What does MAGA actually mean? (1 Viewer)

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    bird

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    I have been thinking about this question and have come to some conclusions as well as some observations and opinions.

    We have talked about “voting against their interests”. This implies two things. The first is that people are stupid as to what their interests are and we have to tell them in order to bring them into the light. This is false. People have multiple interests and those interests are arranged via belief systems in their minds, both consciously and subconsciously. The second is that what we deem as most important in terms of interests may or may not be important to others.

    We have seen in the last election that “the economy” is far too complex a system to make simplistic generalizations such as “why can’t people see that the economy is good?”. The complexity of the interactions makes statements like this null and void. The reality is, as noted by others, that economic measures do not measure the impacts and shifts on a personal level. This particularly applies to the personal level of those who are not wealthy. Wealth is insulated from the vagaries of movements within the economy. The left failed and has failed to note this for the last 60+ years. Since the oil shock of the ‘70’s and the rise of Reagan agitprop about the economy has papered over the shifts caused by globalization, financialization and technology/automation. These three forces much more than anything else have impacted labor on a scale never seen before. While creative destruction in the past eliminated certain jobs/tasks performed by human labor the technologies that emerged created far larger opportunities for employment. This is no longer the case.

    Beyond these comments we can note that racism, misogyny and homo-, transphobia also played a large role. This can be seen by shifts that seem to be in opposition in terms of voting. Large percentages of Latino and Black males voted for Trump due, imo, do the unwillingness to accept either a woman holding the office of president and/or deity prohibitions regarding sex. That DEI is supposed to help advance the economic fortunes of those same voters was deemed far less important.

    MAGA is, imo, a smokescreen and political economic plan to transfer large amounts of wealth upward by using emotional stimuli that appeals to various groups in various ways. It appeals to White men because DEI will be eliminated. It appeals to some minority males because they are cis-gender. It appeals to some males because women should not hold positions of authority. In other words it makes excellent use of “the other” depending upon the audience. Trump himself is incapable of creating a deeply thought out philosophy on such a scale. This is evidenced by his defeat in 2020. Imo, enough political economy philosophers saw their opportunity to cause a tectonic shift in American society and knew that Trump would be useful for this. They also knew that the Republican Party would happily go along with the concepts. In point of opinion, it would behoove us to track the money as well as the contacts between Republican politicians and various well known and less well known think tanks and individuals/groups dedicated to imposing a two-tier political economy. Knowing your enemy is important.

    While I have quasi-seriously talked about “Bird’s theorem” it is much more likely that stupidity and irrationality go hand in hand.

    I welcome your comments.
     
    To me, it's exactly what Trump is doing now. This was his vision. He has been open about it even before he jumped into politics. The Oprah interview from the 90's for example. He's saying the exact things he's saying now and was applauded for it. Now, he is a nazi and a dictator to the left. The democratic party is in a tailspin. All of the woke agenda hasn't panned out for them. They have zero leadership. The panic has set in for democrats. I like the direction we're in. We shall see if it pans out.
    Define woke or drink a big glass of shut the bleep up.
     
    MAGA has it's roots in the Jim Crow era South, but it came to more prominence when Obama was elected president. Remember the "Tea Party?" The only reason it came about was because how dare a black man get elected president in our righteous christian nation?
    The Republicans had the black vote until Goldwater made a fool of himself.
     
    To me, it's exactly what Trump is doing now. This was his vision. He has been open about it even before he jumped into politics. The Oprah interview from the 90's for example. He's saying the exact things he's saying now and was applauded for it. Now, he is a nazi and a dictator to the left. The democratic party is in a tailspin. All of the woke agenda hasn't panned out for them. They have zero leadership. The panic has set in for democrats. I like the direction we're in. We shall see if it pans out.

    PBS covered this topic. The only thing consistent is the tariffs. Well, the racism as well. Trump's catalyst was getting laughed at by a black president. I don't know why MAGA denies that the tea party, and Trump come from having a black guy look down on them.

     
    PBS covered this topic. The only thing consistent is the tariffs. Well, the racism as well. Trump's catalyst was getting laughed at by a black president. I don't know why MAGA denies that the tea party, and Trump come from having a black guy look down on them.


    Ted Cruz was the beginning of why I left the republican party. The sooner he and his racist followers are gone the
    better we all will be.
     
    To me, it's exactly what Trump is doing now. This was his vision. He has been open about it even before he jumped into politics. The Oprah interview from the 90's for example. He's saying the exact things he's saying now and was applauded for it. Now, he is a nazi and a dictator to the left. The democratic party is in a tailspin. All of the woke agenda hasn't panned out for them. They have zero leadership. The panic has set in for democrats. I like the direction we're in. We shall see if it pans out.
    you seriously have no clue what woke means do you? You are part of the problem and not the solution. I hate to be so brutal, but it's
    the truth


    I'll save you research. Woke means being aware of you surroundings. You are not and it's obvious.
     
    When I saw someone wearing a confederate flag t shirt or driving a pickup truck with a confederate bumper sticker (always a pickup truck, never saw a sticker on a Honda Accord) I would make some assumptions about that person/driver

    I make the same assumptions when I see the red MAGA hat
     
    MAGA means not understanding basic biology and being schooled publicly by a judge

     
    MAGA has it's roots in the Jim Crow era South, but it came to more prominence when Obama was elected president. Remember the "Tea Party?" The only reason it came about was because how dare a black man get elected president in our righteous christian nation?
    I just wrote this in another thread (and have said it before here) about the GOP not impeaching Trump

    I agree and to add to this, I've said before that I believe 100% that the GOP wanted Trump gone but they didn't want to be the reason he was gone, that's why they didn't vote to impeach

    They said stuff like "he's not president anymore", "let the courts handle any punishment"

    But I also believe 100% that they believed 100% that the MAGA base would move on and back a new horse and they could champion the legacy of Donald Trump while simultaneously moving past him

    During all the charges they could rile the base up with calls of "Lawfare!" and "Partisan witch hunt!" but the base was supposed to pick someone else

    Not what happened

    I believe this is more or less exactly what happened with the creation of the Tea Party

    GOP absolutely saw the backlash against Obama and what was driving it and happily fanned those flames, which got out of control

    What was supposed to happen was the base was supposed to use that anger, outrage and hatred to flood the voting booths and return the GOP to power

    The voting booths were flooded.........during the primaries.

    What was not supposed to happen was these people were not supposed to run their own candidates not supposed to pass their crazy bills and policies

    We've been paying for that miscalculation ever since

    The horse just isn't out of the barn the barn is on fire and the herd stampeded out
     
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    Dear MAGA Americans,
    I was a devoted member of MAGA nation for seven years; it made me feel I was part of something important: a movement that was trying to save American democracy.

    But starting in 2021, I realized I had been mistaken. It took me a full year to finally break away. During that time, I came to understand that MAGA is sustained by a series of myths that are intended to create perpetual feelings of desperation and panic.

    Succumbing to these predatory myths does not mean you are unintelligent, weak, or lack good character and morals. I have a Bachelor’s degree; have been a working professional my entire life; am a family man; and consider myself a relatively honest and intelligent person. I think the same about you.

    I understand the reasons you have for supporting MAGA. And I know many of us traveled different paths to get there. I gravitated to Donald Trump because I have always been suspicious of our two-party system, and I saw him as the right man at the right time.

    I have a sense that some of you have quietly left MAGA already, or are increasingly regretful, confused and scared. All of this can be doubly upsetting, since some of your sincerely-held beliefs may have alienated you from friends and family. That certainly happened to me.

    It’s perfectly OK to feel this way; leaving MAGA was a tumultuous roller coaster of a process for me. It may be one of the most difficult endeavors you embark upon. In the end, it brought me an inner peace, and a newfound clarity about what is happening in our beloved country.

    I founded this organization, Leaving MAGA, because I wanted to create a safe, non-judgmental community for those who leave MAGA, as well as for those who are having doubts about, or remorse over, their devotion to Trump and MAGA.

    Our Leaving MAGA community will celebrate how acknowledging mistakes empowers you and America.

    It’s difficult for a democracy to function well when millions are estranged from those closest to them.

    You do not deserve to have your anxieties about change exploited. You deserve to know the truth. And with Leaving MAGA, you don’t have to feel you would be alone if you leave the movement.

    Leaving MAGA is possible. Recognizing that we were wrong, and acting on that knowledge, makes us all more invested in democracy and in the continued work of perfecting our union.

    Sincerely, and humbly yours,
    Rich
     
    I just wrote this in another thread (and have said it before here) about the GOP not impeaching Trump



    I believe this is more or less exactly what happened with the creation of the Tea Party

    GOP absolutely saw the backlash against Obama and what was driving it and happily fanned those flames, which got out of control

    What was supposed to happen was the base was supposed to use that anger, outrage and hatred to flood the voting booths and return the GOP to power

    The voting booths were flooded.........during the primaries.

    What was not supposed to happen was these people were not supposed to run their own candidates not supposed to pass their crazy bills and policies

    We've been paying for that miscalculation ever since

    The horse just isn't out of the barn the barn is on fire and the herd stampeded out
    Since the Tea Party was the definition of astroturf the Republicans thought they could control it. They found out the hard way. So did the entire country.
     
    Since the Tea Party was the definition of astroturf the Republicans thought they could control it. They found out the hard way. So did the entire country.
    Once again the tea party movement under Ted Cruz was the beginning of the end for me when it came to the Republican Party.
     
    Donald Trump has been lying to us ever since he came down that escalator. He just never stops lying because as a lifelong con man, it’s all he knows how to do.

    He’s still insisting he won the 2020 election, despite having lost by about 7 million votes and being wiped out in the Electoral College. He lied at the State of the Union about having a mandate to cut Medicaid, as Rep. Al Green (D-TX) pointed out. Along with over 100 other lies he told that day. And now he’s lying about his trade deals with the UK and other governments. Every single day he adds to the pile of lies he’s inflicting on the American people and the world.

    Science, it turns out, explains why this works for him.

    Not the science of elections: the science of propaganda.

    New findings from psychologists at universities in California and Georgia published in the journal Cognitive Research show that the more often a statement — regardless of its truthfulness — is repeated, the more emphatically it’s believed.

    The researchers noted:

    “Repeated information is often perceived as more truthful than new information. This finding is known as the illusory truth effect, and it is typically thought to occur because repetition increases processing fluency. Because fluency and truth are frequently correlated in the real world, people learn to use processing fluency as a marker for truthfulness.”
    While modern science is affirming this truism, it’s been in use a long time. In the past century, for example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called out Republicans for using what we today call the Big Lie around several issues. Running for re-election in 1944, he said:

    “The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself.“The technique was all set out in Hitler's book — and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible — if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again.”
    Back then Republicans were lying that Democrats had caused the Republican Great Depression (as it was called until the 1950s) and that FDR had “failed” to adequately prepare America for war with Germany or Japan (while Republican after Republican took to the floor of Congress to tell us, before the war, that “we can do business with Hitler”).

    Now Trump’s lies (like about the election, immigrants, and what Elon Musk is up to) are parroted daily by Republican politicians and usually echoed in the media without pushback. After all, Trump reportedly slept with a collection of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside: he would be fluent in Hitler’s Big Lie strategy.

    Besides the addition of Trump’s lies, Republican lies haven’t changed a lot since FDR’s era, although they’re more focused and now repeated daily by thousands of rightwing websites, bloggers, podcasts, Fox “News,” and talk radio shows.

    Over the past 44 years, Republican billionaires have built an extraordinary nationwide media propaganda machine. Their goal was directed towards justifying tax cuts for the morbidly rich and the deregulation of polluting industries, but now it’s been taken over by Trump acolytes promoting, among other lies, the idea the Democrats torture children and drink their blood.

    The “useful idiots” in this scheme have been the American corporate and billionaire-owned media, who dutifully echo or leave unchallenged the GOP’s regular lies.

    One of the Republicans most egregious lies — that America is evenly split 50/50 between Republicans and Democrats and on the issues of the day — is constantly repeated on the political Sunday shows. Always without a single word of pushback from the show’s host.

    While the Senate may be more-or-less split 50/50, Democrats in the Senate represent over 40 million more Americans than do Republicans. And on issues like tax cuts for billionaires, the right to unionize, access to Medicare/Medicaid, climate change, the right to abortion, privatizing Social Security, drug prices, Medicaid expansion, free college, and the minimum wage Americans are overwhelmingly on the side of Democrats.

    So how did so many Americans end up believing the many lies that are daily pushed by the GOP?
    In a word: repetition, just like the science shows works. Here are a few of their greatest hits, with each followed by my rebuttal:

    'Tax cuts produce prosperity'

    In a remarkable study published by The London School of Economics, looking at 18 wealthy OECD countries over 50 years, the researchers discovered, unambiguously:

    “We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.”
    In other words, tax cuts for the rich make the rich richer and throw the nation into debt, but otherwise have no measurable effect on the economy.

    Ever since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have been assuring us that if we just give more money to the “job creators,” they’ll use it to open new factories and raise wages. In fact, the morbidly rich simply put that extra money into their offshore accounts and money bins.


    In fact, in the 44 years since Reagan started the practice of massive Republican tax cuts for the richest Americans, there has been a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from America’s working class into the money bins of our morbidly rich.

    The idea that tax cuts for the rich and corporations would produce prosperity was a lie from the beginning and still is, but Republicans are still repeating it after nearly 50 years of disastrous experience with neoliberal Reaganomics................


    How MAGA got brainwashed: The science behind the right-wing’s 50-year propaganda campaign | Opinion

     

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