Opinion | MAGA Is Based on Fear, Not Grounded in Reality
www.nytimes.com
And the fear needn’t reflect reality.

Yet such fantasies are now the common currency of politics on the American right. Remember the days when pundits solemnly declared that Trumpism was caused by economic anxiety? Well, despite a booming economy, there’s still plenty of justified anxiety out there, reflecting many people’s real struggles: America is still a nation riddled with inequality, insecurity and injustice. But the anxiety driving MAGA isn’t driven by reality. It is, instead, driven by dystopian visions unrelated to real experience.

That is, at this point, Republican political strategy depends largely on frightening voters who are personally doing relatively well not just according to official statistics but also by their own accounts, by telling them that terrible things are happening to other people.

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
      24·
      5 months ago

      They had another article today that effectively said “yes, the insurrection is made of insurrection.”

      Is it possible they fell into some kind of time warp, and are perceiving the universe at a slower rate than the rest of us?

      • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
        12·
        5 months ago

        It’s more that the NYT is studiously centrist and is getting to the point where it is OK for their left-of-center opinion writers to say this kind of thing

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
          4·
          5 months ago

          the NYT is studiously centrist

          More center-right to right wing. Just like the DNC leadership and strategists with which they’re joined at the hip.

        • Masterblaster@kbin.social
          2·
          5 months ago

          it’s BS for polite white NY society and it’s garbage. give my grimy seattle anarchist zines, pls. oh wait, that got taken over by the trans movement focused on gender terms or some BS that has nothing to do with victory.

          i remember when i believed in ppl.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            4·
            5 months ago

            It’s not like trans people matter and they are being seriously oppressed right now or anything, am I right?

            Man… first it was the blacks, then it was the gays, now it’s the trans? Who are we supposed to care about next? Poor people? This is BS that has nothing to do with victory!

            • Masterblaster@kbin.social
              3·
              5 months ago

              ride that bandwagon to nowhere!

              edit: look, i get it. it’s another class of people conservatives hate and make their lives a living hell. well, guess what? they do that to all of us! get on the bus with the rest of us and let’s make way towards changing it. i’m just sick of focusing on a narrow segment of the population and losing sight of the big picture.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
        4·
        5 months ago

        Ugh, it’s a Paul Krugman piece? He’s such a pro-corporate establishment hack 🤢

        Nobody should ever look to him for anything, much less timely analysis of what’s going on in the real world.

  • DBT@lemmy.world
    45·
    5 months ago

    Full disclosure: I’m going off the title alone in this comment. It’s late.

    That said: no fucking shit

    Fear mongering is kinda their thing. The illegal brown people are INVADING lol. The libs are DESTROYING our country…

    Look at how they are with their guns. Every time there’s another school shooting another GUNS SAVE LIVES bumper sticker is sold. “This was preventable, if only I, Rambo was there.” No. You wouldn’t have saved shit and you don’t need a gun to survive.

    The GOP and MAGA folks are nothing but scared pussies. Enough with this snowflake mentality.

    • dirthawker0@lemmy.world
      14·
      5 months ago

      The other aspect I believe plays into this is insecurity. They can’t accept brown & black people being equal, or LGBTQs being just as human as they. They can’t accept that some people don’t believe in the same God they do, or have the self confidence not to believe in any god at all. They are frightened by people making choices different from those they would make because it might mean their own choices are wrong. And they react by lashing out, trying to put “those people” back in the closet or into second class citizenship or labeling them as baby killers. They don’t have the self confidence to let others have the freedom to make their own decisions, run their own lives.

  • digeridoo@lemmy.ml
    29·
    5 months ago

    Fear and anger with absolutely no critical thought put into the issues. The two most primal feelings somebody can have.

  • SecretSauces@lemmy.world
    25·
    5 months ago

    For a group that talks shit about “snowflakes” always crying about everything, they sure like to cry about everything

  • Fades@lemmy.world
    22·
    5 months ago

    True but it doesn’t start nor end with maga. Republicans have been using fear mongering for a very long time

    • ZzyzxRoad@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      5 months ago

      Can we stop commenting this on every single political post? It just implies that the behavior in the article should be treated as normal by now. It’s not normal, no matter how common the media makes it seem.

  • btaf45@lemmy.world
    16·
    5 months ago

    Is there anybody left in the entire country who does not understand the fundamental reality that conservatives in general are people who like to be lied to?

    • bmeffer@lemmy.world
      12·
      5 months ago

      The thing is, they don’t know their being lied to. I think the big issue with many conservatives is that they are conditioned, basically from birth, to believe fantastical things as truth, without evidence. I.e. Bible stories as fact. Yes, Gabriel was swallowed by a whale. Of course Noah had all of the animals in the world on his boat. They learn to accept things at face value as long as it sounds good to them. This requires no critical thinking.

      This is how you get otherwise intelligent people who believe right wing myths like high school kids identifying as cats and requiring litter boxes. They will believe anything as long as it confirms their biases. Belief = truth. I believe it, therefore it is true. It’s this simple to them. You can present all the evidence in the world to counter any one of their ridiculous conspiracy theories, but they will never change. Because, to them, belief = truth.

      • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
        6·
        5 months ago

        I’ve seen that with a very conservative former friend. They would send me reel after reel on Instagram of right wing talking heads discussing the “proof” they had that the coivd vaccine was deadly, “proof” that the human soul is placed in the egg at conception, and the LGBTQ+ people were really pedophiles.

        There seemed to be no sense that a 30 second, highly edited reel on instagram could be false. It was telling them what they wanted to hear. The part that annoyed me was that they thought they were debating there position in good faith with these reels. That if they sent enough of them to me I would just say “Wow! you’re right, that reel from Andrew Tate really opened my eyes!”

        We don’t talk any more and I hate that because we were really good friends until about 9 months ago.

      • KptnAutismus@lemmy.world
        5·
        5 months ago

        i was shocked when i found out that everyone was bitching about immigrants collecting all the welfare, even though they are prohibited from working for 9 months after entering germany.

        also many of them have no choice, who’s gonna employ someone who barely speaks english and not a lick of german? but no, mandatory education courses would cost money, we can’t do that.

        conservatives are lying rats who just feed off of the hate they’re spreading.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    13·
    5 months ago

    No one ever addresses the fact that the same people driving the fear are the same people who own and control the country’s main media companies that blast the public day and night with propaganda.

  • gastationsushi@lemmy.world
    11·
    5 months ago

    They are in a cult and cults cannot exist without rigid hierarchy based on lies. If the cult the leader told his flock 2 + 2 = 5, that has utility the truth could never have. Cult members can repeat that lie to prove loyalty, the basis of a cult’s heirarchy.

    When a Trumper tells you a crazy statement like 2 + 2 = 5, don’t look at it like they are an idiot. They understand they are telling you something normal people would find outrageous and they are testing to see how you react.

    It’s almost funny to see corporate outlets like the NYT try an explain the GOP. Flat admitting half of the duopoly is in a cult and has been in a cult 40+ years does not mesh with the supposed meritocracy we live in. So these media narratives like to edge around the truth, never quite getting their because reality is a challenge to our corporate run system as well.

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
    10·
    5 months ago

    This sounds woefully inadequate in it’s understanding of this new incarnation of fascism. It works by fostering inequality based on a myth of an “essentialized identity”. Us vs them. So fear is just one of the tools.

    And a massive driver for this is the increasing wealth inequality and sinking quality of life and prospects of prosperity. Because the old systems of propaganda do not work anymore (which the journalist is a representative of) the system “responds” by using fascism because that still works. For many decades they lie and cheat and this creates the fertile ground.

    You can’t have working democracy without prosperity, security (!= constant wars) and education (!= decades of propaganda in consolidated mainstream media)

  • GodlessCommie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    5 months ago

    I had to stop reading at “despite a booming economy.” It may be booming for Paul Krugman and the wealthy, but for the rest of us it sucks. No amount of gaslighting will convince the 750k unhoused, the 65% living paycheck to paycheck, the 50% of renters that cant afford rent (soon to possibly be homeless,) the skyrocketing auto repos and credit card usage for necessities that the economy is doing well.

    He may as well include BlueMAGA in that statement of ‘based on fear,’ thats how the DNC holds onto power, by selling fear. Fear of what that other guy might do, while we do the same thing.

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
      16·
      5 months ago

      The Democrats are not bluemaga, they operate and reason out policies completely differently, and don’t pretend that you not reading makes you an authority on the matter.

        • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          5 months ago

          Please provide evidence, especially relative to the number of maga and the real world consequences of maga that have occurred?

          It sure wasn’t Blue maga, a made up group, that violently stormed the capital trying to overturn an election, or blue maga, a made-up group, that mailed forged election certificates to the national archives and the vice president.

    • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
      8·
      5 months ago

      I cannot in good conscience upvote the OP, bc of exactly that sentence. However, their (NYT) gaslighting I think is of a different kind. For one, there are THREE entities involved here - which they hoped you would not notice: there are MAGA Republicans, there are the Dems, and then there are the billionaires who control both regardless of who wins (guess who owns the NYT btw:-P). The billionaire class would like it very much - please!? - if you would pretend that they did not exist, and were not the cause of there being no money available for common folks to eat/breathe/everything else, as they send rockets into space, self-admittedly bc they have literally no idea how to spend all that amount of money…

      But as for BlueMAGA, there I disagree with you, bc the two sides are nowhere close to being equal. You might have no idea how close this country came to an actual coup - and I don’t even mean merely January 6. The Republicans winning is worth being afraid of, and I mean literal and actual fear not figuratively by any means. As in by-by democracy as Trump declares himself dictator for life, and then we have a literal civil war over it. It’s no joking matter, in that direction. While if Democrats win, school shootings won’t diminish in any way, so… also not great, but again nowhere close to being equal.

      • GodlessCommie@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        The BlueMAGA cult is as deranged in their loyalty to anything with a D in their name as a mainstream MAGA.

        Nearly 100% of the stuff claims he will do cant happen. If the President had that type of unilateral power to change stuff without Congress why hasnt Biden exercised it? He couldn’t even repeal the ACA with a Republican Congress.

        There was no coup or coup attempt, there was a bunch of hillbillies that stormed the Capital building. And the same gaslighting media like the NYT, among others, see dollar signs from liberals and call it coup. In the end we will see the entire Jan 6 dog and pony show was just a distraction to keep the rabid dogs at attention and barking.

        • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          Ignoring the likelihood that you are trolling me at this point, and responding solely to the issues at hand:

          • you are entitled to your opinion, but so too can people down-vote and block you; but why not choose to educate yourself on these matters before speaking, rather than make others do that work for you? Seriously, you will find that others listen to what you say much more readily when you are very careful to ensure that they match only existing facts. Ignorance is no excuse, outside of the kiddie playground areas. Then again, I misspelled “by-by” (should have been “bye-bye”), so like, nobody’s perfect or at least *I* am not:-P, though still there’s something to this so I hope you will think about it.

          • some of his supporters are that way yes - but the only time stereotypically identifying the most extreme behavior out of an entire population and trying to pass it off as the “norm” works is in… well, politics. WE should hold ourselves to a higher standard than THEM though, no?

          • ofc he can’t do half the stuff he promises - but neither can Trump, who is even older and even more rambling-er-est, and in a contest of lying wins hands-down. Ofc I can call Biden a poopie-head McButtFace (anytime I want! especially in my own head! you can’t stop me, muwhahaha!:-P) but… why lower the discourse to that level? They both have their issues… though nowhere near equally. And some of those issues they have in common with one another, as with most politicians before and surely most after them as well.

          • I specifically said that I was not talking about January 6. I’ll leave this to you to research - you shouldn’t trust me anyway, so best to find out for yourself:-).

          Oh well, my conscience is clear - I tried to help. Make of all this what you will ofc.