Don't avert your eyes: the internal contradictions within MAGA are revealing themselves like never before

What a long title for what will probably be a short post. I think it is no secret that what we think of as MAGA in the US is a movement composed of demographic groups who ordinarily would never be allies. One of the huge challenges among the oligarchs who have their own fortunes to grow - while fleecing the rest of us of course - is how to package themselves as working class nationalist populists when what they really want is to keep the neoliberal gravy train flowing. It is quite the balancing act, and one likely doomed to failure. Elon Musk is our poster boy of an oligarch elite who truly believes he is better than the rabble he amplifies on his social media app. And now that he has his candidate about to occupy the White House, he's let the mask slip. Remember, the white nationalists in the US don't want immigrants at all. They're pretty clear about that. Musk's and Ramaswamy's argument that Americans are poorly educated and not capable of handling the jobs that the immigrants from India and elsewhere perform for their respective corporations. Since they're Trump's key to cosplaying a billionaire, Trump is not going to alienate the likes of Musk. That may not be sitting well with the base.  Of course what will the base do about it? Vote Democratic going forward? Not on your life. Take their toys and go home come the next few election cycles (assuming free and fair elections are still a possibility - and let's assume that for the moment)? That is a possibility. As long as the neoliberal era can be extended so that Musk and his peers can make sure that wealth is transferred from those of us who work for a living to their offshore bank accounts, the demands of the MAGA base do not matter. Another set of saviors will have left them behind, flying 30,000 to 40,000 feet above their dying cities and towns in their private jets to their villas in exotic locations. That's the stark reality. Your gasoline and egg prices will still be determined by market forces beyond your control, somehow those immigrants you hate so much will somehow still be in your community (mass deportations be damned), and if you complain, you won't get any sympathy on X-Twitter or Truth Social. Just the way it is. The MAGAts got played - again. Too bad the rest of us have to suffer along with them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The GOP's authoritarian turn - more graphics from V-Dem

Image
I wanted to follow up on a previous post about the authoritarian turn that the GOP has taken this century. Both of the following graphics I obtained from a working paper (no longer online, regrettably) by V-Dem in 2020. I seriously doubt the trends have changed. The Guardian had a good summary of the findings. For our purposes I am using the term authoritarianism and illiberalism as synonyms.  This first figure shows two dimensions: economic left/right and illiberalism (authoritarianism). Both dimensions start at 0 and end at 1. A party espousing economic conservatism would appear closer to 1 on the economic dimension. A party espousing authoritarian approach to governing will be closer to 1 on the Illiberalism dimension. Notice that Venezuela's ruling party actually scores a perfect 1 on illiberalism. The GOP appears in orange print and the Democratic Party appears in blue print. Other governing political parties appear in gray, and we get a baseline idea of where autocracies te...
Read more

Ozymandias

When I think of our current era and all of its dictators and would-be dictators, there is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that rings as true now as it did when he wrote it:     I met a traveller from an antique land,     Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone     Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,     Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,     And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,     Tell that its sculptor well those passions read     Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,     The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;     And on the pedestal, these words appear:     My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;     Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!     Nothing beside remains. Round the decay     Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and ...
Read more

The COVID-19 pandemic: Five years later

Five years ago today, the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. By then it was pretty obvious what was headed our way. After all, it was hard not to doom scroll during the first couple months of 2020 as Covid-19 spread from Wuhan to the rest of China and shortly thereafter Europe and the rest of the planet. The data we were seeing on reputable news sites and health sites were already frightening. Obviously that only continued to get worse for a while.  My life at the very start of 2020 was really no different from the previous year aside from the increasingly grim news from across the Pacific Ocean. I attended events held by a couple local organizations I belong to (including my county's Democratic Party meetings each month), went out once a week with my wife for a meal together, taught my classes and attended or led committee meetings where I work, did the usual grocery shopping, and otherwise tried to carve out some time to walk along some of the riverfront trails (which typic...
Read more