From a Google Image Search - The Atlantic
When you write commentary about American or even global politics you like to think your efforts, your reading, your research, your arguments, and your viewpoints make a difference. Then you hear that Trump is polling 66% in New Hampshire and you feel the doubts come in. Perhaps if Trump had not come along our tiny but passionate voices might have registered, but since the MAGA cult became louder, scarier, and utterly convinced that they back the guy who has all the answers, even well-known left-leaning writers with far louder voices than many are not making a dent in the adulation of those MAGA devotees.
Although MAGA folks will hate the America they get if Trump and the Republicans have a free hand in remaking America into the version the conservatives and evangelicals visualize, MAGAs delight in being Trump-lovers and owning the libs. They look so happy when anyone interviews them on TV clutching Trump to their middle-America bosoms. I may have to read all those 942 pages in the training manual for conservatives, the same conservatives who want to replace our civil servants with their loyal followers in 2025. I wonder what they will be teaching their future employees about their duties in government if 50,000 current government employees are too woke to work. Nothing seems to ignite any serious opposition to this new version of America.
When interviewed MAGAs always tout the Trump economy. Why? It wasn't that great. He left us with a huge deficit. Trump's policies abandoned any American who makes less than $400,000 a year. His tax cuts increased the deficit. Why didn't he know what to do about the pandemic? You would think he would have adjusted his economy to account for the expenses of the health crisis. Trump just wanted to pretend that COVID was no big deal. Everyone knew but still seemed surprised that a nation's economy cannot be run like a business.
MAGA folks love that their tax dollars will not be used to fund programs for Americans whose circumstances force them into low-wage, unskilled jobs, or they do not want to see any tax dollars spent on providing opportunities that offer off-ramps to poverty. MAGAs think that even Americans who are discriminated against, who live with a metaphorical boot on their neck, should be labeled as feckless and not worthy of attention. They do not seem to have the foresight to see what happens to societies that abandon their poor and disabled. They know that homelessness is rising in our cities but perhaps they don't live in cities where this is happening. Rather than blame policy they blame the city or the urbanites who live there. Under the economic policies that conservatives have planned for the next Republican administration, there will be more homeless people, poverty will become worse for the unemployed or the low-wage workers and if AI takes blue-collar jobs many MAGAs may find themselves out of work without a safety net. What will any of our neighborhoods feel like then?
We who are not MAGAs know that all areas of the nation are affected by drug addiction and that there is not enough agreement about what will work to end this affliction. Close the southern border they repeat like a mantra. If closing the southern border were easy it would already be done. If we were smart, we would try to be good neighbors and try to see these folks as gifts who will start at the bottom doing tasks most Americans won't do. Most of those coming across the southern border are Christians which should please the evangelicals among the MAGAs who feel that Americans are "losing their religion". Without the Affordable Care Act which conservatives want to kill and without social security which we are told is almost bankrupt already will MAGAs be as happy with their new sink-or-swim world? Why would the average American love tariffs? They don't do a thing for me.
Trump wants the old economy back - what does he always say - "drill, baby, drill." He acts like he likes birds and warns that windmills are killing them. Skyscrapers have also killed plenty of birds but Trump loves "towers." Trump backs a fossil fuel economy - "use it all up while you've got it." Why isn't he troubled by "hot spots" and mega-storms, food scarcity, and droughts? I guess if Mar-a-Lago gets too hot he just heads to Bedminster. Does he take his MAGAs with him? He rarely even goes to visit them if he is president, and a tornado takes out their homes.
It is shocking to me that this man, this insurrectionist, this incoherent fascist could be taken to the hearts of so many Americans. It was astonishing to see that so many Americans were delighted to hear that helping people, giving them a hand up, is harmful to them and turns them into dependents forever, so Americans must "be cruel to be kind." They have been happy to embrace the new Christian message that set aside the admonition to treat the less fortunate well, which sends a message that if you are well-off this means you are a superior human being and God loves you more than anyone less fortunate. Many of us have been even more than shocked to learn that people look upon Trump as "Orange Jesus."
This election looks like it could take us to all the places that I did not want to believe we would go. And I don't know who to blame except the MAGAs. Many Americans have been writing, speaking, and podcasting their hearts out, like a foreboding Greek chorus. I fear we are about to live in Conservative America in all its glory. It will be the ruin of our American democracy/republic and we may not make it back. But as any good MAGA will say, "Have a blessed day."