Let the Foundation Crack: Why I Left the Lies I Was Raised With — and Built Something Real

Cuz baby I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me

I used to believe things I wouldn’t be caught dead defending now.

Not because I was stupid — I was compliant. A pleasure to have in class. Rewarded for being a white girl who didn’t question the script. I thought I was informed, moral, maybe even a little superior. I wasn’t. I was just obedient.

I wasn’t raised evangelical, just Christian. The brand that dressed itself in casseroles and country blue ruffle throw pillows with geese in bonnets embroidered on them. Jesus was white. America was special. English was “the official language,” and I genuinely believed people should speak it or go back to wherever the fuck they came from. When someone walked up to me speaking Spanish, I didn’t just feel confused — I felt insulted. This is my country. You learn our language. That was the arrogance. And I carried it with pride.

I came from generations of law enforcement — cops in my family tree going back to the horse-and-buggy days. I believed the badge was sacred. I thought justice lived inside a uniform. I didn’t yet understand that what I saw as “order” was really a system designed to protect people who looked like me — and punish those who didn’t.

I was a teenage Republican. I was a digital intern at FOX News during my college gap year. That "Islam 101" graphic on 'The O'Reilly Factor" was crafted after I equated one single, solitary period of Islam-related curriculum in 8th grade social studies as "woke indoctrination." I believed in the Iraq War and in George W. Bush’s America. I bought into the myth that this country was chosen — ordained by God and defended by good guys with guns and oil contracts.

And then, the foundation cracked.

It started when the truth about the WMDs came out — when it became undeniable that we were lied to. That our leaders used fear to sell bloodshed and that morality was just marketing. And once I saw that first fracture, the entire belief system I’d built my life on began to crumble.

Because here’s the part no one warns you about:

Most of what we’re taught to believe isn’t truth — it’s construction.

A prefab foundation poured by people who benefit from your obedience. Held together by nostalgia, nationalism, and inherited guilt. And when you finally admit it’s cracked, the whole thing starts to fall apart.

Let it fucking crumble. It's okay, baby.

Christian nationalism is a fraud. It’s a buffet religion where you cherry-pick scripture to justify cruelty and ignore the parts about compassion, sacrifice, and radical inclusion. It has nothing to do with Jesus. If Christ came back today — brown, broke, loving everyone you were told to hate — modern American Christians would throw him in Guantanamo and call him a socialist threat to national security.

Donald Trump could drink the blood of my children on live TV, and my dad would still find a way to blame Joe Biden for it. That’s not hyperbole. That’s how deep it goes. This isn’t about theology or policy. It’s about protecting a fantasy where white Americans are always the heroes — even when they’re the ones doing the harm.

When I walked away, it hurt. I lost friends. I lost the ability to sit through Thanksgiving dinner without telling my relatives to go fuck themselves. I lost the easy comfort of being seen as “one of the good ones.” But I gained something real. I stopped pretending. I stopped lying to myself.

They can keep their busted-ass foundation — patched with dogma, bootlicking, flag worship, and FOX News fever dreams. Let them keep pretending that cruelty is virtue and obedience is strength.

I didn’t rebuild what they gave me. I built something custom just for me. Softer. Stronger. A castle made of all the bricks they threw at me — just like Taylor Swift said.

I’ve got a wrecking ball you can borrow. You’ll know when it’s time.