guestpost by wonkie
I’ve been thinking. There’s a lot of discussion on Bluesky of the “Dems don’t fight” type. The Democratic party is at a low point in opinion polling, probably because of the image of Dems as not fighters. There’s a feeling that the times demand a different sort of rhetoric from Democrats.
I’ve also been thinking about how to talk to MAGAS and MAGA adjacents.
I think it’s worth exploring how to communicate with MAGAs because, even when King Pussygrabber strokes out on the toilet at three in the morning, we won’t be over the madness. We will still have the MAGA voters, the Republican party’s commitment to the election tactics of Othering and engineered polarization, and the extensive well-funded Republican hate/fear propaganda bubble (Faux, etc) which, for many people, substitutes for news and shapes their voting behavior.
So my question is: Are MAGAs born or made? Yes, I know the dichotomy doesn’t exist in nature because the human experience is too messy for that. However, I do think there are people who are more toward the born side while others are made, and I think it may make a difference in how we pull people out of the fear/hate propaganda bubble and reduce the engineered polarization.
By born, I mean those people who seem to have an innate predisposition for “othering”. Goebbels used what he called “the thrill of horror” to appeal to these people. So did Caroline Calloway when she wrote materials for Charlie Kirk. Turning Point USA Writer Says It’s “Designed To Scare People” Boogeyman stories have been a staple of Republican political discourse for decades, “The War on Christmas” being a comparatively innocuous example compared to the current “Portland is on fire! Antifa is terrorizing the city!!!” There seems to be people who just fall for this shit naturally. Maybe the opportunity to be thrilled with the horror at the Other makes their life seem like a heroic fight against evil—and all from the safety of their couch. All they have to do is watch Faux and feel the thrill!
Caroline Calloway, the young woman in the link above, seems to be more of a “made” person. She grew up in a religious conservative family and was recruited into Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives Only (TPUSA. Dare I compare them to the Red Guard? There are similarities) at 17. Her role was to write hate literature designed to give that thrill of horror of the Other–meaning Black men and Democrats—to young white people.
Sadly for Turning Point, they lost their propagandist when she went to college and studied poli sci. Exposed to the wider world and some reality therapy, Caroline had a “crisis of faith”, left TPUSA, and is no longer a conservative.
How did that happen? In her case, learning about systems of governance and experiencing people outside of the framework of her upbringing, combined with her ability to examine herself and to change, led her to recognize that her deepest values lay outside the bubble of conservatism as she experienced it. She valued fairness, freedom of speech for everyone, the common good, civility, empathy. She didn’t learn those values at college; she already had them before she got there. Her change came when she realized that Charlie Kirk, TPUSA, and the Republican party all exist in contradiction to those values. That left the door open for her to walk out of the bubble and toward the Democrats.
This, of course, is why Kirk’s organization targets universities. He, and the heirs of his hate propaganda business, aren’t interested in free speech and are only secondarily interested in recruitment of young people. Their goal is to prevent anyone who grew up in the bubble from escaping through exposure to life outside the bubble while at a university. Hence, Kirk’s watch list of professors to be driven out of their jobs for thought crimes. And the beat goes on: Rutgers professor known as ‘Dr Antifa’ shares plans to relocate to Europe.
I don’t think it really matters that much if Trump is around to be the Dear Leader of MAGA or not. When he is gone, there will still be a whole Republican party that enabled him to the max and the hate/fear propaganda bubble will still be poisoning our political discourse.
So how do we communicate to break through the bubble? I don’t know what will work, but I know what doesn’t work: the traditional Democratic approach of being politely reasonable in discussion of policy based on the polite pretense that Congressional Republicans are capable of acting in good faith and the traditional “rise above them” response to Republican slanders, while outsourcing the more bluntly truthful discussion to Raw Story. The conventional “wisdom” was that Dems should appear moderate and reasonable to retain credibility with the MSM and pundits like David Brooks.
The result is a milquetoast speaking style where the content of the remarks is obscured by professorial language and a passionless affect. Schumer does this all the time.
Fuck that shit.
When someone needs to be told to fuck off then tell them to fuck the hell off.
I think we need to communicate moral outrage and patriotism forcefully while openly attacking Republican tactics. Start the Truth and Reconciliation with loud, clear, unequivocal truths about the Republican party leaders’ behavior and actions. Expose them. Contradict them. Mock them. Attack them.
It feels to me like Tim Walz was on the right track with his line about weirdness. (How ‘Republicans Are Weird’ Caught Fire Thanks to Tim Walz) There was a lot of concern trolling about that from the msm and some Dems about that. Oh no, no, no, Democrats must be polite and rise above etc. Plus there was Republican outrage. (Democratic party’s ‘Trump is weird’ strategy rattles Republicans) But I believe that when Dems say things that trigger an attack of hysterics on the part of Republicans, then they have probably hit a nerve and should repeat whatever they said louder. The decision to drop the “They’re weird” attack was, I think, a mistake.
More of this, please:
Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said, “Healthcare for illegal aliens” is the new “immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield. The Republican Playbook is simple: make up a baseless lie, repeat it every chance you get, hope and pray that everyone blames Democrats for the crisis you created. Republicans don’t want to govern. They want to rule.”
He doesn’t politely explain a Dem POV—he calls Republican politicians racist liars, exposes their bad faith, and clearly explains their malicious trickery. He asserts the bare truth in terms that anyone can understand.
Or this: Pritzker warns against Trump sending troops to Illinois in raging speech:
‘Jackbooted thugs’ Over the top talk? Nope: An ICE agent rammed a woman’s car, shouted abuse at her and shot her—and then lied about who rammed who. There’s a video! There’s also a video of ICE agents murdering an immigrant and don’t forget the helicopter raid on an apartment building and the zip tied children. We need to call things by their real names—no toning down for the sake of appearing moderate. Stop worrying about pleasing the NYT editors and Politico. Put the truth out there, bluntly.
Or this: ICE Barbie (Kristi Noem Triggered by Man in Chicken Suit on Portland Trip). I like the characterization of Neom as a humorless poseur who shouts about antifa terrorists when she sees a man in a chicken costume. Mockery is a good tool for exposing bad faith.
The “kitchen table issues” are moral issues and should be talked about that way. “Lives are at stake. Republicans need to fund health care. Their plan is immoral.” (cf Facebook)
Will this jar the “born” people to abandon the Republican hate/fear propaganda? I don’t know. There’s a subset of the Republican base that gets a vicarious thrill out of what they see as displays of power. If there is any way to communicate with them, it will have to be by displaying power back at Republican leaders. Besides, it’s a moral imperative to stand up to thugs and bullies. Can Democrats jar people like Caroline into a recognition that their good values are contradicted by the patterns of behavior shown by most Republican leaders and organizations? Maybe. There are Republican voters who value fairness; have respect for the law; dislike bullies and thugs; don’t want government of, by and for the superrich; and don’t want to be aligned with unconstitutional behavior. The Republican leaders have engaged in false advertising about their entirely imaginary moral superiority for decades while Democrats talked about policy on the assumption that policy was understood to arise from values. It’s way past time for Democrats to claim morality LOUDLY AND OVERTLY and to put issues into a moral framework. Do that, and the Carolines of our society will have a way out of the fear/hate propaganda bubble.
I think we need to give the Overton Window of acceptable discourse a good hard yank in the direction of Dems being bad asses when it comes to word choice and phrasing. We’ve endured decades of Republican engaging in slanderous lying while Dems held themselves and were held by the media to a higher standard. I think we need to remain truthful, but polite? Moderate in tone? Fuck that shit.
Someday, hopefully, we’ll go through a truth and reconciliation phase. Let’s get that started by shouting the truths out loudly and clearly
One thing that I have found effective in teaching is that the moments when I am being critical of something are always more powerful for the class when I can find a way to tell them from the perspective of “we,” rather than “I,” and when that narrative incorporates how “I” learned to view the problem through a perspective that helps put “us” back in a position with more agency to address “our” problem.
That, and starting with questions and listening rather than with advice and instructions seem to be the magic mix.
This post was about how Dem pols should talk and I firmly believe they should be VERY LOUD AND HARSH IN THEIR CRITICISMS of the R party. Use the F word. Actually, both of them.
However, I don’t think they should say anything about MAGAs and should talk to them. The goal must be to defuse the polarization.
As for me, I have MAGA friends and acquaintances and no desire to hurt their feelings. However, I also think that I’m not going to be complicit. At all. So, I post stuff on FB that flat out contradicts a lot of MAGA beliefs. For example, I posted an article about Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives Only and how people who criticized him have been attacked. At least one of my FB friends loves Kirk.
We still seem to be friends.
My natural impulses don’t always tend toward kindness, but I made a rational decision at some point that I should try to be kind because it seems to be the best way to live, both for the people around me and myself. (That’s not to say I don’t regularly fail at it, but it’s still a goal I strive for.)
That said, it can be complicated. You aren’t being kind to someone when you allow someone else to be unkind that person if you’re in a position to do something about it. You also can’t be kind to one person when someone else will suffer for it, at least when that suffering outweighs the kindness.
How can I (or anyone) be kind to someone who is MAGA? That’s generally complicated because the MAGA movement is largely unkind. What I’m talking about here is something other than, say, helping someone who is broken down on the side of the road if they have a tRump bumper sticker. I do mean how you interact where politics is involved somehow.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s not possible. To take it to an extreme, how could you be kind to tRump, himself? I write his name “tRump.” It doesn’t really affect him because he’s almost certainly never going to see it, but it still isn’t kind, right? Am I failing, or is he not deserving of kindness?
I don’t believe – I’m not willing to believe – that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We’ve all been taken in at some time by liars: it’s our side’s job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars’ victims. [Emphasis added]
I think this is another piece of the puzzle when trying to break thru. Be up front about having been bamboozled ourselves. Just to avoid the suggestion that “we’re smart enough to have seen thru it, but you re so dumb you got conned.” It helps if you’ve got an example of where you got taken in initially. And if it’s something that they can see thru, all the better. (Perhaps “when I was in school, socialism looked attractive. Took me a while to see that it wasn’t workable in the real world.” Even if you still do think it is workable, it can be a useful example.)
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
An excellent suggestion, and one I will use.
To wonkie’s point about MAGAs being no more forgotten or neglected than anyone else – that seems correct to me, but I’m not sure it matters if their sense of threat or concern makes sense. Or even whether it’s sincere, or just a justification for less sympathetic reasons.
It’s a place to start that isn’t focused on fingerpointing. I’m prone to that, as well as to the “go piss up a rope” response. Those aren’t that constructive, so I’m looking for other approaches.
To me MAGA just seems like an expression of stuff that’s always been in our national character. Nativism, xenophobia, white (especially Anglo) hegemony. Endless arguments about who gets to be a “real” American. I don’t think it will ever go away, really. The name will change but the sensibility has always been part of the mix.
I just want to return to the day when “the Paranoid Style” was not seen as something to aspire to and embrace.
We should call Trump and his collaborators what they are. I learn that he’s been hosting an “anti-antifa roundtable”. To support that the contention that “antifa” is an actual organization, one speaker announced that “Antifa is real. Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost a hundred years in some instances going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany.”
So that’s clear, they’re proudly against the opponents of fascism. “Anti-antifascist” is a clumsy way of expressing what they actually are – pro-fascist.
These people are evil. But – I want to write that in big letters – half the voting population of the USA votes for them. I don’t believe – I’m not willing to believe – that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We’ve all been taken in at some time by liars: it’s our side’s job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars’ victims.
“So, Democrats have three words for this: no fucking way. It’s literally life or death. We will not let Republicans blow up our health care system.”
THANK YOU CHUCK!!!!!!
About giving up hate and experiencing pain instead. I don’t think MAGAs are in pain any more than the usual for middle class Americans. I don’t think that’s why they like to hate. The concept of MAGAs as these poor sad people who have been left behind, the Forgotten Americans, working class and ignored by Dems, struggling to get by etc is mostly wrong. MAGAs tend to be better off than Dems, more likely to own homes as opposed to renting and are mostly middle class, They are over represented in government. Their lack of any real grievances is what makes them so appalling. Demographics & Group Affinities – Panel Study of the MAGA Movement The only thing they would lose if they gave up hating is their goddawful snobbery about being superior to everyone else and the entertainment they get from the thrill of horror as they armchair hero their lives away in front of the TV>
Not just pain of whatever they have suffered either, GftNC. They also have to give up the narrative justification that gave that suffering purpose, and they have to take on the additional sting of shame for having embraced that hate. That’s a lot to swallow.
People will do a lot of shameful things in order to avoid feeling shame.
It’s a long time since I read The Fire Next Time, but I just saw somewhere this quotation from it, which resonated:
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain”
I think contemplating that makes certain kinds of people very afraid.
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
For a lot of people, admitting to being afraid is shameful. (And, for some men, an attack on their manhood.). But there’s nothing wrong with being concerned. It might be a way to get the conversation to the place you want it to go. Without getting the reflexive rejection of the whole thing.
Just a thought.
I’m pretty much happy to talk to anybody about whatever, but I more or less insist on sticking to reality. If folks insist on doubling down on stuff that is simply factually wrong, I excuse myself from the conversation.
What I take away from most of my fairly limited collection of conversations with MAGAs is that they feel threatened. They are afraid. I don’t really understand why, and the reasons are probably different for different people. That is what I’d really like to talk to them about, but it’s hard to steer the conversation in that direction.
Nobody likes to admit they’re basically just afraid.
I was at a local ICE office yesterday for a protest and noticed that they’ve begun putting badging and insignia on their vehicles. Some of them, anyway, some are still unmarked.
One of the slogans on the vehicles reads “Defending the homeland”. And it just kind of made me laugh. Defending the homeland from the guy who mows your lawn? Your waiter? The woman taking care of your grandmother in the nursing home? The people picking lettuce?
What’s the threat?
The Stephen Millers Kristi Noems and Kash Patels of the world understand and work on that sense of threat by making absurd claims. 5% of the population of Chicago are violent antifa extremists! Tren de Agua has taken over downtown Portland!
It’s risible, but it resonates with people who are already afraid. I want to understand why they’re afraid. But it’s hard to get the conversation to that point.
There’s also the whole nativist / nationalist streak in American history and in our national character. It’s been there from the get. The early English folks looked down on and were suspicious of the German immigrants. Then both were suspicious of the Irish. Then all of them were suspicious of the eastern and southern Europeans. Then the Hispanics. Everybody hated the Chinese until pretty recently. And everybody has always had issues with black people, who have been here longer than almost everyone else, and mostly had no choice about being here in the first place.
The endless argument about who is a “real American”.
I’m still trying to understand WTF people are on about when they talk about “western civilization”, which of course is yet another thing that is always on the verge of being subsumed by the latest wave of People Who Are Not Like Us.
It’s all fear. Toxic, destructive fear.
I would like to talk to MAGAs about what the hell it is they are afraid of. What is that they think is going to happen. What precious thing are they going to lose.
I’m not sure how to get to that conversation. I sure as hell am tired to debating with them about crap like whether the Haitians are eating their pets, or whether blacks are roaming the streets looking for white people to assault. Or whether ICE are engaged in nightly hand to hand combat with the armies of antifa.
What’s going on is too fraught right now to waste time on bullshit.
I don’t think it really matters that much if Trump is around to be the Dear Leader of MAGA or not. When he is gone, there will still be a whole Republican party that enabled him to the max and the hate/fear propaganda bubble will still be poisoning our political discourse.
I think it will matter. Here’s why.
My distinct impression is that the vast majority of MAGAs are made, not born. For those that are born, they can get their dopamine hit from lots of places. They did pre-Trump and they will again when he’s gone.
As for those who are made, Trump matters because he is, par excellence, a con man; a salesman for the radical right. Nobody else that they’ve got can hold a candle to him. When he’s gone, there isn’t anyone with a real chance of picking up the baton. (Lots who are convinced they can. But none who anybody else thinks can pull it off.)
The thing about the enablers is that they are, at heart, followers. No doubt they would like to keep the whole fear/hate coalition going. But I don’t think they can pull it off. The folks around Trump are actually four or five groups with very different agendas, united only by their recognition that they can use Trump to move those agendas forward. And their increasing desperation as MAGAland fragments will only make it fragment faster.
The thing to remember about those groups is that their various agendas are seriously unpopular. Even with the other groups. Without Trump as a useful umbrella to (sort of) unite them, they will crumble.
The problem for those who want to roll on after Trump is the same one that has historically faced autocrats: how to guarantee the succession. The traditional approach, from monarchs throughout history to Kim Il Sung, is to go with the founder’s children — genetics as legitimacy. But Trump’s children are jokes. And Trump’s ego won’t tolerate anybody else stealing his limelight to build a post-Trump coalition ahead of time. And there’s really nobody else who can effectively unite them.
As for the question of how to jar the “made” ones back to reality, a few may jump ship as reality (economy tanking, etc.) starts to hit home. But for the rest, I think that, unfortunately, the best that can be done is to prepare the ground for the day when he passes from the scene. Then, but probably only then, can they be brought to see their objections to those who would follow after.
All of which is not to csay that the Democrats couldn’t use a charismatic leader (or several) of their own. But so far, nobody has risen significantly above the throng.
Thank you, JP. As for messaging, the people of Portland are doing it right; the image of ICE teargassing a silly inflatable dinosaur is not what Cruelty Barbie and King Pussygrabber want. The NYT noticed and had an article to the effect that “Portland responds to ICE with whimsy” and this morning’s Wall Street Journal, under the headline “What’s really going on in Portland” details out from police logs that answer is “Not much at all.” Maybe Walz has the smartest approach of all: “These people are nuts.”
I actually agree with pretty much all of this, particularly with describing openly what much of the R/Trumpian project really does to ordinary people. I think it’s particularly effective to expose the lies, call them lies, and provide clear proof. The fact that, on the shutdown, D messages on the loss of health care are cutting through is a good example. It seems obvious to me that the finer points of progressive ideological concerns do not cut through to the electorate, or move the Overton window (except in the wrong direction).
I put this as a comment so as not to distract. The post is wonkie’s, but the image of a spade is what I found at Amazon.
I’m grateful for her guestpost and want to encourage others if they have something they want to say. I think I have demonstrated that posts don’t need to be airtight. Just send them over the transom to libjpn@gmail.com.
Some might wonder what would happen if a submission came in that I and the powers behind the screen (Russell, janiem and wj) were vehemently opposed to. Well, we can burn that bridge when we come to it. So give it a try, what do you have to lose?