Just something MAGA-people seem to have a hard time with sometimes. Probably not as much when Americans are speaking to themselves, but as a non-American, sometimes it’s challenging to get “those people” to admit that there is indeed anything wrong with the US. As in they won’t accept a single criticism, and will loudly proclaim “America is the greatest country in the world”, while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, which for me pretty explicitly means America isn’t great, if it has to be made to be such again.
Their claim is that the country has been ruined by the left, and they want to restore it to its former glory. It requires ignoring the fact that the country has taken a hard right shift since the time they are idealizing.
As for the cognitive dissonance, Stephen Colbert (during The Colbert Report) played around with this self-contradiction. His book is titled “America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren’t”
Edit: autocorrect
They also never call out by what metric America isn’t great anymore. There are plenty of metrics it’s not, but they won’t call those out.
Is it peacetime? Because we’re the most peaceful we’ve ever been right now. Is it the economy? It’s the strongest now than it ever was. Is it family values? First quantify what that means. Is it divorces? Those are down for the first time. Is it orpahaned families or something? Education? Well those are liberal values so they can’t use those.
Or is it all just racist and homophobic dog whistling, meaning they want to go back to white nuclear families - they just can’t say that.
Really it’s all just “My nostalgia is more fun than dealing with today’s problems”. Nostalgia just ignores all of the problems at the time. “The 60s were better!” Just ignore Vietnam, the separate drinking fountains, the upcoming cold war, also the fact that the reason you had a good childhood was because of the social protections you had that you dismantled
Is it peacetime? Because we’re the most peaceful we’ve ever been right now.
Maybe with other countries. We seem pretty much on par with civil war days in terms of internal conflict.
Has it taken a hard right shift? There’s far more civil liberty (the underlying thing most loud conservatives want to curtail) than “back in the day”.
Sure, there’s a much greater schism between ideologies these days, what with the normalization of social media and media in general… but I’d be hard pressed to say that the country is a lot more right leaning than it used to be.
The majority of the people are significantly more left leaning, but our politicians continue to drag the country to the right. (Particularly economically… Socially they just drag their feet, but we’ve had some progress) This is because the only “people” they care about are corporate people (as in corporations are people).
However, while the vast majority of human people are far left of anything happening in politics, what remains of the right is becoming more and more violently entrenched in their conservative ways… Basically the schism is because most of society is progressing into the future, while a small group refuses to come with us, and is determined to hold us all back.
I think they’re probably referring to tax brackets and how much the ultra wealthy were taxed back in the 50s or something
Ah, so one of many factors means a hard right turn…
You bring up a valid point. There are many facets of life and a left/right divide, and some of them did shift left.
But compared to the 50s (which is when many right wingers idolize), particularly starting with Reagan, we’ve seen:
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Push for theocracy
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The war on drugs
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Less “society” and more individualism. This is especially true regarding regulation of harmful activities for profit, such as corporate pollution
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Reduced enforcement of those laws that we do have, as long as it’s a corporate entity and/or for profit
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Massive consolidation of all industries. Competition is now mostly an illusion.
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Strong push against workers’ rights. Reduction in union protections, minimum wage laws, OSHA powers, etc
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Active, planned takeover of media. This was started by (IIRC) Roger Ailes that if the right controlled the media, Nixon would not have been impeached. He went on to found Fox News with that philosophy, and proved it correct with Trump. See also: Sinclair
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While this mostly happened at a state/local level, it has been nationwide. Government was intentionally ruined as an effective organization, and now provides way fewer/worse services
These are just a few ways that the country has shifted right, but they are so impactful to the average person’s daily life.
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Welcome to the paradoxical nature of fascism the greatest and most powerful country on earth is at risk from a secret cabal of highly intelligent, highly organized criminals led by the dementia riddled criminal mastermind Joe Biden crime family who’s actually being being puppeted by AOC and is a mouthpiece for Obama, and who are sending lazy, job stealing, taxpayer benefit robbing Mexicans to bring hard core drugs like marijuana and fentanyl across the wide open red carpeted border so that they can vote for democrats in elections that are also rigged in favor of democrats because that…
So yeah you get the point, fascists don’t make any sense to anyone who stops and thinks for more than a minute. Their logic is non-existent, they parrot whatever talking point they hear on their propaganda network of choice is convenient.
Managing Partner of my company came in today. He sounds just like this every time he talks politic. Every time I say “The Earth works on rather straightforward logic for us, correct?”
“Yes”
“What’s more straight forward? That Trump staged this entire shooting to “play dirty” with the democrats and expose them? Or that some depressed young adult searched for any person of fame near him to suicide by cop?”
It always locks him up for a second saying “No, no, no, you see- shifts position as brain attempts to boot”
Another good brain reboot comment to make would be “if Republicans actually trained with their guns and the shooter was a better shot, trump would have been dead.”
They’re trapped between breaking the facade of Republicans having all the guns and going to win the civil war because they know their guns, and breaking unquestioning loyalty to dear leader Trump.
Ohh, don’t forget the lazy uneducated immigrants who come and live off welfare while also stealing all the hard working jobs!
Yeah, don’t I know it.
Fucking annoying.
And when you actually point out their contradictions, they start having tantrums like toddlers. Unfortunately these toddlers are adults and as such quite a bit more dangerous than actual toddlers.
The tantrums are just them admitting that they don’t have a real response.
Yeah, yeah it is.
But what do you do when someone in a position of power over you has a tantrum and refuses to use common sense…?
WHAT ABOUT THE CLINTONS?!?!
Doublethink is a core feature of fascism.
Not only is cognitive dissonance not a problem, they take pride in believing two mutually exclusive things at the same time. It’s proof to how willing they are to align themselves with the party.
You’re telling me that the GOP really is literally 1984
Orwell went to Spain to fight in the Spanish civil war against fascism.
The book is literally written about fascism.
So… Yep.
This one is easy to explain away… If you’re ranking countries on greatness, then you put America at the top. But then unfortunate things happen, like minority presidents and gay marriage and solar panels, so that makes America not quite as great, but still far better than everyone else. But if we could roll back the clock, maybe to some time before women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement, that would make America return to the extra high standard that it’s capable of achieving.
I think an important related aspect is that the ‘unfortunate things’ that happen make it only “not quite as great” but are definitely destined to make it “the worst”. That way there’s a sense of urgency that you wouldn’t otherwise get from just “not quite as awesome as it could be, but still the best”
“America was great once… before the libruls took it over! Things were so much better when I was young… not like this weird shit now around me… it’s not ME who’s grown older…! …it is YOU who’ve gone weird! Why should I change! I refuse to change! That would require… making an effort! I refuse to change! Damn libruls! Damn libruuuuulssss…!!!”
Your observation is astute. I kinda want to make red hats that just say COGNITIVE DISSONANCE on them
I kinda want to make red hats that just say COGNITIVE DISSONANCE on them
That would be way more apt and it would calm down my inner autist screaming at the paradox.
This is a really good idea though. And would kinda reclaim red hats.
Well if you think about the wording of it, then yes.
But fortunately for the far right, MAGA people aren’t burdened with such troubles.
Instead they get to think about how great it would be without blacks or Hispanics or Jews or women’s rights or gays or trans people or any of the myriad of other things whose mere existence sends them into a purple faced rage on a daily basis. And if you fit into one of those categories, then you just think “well surely they don’t mean me, I’m one of the good ones” while ignoring the last century of evidence until it’s way too late.
They want America to be more racist, sexist, and or transphobic
I’d say that’s a pretty definite “and”, no need for the “or”.
Not every bigot fits every box though!
There’s a lot of diversity of hate.
I thought MAGA was coined when he was demonizing immigrants and campaigning on building a wall and making Mexico pay for it.
It was a racists dog whistle from the very beginning. It meant expelling the
JewsMexicans to make America White again. After 8 years of a Black president.Did people really miss this? This was like… the main focus of his campaign.
Yes… that’s exactly what it means. America is in bad shape domestically and internationally.
Are you really trying to make sense of cultish gibberish?
Sort of. I’m trying to make sense of the mentality needed to believe in shit like that. Or to pretend to believe it.
It’s genuinely baffling.
https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/
“The higher, pretentious form of stupidity stands only too often in crass opposition to [its] honorable form. It is not so much lack of intelligence as failure of intelligence, for the reason that it presumes to accomplishments to which it has no right … The stupidity this addresses is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself. … [S]ince the ‘higher stupidity’ consists not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings … We may say that the reversal of a spiritual sickness must entail a spiritual cure.”
(Paraphrasing an old comment from the Bad Site)
“Make America Great” would be a fine, if bland slogan. Everybody wants that. It’s not controversial, but also not distinctive in any way.
“Make America Greater than Ever” would be better. The implication being that we can do better, and be better. But they intentionally went with something else.
It seems to me, and as you have identified, that the “Again” is the key part of the phrase that drives the whole narrative. Here’s the kicker: by nearly every objective measure, the country is safer, richer, more equal, and has a better overall quality of life today than at any point in history[1]. The only thing that has significantly declined over the last 40-50 years is “the percentage of total societal influence held by straight white men.”
“Again” is the dog-whistle of misogyny, racism, and homophobia, wrapped up in the plausible deniability of nostalgia for an objectively worse time.
[1] There may be some room for disagreements here, primarily because of the first Trump administration and the pandemic years causing some backsliding, but this was especially true in 2016 when the slogan first really appeared, which is when it should be judged.
I think MAGA is an unspoken admission that there are a lot of easily swayed people in this country that have been failed by the existing system.
Even if deep down they know it is all BS they can’t allow themselves to acknowledge it because that would mean having to face the reality that they don’t have much of a future to look forward to for various reasons.
A lot of people can’t take that mentally and keep going day to day, so they just go along with the crazy because it seems easier to go with the delusion.
You got it man.
Admitting that their whole identities were built around bullshit is just too much.
I genuinely believe that for people like that, MDMA (or other serotonergic substance) assisted therapy would help people like that a great deal. These are the “powertools” of psychology currently, and I genuinely think they’re necessary for people like that.
Sometimes — albeit rarely — you see ex-maga people or ex-some other right wing lunatic people who have genuinely come to their senses, but they are exceedingly rare.
I think MAGA is an unspoken admission that there are a lot of easily swayed people in this country that have been failed by the existing system.
From what I recall there were not an insignificant amount of Bernie to Trump voters. Sick of the current system and looking for a charismatic outsider that wanted to fight for them.
Without expressing an opinion on it: some people believe that it is meant to say that America was greater during times when women and minorities were more oppressed than they are now.
My own interpretation at least in 2016 was always that it was meant to say that Obama was a weak leader in terms of foreign policy and that Trump would restore America’s place in the world to be stronger. This may have been my interpretation because I am not from the US and so mainly care about it because of its foreign, not domestic, policy.
My own interpretation at least in 2016 was always that it was meant to say that Obama was a weak leader in terms of foreign policy and that Trump would restore America’s place in the world to be stronger.
That’s what the republicans tried to make people believe, because that’s more palatable to the public than the actual reason, which was that racists were mad about having a black president for 8 years who worked to make the lives of various minority groups better. It’s a zero-sum mindset and they think they suffered and got less while those ‘who don’t deserve it’ got free handouts, which has little to no basis in reality.
I think the reason why it’s so pervasive is that it taps into the romantic notion that things were better in the good old days, and people can overlay whatever meaning they wish.
The reality is that in the grand scheme of things, the world does get better over time. Most of human history consists of wars, plagues, famines, power struggles, authoritarian rule.
But occasionally some aspects of the world get worse, too. For example, the widespread introduction of cars was “human progress” in the sense of enabling everyone to be mobile; it led to environmental problems and degradation of quality of life for many people.
America was pretty great before trump came along and ruined it.
Kinda? LOL
Seriously though, it was pretty great for most of my life. Not without issues, but still a great place to live.
America has never been a great country. Granted, there are times when it was great for a very small and very select group of people, but for the vast majority of Americans, America has never been great. It’s always been a shit hole nation that makes promises it knows it had no intention of keeping. If you don’t believe me, just ask the First Nations what America thought of promises.
Even our founding fathers were pieces of dog shit. The amount of slavers who pretended like they were doing anything more than personally enriching themselves or playing “where is the slave” (or as Washington liked to call it, musical slaves) is funny as hell in all the wrong ways considering the whole ‘all men are created equal’ thing.
