoming them. But the reaction wasn’t entirely the applause he expected. Many pushed back hard: leaving a political cult doesn’t make you a hero, they said, it just makes you free to start doing the work.
Murphy didn’t take that well. Within days, he rebranded his profile under the handle “RestoringOldAmerica,” a name that sounded uncomfortably close to the nostalgia-soaked slogan of the group he was leaving. His new message focused less on self-examination and more on demanding others join him, insisting that unity should come before “feelings” and that questions of human rights could wait until the “harm” Trump is causing those like him and his family were addressed. The irony was almost too sharp to miss: a man denouncing division, angry that those he once dismissed refused to forget.
According to a Pew Research Center study, most Americans now describe themselves as “worn out” by hostility and disgusted with the political climate. Hate, it turns out, burns fast and hot, and eventually even those who fed the flames grow weary of the smoke. But as Murphy’s story shows, fatigue is not repentance. What many are calling “unity” may in fact be something far more familiar: the search for comfort without accountability.
Manufactured Division and the Seeds of Fatigue
The exhaustion didn’t happen by accident. Division was the design. Trump’s rhetoric has for years relied on the logic of siege, a nation under threat from “invaders,” “enemies within,” and “traitors” who needed to be rooted out. He was never subtle about it. Each rally, each Truth Social post, each call to punish or purge became another rehearsal in collective grievance, transforming anger into belonging.
For a time, it worked. Rage feels like purpose. But as the slogans hardened into policy (mass deportations, bans, loyalty tests) the spectacle began to feel less like empowerment and more like a hangover. Trump’s campaigns and time in office has fractured not only the country but also its emotional center of gravity, leaving Americans addicted to outrage and distrust. The sequel, now unfolding, is no different, only more efficient.
Studies from the Pew Research Center show a clear emotional downturn: two-thirds of Americans report being “exhausted” by political conflict, and a majority believe the country is “trapped” in cycles of anger. Political scientists describe this as “outrage fatigue,” a saturation point where emotional intensity collapses under its own weight. When hate becomes habitual, it loses its thrill.
Yet fatigue, as history shows, is not the same as wisdom. The post-war disillusionment of Europe, the fall of McCarthyism, the end of apartheid, all followed similar emotional arcs. People grew tired of extremism before they confronted it. Weariness can start the process of healing, but if it isn’t paired with moral clarity, it just drifts into forgetfulness.
That’s what’s happening now: a yearning for calm without the courage to face what caused the storm. The “purple” talk is not born from newfound empathy, it’s the body politic gasping for air after years of holding its breath in rage.
When the Blowback Hit Home
For years, Trump’s supporters have applauded policies that stripped others of rights, benefits, and protections. They watched teachers’ unions vilified, health coverage gutted, and environmental safeguards dismantled, all in the name of “freedom.” They called it draining the swamp. Now, in his second term, they’re discovering that the swamp was their paycheck, their clinic, their children’s school, the immigrant neighbor next door.
Economic policy is no longer abstract. Cuts to social programs, framed as eliminating “waste,” have slashed subsidies and assistance relied on by millions of working-class families, including those who once wore red hats to every rally. A Government Accountability Office report earlier this year warned that proposed spending reductions could affect millions receiving Social Security disability benefits and Medicaid coverage. Farmers who once celebrated deregulation are now watching corporate agribusinesses swallow what’s left of local markets after the administration rolled back price and environmental controls.
Healthcare, too, has become a breaking point. The administration’s renewed push to repeal Affordable Care Act provisions and reduce federal funding for state exchanges (especially targeting blue states) threatens coverage for people with preexisting conditions, a group that includes many who once cheered its repeal. In the words of one former supporter, “I thought it was about getting rid of bureaucracy. I didn’t think they meant my coverage.”
Then there are the veterans. Trump’s political identity has always leaned heavily on military imagery, but his second-term budget has faced backlash even from conservative veterans’ organizations after proposals to privatize sections of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Those cuts were justified as efficiency. For many veterans, it felt like betrayal.
This is the second great turning point: the moment the cruelty became domestic policy. When tax breaks for billionaires meet benefit cuts for everyone else, when corporate deregulation poisons the water table, when “law and order” turns into surveillance of protesters, suddenly, the strongman’s hand doesn’t feel strong anymore. It feels heavy.
The same people who once said “that’ll never touch me” are realizing that authoritarianism doesn’t stop at ideological borders. It eats its own. The hard truth is that they didn’t misunderstand Trump’s agenda. They just assumed they’d never be on the receiving end.
Immigration: An Unexpected Twist
If there is one issue testing the sincerity of this so-called “Purple Revolution,” it’s immigration, the very cause that once defined MAGA’s identity. What began as an obsession with border walls and “law and order” has become a point of fracture. Former supporters now say, “I just thought he was going after criminals, not everyone.” But that was always a fantasy. The cruelty was never hidden. It was a promise.
From the start, Trump’s movement blurred the line between enforcement and persecution. In 2018, the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents, a practice condemned both here at home and around the world. His speeches portrayed immigrants as an invading horde, echoing themes that have long fueled nativist politics in America. He called them “animals” and warned they were “poisoning the blood” of the nation. Those words were not slips of the tongue — they were declarations of intent.
Now, in his second term, the intent has become policy again. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has expanded surveillance powers, contracting facial recognition and biometric tools once reserved for terrorism investigations. Deportations are increasing, legal pathways are tightening, and new restrictions threaten labor shortages across key industries, from agriculture to food processing, according to the Washington Post.
This is not Trump betraying his promises. It’s him fulfilling them. The difference is that now, the dragnet has widened enough to touch families who once felt immune. Neighbors, coworkers, and even relatives of former supporters are being caught up in raids and revocations. For some, that shock has triggered the first flicker of doubt. For others, it has sparked anger, not at the cruelty itself, but at being reminded that cruelty eventually circles back.
And so the exodus begins, not out of conscience but consequence. They’re discovering what every targeted community has known all along: you can’t cheer the machinery of persecution and expect it to stop at your doorstep.
Leaving MAGA Does Not Equal Redemption
Leaving MAGA is not an act of courage in itself. It’s a beginning, not a finish line, and for many, not even that. Too often, it’s an exercise in image rehabilitation: a way to escape association without confronting complicity. Across social platforms, former loyalists are rebranding themselves as “centrists,” joining the self-described purple revolution and demanding instant trust. When that trust isn’t granted, they bristle. The resentment comes quickly: I’ve changed, why won’t you just accept me?
That defensiveness reveals something crucial: they still see morality as a transaction. They expect belonging as a reward for a belated change of heart, rather than understanding that trust must be earned through reflection and repair. The loudest “ex-MAGA” voices often want to move on without naming what drew them in. They talk about “division” and “toxicity,” but not about the racism, misogyny, or authoritarianism they once excused because it served their side.
The backlash they face is not vindictive; it’s the natural consequence of credibility lost. The left, and especially marginalized communities, remember who cheered family separations, who mocked mask-wearers during a pandemic, who laughed when journalists were attacked. As one viral Reddit discussion put it, “You don’t get to jump ship now just because you’re suddenly ashamed of how your name will be tied to history.” That isn’t cruelty. It’s accountability.
History offers plenty of parallels. After the fall of McCarthyism in the 1950s, many of its enablers reinvented themselves as centrists, pretending they had merely been “misled.” When apartheid collapsed, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission made clear that confession was not absolution, that only truth-telling could begin the process of healing. The same principle applies now: you can leave a movement without leaving behind the moral debt it incurred.
The true test of change isn’t who you vote for next. It’s whether you can sit with the discomfort of being mistrusted and keep doing the work anyway. That’s the difference between true transformation and strategic rebranding.
The Limits of Unity without Accountability
Unity sounds noble; who wouldn’t want the noise to stop? But calls for “coming together” can become dangerous when they demand amnesia instead of understanding. When political unity skips over accountability, it becomes what philosophers of transitional justice call false reconciliation: a peace built on silence. It may calm the surface, but it leaves the rot untouched beneath.
In the United States, that silence has a long lineage. After the Civil War, white Southerners called for reunion while Black Americans called for justice, and the country chose reunion. The result was Jim Crow. After the Iraq War, politicians from both parties urged the nation to “move forward,” leaving behind the architects of torture and lies unpunished. Each time, the pursuit of unity without truth preserved the very structures that caused the harm.
Today’s “purple” centrism risks repeating that cycle. Many of those leaving Trump’s orbit insist they just want to “lower the temperature.” But lowering the temperature isn’t the same as curing the infection. You cannot heal a civic body by pretending the disease was mutual. It wasn’t. One side built a movement around the dehumanization of immigrants, the erosion of democratic norms, and the weaponization of fear. The other side (imperfect, fractured, often naïve) tried to resist that corrosion. Treating those positions as equivalent is not balance; it’s distortion.
Political scholars warn that a “both-sides” impulse can inadvertently enable extremism. Genuine reconciliation requires accountability, a willingness to name harm and make amends before forgiveness can take root. Without that, unity becomes a way for the powerful to reset the game without consequence.
And yet, within this exhaustion, there is a real opportunity: a chance to redefine what civic sanity looks like. The challenge is ensuring that “purple” doesn’t mean dilution, that it doesn’t replace moral clarity with moral fog. For any center worth building, it must rest not on forgetting, but on remembering responsibly.
The Work of Redemption
Hate movements collapse the way fires do, not through defeat, but through depletion. They burn until there’s nothing left to consume. The “purple” rhetoric spreading online is less revolution than smoke from a dying blaze, and the story of Brian Murphy is its perfect parable. It seems he wanted unity without humility, redemption without reflection, a shortcut back to moral safety. But leaving a movement built on cruelty means more than changing your username; it means changing your understanding of humanity itself.
What we’re seeing now, in this talk of “purple,” isn’t a moral reawakening so much as the fatigue of an overfed blaze. But exhaustion isn’t transformation. It’s only the pause between reckoning and relapse.
Political fatigue can be a door cracked open, but what comes through it depends on honesty. The former believers (cultists) who now wish to call themselves centrists will find no short road back to trust. They will have to show up, again and again, where they are not the center of attention, where their discomfort is not the story. The test of moral change is endurance, the willingness to stay in the room when the past is named aloud.
America has been here before. After every fever of hatred (after slavery, after McCarthyism, after segregation) the nation has tried to move on faster than it learned. Each time, the reckoning was deferred, not erased. Now, under another authoritarian presidency, the cost of denial is clearer than ever. The republic cannot be saved by people too proud to admit they helped endanger it.
If this country truly wants healing, it has to resist that shortcut. Real unity doesn’t begin when the Brian Murphys of the world grow uncomfortable; it begins when they sit still in that discomfort and listen. We don’t need them to join us. We need them to take time, a long time, to understand how they were drawn in by a political personality cult and the damage that has done to others. The border of a decent nation isn’t drawn in sand or steel. It’s drawn in conscience, and crossing back takes more than fatigue. It takes courage.
Redemption doesn’t begin with a hashtag or a new color palette. It begins with memory, with acknowledging what was done, who it harmed, and how easily ordinary people rationalized cruelty when they thought it served their interests. Those who cheered for the cage and the ban, for the walls and the chants, for the violence and overt support of fascism, now face a question they can’t evade: why was that acceptable to me?
Originally published by Brewminate, 10.22.2025, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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