“What MAGA all agree” is a fool’s errand, like most universal consensus questions.
But here are a few high points:
- Some genuinely believe the rhetoric about how Trans/brown/non-Christian/etc. people are destroying the American way of life, jobs, safety, sports, the economy, and whatever they get pointed to at any given moment.
- Some are outright racists, bullies, and fascists, and absolutely love what Trump is doing right now.
- Many are just frustrated with their lot in life, and are willing to try anything (except personal action) to improve things.
- Many more feel like they’re just a few paycheques or a small windfall away from living the rich life like Musk et al. As about 90% of lottery winners can attest, winning $10M or so doesn’t make you obscenely wealthy, and it’s still pretty easy to piss it all away. They have no concept of the difference between “rich enough to not work” and “rich enough to own multiple superyachts.”
Most importantly, a large subset of this last group overlaps with the others, and believe that they only way for them to get ahead is by climbing over the bodies of others.
They will 100% sacrifice their own happiness and rights if they know it’s hurting people who live their lives is ways they don’t like.
This isn’t an exaggeration.
They literally want bloodshed and the world to burn
This is conservative vengeance
And everyone is going to suffer from it
I realized this during the 2016 election. People always say they are voting against their own interests, but their only real interest is to spite someone else. Hurting other people is a win, for them.
I’m going to go on a less extreme take. They’ve been told from childhood they live in the land of opportunity, yet they work in dead end jobs or working fields.
They see money flying away every paycheck they live week to week on while being pumped propaganda (that people in suburbs and urban areas don’t see) that shows people who look different from them getting gov’t housing and getting programs funded with their tax dollars.
The same party they now demonize supports ridiculous looking gay parades that show a mentality they don’t understand, so they begin to hate. They wake up morning after morning in the same place with no change, and they stew and stew and stew.
So now they basically give up and see a hyper-masculine wannabe saying all the things against those who are different, and the long encrusted anger starts spewing out.
Most of the comments here are ignorant and hate filled against the wrong people. It’s not the MAGA supporters that did this, it’s the system. We need to stop polarizing ourselves with hatred and point the finger at those truly responsible. Not the poor (literallly) voters who are so dejected and living in decay that they just don’t give a rats ass anymore.
The more you hate the other side, the less you see the truth. The goal is to make you hate them. The goal is to make them hate you. You can’t define an entire person in a paragraph.
I think MAGA represents to Republicans what progressives like Bernie and AOC represent to Democrats. Republicans were able to reimagine their party into a form that isn’t just going to follow the status quo that, like you said, has led to a stagnant existence for average Americans over the last 50+ years. And stagnant is probably a nice way of putting it, since buying power has essentially disappeared, on top of wages barely moving.
So Trump comes in, he says drain the swamp, and you hear that to mean the whole machine, everyone who, for the last 50 years (and some folks have been involved in that government for a good chunk of that 50 years, just perpetuating that status quo) has allowed the rich to get richer at the expense of the working middle class.
And so you toss on your blinders. You’re not necessarily a bigot, but you believe social issues are a distraction from actual problems (i.e., ones that affect you directly), and you vote in a way that you hope will better your life. It’s hard to blame someone, especially someone just exhausted from grinding through their shitty life, for thinking about themselves. It’s not the right way to think, but I get it.
And so you toss on your blinders. You’re not necessarily a bigot, but you believe social issues are a distraction from actual problems
Tbf, identity politics are 100% used as a smokescreen
You won’t hear me disagree.
This is pretty much it, in my view.
Americans need to watch the Estonian-Georgian movie Tangerines before demonizing “the other side”. Besides an anti-war movie, it’s also about a movie about how two sworn enemies realize the other is also human.
A good clip to watch if you’re not interested in watching the entire (relatively short) film
A MAGA I know told me this is all worth it because he doesn’t want his son to know gay people exist and wants revenge on the people who told him he can’t say “Merry Christmas” anymore…
So straw man arguments and a misunderstanding of sexuality.
Oooh, big words there fella. What are you, educated or something?
Check r/conservative and you get a fair idea.
I do. There is no information there i couldn’t find written on a bathroom wall.
That makes sense, it’s probably the same people writing both messages.
They think all of the gov’ment was corrupt and bad, so they’re cheering for the destruction of all gov’ment.
they want to be openly fascist
OP is asking an interesting and important question. While I don’t claim it as definitive, there was an insightful article written in 2016 that attempted to address the question head on: How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind
Already some of you have gotten angry, feeling this gut-level revulsion at any attempt to excuse or even understand these people. After all, they’re hardly people, right? Aren’t they just a mass of ignorant, rageful, crude, cursing, spitting subhumans?
It feels good to dismiss people, to mock them, to write them off as deplorables. But you might as well take time to try to understand them, because I’m telling you, they’ll still be around long after Trump is gone.
This is basically Lemmy’s whole MO LMAO 🤣
If it were actually country vs city why donald trump?
Bro did you even read the article
I’m failing to see where it refutes my argument.
Remember that they accurately believed the DNC were horrible. They stopped Hillary. They stopped Biden and Harris. Good for them? Kinda, not really though.
… We know Trump is worse. Far worse. But they saw a legitimate threat, a group of people who were not going to make their lives better, and they took some kind of action to stop them.
And then lots of bigotry. Can’t forget that.
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Revenge. 🤷♂️
I’ve wondered this exact question. How does any of this evil fascist shit benefit the average Trump voter.
Trade tariffs just make things like durable goods more expensive.
Deporting migrant workers is going to make food more expensive.
Killing all references to Trans people doesn’t do anything but hurt the Trans folks.
Killing all references to climate change is just going to eventually destroy the whole planet (well just our existence on it… the planet will be fine eventually).
Killing the Dept of Education is just going to make us all dumber.
DOGE is just a meme dept whose soul purpose seems to be to let Elon enact his revenge.
RFK2 gets in charge of all the countries medicine and vaccines and bans it all just in time for Pandemic 2, Electric Boogaloo.
So basically things get a lot more expensive, the rich get richer, lots of people die, and the world becomes a generally more shitty place. Yay!!! Let’s Go Brandon!!
It’s not like these people are open to reasoned debate. The only answer is there is something broken inside and fuck if I know what.
They say it all the time. You just have to hear, and more important, listen to them
About 70% of reps think the government deficit is too high. About 45% of Dems think the same. Both have been, interestingly, increasing yearly.
Widespread, 60% of voting age adults in USA think the government spends too much “on shit nobody cares about”. My quote.
Because people want the spending on medical care, education, science, social security, helping the needed and so on. Polling shows it.
But this has to come at a cost.
Dems want a bigger state apparatus behind all this.
Reps want an efficient, smaller one behind this.
Interesting as well , a lot of people, like 40%, want more spend in security forces.
… no one believes trump will deliver a smaller government. If they do they haven’t been paying attention.
This use to just be a libertarian thing, too. So, you can say they are united in this cause but could I really ask any MAGA person and this is what they will tell me?