by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
The thing about MAGA is it’s based on a lie. The whole thing is bullshit. Really, at its core, MAGA is identity politics for white people. Throw in some base misogyny and nativism and amosexualism and Christian persecution porn and you have yourself a very powerful political movement.
What’s so astonishing to me is how easy is it to grift MAGA. Sometimes, the bigger the grift, the more popular you are. That, I think, explains MAGA. Trump is the biggest grifter of all. His grift has become so successful that it’s the basis of a cult of personality.
I have, on more than one occasion, thought about trying the grift myself. It would be very easy to abruptly change political views a la Dennis Miller. Within six months, I’d likely be having lunch with Trump himself. The need for grift is that powerful within the MAGA movement.
The whole thing has become so ridiculous — and is so based on hair-trigger hypocrisy — that wild things happen over and over again. The most recent example of this is the surreal attack on Debra Messing. She committed — as I understand it — a minor infraction on Twitter and the MAGA echo chamber is out for blood. But it seems pretty obvious that the whole thing is not being done in good faith and it’s being used as excuse to own a lib that Trump has attacked recently.
This is a prime example of how Trump is simply an avatar for a deeper, darker, problem in American society. We’ve reached the point where MAGA will do anything to get and keep power to such an extent that the “Resistance” simply can’t keep up. When your political opponent is an ideological zombie and you’re trying to reason with them using “norms” you’re setting yourself up for failure.
What might happen is sometime in the middle of Trump’s second term, the center-Left might realize it has to adopt the “new rules” of MAGA to defend itself. Unfortunately, while it has to be done for simple political survival, long term it’s the setup for nothing less than a civil war — or a military junta. There may come a time, I’m afraid, when Blue States begin to believe that the only way to keep any semblance of freedom is to leave the Union altogether. That definitely would put the Red States absolute desire to “own the libs” to the test, now wouldn’t it.
It’s kind of sad when the best case scenario you can think of to keep yoru nation together long-term is a military junta. But that’s some time down the road. For the time being the MAGA grift will continue. The center-Left is, sadly, a bunch of wussies in my opinion. I’ve mulled the need for, on an ideological level, a form of Radical Resistance. But in hindsight I realize I was extremely naive. MAGA is a cancer that is going to kill the patient and I can’t see that there is anything to do about it.
