"MAGA was never about policy.
It was never about taxes or trade or immigration, at least not in the ways its supporters claim. It was about fear. About losing status. About the aching dread that the world no longer bends to you. And when power begins to slip, the mind scrambles to make sense of its new fragility. That’s when people reach not for reason, but for revenge (Kelly, 2020; Golec de Zavala & Keenan, 2021)."
Trump’s followers are not irrational. They are reacting, often viscerally, to a perceived collapse of the world they knew. Crime is down, but they feel unsafe. Immigration enriches the economy, but they feel invaded. Diversity increases opportunity, but they feel erased. Trump doesn’t need to solve these problems. He just needs to affirm that they exist, and promise to punish whoever caused them.
This essay is excellent.
Absolutely. Saved a copy for when it inevitably gets censored. This summation stuck out to me:
We often talk about MAGA as if it were a political disagreement. As if it were about taxes, jobs, or policy platforms. But what the research shows, across neurology, psychology, and political science, is that MAGA is something deeper: an identity reaction to perceived loss. It is fear rebranded as freedom. It is status anxiety rebranded as tradition. It is authoritarian psychology wearing the skin of patriotism.
This isn’t just a movement of bad ideas. It’s a movement of deeply felt insecurity, fused to a political figure who offers vengeance, not vision. And in that fusion, the need for power replaces the desire for truth. The need to dominate replaces the value of liberty. The need to feel morally superior replaces the capacity for self-reflection.
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
James Waterman Wise
Remember, if someone from ICE/DHS asks you on a date …
https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2020/03/the-teenage-girls-who-seduced-and-killed-nazis/
… one must recognize choices.
And people with privilege (especially, those that don’t recognize it) tolerate it.
Fear is the fuse
Good one line summary to remember
Yeah, fascism literally doesn’t work without an “enemy” to stoke the fear.
I suspect they don’t know what fascism is. Fascism is nationalism, corporatism, and authoritarianism. Almost all political movements are about fear. Climate alarmist fear global warming, communist fear capitalism, if there was no fear, then there would be no anxiety, or worry. Democrats feared Donald Trump. Most of the world is nationalist, including Ukraine. Israel is nationalist. China is nationalist. Japan is nationalist. The list goes on and on. The world is structured as nation-states for a reason. Donald Trump is a nationalist, that doesn’t necessarily make him a fascist. He is a populist, that is why he won. Kamala Harris/Joe Biden 2.0 didn’t win because she is not a populist, she wanted people to vote for her, so she can tell them how the world should.
The paradox of the progressive is the support of unions, which are the very constituents that would prefer nationalism, and anti-immigration. Joe Biden did poorly on the immigration front. When you have unions and bus drivers deciding policy for your country, you will have a dysfunctional state in the future. To the democrat who says, finally democracy is working, the people are leading policy, not elites.
Trump is a fake populist. A total phony. He said some things people desperately wanted to hear in order to get elected, then once in office did none of them and only works to enrich himself.
America would do much better to have a bus driver in the White House than the orange fascist dotard.
Trump got elected because of immigration of all types. His tariffs reflect America First policy. He is a populist, and he believes in the common things, as Joe Six Pack does. Bernie Sanders is a populist as well, but he is a socialist. In both cases, the voter is thinking that the system has failed, or is failing. The Bernie supporter believes capitalism has failed, and the Trump supporter believes that liberal economics has failed. In both cases, they want what they think is “fairness”. They both believe there is a zero-sum game, and the pie is shrinking, or not distributed evenly, and that we are reaching some kind of peak that will usher in decline. Both sides believe their country is in decline. I am not saying the US does not have problems, but the liberal elites failed to address the issue of living costs and in my opinion, general price increase while having a foreign policy that seems to disconnect them from domestic issues. Both sides will have suicidal policies, thinking they will address the problem, that is free trade, and lack of sufficient wealth redistribution. Why did you think Obama ran on “hope and change”? He himself is a liberal that ran on America being on the decline.
“liberal” who you’re referring to are not very liberal.
