Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Are MAGA supporters just as bad as Trump? Someone asks.

However ill or well-informed they might be, MAGA seems to rely on a base of the despondent crossed with Christian Nationalists, and the rest are betting those votes against the Democrats, who I feel are not connecting with the rational side of their populist and popular policies.

You know how disdain and disgust are hard-wired in to Conservatism, and with his prevarications as well as the vulnerable parts of policy like the border and housing, some of them might not be such bad folk, but they need an opposition champion. With the neo-con alternative in Haley, and Trump-lite in the rest, he remains the default choice, for many people who embrace the Stolen Election argument, and those in stringent opposition to an establishment that has seemed - seemed, mind you- to offer nothing different.

I think there's a factual argument to be made for more progressive improvements which have been advanced. But if your town is shrinking from out-sourcing, it's really hard to establish small businesses, might be impossible to sustain your standard of living. There is genuine pain, felt by all of us working for corporate America.

At least, this is what I tell myself. I realize there are a lot of A**^#^@s out there who really are just-as-bad. And on whole, we started passing the threshold for Shamelessness and Prevarication back to his campaign launch. I really think our adventures in South America, not to mention proliferate gun sales, have destabilized the countries from which migrants are fleeing, and do not see them as 'vermin.' (There's no logic whatsoever in saying there's an organized effort to send the mentally-ill from asylums. If those countries had that sort of infrastructure, they'd have better mental health care. Tickets and transportation to America for the mentally incapictated are not a cheap or viable solution- that's fear-mongering.)

But keep hope.

I really don't know how a force of freedom fighters could duplicate Washington's courageous rally from the winter depths of Valley Forge, with a massive domestic force in place that is OK with the kind of extra-legal activity we saw with U.S. support of South American dictators. It would be a long struggle to build anything from a coalition of non-dicatatorship partisans, reliant largely on the ineptitude and croneyism of a fascist regime, which might be passed down for several terms. I feel this dictatorship suggestion will not alleviate the burdens of the working people, just as it's failed abroad. It's probably favorable to rich right-wingers who would love to lock up the opposition, who, in this GOP-led House that passed just 22 bills, isn't that effective against them, anyway.

I realize these are the times that try the souls of men. Keep the faith that we can emerge from this eclipse of genuine equality for all.