The MAGA movement needs to grow up
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2024 7:47 pm
I'm not writing this for the die hard communists on this board, but perhaps this might go down a little smoother for some of you. I think this guy does have a point. Do any of you agree with this?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 8f26&ei=28The Make America Great Again movement has surpassed every conceivable expectation since its inception nine short years ago. It devoured the Republican Party and swept into the presidency in 2016, which enabled it to transform the Supreme Court, pass the largest tax reform legislation in history, and enact the most successful foreign policy of any administration this century by fundamentally reimagining U.S. trade policy and reasserting military deterrence. It maintains a massive and enthusiastic base of support — it is, arguably, the nation’s most potent political faction. Poll after poll now shows voters prefer the MAGA platform to the Democratic alternative by overwhelming margins. Its leader and founder, former President Donald Trump, is favored to retake the White House in November.
And yet, the MAGA movement has not achieved anything like its true electoral potential — and it likely never will. That’s because it refuses to grow up. The movement, like its woke counterpart, is animated primarily by its addiction to grievance and attention-seeking behavior, not by an authentic desire to implement its political vision. MAGA isn’t concerned with winning elections — despite the surprising popularity of its policies, it hasn’t notched a signature electoral victory since 2016 — and even less with forging the coalitions necessary to govern. Instead, the movement seems content to simmer in paranoia and resentment.
So it wasn’t the least bit odd to see Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) show up at last Tuesday’s State of the Union address looking like a human clickbait article for a website that sells a dozen different brands of “patriot vitamins.” Her “outfit,” as it were, seemed especially designed to repel non-MAGA voters from joining the cause. From her cheap red MAGA baseball cap — and no, it isn’t “elitist” to pine for the days when elected leaders dressed like adults inside the Capitol — to her many loud buttons, to her T-shirt adorned with a slogan plucked directly from wokedom circa 2020, “Say Her Name,” in reference to Laken Riley, Greene put on a clinic of unsightliness. Her on-camera manner, which can be described as ballistic, veiny, and vaguely clammy, put an exclamation on her efforts to drive every last independent voter into President Joe Biden's rapidly withering arms.
And she’s not some MAGA maverick gone rogue. Instead, “Marjorie Taylor-Greene,” as she calls herself in a lame attempt to mimic her woke congressional counterpart, is following the Trump script to the letter. At a rally last week, for instance, Trump called the press in attendance “criminals” to the delight of his clapping seals. Of course, “corrupt hacks” would have done the job just fine — but no, that wouldn’t have been dark and weird enough. For the MAGA mob, the whiff of violence is the spice of life. It’s a wonder that one of the cracked-out uber-patriots in attendance didn’t attempt to apprehend a cameraman.
Comedian Bill Maher has wisely counseled Democrats to eschew the “Fox News fallacy,” which states that anything said on the conservative news channel is automatically wrong. In this vein, I’d encourage the GOP to avoid the “Joe Scarborough fallacy.” Even that pompous establishment twit has a point now and then.
Earlier in the rally, there was a bizarre recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in honor of the Jan. 6 “hostages.” It is indeed true that many of the rioters who smashed windows and climbed the walls of the Capitol, convinced that they were B-movie action stars, have been punished more harshly than if they were Democratic-friendly rioters. But “hostages”? Such hyperbole begs for violence. Those in prison for the Jan. 6 riot aren’t “hostages” — they’re fools.
Of course, none of this idiocy would be necessary if winning elections and implementing a political vision were the ultimate goal. MAGA only needs to be normal in order to prevail at the ballot box. The incumbent party is despised, and MAGA's policy agenda is widely embraced, as it should be: It is the height of normalcy to desire a secure border, to prefer excellence to equity in education, to be skeptical of globalism, to challenge a news media that is as corrupt as it is incompetent, and to be wary of unnecessary foreign conflicts — or to at least demand a coherent strategy for conflicts we can’t avoid. The case for MAGA policy is an easy one to make. But persistent MAGA immaturity and malevolence make it impossible.
I, for one, wouldn't trust the MAGA mob to run a gas station, let alone a government, because they appear so bent on lighting matches. And I won't until they show some signs of growing up.