MAGA Egalitarians
Say what, Michael?!!
Yes, for the most part the followers of Donald Trump are egalitarian in terms of political culture. The other term for them, which Mary Douglass first used in Purity and Danger (the foundational work of grid-group theory) is Sectarian.
Within the sect, there is great freedom and equality. Sectarians do not govern within the group so much as expel those who do not conform to their message. The Reign of Terror in France to the Killing Fields in Cambodia were both egalitarian/sectarian events. Once an enemy is identified, all manner of violence is justified. The Holocaust? That too. The Jews were the enemy other, so said the leader, so they could be killed without inspiring opposition.
Hitler was not an egalitarian himself. Egalitarian leaders impose order because the followers do not. The leaders are authoritarians, like Trump. I find commonality among those at the top of any of the four Ways of Life defined by Professor Douglass' grid/group typology. Authoritarians have a lot in common with Libertarian Capitalists, Hierarchs (both military and religious) and true Egalitarians (Civil Rights movements who speak a powerful vision to move the movement).
I wrote about MAGA eglitarianism as a cult a year ago at http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2021/06/maga-egalitarianismthe-cult-of-q.html, after the insurrection at http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2021/01/on-november-4th-i-explained-economic.html and after the election at http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2020/11/compassion-for-trump-voters.html
In what way are Trump supporters egalitarian?
They resort to violence. They threaten outsiders, although they may not carry those threats out. Given the number of anonymous threats, how many were actually followed up? I have not heard of any. Violence happens when the gang gets together. January 6th was a prime example of egalitarian gang violence. It is transitory, however. Those who have been caught have left the group and are amazed at what they did on that day. They are not lying about their regrets.
Egalitarians do not like rules. This is why they remain unvaccinated. Lucky for them, Omicron provides herd immunity so that they won't die. However, they were very suspicious of the medical establishment and their call for obedience in wearing masks and distancing. Doctors are "them". They make a lot of money - more than anyone truly in MAGA makes. Egalitarians cannot stand economic inequality when they are the ones who are not considered equals.
I wrote about MAGA attitudes during the pandemic at http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2020/03/a-cultural-theory-of-covid-19.html Culture also affected how the medical establishment saw itself as a moral venture - or a religious experience. See https://xianleft.blogspot.com/2020/05/pandemics-as-religious-experience.html
MAGA members don't trust the drug companies either. It is not the MAGA membership, however, who resisted Medicare drug negotiations - that was the libertarians in PhARMA. The only reason MAGA did not rise up in support is that Biden is among the other, even though he has great street cred as an egalitarian.
What cost Biden his street cred? Abortion - as if you could not guess. MAGA members consider the unborn as "in" as a persecuted group. There are enough female conservatives for MAGA men to get away with their belief. Both men and women in the pro-life movement see sexual self-denial as virtue and believe that those who do not are the enemy other. This plays into the hands of libertarian (authoritarian) capitalists who fund the movement.
Most women would not admit to having an abortion or never would do so. If their child needed one, well that is another matter. They cannot see their children as evil. It is a safe belief, or was when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. Now that it is not, expect fractures in the pro-life movement.
Individualists, such as your's truly, point out that the way out of having abortions is to provide more money to families in terms of minimum wage and child tax credit benefits.
So far, MAGA egalitarians have not jumped on board to Build Back Better. Most of them worked in authoritarian capitalist systems where, by working and behaving themselves, they earned enough money to get by. Those who had egalitarian unions got by even better - as well as veterans who had adequate funding in that most hierarchical system on the planet. In the military, your pay goes up in rank and that feeds your family, although there are some very egalitarian benefits for soldiers and veterans as well - all earned.
For MAGA, the idea of giving money to people who did not join them in the workforce is a non-starter. Those people are among "the other," especially if there are demographic differences - from race to immigration status. The Libertarian Capitalist Elites take advantage of this, which is a benefit to them.
The error Obama and Biden have made is to aim at these elites in paying for healthcare and the expansion of the child tax credit. Members of the Senate who believe that work is freedom are paid good money to protect their donor base. Senators are also correct in their surmise that if you solely tax the wealthy to find equality, the wealthy will hide their money.
Making the wealthy pay, rather than using broad based tax reform, makes the child tax credit and minimum wage look like welfare. Enact a broad based tax to fund child tax credits for all income levels and you may get takers.
MAGA franchise employees and employers see themselves as victims if wages and benefits go up. Any minimum wage action that does not include reforming the entire franchise system is doomed to fail. Employer distributions of a higher child tax credit should include a lower tax if they have more children than average supported by firm workers.
There are plenty of workplace reforms needed. Farmers who are outside the cooperative system who are locked into exploitative contracts with Food, Inc. for seeds or factory farming have, quite unintentionally, joined the ranks of authoritarian followership.
Most gig workers are paid to obey, although many don't see it that way. The Libertarian Capitalist Class is more than happy to let them think they are working as free people, rather than following orders. That is all propaganda. No one likes to think of themselves as a wage slave. That this has become a common theme in most workplaces is why MAGA exists.
The working class is humiliated and underpaid on a daily basis. Donald Trump offered a way out - a road to the same success he had. Of course, if people really knew about his finances, they would see him as both a spoiled rich child and truly one of their number (aka, poor). The whole bloom comes off the rose once their savior is dethroned.
That still won't be enough, however. The thing Trump fears the most, indeed, it is why he and his cronies staged an Insurrection, is that any honest investigation will show that Trump's softness on Putin was not due to foreign policy but to bribery.
Donald Trump being tried as a KGB asset (the GRU label is only branding) will turn his followers against him. Given the certainty that being loyal to Trump is to be soft on Putin will end MAGA forever. Seeing that Roger Stone, the figure behind the radical right movement since Nixon, is a driving force in the Russia affair, will lead that network at the top of MAGA to disappear. Permanently.
This is why we not only have to keep Trump out of the White House - we must link him (and his cronies) to Putin's war on Ukraine. Nothing else breaks the MAGA spell. See the following blogpost and related videos for more on how the Pro-Life movement have become MAGA's useful idiots.:
posted by Michael Bindner at 2:39 AM
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