Trump And The Power Of MAGA World
To understand Donald Trump and his fanatical adherents one must first understand the symbiotic relationship between the Donald and his supporters, a relationship that together constitute MAGA World. But even before that clarification one needs to comprehend how societies of the world. especially how the multiracial, muticultual American society, are being stretched like a rubber-band about to snap — part of society zooming into the future in terms of finance, knowledge and status, while on the other hand there is a significant portion of America’s lost souls feeling battered and bewildering in todays high tech, modern world, folks who simply wish to tumble back into, and hide in past ways, because for them the train of the future has left them standing cold at the station.
The two biggest aggrieved parties in the United States are Evangelical Christians and non college educated White males. Evangelicals see the world rolling over their insular belief systems with the greatest of ease. They know that they are portrayed in moves and television as cultists crackpots. Even in the folksy TV show, “Young Sheldon,” the boy genius, Sheldon, sees his mother whom he adores as sadly some kind of religious freak, with the rest of the family merely indifferent to her pious, Bible quoting lifestyle. Trump revives Evangelicals sense of social power when he appoints supreme justices favorable to their beliefs. Some of the conservative pious ones even see Trump as the mystical hand of God at work.
Intertwined with the erosion of religious influence in our modern American daily life is the lost of influence among White America males of limited education and sophistication. There was a time when such men ruled the family with an iron hand — father knows best. Thus, not only that long ago did they lose their high paying factory jobs with good benefits, they as well lost their pride and social status, especially as more and more women were graduating from college and along with an army of minority men and women were moving up in the world as reporters, scientist, CEOs, Senators and Congressmen — even up to the high offices of president and vice-president of the nation.
As a group such men formed what the great America social commentator, Eric Hoffer, once called the new poor, the most destabilizing element of a society, because such persons had once viewed themselves as entities of notable worth, but, alas, in having lost their high paying jobs and no longer seen as the ones in charge of much of anything, they were caused to become emotionally unmoored — being hardly needed and often disrespected, hopelessly adrift in the sea of life. But then along came Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, a social life saver for them to latch onto. With Trump belittling and demeaning those that the lost White souls viewed as passing them by, they suddenly found a cause greater than themselves that they could embrace and emotionally fuse with its strength and salvation.
Back to the symbiotic relationship between Trump and his followers. Among the psychological unmoored of the Donald’s followers, they pray not so much for their daily bread as they do for their daily delusion. Trump answers their prayers in an endless series of oft repeated big lies that prop up their egos at the expense of others, And when Trump seems to diminish women, it’s a meme which really endears the Trump to his socially diminished male adherents. By putting women in their “place,” the White males are once again able to feel lifted up to their rightful status in the social order. In their allegiance to the master, Trump, they feel a new sense of vitality and mental ease.
As for Trump, he hardly feels any more emotionally secure than his MAGA army. Everything he does and says screams of infant insecurity and childish grievance, with a ding-dong school vocabulary that matches his stunted intellect. Moreover, he is obviously bad at hiding his pathetic brand of egocentricity. But while his childish rants may turn off fully formed adults personality types, it has kind of an overpowering Svengali effect upon the White American misfit ilk.. Trump is saying out loud the way these selfish, crude persons have always felt, but among polite society have often filtered out directly expressing such crudities. With Trump in the lead, however, they finally, for the first time, feel free to openly express who they really are. For them Trump is truly a freeing breath of fresh air. And so they latch on to him for dear life — this lying conman. And it is from this adoration of the masses from whence Trump derives his sense of power and self-worth. And thus while Trump’s followers pray for their daily dilution, Trump prays that he will be able to deliver it to them. And therein lies the symbiotic relationship between Trump and his fanatical minions.
Trump, alas, with his more thuggish backers, oozes paranoia. “I’m the most persecuted president of all times. Can you believe that?” Of course when one is like Trump, who spends a lifetime stabbing folks in the back, he naturally assumes everyone else is wanting to do the same to him. This plays super well to many of his aggrieved supporters, especially when he says, “all these terrible people are out to get us just because we are patriotic Americans determined to put country first.”
And when Trump supporters hear Democrats claiming that it is their primary mission to save American democracy, it terrifies them. Functioning within freedom and democracy gives them, no cover, no excuse for their shortcomings, outside of creative lies. Therefore they actually would feel much more comfortable in some sort religiously contrived authoritarian state.
The following attribution to the Donald is likely false, but if you have ever studied the life, personality and ruthlessly aggressive political strategy of Adolf Hitler, it is easy to see the similarities of their ways. For one thing, Hitler believed strongly in the power of the big lie endlessly repeated, which is also a Trump foundation piece of his existence.
“Reading Mein Kampf in college had a profound affect [sic] on me. Very, very interesting. Of course there were many problems in Germany at the time, they were losers, they lost. But Adolf Hitler, that is to say, I don’t agree with everything he was saying at the time of course but I do respect him. As a leader. Tremendous respect. And I suppose you could say, I try to incorporate some of his teachings into everything I do to this day. In business, my daily life and my politics.”
— Donald J. Trump
Trump is not a stupid person, but he certainly is an ignorant, lazy fellow. He still doesn’t known much about how government and the world work — and could care less. All that concerns him is that government and the world work the way he wants them to work. And, really, forget about rules and regulations. They are for chumps and losers to worry about, is how Trump sees life.
And so we find that in the rounding up of America’s misfit into a single political parties — after having been forever scattered among all of America’s political persuasions — and merging them with the Svengali personality of Donald J.Trump, cheered on by the right-wing media lead by Fox News, there emerged the anti democratic world of MAGA. Traditional Republicans still can’t believe that they have loss out forever — but they have! The Trump base, the heartbeat of MAGA world, has zero interest in traditional conservative values. Zero!
Alas, the party of Lincoln has become a nonsensical concoction of true believers, a cult that only sees and hears the Donald. In time, perhaps, another personality may supersede the Donald in MAGA world, but at heart there is no conceivable way that the party base will not continue to represent a danger to the nation and its history of ever expanding individual freedoms — with its evangelical component always pushing the movement to become an American version of the Afghan Taliban.
Indeed, the dark underbelly of America has found its footing in MAGA, a violent, massive power of fanaticism, always ready to enforce its will on the majority anytime the majority falters.
