Just something MAGA-people seem to have a hard time with sometimes. Probably not as much when Americans are speaking to themselves, but as a non-American, sometimes it’s challenging to get “those people” to admit that there is indeed anything wrong with the US. As in they won’t accept a single criticism, and will loudly proclaim “America is the greatest country in the world”, while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, which for me pretty explicitly means America isn’t great, if it has to be made to be such again.
Welcome to the paradoxical nature of fascism the greatest and most powerful country on earth is at risk from a secret cabal of highly intelligent, highly organized criminals led by the dementia riddled criminal mastermind Joe Biden crime family who’s actually being being puppeted by AOC and is a mouthpiece for Obama, and who are sending lazy, job stealing, taxpayer benefit robbing Mexicans to bring hard core drugs like marijuana and fentanyl across the wide open red carpeted border so that they can vote for democrats in elections that are also rigged in favor of democrats because that…
So yeah you get the point, fascists don’t make any sense to anyone who stops and thinks for more than a minute. Their logic is non-existent, they parrot whatever talking point they hear on their propaganda network of choice is convenient.
They must all be so miserable all the time
Miserable in a Sysiphean way. Like their existence is absolutely isolating and alone, but they get to be secure in their convictions by cutting ties to people that think differently from them or harassing others long enough they just leave them, further proving them right that everyone else is either duped by the conspiracy of overwhelmingly strong weaklings or is in on the conspiracy.
To be fair any extreme tends to be miserable.
Managing Partner of my company came in today. He sounds just like this every time he talks politic. Every time I say “The Earth works on rather straightforward logic for us, correct?”
“Yes”
“What’s more straight forward? That Trump staged this entire shooting to “play dirty” with the democrats and expose them? Or that some depressed young adult searched for any person of fame near him to suicide by cop?”
It always locks him up for a second saying “No, no, no, you see- shifts position as brain attempts to boot”
Another good brain reboot comment to make would be “if Republicans actually trained with their guns and the shooter was a better shot, trump would have been dead.”
They’re trapped between breaking the facade of Republicans having all the guns and going to win the civil war because they know their guns, and breaking unquestioning loyalty to dear leader Trump.
Yeah, don’t I know it.
Fucking annoying.
And when you actually point out their contradictions, they start having tantrums like toddlers. Unfortunately these toddlers are adults and as such quite a bit more dangerous than actual toddlers.
Would you rather fight 1 adult-sized MAGA jerkosaurus or…
The tantrums are just them admitting that they don’t have a real response.
Yeah, yeah it is.
But what do you do when someone in a position of power over you has a tantrum and refuses to use common sense…?
in a position of power over you has a tantrum and refuses to use common sense…?
Oh lord. This is not how you approach thinking about anything remotely like this if you actually want to change someone’s beliefs.
Belittling them and their beliefs, no matter how deserving, is nearly guaranteed to just piss them off and not do much more. It doesn’t read as an attack on misguided beliefs, it will read to them as an attack on them and their own decision making/reasoning skills. Because you probably are internally thinking “what the fuck is wrong with you” and it probably come through to them loud and clear.
If it’s your boss, stop fucking talking politics at work. Not tomorrow, not now, yesterday. No, you don’t get a pass for correcting the abysmally wrong. Just shut the fuck up about politics and keep your head down. Work is for making a paycheck so you can survive, not for making an idealogical stand. If they keep trying to talk politics to you and won’t allow you to disengage, start looking for a new job. HR is not your friend and are most likely going to side with the more senior position, or at least will let it slip that you complained to them, making your job even more hell. Just cut your losses. Either get your shit together to be able to work around it, get a number of people together to all lodge the same complaint so it’s more costly for HR to ignore you than it is for them to, or find someplace else asap.
If it’s your parents or family, just avoid the fucking subject for as long as you are reliant on them for anything. If they won’t shut up about it, learn to “grey rock” or just smile and nod. Redirect. Change the subject. Do anything except try to meet them head on and “win” the argument. That’s not how conversations work in regards to convincing people of things, especially when there are strong feelings attached.
It is not your job to correct people’s misguided beliefs. The people who argue that it’s your duty to speak up whenever and wherever you can… they live a life that is either significantly divorced from reality, insulated by living surrounded entirely with like minded individuals, they are slowly alienating those around them, or they are only so outspoken online. Your first priority is to just get by, hopefully avoiding unneeded conflict in your daily life.
And before all the people come out of the fucking woodwork with extreme hypotheticals… Yes, if your boss or parent is literally using racial slurs, that changes things. If things are more extreme than some asshole just blabbing out their dumbass beliefs, re-evaluate. All I’ve said is under the assumption that the shit you’re complaining about is mainly just people talking stupid shit.
People don’t work like some sort of fucking debate club where you can beat them over the head with facts, logic, and gotchas until they submit and see things your way. It’s a very addictive thing to convince yourself that they do, but they overwhelmingly don’t
If it’s your boss, stop fucking talking politics at work.
I live in a country where I people can’t be fired over “talking politics” at work. A boss isn’t too much in a position of power, depending on the job. This is because here in Finland, we have regulation.
I’m an adult. Why would my family be in a “position of power” over me?
“It is not your job to correct people’s misguided beliefs”
So if a cop broke your rights because they got mad at you for making them have a tantrum and use an excuse to arrest you, you’d allow them and apologize and not do anything about it, since “it’s not your job” to correct the cops misguided belief that they were in the right to arrest you over simply having offended them?
If you’re in politics, and you’re in a session and the speaker has a tantrum, what do you do?
If you’re an American a few years ago, your president was Donald Trump, a drooling, diaper-wearing senior who can’t parse sentences together and refuses to believe in well established facts. That’s a deluded, misguided, and willfully ignorant man as the president, which I would consider a position of power (over the people in his nation, not me, as again, not American.)
You wouldn’t think it’s perhaps in the interest of greater society to not have people like that in positions of power?
People don’t work like some sort of fucking debate club
Oh gee whiz, kind internet-stranger, thanks for the words of wisdom, I never would’ve thought that otherwise.
Or perhaps I’m making conversation here about this subject you think you know so well.
Have a gander: https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/
“The higher, pretentious form of stupidity stands only too often in crass opposition to [its] honorable form. It is not so much lack of intelligence as failure of intelligence, for the reason that it presumes to accomplishments to which it has no right … The stupidity this addresses is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself. … [S]ince the ‘higher stupidity’ consists not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings … We may say that the reversal of a spiritual sickness must entail a spiritual cure.”
That’s a lot of words to ignore critical pieces of what I said.
I live in a country where I people can’t be fired over “talking politics” at work.
Awesome! Given this was a post about MAGA, I assumed you were from the US, dealing with people also in the US.
I’m an adult. Why would my family be in a “position of power” over me?
I don’t know you, and there’s more and more posts on lemmy each day from high schoolers and young adults still living with their folks. I very clearly said that was advice for if you were still reliant on them, so… just ignore that section I guess?
So if a cop broke…
If you’re in politics…
Read on to the end please, I tried to be clear that I was giving advice for a situation where someone is just dealing with annoying talk and poor political beliefs from a boss or a family member they may be dependent on. I’m seeing more and more of those posts lately.
I’m not interested in discussing extreme hypotheticals, as I hoped that it might not need to be made explicit that advice meant for one context does not apply outside of it.
If you’re an American… [orange man bad]… You wouldn’t think it’s perhaps in the interest of greater society to not have people like that in positions of power?
Absolutely.
Oh gee whiz, kind internet-stranger, thanks for the words of wisdom, I never would’ve thought that otherwise.
Oh, I’m very sorry that I mistook your comment worded as though it was looking for advice as though you might be looking for advice. Again, I don’t know you, who you are, or what you do and don’t know.
Have a gander… [stoicism stuff]
That’s a nice piece there, and effectively what I was trying to get at in a far less pretentious manner than that text. Can’t logic people out of beliefs that have a significant emotional component.
And because of that, I feel it’s best to not waste effort if there isn’t a pressing need. No single person is going to argue down enough Trump voters to impact US election results, so that effort is likely best applied elsewhere, rather than introducing unproductive conflict into your life.
Awesome! Given this was a post about MAGA, I assumed you were from the US
That’s understandable. Personally, I don’t comment on posts without reading them, but I understand the attitudes towards literacy are a bit different in the States. If you had, you’d have probably noticed the “as a non-American”, bit, wouldn’t you?
Read on to the end please
That’s a bit ironic, innit?
That’s a nice piece there
Oh as if you even browsed it, let alone read it.
Can’t logic people out of beliefs that have a significant emotional component.
Not what the point of the article, which again, you’d have known had you read it.
No single person is going to argue down enough Trump voters to impact US election results
Well, we’ll ignore the fact that the US doesn’t have direct presidential elections and pretend as if the popular vote was a de-facto direct vote. If it was, then even by affecting one voter, you could be affecting the outcome of the election. To say there’s literally no impact is disingenuous, because politics is all about, well, politics. To say that “what are you gonna achieve by talking about it”, in the context of politicians, is… rather silly.
Apathy is the greatest tool of the oppressor, and they’ve certainly gotten you. You should definitely have a look at this. https://medium.com/@annalloydc/how-fascism-and-apathy-are-linked-017c8a7b1e3d (And I use have “a look”/“gander at”, because I knew you wouldn’t be bothered to spend a few minutes reading them, but hoped I’d be wrong.)
Apathy can result in a lack of political engagement and interest, creating fertile ground for the rise of fascism. Corrupt people in political office love it when young people don’t vote, and become apathetic, because it increases their chances of winning.
“You can’t argue the opposition anyway since they’re idiots, so why bother”
Well, because while most idiots will stay idiots, not all do. Yes it’s a vanishingly small percentage you’ll experience doing it mid-debate, but to think that having discourse has no effect even if some MAGAts stayed magats despite the discourse, then you’re being apathetic, which is putting the US (and the world) at more risk of fascism. So… please stop.
It is from small streams that big rivers rise.
WHAT ABOUT THE CLINTONS?!?!
This one is easy to explain away… If you’re ranking countries on greatness, then you put America at the top. But then unfortunate things happen, like minority presidents and gay marriage and solar panels, so that makes America not quite as great, but still far better than everyone else. But if we could roll back the clock, maybe to some time before women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement, that would make America return to the extra high standard that it’s capable of achieving.
I think an important related aspect is that the ‘unfortunate things’ that happen make it only “not quite as great” but are definitely destined to make it “the worst”. That way there’s a sense of urgency that you wouldn’t otherwise get from just “not quite as awesome as it could be, but still the best”
One of the funny things about the whole MAGA thing is that they’re clamoring for a return to something like the 50s or 60s… but only the shitty parts. These idiots seem to be under the impression that everything will be better once we re-implement institutionalized racism and sexism, but ignore the fact that the “better times” they want to bring back ALSO included like a 90% tax rate for the wealthy, and pensions for, like, literally everyone (or more accurately, every white male). But of course, that’s communist talk, and we can’t have that!
These idiots seem to be under the impression that everything will be better once we re-implement institutionalized racism and sexism
I’m slowly getting convinced that they would enjoy that reality more, that’s how much of a sadist some can be.
One of the funny things about the whole MAGA thing is that they’re clamoring for a return to something like the 50s or 60s… but *only
[So the exact opposite of the people in this skit?] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc6VP7Qp-Y8)
The way I’ve always interpreted it is far more abstract, and probably far more kind, than most people.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that there’s some fucked up shit happening not only in the world, but in the USA. Most people realize and accept this to differing degrees. Most people will disagree on the specifics of what, even if they might have significant overlap with others.
One thing also almost universally believed is that “things didn’t suck so much when I was younger”. The reality is that it’s a combination of nostalgia, the fact that you were less aware of everything when you were younger, and you had less to worry about when you were younger. But most people can’t shake the feeling that things were better when (insert something from earlier in their life).
To me, MAGA preys on that nostalgia for simpler times. It doesn’t define what was so great before, when it was so great, or what specifically has changed. Only that something has changed to diminish the greatness, and we have to change it back.
People may not like me saying this, but it has a lot of parallels to Obama’s campaign slogan, change. It doesn’t define what’s wrong, it doesn’t define what needs to change, but again it taps into that generally shared concept that things would just be better if something changed. People fill in the blanks themselves with whatever allows them to connect with the concept. The main difference is that “change” as a slogan is not tied to the concept of “going back” to make things better, leaving conceptual room for forward movement.
Ultimately the individual gives both sayings meaning and emotional content themselves, even if they may not be able to explicitly parse it back out to specifics.
One thing also almost universally believed is that “things didn’t suck so much when I was younger”. The reality is that it’s a combination of nostalgia, the fact that you were less aware of everything when you were younger, and you had less to worry about when you were younger. But most people can’t shake the feeling that things were better when (insert something from earlier in their life).
The funny thing is that for millennials, we actually know when things turned and got shittier than they had been earlier in our lives. With 9/11, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the war on terror, we got to see our society start to circle the drain in real time as we grew into the world.
“America was great once… before the libruls took it over! Things were so much better when I was young… not like this weird shit now around me… it’s not ME who’s grown older…! …it is YOU who’ve gone weird! Why should I change! I refuse to change! That would require… making an effort! I refuse to change! Damn libruls! Damn libruuuuulssss…!!!”
Your observation is astute. I kinda want to make red hats that just say COGNITIVE DISSONANCE on them
I kinda want to make red hats that just say COGNITIVE DISSONANCE on them
That would be way more apt and it would calm down my inner autist screaming at the paradox.
This is a really good idea though. And would kinda reclaim red hats.
I think MAGA is an unspoken admission that there are a lot of easily swayed people in this country that have been failed by the existing system.
Even if deep down they know it is all BS they can’t allow themselves to acknowledge it because that would mean having to face the reality that they don’t have much of a future to look forward to for various reasons.
A lot of people can’t take that mentally and keep going day to day, so they just go along with the crazy because it seems easier to go with the delusion.
You got it man.
Admitting that their whole identities were built around bullshit is just too much.
I genuinely believe that for people like that, MDMA (or other serotonergic substance) assisted therapy would help people like that a great deal. These are the “powertools” of psychology currently, and I genuinely think they’re necessary for people like that.
Sometimes — albeit rarely — you see ex-maga people or ex-some other right wing lunatic people who have genuinely come to their senses, but they are exceedingly rare.
Are you really trying to make sense of cultish gibberish?
Sort of. I’m trying to make sense of the mentality needed to believe in shit like that. Or to pretend to believe it.
It’s genuinely baffling.
https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/
“The higher, pretentious form of stupidity stands only too often in crass opposition to [its] honorable form. It is not so much lack of intelligence as failure of intelligence, for the reason that it presumes to accomplishments to which it has no right … The stupidity this addresses is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself. … [S]ince the ‘higher stupidity’ consists not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings … We may say that the reversal of a spiritual sickness must entail a spiritual cure.”
They want America to be more racist, sexist, and or transphobic
I’d say that’s a pretty definite “and”, no need for the “or”.
Not every bigot fits every box though!
There’s a lot of diversity of hate.
Yes… that’s exactly what it means. America is in bad shape domestically and internationally.
(Paraphrasing an old comment from the Bad Site)
“Make America Great” would be a fine, if bland slogan. Everybody wants that. It’s not controversial, but also not distinctive in any way.
“Make America Greater than Ever” would be better. The implication being that we can do better, and be better. But they intentionally went with something else.
It seems to me, and as you have identified, that the “Again” is the key part of the phrase that drives the whole narrative. Here’s the kicker: by nearly every objective measure, the country is safer, richer, more equal, and has a better overall quality of life today than at any point in history[1]. The only thing that has significantly declined over the last 40-50 years is “the percentage of total societal influence held by straight white men.”
“Again” is the dog-whistle of misogyny, racism, and homophobia, wrapped up in the plausible deniability of nostalgia for an objectively worse time.
[1] There may be some room for disagreements here, primarily because of the first Trump administration and the pandemic years causing some backsliding, but this was especially true in 2016 when the slogan first really appeared, which is when it should be judged.
America was pretty great before trump came along and ruined it.
Kinda? LOL
Seriously though, it was pretty great for most of my life. Not without issues, but still a great place to live.
America has never been a great country. Granted, there are times when it was great for a very small and very select group of people, but for the vast majority of Americans, America has never been great. It’s always been a shit hole nation that makes promises it knows it had no intention of keeping. If you don’t believe me, just ask the First Nations what America thought of promises.
Even our founding fathers were pieces of dog shit. The amount of slavers who pretended like they were doing anything more than personally enriching themselves or playing “where is the slave” (or as Washington liked to call it, musical slaves) is funny as hell in all the wrong ways considering the whole ‘all men are created equal’ thing.
It’s a dog whistle for “Make slavery legal again” and “Woman into the kitchen”
There’s the context of Trump riding the wave of right wing rage with his claims Obama was born in Kenya. Shortly after he paid a bunch of hourly extras to form a crowd as he descended a golden escalator to launch his 2016 campaign claiming Mexico was sending rapists, and a cadre of WWE fans, white supremacists, credulous evangelicals, and reprogrammable meatbags who tuned into Fox News decided politics was interesting again.
For most of these people if you start asking which years America was great versus not great they might admit some of the Bush years were sub-par (because of those OTHER people who hate freedom), and preach about the good ol’ days when we drank water from a hose. Where everybody treated each other right, unless you were a person of color in a sundown town. They will retcon any facts you present and claim you are cancelling them and it’s no fair remembering the past, as they have been conditioned to believe faith is a virtue. The Bible’s “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” fucked up my brain for too many years of my life. I wish it was easier to fix this, but a useful quote I remember when I break off most discussions with my dad is,
If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic? -Sam Harris
I thought MAGA was coined when he was demonizing immigrants and campaigning on building a wall and making Mexico pay for it.
It was a racists dog whistle from the very beginning. It meant expelling the
JewsMexicans to make America White again. After 8 years of a Black president.Did people really miss this? This was like… the main focus of his campaign.
