by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
A recurring theme whenever I talk to MAGA people is their desire to “just be left alone.” Given how willing they are otherwise to embrace autocracy — which will definitely not just leave them alone, I struggle to understand what they’re really talking about. What, exactly, do they mean by the idea of “just being left alone.”
Under our current liberal democracy, who is not leaving them alone?
It’s this type of abstract fear on the part of MAGA that eats away at me. One reason this is so is FOX News and Trump really lean into this fear. They promise MAGA people that if only they support The Dear Leader, that they will stop the evil liberal-progressive forces that will mess with them.
I guess if I wrote for Vox, I would be smart enough to figure this out. I know this sentiment is some sort of MAGA code for a specific situation, but I still can’t figure out what they really mean. Maybe what they’re talking about is how they have a different interpretation of the social contract than non-MAGA people. Maybe they see “just being left alone” to mean the right to be openly racist, bigoted and misogynistic?
But I fear that doesn’t really even properly express what’s going on. We all want to just be left alone, regardless of political leanings, and yet I see that freedom as something we already have and MAGA sees it so currently imperiled that they would burn the country to the ground and install an autocrat to defend it.
