It sounds very pop-psychology-ish (<---- there's a word we need) but I truly believe the MAGA "movement" is a form of mass psychosis. It's not unique in history, it's simply an American manifestation of a more general problem stemming from vast disparities in wealth and policies that seem to erect a thirty foot tall wall of razor wire separating the top and the bottom in the form of poor education and distorted, re-distributive tax policies that protect the wealthiest at the expense of those at the bottom who see no viable upward path.
I frequently make reference to "teachable moments" -- points in one's experience where facts and conditions one has been previously able to suppress from processing as part of one's decision-making lead to outcomes which make those facts and conditions IMPOSSIBLE to ignore and IMPOSSIBLE to NOT associate with one's prior ignoring of those inputs. The most important aspect of a teachable moment is that it makes it inescapably clear to the person in that moment that the suffering they are currently experiencing is PRIMARILY due to their OWN prior choices and that making DIFFERENT choices going forward is required for their literal survival.
In the past, I might have used the following scenarios as examples of teachable moments:
- a person choosing to go without auto insurance getting in a wreck and going bankrupt from damages
- a denier of climate change building a house 200 feet from the ocean in Florida and getting wiped out by a hurricane
- a fan of de-regulation learning they have been harmed by an unsafe drug rushed to market
- an anti-vaxxer losing a child to a preventable childhood disease conquered sixty years ago
- an opponent of Welfare and Social Security becoming disabled and having no safety net to support them
- an NRA nut losing a family member in a mass shooting involving an automatic weapon
The problem with my concept is that even THESE situations require at least a tiny kernel of basic reasoning and one of the unique aspects of the MAGA movement is that its adherents seem to have one unifying characteristic - their primary education was grossly deficient. Not only in civics (concepts about the separation of powers as a means of protection against tyranny, how bills become law, basic civil / criminal procedures, federalism and delegation of powers, etc.) but more basic skills in simple mathematics, history and language. Poor math skills prevent them from being scammed by politicians lying about tax abatements for $500 million dollar stadiums owned by billionaires. A poor background in history prevents one from recognizing old schemes that worsen problems being proposed with new terminology to benefit the privileged.
Note that this is not a comment about the background of the LEADERS of the MAGA movement. Many are nominally very well educated at some of the (previously) most prestigious universities in the country. I'm not convinced these leaders BELIEVE in many (any?) of the ideals of MAGAism. However, every MAGA "leader" clearly understands the existence of such a collective provides a large enough base of voters that can be bilked for campaign contributions and leveraged in a corrupt, gerrymandered system to gain and retain POWER which is their only motivation.
The concept of a "teachable moment" seems to make sense in a very limited, one-person-at-a-time sense. But it's a horrible way to learn a lesson when millions need the lesson. That's a lot of pain and economic / emotional trauma to impose on a large population which injects a new negative shock into the larger system. And that type of "mass teachable moment" won't just hurt those needing the lesson. They have family members dependent upon them as well who will suffer right along with them. And the types of behaviors favored by the MAGA cult involving abusive prosecutions of enemies, coddling of foreign dictators, election fraud and financial fraud hurt the entire population and the world.
It's not entirely clear that members of the MAGA movement are actually capable of learning from any such teachable moment. The blending of MAGAism with a particularly militant type of Apocalyptic Christian evangelism adds an additional layer of group-enforced rejection of reason that only delays the point at which a particular person might realize they've hit rock bottom.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the current mass psychosis exhibited by MAGAism is that success in halting the ascendancy of this flawed thinking won't actually eliminate it. If the United States turns back this tide in November 2024, alters the mix in the House and Senate to weed out the obstructionists and manages to get back to the point where compromise and reason allow legitimate problems to be solved in a timely manner, MAGA thinking won't disappear forever. It won't be "disproven" in any sense. Those that believe its tenets won't link a more functional government to the LOSS of MAGA control in government. Their concerns will simply disappear into the fringes where they came from and lurk... Until the country teeters back after failing to address fundamental problems with education, economic opportunity and justice. But no viable ideas for solving those problems are coming from the MAGA fringe. And they never will.
WTH
