There appears to be an illusion among a significant portion of the population that the U.S. can be a fortress nation isolated from and disinterested in what’s going on in the rest of the world. Perhaps some of it is due to exhaustion; America has been the world’s leader long enough, let someone else take over. Others, I suppose, think America is a super power so unrivaled that it can both get along on its own without others and can also dictate conditions by which others have to behave. It’s obvious that many believe saving white hegemony, whatever the cost, is the only way to keep America, America.
We’ve been there before with the Know Nothings movement in the 1850s, the Ku Klux Klan in post reconstruction years, and the pro-Nazi America First movement of the late 1930s. The MAGA movement is simply another recurrence of a chronic pathogen that goes into remission for decades but never dies. The difference today is that it has a serious contender for the presidency who may very well win and who has promised to remake America in his own undemocratic image.
It is unclear that enough voters are sufficiently aware of the danger. Too many happily vote MAGA candidates into Congress and state houses thinking they will be for the little guy, the forgotten and dishonored, and they will stick it to the hated coastal elite. It’s a tragic choice based on artful constructions of “others” responsible for all their troubles, and more “others” looming on the horizon to do evermore damage. The first “others” are the so called elites and national media, all labeled as radical left wingers. The second wave of “others” are immigrants, especially immigrants of color coming across the southern border who are accused of being the worst of the worst of really bad countries.
It’s a tactic honed to near perfection by Nazis in the run up to WWII, and MAGA leaders have strengthened its effectiveness with every tool of technology and psychology at their disposal. And to what end? Certainly not to help the little guy, the people whose well programmed anxieties are maintained at high levels by MAGA leaders reminding them that they are forgotten and dishonored, and that those same MAGA leaders point out who is to blame for their plight.
The goal is power, not simply the power of position in a democratic society, but power itself to do with society what it wants for the benefit of those who hold power. And what of the people? They are the pawns needed to win, gullible, used, and not worth worrying about.
It sounds a very sophisticated plan and in some ways it is, but it’s an old script with predictable results. If it succeeds, the U.S. will quickly drift into low second rate global status aligned with other “strong man” countries. It’s former allies will offer condolences and get on with life, a little sad at the demise of a once great nation. Conformity to MAGA dictates will be called freedom, and freedom will be called rebellious treason.
In a curious twist the supreme leader, at least for now, is an unintelligent, largely uneducated man with a mobster’s mentality. His rallies are dominated by long rambling speeches, sometimes incoherent, that complain about how unfair he is being treated, just like all of his supporters are, how he is one of them, and how he will take revenge on their behalf when elected. Yet he shows no affection for them and belittles them behind their backs. As for the strong man leaders he so admires, he has no interest in or knowledge of economic and social conditions in the nations they lead or have led. Questions about ethics and morality appear never to cross his mind. I fail to understand why so many commentators continue to try to give him the benefit of the doubt.