I know it sounds like libstuff from 2016, but recently I have been buying into the idea that being a Maga is a legitimate mental illness.
It is.
I understand it's pretty dangerous in a country with only 2 political parties to declare 50% of them invalid and insane.
It's more like 25-30%, and they are insane. 25%~ish vote Republican. 25%ish vote Democrat. 5% vote based on which way the wind is blowing and if they feel like the current party is doing okay or not. The rest just don't vote.
The older I get, the more I understand that some conservative ideas actually make sense in context.
That context is being afraid of sky daddy, wanting to kill anyone with dark skin or some complex mental gymnastics that ultimately unravel to loveual repression.
Conservative "Ideas" otherwise make no sense at all unless you speak tinfoil hat and Smeagol.
But the way Magas have fully committed their entire selves to constantly being pissed off, paranoid and ready to throw down at any second, the way they flatly deny cold reality in front of them while accusing their mortal enemies of just the same, the way they refuse to accept that what is obviously, by all accounts, according to everyone else on Earth, the absolute sleaziest and most corrupt man alive is anything less than the Christian Messiah, and the full hog, day-to-day devotion to hating literally to death anyone who isn't themselves over petty bullstuff like the current status of their rooster or lack there of. How can I interpret this as anything other than some kind of madness?
This is because they are in a cult. A cult of cowards no less. It is often you will find MAGA chuds too afraid to even acknowledge in public they are right-wing or hold any such ideas to their chest. They know it's wrong, they know it's immoral and evil. So when push comes to shove they'll play a game of pretending to be an "average person" with "totally normal views" right before they go on some rant about migrants or women.
They're run by fear and a perpetual panic. If at any moment that stops a massive part of their structure is lost. The other is the head of the cult, which most interpret to be Annoying Orange. Annoying Orange is the head of one of the cults, but there are countless of them. Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Tim Pool, Charlie Kirk, Nick Fuentes, Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), Asmongold, I could go on and on. These are also Cult heads, they just have happened to remain in line with Annoying Orange until recently. Now it's been a back and forth Chaos where they will swing with or against Annoying Orange on issues. If you see doubt sewn on the idea that this is a Cult, keep this in mind. Not every MAGA Cultist is explicitly in Annoying Orange's camp, many of them were just on Annoying Orange's side because their preferred talking head cult leader was on Annoying Orange's side.
They pump out non-stop fear, panic and hate every single day. Consistent schedule, every day. If there is no news, they make news. It's that simple. And there are so many who are desperate, already mentally broken and when someone comes along to tell them they're not in any way wrong, it's not their fault they are in the situation that they've ended up in... it resonates.
All powerful lies are grafted on a sprouting seed of truth. It usually isn't their fault. Their poverty, their loneliness. At this scale, it cannot be the fault of the individual. So the Far Right take advantage of this, because they know their Liberal opposition would never say this. Liberalism is fundamentally at odds with ever blaming loneliness or poverty on anyone but the individual. And we do not have anyone who would speak the whole truth in any position of power, they're either dead or afraid to speak. The only people speaking a partial truth are the Right.
And so their hook is cast, and the fish do bite. Desperation breeds the best dictatorships. The reason so many in the US seem to fall face first into insanity like essential oils and anti-vaxx stuff is because our healthcare system has been so broken for so long. Academics and Scientific research is not nearly as profitable as posing as academia and scientific research, this is how that trust is broken. The people who we say are the experts are usually tilted by money. And so, the system IS broken. The Right screams the system is broken, and therefore it must be fundamentally wrong. And since the system is actually broken, the people begin to believe the only option is to replace it with the opposites as prescribed by their cult leaders. Science must be replaced with Faith, Social Programs must be removed under the guise of Privatization, public infrastructure must be owned by companies and individuals.
The greatest irony of it all, is that those who are at the root of the corruption of the government, are the ones offering themselves as the solution to government.
And unless someone can speak loud enough, to enough people, an alternative that is not Conservative or Liberal, then the right will continue their massacre of everything decent.
But... what if someone already has done that?
Annoying Orange blew through my county the other day. I can't say I know why. He was within 20 miles of my house and I didn't even know about it until 2 hours after he was gone. The only reason I did was because I drove through the town where he visited and it was completely deserted. No traffic anywhere, no one out. Just exactly two cop cars idling at every intersection for maybe 10 blocks. I thought maybe a terrorist threat happened until I saw the giant neon sign that said "WELCOME PRESIDENT Annoying Orange." The venue happens to be very near a discrete, rural airport which normally only deals in cargo, not passengers. They got him in to speak at a casino in some podunk mountain town for some god-forsaken reason then got him out again in under 2 hours. What is the point of these events???
Someone has spoken loud enough, to enough people, on an alternative that is not Conservative or Liberal. And it has begun to sweep throughout the Democratic party. Republicans have been losing seats that were thought forever safe. This is a tour of desperation to try and protect against future losses.
During 2024 the idea of focusing on affordability and prices was absurd to the Democratic party. Their precious charts on the GDP said the economy was good, they couldn't comprehend why so many people felt the economy was bad. So they decided to ignore it, at their own peril.
In 2024. Republicans swept, and they swept hard. And still the old and tired Democrats ignored warning after warning. Their Hubris was beyond unfounded at this point, they had compiled Loss after Loss. Then NYC happened. The Democrat establishment backed Andrew Cuomo over Zohran Mamdani. They backed Cuomo in the Primary, and then they refused to endorse Mamdani as the official Democratic Candidate until mere days before the election.
They had unwittingly created the underdog in their own party, and it has transcended the name and become the idea. Affordability. Affordability is a massive issue, it was so hard to give it a name for so long. Anytime anyone came in to speak of their issues they were told they were "Communists" or "Socialists" or some other fear mongering title. But when push comes to shove, if you try to tell people they're a tree because they want things to be better. They will start saying they're a tree. And so it was, NYC elected a Mayor who openly described himself as a Socialist.
Hunger and homelessness are not issues you can make disappear with a campaign against Trans people or Mexicans. Affordability is not a Democrat Hoax, despite how much dear leader wants it to be.
