No. of Recommendations: 38
This is such a powerful, disturbing, and, unfortunately, relevant observation.
I have observed the posts on this board for some time and noted a pattern: the posts of Trump critics are typically reasoned and factual while those of his MAGA supporters are full of braggadocio, bullying and baffoonery. I have yet to read an ounce of empathy for the enemies they vilify, be they trans, immigrants, Ukrainian, or just liberals. Instead what I see is a joyful adolescent sadism devoid of thought but full of celebratory hate for the suffering sheeple. A kind of cognitive malignancy has seized the minds of tens of millions Americans.
My father suffers from this malignancy. Like Albaby, I hold on to the belief that his views are reasoned and that we can get to some solid ground where facts are agreed upon and differences can be identified and meaningful debated. If we could find that ground we might be able to get our footing and move toward some mutual understanding, and even compromise. But each time I think we’re getting close to agreement on the facts, and an understanding that maybe some of those facts don’t support his strongly held beliefs, the conversation evaporates into a cloud of emotional dismissal of “liberals”. I finally realized that we exist on different political planes, one rooted in the modern world of science and empiricism, the other in the post-modern world of discourse and emotionalism. My assumption that his views are reasoned in fact is mistaken. Emotion is the core of his political world view. There is no common ground.
Why is the dominant emotion of the right hate? Hate for the other. Especially hate for the liberal. With hate comes disdain. We saw that yesterday with Trump and Vance’s embarrassing display. The language used to accuse and dismiss Zelenski was emotional. “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel”. From there the conversation turned to disrespect. Much like a conversation with my dad, Zelenski’s lesson on the history of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine was dismissed in a cloud of hurt feelings and a refusal to engage with the facts, replaced with bullying and a sadistic celebration of the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Their suffering was reduced to a card game.
On the one hand it is important to understand what the goal is here. What is driving this Trumpian worldview, and what is the end game they are playing for? Domestically it is pretty clear—the implementation of Project 2025 and the destruction of the state bureaucracy clearing the way for oligarchic rule and Christian-Nationalist cultural hegemony. But what is the foreign policy of this new domestic world order? Clearly the nature of alliances has changed. Given the domestic agenda there is no longer a principled commitment to democratic values driving our relationships to the world. Given the embrace of Christian-Nationalism, human rights no longer matter. Indeed the open embrace of the AfD, Putin, and Orban suggests that affinity to Christian-Nationalist movements is the transcendent foreign policy value of Trumpism. At some point, though, a clash of nationalisms looms (think tariffs) and war usually follows this clash.
I can see how this politics of a new right benefit capitalists, the tax cuts and gutting of the state will only concentrate and enhance the power of the oligarchy. And I can see how a beleaguered white petty bourgeoisie will turn their attention toward the brown and black hoard’s clamoring unjustly for a piece of their pie. A pie, by the way, that is empirically shrinking as the oligarchy vacuums up a greater and greater share of the national wealth. But why is a fraction of the working class drawn to this hate filled ideology?
There is no question in my mind that bread and butter issues are at the heart of it. Constant dollar earnings of workers with some college education and below have fallen by up to 20% since Reagan took office. This decline has occurred through republican and democratic administrations alike, but for many the cause is attributable to foreign (globalization) and domestic (immigration) competition rather than the breaking of the labor contract that tied wage increases to productivity increases in the economy. All of the benefits of productivity gains from technological innovation in the last half century have accrued to owners of capital rather than labor. For some reason beyond my comprehension it’s easier to attribute this wage suppression to immigration and foreign competition rather than to the anti-labor economic and tax policies of both parties since Reagan.
Ultimately this MAGAmyopia is going to slam into the very people who support Trumpism but who also depend of the structures of social and economic support that Trump aims to dismantle. My father believes that only the others will be impacted by $2+ trillion in cuts to Medicare and other government programs. But he will experience the pain. Cuts to NIH will result in the loss of thousands of jobs in Baltimore, but every town with a university hospital will see layoffs and program closures. That experimental Car-T treatment that saved my brothers life? Who knows what happens to that kind of research. The millions of rural MAGA supporting Pennsylvanians will lose their Medicaid health plan subsidies and suddenly discover that THEY are the other.
Across the country a great reckoning is coming and by the time the angry MAGA crowd realizes that they were the mark, it will be too late. They will have ridden a wave of emotionally driven schadenfreude right into the reich.
God Save America
