It hasn’t been easy to make sense of the whole MAGA movement. While Trump ran as a Republican and the movement is heavily associated with the right, that framing oversimplifies things.
It's rigid thinkers (authoritarian ideologues), left and right, who disregard the rule of law and threaten the civil and personal freedoms advanced by classical liberals. On the differences between populism and democracy see: "The Psychology of Populism: Tribal Challenges to Liberal Democracy" ( https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2021/08/op183.pdf ), published by the Centre for Independent Studies (self-described as a classical liberal think tank). The author looks at the differences from the perspectives of liberal democracy and evolutionary psychology. The author, Joseph P. Forgas, is a Hungarian-Australian social psychologist.
Here is an excerpt (minus references):
"Populism, although difficult to define, is marked by several common features. It is a collectivist conflict ideology that contrasts the people with an allegedly ‘elite’ class of oppressors, idealises the people as an unquestionable reference group, considers its own ideology to be morally absolute, and advocates a hierarchical, autocratic system that repudiates individual freedoms and minority rights. Populism is thus an archaic, collectivist tribal ideology that typically — but not exclusively — emphasises the primacy of the group over the individual.
The common juxtaposition of populism and democracy can be confusing, since both terms mean rule by the people (demos in Greek, and populus in Latin — although populist leaders are labelled demagogues). Over centuries, democratic systems invented increasingly precise and refined techniques to translate popular will into limited executive power. Populism in contrast remains a simplistic manichean [good vs. evil] credo emphasising the moral superiority of the ‘people’ against its enemies. Because populism invokes an absolutist and intolerant concept of majoritarian popular sovereignty, it challenges liberal democracy by rejecting such constraining principles as the rule of law, minority rights, checks and balances, and the separation of powers.
Populist narratives are psychologically attractive because — unlike liberal democracy — they offer simplicity, cognitive certainty, moral absolutism, positive tribal identity, and utopistic ideation. Democracy and populism also differ in their assumptions about human nature and our fundamental cognitive abilities. Unlike democracy, which assumes a universal human ability for more-or-less dispassionate, rational decision-making, populism exploits our ancient evolutionary tendency for tribalism. It was only after centuries of horrific religious bloodshed in Europe that the revolutionary ideology of the Enlightenment first challenged the primacy of absolute group identification and replaced it with the philosophy of the free and independent individual; inaugurating probably the most successful civilisation yet in human history."
There once was a political party that combined into one coalition captains of industry who loved tariffs, religious fanatics, and immigrant bashers. But once it won the Civil War, and the religious fanatics ended slavery, they didn’t know what to do with themselves until they found a new religious cause. Today’s Republican Party is nothing new. It was yesterday’s Republican Party that was new.
Populism these days at least is a tool for oligarchs and authoritarians to subvert threats of class war by pitting one group (MAGAs) against another (“Marxists” aka people who actually care about each other).
The most useful formulation that I’ve come across is “brokenism”.
Individuals who feel that the status quo is broken have rallied to Trump. That view transcends class (Trump’s blue collar working class base versus the tech overlords of Silicon Valley) or political party (RFK, Gabbard, Nicole Shanahan). It also ignores the old political boundaries of race or even nationality—Milei and Bukele were essentially elected on reform platforms.
In short, people tend to have impaired thinking where ideological positions and political groups they oppose are concerned. You often let contempt show through when talking about Trump or MAGA and seem to have paid little real attention to the points you were responding to (such as by mistakenly mixing Musk in with the intellectuals when I clearly categorized him as an elite billionaire). I know you are intelligent and quite capable of reading comprehension, which means that you presumably either skimmed my comment without giving it much thought before responding or have ideological priors that distorted your perception of what I wrote. In either case, it suggests that you give similarly shallow and/or biased attention to other statements by MAGA members and tend to allow your emotional dislike to compromise your assessment of what was said and what was meant. This tendency undermines your credibility on the topic. I can see the significant difference between your writing and reasoning quality in posts on other topics versus posts infected by your dislike of something or someone. I'm subscribed here precisely because your articles are more often good than not. It's generally worth my time to read you. So, I'm starting by addressing the way you appear to reason about MAGA because we are both largely making judgement calls here, so factors that affect the accuracy of that judgement are relevant.
For another example, I actually agree that the MAGA movement does not "embrace" intellectualism. I didn't claim that it does. It's not a movement of intellectuals, by intellectuals, or for intellectuals, it's not oriented for or against intellectuals as a class, profession, or practice at all. I said that it isn't ANTI-intellectual, though many of its opponents make that claim. Those are not quite the same things. MAGA does have a decent number of intellectuals within it and guiding it and even more outside it that are nonetheless respected and referenced (like JBP), but they aren't accorded the sort of moral pedestal and "Trust the Experts" deference the Brahmin Left gives to theirs, nor the contempt and hostility plainly obvious from actual anti-intellectual movements.
MAGA is, as I said, more properly understood as an anti clericalism movement. It's open to listening to public intellectuals and other elites, adopting their ideas or not, but fiercely guards the individual right to challenge and disagree with intellectuals and experts on the facts, without the regard for credentialism and position so common on the Brahmin Left. Put another way, the Authoritarian Left tend to regard Appeal to Authority as a valid argument whereas MAGA tends to regard it as a Fallacy, preferring demonstrated real world results over more theoretical claims to competence and not giving even the elites and intellectuals that it respects and likes and agrees with any greater moral authority or presumed personal virtue than it does the common laborer or any other ordinary citizen. MAGA generally treats intelligence and expertise as a practical virtue, not a moral one.
So I'll start here. First of all, I do appreciate the thoughtful response, and I will admit that when I responded I did so in a rush and did not read all that carefully. So that was an error on my part, and I will own that.
That said, the idea that I'm somehow responding from an ideological position is incorrect. I absolutely have an opinion on Trump's actions and MAGA, but it is based on facts and observations, not some ideological perspective—which, in my case, isn't even particularly set.
The idea that my skimming your comment means that all my attention is shallow or biased is false. I've spent a great deal of time communicating with MAGA in very good faith. I've also observed their behavior and claims, and ultimately arrived at a conclusion that's different from yours.
My dislike isn't arbitrary and should not be dismissed as such.
And while as a whole I have come to a particularly conclusion, it doesn't mean that I lump all individuals in one camp.
I think we agree that it isn't a movement of intellectuals. I'm not sure if it's anti-intellectual specifically, but I'd need more examples of intellectuals within it (who are not populists like a Peterson has become) to establish if it has many intellectuals within. Though it's not something I care that much about. Intellectuals, as I've said, aren't necessarily superior.
As for your other claims, it depends on who you talk to. Some are more open-minded and pro individual rights, and a lot have shown that they are not in practice, despite paying lip service to that notion. I'll agree that MAGA is mostly anti-authoritarian (as far as appeals to authority). One aspect of that which concerns me is that the derision of "experts" is so great that as a whole it's extremely dismissive of the fact that there's indeed expertise that earned over time, which is not replaceable by a good search by some random person—because complex topics do require people who have dedicated their lives to their study. Where I agree with MAGAs is that individuals shouldn't just blindly defer to those "experts" -- but there should also be a humility in understanding that there's much that we don't understand. We should better in evaluating those with competence, but not dismiss them.
If MAGA is anti-authoritarian then why do they support and deify Trump? MAGA is anti intellectual because the great mass of MAGA, especially in the South and Midwest, are not college educated professionals.
They have limited life experience outside their
communities. This doesn’t make them bad people. But it partially explains why in many cases, they cannot
understand the cultural and social changes that changed the United States in the 1960’s. Racial equality. The rise of women’s rights in the workplace and social structures. Upward mobility due to higher education. A more informed worldview due to travel, both domestic and foreign. These characteristics are generalized and of course not indicative of all MAGA.
You do have a very educated MAGA which is an essential component of the modern Republican Party. They have adopted Trumpism because it serves their ends.
Look to the voting data of the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections if you truly wish to understand much of MAGA.
I appreciate your acknowledgement. It's often hard for people to admit when skimming and dashing off answers in a hurry impaired the quality of a response. I know it is for me when I do it. I also give full credit that you make an effort to engage in good faith with people with whom you have disagreements and even dislike.
I didn't claim that your dislike is arbitrary or attempt to dismiss it as such. I don't address that at all because I don't consider it relevant. The study results regarding logical reasoning make no distinction regarding WHY people are opposed to a position or group. It is sufficient for my point that you do in fact dislike them, that that dislike is evident in your writing about them, and that same writing does not display any use of structured analytics to minimize the influence of that emotion on your reasoning regarding them. That undermines your credibility on that topic. I would have more confidence in your writing on MAGA and Trump if you either transparently used neutral analytics that I can double check or displayed greater emotional distance and objectivity from the subject to avoid appearance of bias.
I can't directly judge whether your good faith engagements with other MAGA exhibited the same behavior as your initial response to me, though as I said, it seems to me a pattern that your writing and reasoning quality is usually higher on topics not related to MAGA or Trump, which to me suggests bias against MAGA/Trump as the most likely explanation.
I'll admit it's not the only possibility. MAGA is a large movement, so you and I may have significant differences in the sub-samples of it that we interact with. It's also possible that I'm the one suffering degraded reasoning for some reason. Regardless, I don't feel that the relatively minor scope of our disagreement at this time warrants any long dispute in the comments. So I'm satisfied with having said my thoughts and leaving it here. Besides, I value hearing from people with differing opinions as a check on my own judgements, so in a sense it's not really in my interests to convince you to agree with me about MAGA, only to encourage you to steelman your arguments a bit more carefully regarding them, which seems like something you may be willing to do. Agree to disagree for now?
MAGA is interesting in a lot of ways. It gets branded as "anti-elite" and "anti-intellectual" a lot, but I don't think that's quite correct given how comfortable it has been welcoming billionaires like Elon Musk and quoting public intellectuals like Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson. It seems to me to be more properly defined as having a strong strain of anti clericalism to it. It's a hard rejection of the Brahmin Left and their woke religion coding any questioning of the narrative, disagreement on the facts, or difference of policy preferences as a MORAL wrong rather than routine political dispute.
MAGA is not so much concerned with tearing down economic imbalances like leftist class warfare, but rather more focused on upending the cultural status hierarchy that has enshrined a secular priesthood of bureaucrats to rule with impunity over the working class and small business owner. It's a revolution against the managerial class and administrative deep state. It's a (mostly) bloodless overthrow of the aristocracy. That does make for a sometimes uncomfortable union between Lefty Labor and Conservative Capitalism, but they do indeed have shared interests under economic nationalism.
It's turbulent times and all sorts of odd things are getting dredged up from the sediment of history to be looked upon anew and tested once more against modern circumstances. Powerful, messy, and likely long overdue.
I listed Musk as a billionaire (elite), not as an intellectual.
Sowell disagree with the tariffs, true, by he is frequently respected and quoted by MAGA nonetheless. I consider it a credit to the movement, not a demerit, that MAGA is a fairly broad tent and inclusive of differing views on many individual policies.
I doubt that you consider yourself to be MAGA, do you? I am one. I assure you that Peterson gets quoted within MAGA at least as often for his 10 Rules for Life and deep thoughts on philosophy as anything he says related to public policy or populism.
Your dismissive tone does you no favors in regards to credibility on the topic. You clearly dislike MAGA and it comes through in much of what you write.
Let me ask you this: why does my potential dislike of MAGA lower my credibility? Should you not be contending with the arguments themselves, which you're of course welcome to disagree with.
Second, I'm sorry if you found my tone to be dismissive. Though the tone was largely because I was typing quickly from my phone, in some ways, it was. Because on the whole, I did not find the movement to embrace intellectualism. It doesn't mean that there aren't some smart people who support it, or some who are even intellectuals (btw, to me, intellectualism isn't something necessarily superior), but as a whole...no, that's not what I've observed. And I spend a LOT of time, daily engaging with MAGA supporters in good faith.
Yesterday well-known journalist/author Fareed Zakaria used the word "Maoist" to describe the US administration, and there's little doubt - hate it or love it - that there's a new radical and even revolutionary wind blowing in Washington: 'As I've written before, President Trump and "tech bro Maoists" have launched a cultural revolution in America.'
Now that the Republicans are so firmly the populist party, I often think about how much low-hanging fruit there is for the Democrats if they would just pivot to the center a bit more on economic and cultural issues.
I read yesterday that Rand Paul pointed out how the Republicans lost more than 50% of their seats in Congress each of the last two times they applied tariffs, in the 1930s and the 1890s. Democrats should be able to clean up big time in 2026 and 2028, but they will be greatly helped if they can jettison some of the unpopular cultural positions in particular.
I think we will be fortunate to avert a very deep recession if these tariffs are held in place at this level for even a year, let alone longer.
Even if we wanted to locate all these supply chains into the US, a very dubious goal, it would take most of 10 years to do this at best. It took 80 years to gradually and organically globalize supply-chains. Opening new factories takes many years due to a host of factors. There is no way to replace these goods on a dime, yet tariffs go in on a dime. There’s no way to avoid prices surging dramatically. This will cause a further consumer pullback in spending. I sure as hell will cut my spending if items become 25-50% more expensive. Businesses will then enter a cash-preservation mode, avoiding long-term bets and investments in research, avoiding the risk-taking that leads to innovation which leads to productivity improvements, the only way to get richer in any reasonable post-1930s economics. This will all cascade through the entire economy as everyone has less money to spend and becomes poorer.
I actually went out yesterday to the Apple Store to buy 2 new iPhones and a new iPad 6 months earlier than I was planning to because I don’t see how Apple can possibly avoid raising their prices with iPhones being made in 50 countries or something like that, and what with how Apple has already been holding their basic phone at $800 since before 2020. That dam is going to break soon and it made sense to upgrade early. It was not easy to rush out and spend that much time at that store as my toddler was pulling phones off of displays and actually pulled the fire alarm in the store, though it thankfully did not go off. 😓
Trump fundamentally does not understand that cooperation is beneficial for all, perhaps especially in economic matters. I’m not sure what more we should expect given how transactionally he runs his personal life as well. But think about how many capable people we have in the US who could be president, yet we’ve chosen this man, “the most flawed individual I have ever met” as John Kelly said. Sigh. I would kill for a Mark Carney figure as leader here.
The only thing that would set us up more to be steering toward major war would be if we started threatening to take over other countries by force. Oh wait…
I think the focus on what's "left wing" or "right wing" is often missing that there is no "left wing" or "right wing"; it's all an illusion. And an illusion that ramps up toxic conflict by making people thing there's some grand left/right one-philosophy-versus-another conflict going on, when there's not. People interested in that should read The Myth of Left and Right. I interviewed the author of that book to talk about these ideas: https://behavior-podcast.com/is-the-left-right-spectrum-concept-a-matrix-like-illusion/
There is very little about MAGA that I would say is traditionally conservative. I know too many who were once liberals who also vote MAGA, too. It's a strange conglomeration of political voodoo.
The difference between two extreme political thoughts tend to end up being very similar.
Trump will not make America great, no one trusts in trump regime. I just hope that his voters actually look at what he is
doing and how he is slowly deconstructing freedom and democracy in US. But since trump has most of the Media especially twitter and Facebook
to spread his insults and lies.
It is Trump and all of his team are the elite, the Billionaires that have turned America into a Plutocracy.
Just look at Musk and how he treats people. Are the not well-off trump voters aware that Trump would
not even give them the time of day.
It's rigid thinkers (authoritarian ideologues), left and right, who disregard the rule of law and threaten the civil and personal freedoms advanced by classical liberals. On the differences between populism and democracy see: "The Psychology of Populism: Tribal Challenges to Liberal Democracy" ( https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2021/08/op183.pdf ), published by the Centre for Independent Studies (self-described as a classical liberal think tank). The author looks at the differences from the perspectives of liberal democracy and evolutionary psychology. The author, Joseph P. Forgas, is a Hungarian-Australian social psychologist.
Here is an excerpt (minus references):
"Populism, although difficult to define, is marked by several common features. It is a collectivist conflict ideology that contrasts the people with an allegedly ‘elite’ class of oppressors, idealises the people as an unquestionable reference group, considers its own ideology to be morally absolute, and advocates a hierarchical, autocratic system that repudiates individual freedoms and minority rights. Populism is thus an archaic, collectivist tribal ideology that typically — but not exclusively — emphasises the primacy of the group over the individual.
The common juxtaposition of populism and democracy can be confusing, since both terms mean rule by the people (demos in Greek, and populus in Latin — although populist leaders are labelled demagogues). Over centuries, democratic systems invented increasingly precise and refined techniques to translate popular will into limited executive power. Populism in contrast remains a simplistic manichean [good vs. evil] credo emphasising the moral superiority of the ‘people’ against its enemies. Because populism invokes an absolutist and intolerant concept of majoritarian popular sovereignty, it challenges liberal democracy by rejecting such constraining principles as the rule of law, minority rights, checks and balances, and the separation of powers.
Populist narratives are psychologically attractive because — unlike liberal democracy — they offer simplicity, cognitive certainty, moral absolutism, positive tribal identity, and utopistic ideation. Democracy and populism also differ in their assumptions about human nature and our fundamental cognitive abilities. Unlike democracy, which assumes a universal human ability for more-or-less dispassionate, rational decision-making, populism exploits our ancient evolutionary tendency for tribalism. It was only after centuries of horrific religious bloodshed in Europe that the revolutionary ideology of the Enlightenment first challenged the primacy of absolute group identification and replaced it with the philosophy of the free and independent individual; inaugurating probably the most successful civilisation yet in human history."
The no1 question, if we are so bloody wonderful, why did so many vote for Trump.
If you can't answer that, then yes, you are missing something. And I am pissed off at you for helping him get elected.
There once was a political party that combined into one coalition captains of industry who loved tariffs, religious fanatics, and immigrant bashers. But once it won the Civil War, and the religious fanatics ended slavery, they didn’t know what to do with themselves until they found a new religious cause. Today’s Republican Party is nothing new. It was yesterday’s Republican Party that was new.
MAGA is the worst of all worlds
Populism these days at least is a tool for oligarchs and authoritarians to subvert threats of class war by pitting one group (MAGAs) against another (“Marxists” aka people who actually care about each other).
The most useful formulation that I’ve come across is “brokenism”.
Individuals who feel that the status quo is broken have rallied to Trump. That view transcends class (Trump’s blue collar working class base versus the tech overlords of Silicon Valley) or political party (RFK, Gabbard, Nicole Shanahan). It also ignores the old political boundaries of race or even nationality—Milei and Bukele were essentially elected on reform platforms.
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-everything-is-broken-administration
Let me answer, because partisan bias demonstrably degrades logical thinking in the absence of structured analytic reasoning. For example, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13546783.2022.2038268#abstract
In short, people tend to have impaired thinking where ideological positions and political groups they oppose are concerned. You often let contempt show through when talking about Trump or MAGA and seem to have paid little real attention to the points you were responding to (such as by mistakenly mixing Musk in with the intellectuals when I clearly categorized him as an elite billionaire). I know you are intelligent and quite capable of reading comprehension, which means that you presumably either skimmed my comment without giving it much thought before responding or have ideological priors that distorted your perception of what I wrote. In either case, it suggests that you give similarly shallow and/or biased attention to other statements by MAGA members and tend to allow your emotional dislike to compromise your assessment of what was said and what was meant. This tendency undermines your credibility on the topic. I can see the significant difference between your writing and reasoning quality in posts on other topics versus posts infected by your dislike of something or someone. I'm subscribed here precisely because your articles are more often good than not. It's generally worth my time to read you. So, I'm starting by addressing the way you appear to reason about MAGA because we are both largely making judgement calls here, so factors that affect the accuracy of that judgement are relevant.
For another example, I actually agree that the MAGA movement does not "embrace" intellectualism. I didn't claim that it does. It's not a movement of intellectuals, by intellectuals, or for intellectuals, it's not oriented for or against intellectuals as a class, profession, or practice at all. I said that it isn't ANTI-intellectual, though many of its opponents make that claim. Those are not quite the same things. MAGA does have a decent number of intellectuals within it and guiding it and even more outside it that are nonetheless respected and referenced (like JBP), but they aren't accorded the sort of moral pedestal and "Trust the Experts" deference the Brahmin Left gives to theirs, nor the contempt and hostility plainly obvious from actual anti-intellectual movements.
MAGA is, as I said, more properly understood as an anti clericalism movement. It's open to listening to public intellectuals and other elites, adopting their ideas or not, but fiercely guards the individual right to challenge and disagree with intellectuals and experts on the facts, without the regard for credentialism and position so common on the Brahmin Left. Put another way, the Authoritarian Left tend to regard Appeal to Authority as a valid argument whereas MAGA tends to regard it as a Fallacy, preferring demonstrated real world results over more theoretical claims to competence and not giving even the elites and intellectuals that it respects and likes and agrees with any greater moral authority or presumed personal virtue than it does the common laborer or any other ordinary citizen. MAGA generally treats intelligence and expertise as a practical virtue, not a moral one.
So I'll start here. First of all, I do appreciate the thoughtful response, and I will admit that when I responded I did so in a rush and did not read all that carefully. So that was an error on my part, and I will own that.
That said, the idea that I'm somehow responding from an ideological position is incorrect. I absolutely have an opinion on Trump's actions and MAGA, but it is based on facts and observations, not some ideological perspective—which, in my case, isn't even particularly set.
The idea that my skimming your comment means that all my attention is shallow or biased is false. I've spent a great deal of time communicating with MAGA in very good faith. I've also observed their behavior and claims, and ultimately arrived at a conclusion that's different from yours.
My dislike isn't arbitrary and should not be dismissed as such.
And while as a whole I have come to a particularly conclusion, it doesn't mean that I lump all individuals in one camp.
I think we agree that it isn't a movement of intellectuals. I'm not sure if it's anti-intellectual specifically, but I'd need more examples of intellectuals within it (who are not populists like a Peterson has become) to establish if it has many intellectuals within. Though it's not something I care that much about. Intellectuals, as I've said, aren't necessarily superior.
As for your other claims, it depends on who you talk to. Some are more open-minded and pro individual rights, and a lot have shown that they are not in practice, despite paying lip service to that notion. I'll agree that MAGA is mostly anti-authoritarian (as far as appeals to authority). One aspect of that which concerns me is that the derision of "experts" is so great that as a whole it's extremely dismissive of the fact that there's indeed expertise that earned over time, which is not replaceable by a good search by some random person—because complex topics do require people who have dedicated their lives to their study. Where I agree with MAGAs is that individuals shouldn't just blindly defer to those "experts" -- but there should also be a humility in understanding that there's much that we don't understand. We should better in evaluating those with competence, but not dismiss them.
If MAGA is anti-authoritarian then why do they support and deify Trump? MAGA is anti intellectual because the great mass of MAGA, especially in the South and Midwest, are not college educated professionals.
They have limited life experience outside their
communities. This doesn’t make them bad people. But it partially explains why in many cases, they cannot
understand the cultural and social changes that changed the United States in the 1960’s. Racial equality. The rise of women’s rights in the workplace and social structures. Upward mobility due to higher education. A more informed worldview due to travel, both domestic and foreign. These characteristics are generalized and of course not indicative of all MAGA.
You do have a very educated MAGA which is an essential component of the modern Republican Party. They have adopted Trumpism because it serves their ends.
Look to the voting data of the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections if you truly wish to understand much of MAGA.
I appreciate your acknowledgement. It's often hard for people to admit when skimming and dashing off answers in a hurry impaired the quality of a response. I know it is for me when I do it. I also give full credit that you make an effort to engage in good faith with people with whom you have disagreements and even dislike.
I didn't claim that your dislike is arbitrary or attempt to dismiss it as such. I don't address that at all because I don't consider it relevant. The study results regarding logical reasoning make no distinction regarding WHY people are opposed to a position or group. It is sufficient for my point that you do in fact dislike them, that that dislike is evident in your writing about them, and that same writing does not display any use of structured analytics to minimize the influence of that emotion on your reasoning regarding them. That undermines your credibility on that topic. I would have more confidence in your writing on MAGA and Trump if you either transparently used neutral analytics that I can double check or displayed greater emotional distance and objectivity from the subject to avoid appearance of bias.
I can't directly judge whether your good faith engagements with other MAGA exhibited the same behavior as your initial response to me, though as I said, it seems to me a pattern that your writing and reasoning quality is usually higher on topics not related to MAGA or Trump, which to me suggests bias against MAGA/Trump as the most likely explanation.
I'll admit it's not the only possibility. MAGA is a large movement, so you and I may have significant differences in the sub-samples of it that we interact with. It's also possible that I'm the one suffering degraded reasoning for some reason. Regardless, I don't feel that the relatively minor scope of our disagreement at this time warrants any long dispute in the comments. So I'm satisfied with having said my thoughts and leaving it here. Besides, I value hearing from people with differing opinions as a check on my own judgements, so in a sense it's not really in my interests to convince you to agree with me about MAGA, only to encourage you to steelman your arguments a bit more carefully regarding them, which seems like something you may be willing to do. Agree to disagree for now?
Tend to agree. (Unintentional) outcomes of some of the Trump policies are what Bernie would have hoped for.
And Shawn Fain, who called Trump a scab at the DNC, publicly praised the tariffs as what organized labor has wanted for a long time.
It's not a coincidence that many Bernie supporters voted for Trump in the first round.
To the extent that MAGA is left leaning
It seems to be in word only as the deeds are mostly bait and switch
What is happening is the dismantling of our federal system of government and its' elites in favor of an oligarchy and its' whims
MAGA is interesting in a lot of ways. It gets branded as "anti-elite" and "anti-intellectual" a lot, but I don't think that's quite correct given how comfortable it has been welcoming billionaires like Elon Musk and quoting public intellectuals like Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson. It seems to me to be more properly defined as having a strong strain of anti clericalism to it. It's a hard rejection of the Brahmin Left and their woke religion coding any questioning of the narrative, disagreement on the facts, or difference of policy preferences as a MORAL wrong rather than routine political dispute.
MAGA is not so much concerned with tearing down economic imbalances like leftist class warfare, but rather more focused on upending the cultural status hierarchy that has enshrined a secular priesthood of bureaucrats to rule with impunity over the working class and small business owner. It's a revolution against the managerial class and administrative deep state. It's a (mostly) bloodless overthrow of the aristocracy. That does make for a sometimes uncomfortable union between Lefty Labor and Conservative Capitalism, but they do indeed have shared interests under economic nationalism.
It's turbulent times and all sorts of odd things are getting dredged up from the sediment of history to be looked upon anew and tested once more against modern circumstances. Powerful, messy, and likely long overdue.
It's hardly intellectual. Musk is not an intellectual. He's smart and skilled in some areas, but not intellectual.
Sowell has little in common with MAGA and would be highly unlikely to support Trump's tariffs.
And Peterson is only popular with MAGA for his populist statements, not for his university lectures, which are deeper.
I listed Musk as a billionaire (elite), not as an intellectual.
Sowell disagree with the tariffs, true, by he is frequently respected and quoted by MAGA nonetheless. I consider it a credit to the movement, not a demerit, that MAGA is a fairly broad tent and inclusive of differing views on many individual policies.
I doubt that you consider yourself to be MAGA, do you? I am one. I assure you that Peterson gets quoted within MAGA at least as often for his 10 Rules for Life and deep thoughts on philosophy as anything he says related to public policy or populism.
Your dismissive tone does you no favors in regards to credibility on the topic. You clearly dislike MAGA and it comes through in much of what you write.
Let me ask you this: why does my potential dislike of MAGA lower my credibility? Should you not be contending with the arguments themselves, which you're of course welcome to disagree with.
Second, I'm sorry if you found my tone to be dismissive. Though the tone was largely because I was typing quickly from my phone, in some ways, it was. Because on the whole, I did not find the movement to embrace intellectualism. It doesn't mean that there aren't some smart people who support it, or some who are even intellectuals (btw, to me, intellectualism isn't something necessarily superior), but as a whole...no, that's not what I've observed. And I spend a LOT of time, daily engaging with MAGA supporters in good faith.
MAGA isn't so much "right wing" as it is "stupid wing".
Yesterday well-known journalist/author Fareed Zakaria used the word "Maoist" to describe the US administration, and there's little doubt - hate it or love it - that there's a new radical and even revolutionary wind blowing in Washington: 'As I've written before, President Trump and "tech bro Maoists" have launched a cultural revolution in America.'
Very strong and succinct piece!
Now that the Republicans are so firmly the populist party, I often think about how much low-hanging fruit there is for the Democrats if they would just pivot to the center a bit more on economic and cultural issues.
I read yesterday that Rand Paul pointed out how the Republicans lost more than 50% of their seats in Congress each of the last two times they applied tariffs, in the 1930s and the 1890s. Democrats should be able to clean up big time in 2026 and 2028, but they will be greatly helped if they can jettison some of the unpopular cultural positions in particular.
Especially considering how unlikely it is that we are to see a positive economic outcome, at least in the short term.
I think we will be fortunate to avert a very deep recession if these tariffs are held in place at this level for even a year, let alone longer.
Even if we wanted to locate all these supply chains into the US, a very dubious goal, it would take most of 10 years to do this at best. It took 80 years to gradually and organically globalize supply-chains. Opening new factories takes many years due to a host of factors. There is no way to replace these goods on a dime, yet tariffs go in on a dime. There’s no way to avoid prices surging dramatically. This will cause a further consumer pullback in spending. I sure as hell will cut my spending if items become 25-50% more expensive. Businesses will then enter a cash-preservation mode, avoiding long-term bets and investments in research, avoiding the risk-taking that leads to innovation which leads to productivity improvements, the only way to get richer in any reasonable post-1930s economics. This will all cascade through the entire economy as everyone has less money to spend and becomes poorer.
I actually went out yesterday to the Apple Store to buy 2 new iPhones and a new iPad 6 months earlier than I was planning to because I don’t see how Apple can possibly avoid raising their prices with iPhones being made in 50 countries or something like that, and what with how Apple has already been holding their basic phone at $800 since before 2020. That dam is going to break soon and it made sense to upgrade early. It was not easy to rush out and spend that much time at that store as my toddler was pulling phones off of displays and actually pulled the fire alarm in the store, though it thankfully did not go off. 😓
Trump fundamentally does not understand that cooperation is beneficial for all, perhaps especially in economic matters. I’m not sure what more we should expect given how transactionally he runs his personal life as well. But think about how many capable people we have in the US who could be president, yet we’ve chosen this man, “the most flawed individual I have ever met” as John Kelly said. Sigh. I would kill for a Mark Carney figure as leader here.
The only thing that would set us up more to be steering toward major war would be if we started threatening to take over other countries by force. Oh wait…
I think the focus on what's "left wing" or "right wing" is often missing that there is no "left wing" or "right wing"; it's all an illusion. And an illusion that ramps up toxic conflict by making people thing there's some grand left/right one-philosophy-versus-another conflict going on, when there's not. People interested in that should read The Myth of Left and Right. I interviewed the author of that book to talk about these ideas: https://behavior-podcast.com/is-the-left-right-spectrum-concept-a-matrix-like-illusion/
There is very little about MAGA that I would say is traditionally conservative. I know too many who were once liberals who also vote MAGA, too. It's a strange conglomeration of political voodoo.
Very much so