The Nihilism of MAGA World

[Res Ipsa]

Doc, I didn’t mean to suggest that he was drawing an equivalence between his criticisms of the GOP and his criticism about the marines. One was an article and one was a tweet. I mentioned it only as an illustration of how he isn’t in the tank for the blue team or the red team.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Doc, I didn’t mean to suggest that he was drawing an equivalence between his criticisms of the GOP and his criticism about the marines. One was an article and one was a tweet. I mentioned it only as an illustration of how he isn’t in the tank for the blue team or the red team.

Oh, for sure. I wasn’t directing my comment toward you. I was just riffing off the information presented.

- Doc

[Gadianton]

You seem to have a propensity for substituting e's for a's

Spelling isn't my thing. But, "e" for "evil" might be better anyway. Make evil great again. That's the gist of their message.

[Gadianton]

I follow Tom on Twitter. He leans conservative, but the kind of conservative that Ajax would dismiss as a RINO. He’sa pretty straight shooter. He wrote that piece, but he was very critical of having the Marines in the background of the speech. I find his positions to be thoughtful and well supported, even when I don’t agree with him.

The other day I saw one of these youtube clips where the guy showed a sample of tweets from republicans that have recently shifted democrat. One theme coming out that I hadn't thought about before was feeling displaced within their own party. As a republican, unless you're in support of fraud and insurrection, you're yelled at by your own party members for being a RINO.

[Res Ipsa]

I follow Tom on Twitter. He leans conservative, but the kind of conservative that Ajax would dismiss as a RINO. He’sa pretty straight shooter. He wrote that piece, but he was very critical of having the Marines in the background of the speech. I find his positions to be thoughtful and well supported, even when I don’t agree with him.

The other day I saw one of these youtube clips where the guy showed a sample of tweets from republicans that have recently shifted democrat. One theme coming out that I hadn't thought about before was feeling displaced within their own party. As a republican, unless you're in support of fraud and insurrection, you're yelled at by your own party members for being a RINO.

I am seeing more of that on Twitter. Not so much changing party identification, but anti-Maga Republicans. I’m wondering whether the combination of January 6, draconian anti-abortion laws, other extreme legislation, and the document scandal hasn’t caused more polarization within the Republican Party than folks realize. The MAGA base may be smaller than it thinks it is. We’ll have to see.

[Gadianton]

The main takeaway for me was that Trump fans are unreasonable; they refuse to acknowledge reason. "If you could reason with a Trump fan, they wouldn't be a Trump fan," as I heard one day.

Well this is absolutely true and it's a culturally practiced strategy. They don't realize this is what they are doing. Jehovah's Witnesses have a somewhat similar MO. They have their prescribed talking points and their defenses of those points from the Bible. They're trained to deflect your objections and move rapidly from point to point. If you make a point that really stumps them, they stop and completely change the subject, even terminate the religious conversation and move on to the weather. It's a highly practiced one-way street. But it's a conscientious practicing. They know exactly what they are doing. In contrast, a MAGA hat wearer is culturally conditioned to go into a rapid-fire meltdown of "what about this?" "what about that?" and no matter how you answer it just evokes a move to the next complaint on the list. They learn this by basically watching others do it, there is no training course or book about it.

So no, there is no chance of ever reasoning with Ajax. That's why Biden is absolutely justified in calling attention to neo-fascism of today's right-winger. Is it divisive and stoking tension? Maybe, but maybe it's time to fight fire with fire. There has been this dynamic where right-wingers take the role of the upset child, and the left-winger is expected to take the roll of the patient parent who listens and tries over and over to explain while the child continues the tantrum. Maybe it's time to send the kids to their rooms and take away their dinner.

One solution is time, and let the older generation die out. The worst of these folks are middle-aged. I also hope as the fight continues, that those less deeply committed and those okay with the movement as a tool begin to see that there are real consequences and opt out.

[Gunnar]

You seem to have a propensity for substituting e's for a's

Spelling isn't my thing. But, "e" for "evil" might be better anyway. Make evil great again. That's the gist of their message.

I like that suggestion! Certainly it is a more truthful representation of what they are actually about than "Make America Great Again."

[Gunnar]

I am seeing more of that on Twitter. Not so much changing party identification, but anti-Maga Republicans. I’m wondering whether the combination of January 6, draconian anti-abortion laws, other extreme legislation, and the document scandal hasn’t caused more polarization within the Republican Party than folks realize. The MAGA base may be smaller than it thinks it is. We’ll have to see.

Yeah, according to polling trends it seems that the worse it looks for Trump as new and ever more damning revelations become available, the greater is the percentage of Republicans who still double down on supporting him, but I get the impression that this is mainly because there is a growing trend for Republicans to leave the party in disgust. The MAGA base is either shrinking more slowly than the total number of Republicans, or not shrinking at all. This, of course, would make the percentage of Republicans who are still MAGA increase.