by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I had a really great, interesting conversation with a center-Right person today and as a center-Left person, it was very illunative. My biggest problem these days is when people come at me from the Left and I’m aghast, saying, “But I’m on YOUR side.”
So, it was a refreshing change to talk to someone from the center-Right who wasn’t MAGA and, as such, wasn’t completely bonkers. My chief take away is America is in a lot of trouble, mainly because the Left’s “woke cancel culture mob” continues to drive conservatives straight into the arms of MAGA fascism. It’s very alarming.
And, to me, the crux of MAGA is how much of it is performative done in the service of using bad faith arguments to “own the libs” and how much of it is actually hardcore wilful ignorance that wallows in the “cruelty is the point” aspect of MAGA.
I continue to be at a loss on which end of the spectrum MAGA inhabits. There is a cult-like element to MAGA, yes, but some of it is so over-the-top and dumb that it makes you wonder who’s zooming whom as the old song goes. Are the dumb hero worshiping theatrics of MAGA just one big troll? Is it not so much that MAGA believes that Trump is some sort of god-like figure sent to save America from the “woke cancel culture mob,” but rather because of extreme negative polarization it’s all something of a joke that MAGA people don’t REALLY believe?
I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.
I keep reading a great book about the rise of the Nazis and while MAGA and the Nazis share a lot — and I mean A LOT — of traits, Hitler was an actual Great Man who bent history to his will as he felt necessary, while Trump is just a lazy idiot who is an avatar, a vessel for white Christian rage over how the “woke cancel culture mob” wants to turn everyone gay.
Maybe MAGA is both things at once? Maybe some people are MAGA because it gives them a sense of belonging, while others want to just “own the libs” with bad faith arguments while still others are so alarmed by the “woke cancel culture mob” that they are willing to embrace regular old fascism.
But I will note one thing — the Right’s echo chamber is far, far more developed and all consuming than the Left’s. A combination of Fox News and Right wing podcasts give Traditionalists (white Christian men) easy to understand talking points that make them able to sleep at night as the country continues to slide into fascist MAGA autocracy.
It’s because of all of this that, at the moment, I just don’t think Blues have it in them as a movement to do the one thing that otherwise they should do — demand a National Divorce. I think, in the end, when MAGA autocratic fascist steal the 2024 election in broad daylight….Blues will bend a knee. And those Blues who can’t handled living in a MAGA-themed autocracy will simply leave the country.
I suppose it’s for the best. I don’t want a civil war.
