I’ve been tardy in approving comments and posting these daily rants to Facebook and Bluesky. I am also likely to miss a couple of days, although I will try not to. I usually write ahead, but yesterday’s was the last full post I’d prepared.
On vacation in South Carolina, I was trying to help my son-in-law take my husband’s mobility scooter out of the rear of his van. I slipped (it’s heavy) and fell, and heard something crack (NOT a pleasant sound!) Turns out I fractured something called the T12 vertabra. I flew home rather than riding in a car for 15 hours, but the airplane trip didn’t help. Bottom line, I’m pretty much out of order for the next couple of weeks. Between the pain and the drugs to control the pain, it’s definitely interfering with my ability to read, think and analyze. So expect brief messages rather than extended conversations for the next few days, until sitting at my computer is easier.
ER folks tell me the fracture is the only problem, which is good, and that it should heal in 8-12 weeks–and the pain should subside well before that, so those of you who are kind enough to keep coming back to my cantankerous offerings won’t have a long time to wait for the “full experience.”
Meanwhile, if you have news that Trump’s hold on his cult is failing, the Epstein files are being leaked, Stephen Miller has disappeared–good news, in other words–please share it in the comments!
The central mystery of MAGA’s devotion to Donald Trump has always been–at least to me–one incomprehensible question: how can any minimally reasonable person look at this man– an adjudicated felon and sex offender, a thin-skinned buffoon and bully constantly lashing out at any criticism with kindergarten-level insults and a third-grade vocabulary–and think, “yep, that’s the guy I want to entrust with the nuclear codes.” How can anyone who can read or watch news videos ignore the increasingly psychotic behaviors?
It’s understandable that people who don’t follow the news, or who get their “news” from Fox, et al, might have missed the copious evidence of his greed, and his use of the Presidency to enrich himself–although the most recent evidence (Paramount Plus’ payment of a bribe to get the government to approve a merger that will make its owner billions) has been very widely publicized.
Evidently, none of this matters to the MAGA cult: not the stupidity, not the ignorance, not the greed. Not the enormous damage he is doing to the country. Cult leaders can do no wrong.
So what explains the evident defection of so many MAGA cultists over the Epstein cover-up? Why of all things has the increasing likelihood that he participated in the rape of numerous young girls penetrated (no pun intended) MAGA’s “see no evil” devotion? After all, they were happy to ignore all the evidence of his predatory sexual behavior against adult women–E. Jean Carroll’s successful lawsuit, the 26 women who’ve claimed they were subjects of groping and other inappropriate assaults, his own taped admission that, being a “star” (at least in his wildly inflated opinion) he could grab women by the you-know-what.
Sane Americans are cheered by recent polling that shows Trump’s precipitous decline, but according to Gallup there are still 37% of Americans who approve of his performance as President. Thirty-seven percent of us look at this pathetic, criminal ignoramus and say “looks good to me.”
Psychologists tell us that one of the most important aspects of a cult–one of the most attractive attributes to members–is the reduction of the individual’s autonomy, the ceding of control over large areas of one’s life to someone else. As one article I read put it, the cult controls people’s thinking and behaviour, their choices about who to associate with, what jobs to do, who to marry or have relationships with, what to believe, and depending upon how extreme, when to eat and sleep and even in some notorious cases when to die.
In addition to relieving the burden of thinking for oneself, in the case of MAGA, mountains of research have affirmed the central role played by racism. As American society has changed in ways that most of us would consider positive, White “Christian” men have experienced those changes as assaults on their status. How dare those uppity women take management positions? When did those Black and Brown people get the idea that they were entitled to equality? Gay people are getting married! There were plenty of straight White males who experienced the progress of others as an assault–as deprivation of their god-given right to dominance. Trump validated their anger and bitterness at a world that was failing to accord them the status they believe is their due. He made it okay to voice their racism, homophobia and misogyny.
Most of all, he provided them with stories to tell themselves. One of the most pervasive of those stories was that of the Deep State. Government was filled with horrible Democrats who sexually abused (and even ate) helpless children. Cult members were the good guys who were going to root out these terrible people and return control of the country to the good guys who deserve to control it. It was an article of faith, a part of the cult identity.
What happens when this article of faith encounters the reality that Trump–the man with whom they identified themselves in this holy war against evil– is one of the bad guys, one of the Deep State pedophiles? I think we’re about to find out.
Some of the faithful will simply reject the evidence, but as we are seeing, others will experience disillusion.
I don’t know what the outcome will be, but thus far, Trump’s usual tactics–lie, call out “fake news,” blame Obama and Hillary Clinton, manufacture distractions–haven’t worked. There are several possible outcomes: MAGA may burrow more deeply into denial and cognitive dissonance. They may double down. Or they may defect.
The most important thing I learned in law school can be summed up with the adage “he who frames the issue wins the debate.” The most consequential move a lawyer–or any debater–can make is to define what the argument is all about. (Our idiot-in-chief clearly does recognize that, at least at some subconscious level, since his response to any and all accusations is always to insist that the real issue is whether the accuser is “fake.”)
What reminded me of that old law school conclusion was a recent article in the New York Times, citing a communications professor from Texas A&M, one Jennifer Mercieca. According to the article, her recent book addresses that issue– what she calls “frame warfare.” Mercieca argues that the power to name things is the power to define reality, and she identifies that tactic as Trump’s most potent. As she points out, it’s a tactic that goes hand in hand with his constant assertions that fly in the face of facts and evidence. Redefinitions of reality, she writes, have been central to his success.
As Mercieca explains frame warfare, “What you call a thing determines the contours of the debate around it — or precludes debate altogether. Did you borrow a car without permission, or did you steal it? Was the crush of migrants at the Mexican border an invasion or a humanitarian crisis?”
The importance of framing is obvious in the fulminations of America’s White Christian Nationalists. One of the most obvious examples is the debate about abortion. “Christian” paternalists focus on the “sin” of terminating a pregnancy–on the propriety of the decision being made by a pregnant individual. Civil libertarians insist that the issue is really who decides? In our frame, we ask: is this a decision government should have the authority to make, or is it a decision properly made by the individual woman? As I used to tell my students, the Bill of Rights is essentially a list of things that government is prohibited from deciding–what prayer you say (or whether you pray at all), what political opinions you hold, whether you have a right to travel without offering justification to authority…
Back when Republicans could credibly claim to be proponents of limited government, many weighed in on the side of individual liberty. (I remember–back in the day– being part of a group called Republicans for Choice.) Barry Goldwater famously said that government didn’t belong in either your boardroom or your bedroom. (That belief also led him to support gay rights–he even got an award from PFLAG.)
Rather obviously, if we decide that the role of government is to require people to live in accordance with God’s will, we have to decide whose version of that will government should enforce. “Christian” nationalists are fine with giving government that power, so long as they get to be the arbiters of what is “godly.’ They also talk a lot about religious liberty–for them. They aren’t so solicitous about religious liberty for adherents of other (wrong) religions. Their version of religious liberty turns out to be their liberty to use government to impose their particular religious beliefs on those who don’t share them.
It isn’t just the “Christian” nationalists whose framing is perverse. It’s also MAGA.
Just what makes America great? Or more properly, since “again” is a prominent part of that slogan, what DID make America great? If you listen to Trump’s base, it’s pretty clear that their version of “greatness” requires the social dominance of straight White males.
Over the past several years, Americans have stopped debating policy–after all, policy debates require evidence, consideration of past experience ….FACTS. It requires respect for people who come to the conversation with a different–but rreality-based– perspective. The reason we can no longer engage in civil discourse is that MAGA has framed control of government as a fight between the resistance of those of us who live in the real world and their right-their need– to impose their “alternate reality”–their preferred frame– on the rest of us.
I think the proper frame for the culture war we are fighting is this: Both MAGA and the “Christian” nationalists want to take America back to a time that never was.
As regular readers of this blog know, I don’t suffer what I consider foolishness (or worse) in silence. At times, as I survey the political landscape, words positively spew out. But every once in a while, I read something that captures my perspective so perfectly–that so eloquently captures my angst, anger and perspective– that it deserves copious quotation.
The tirade perfectly expresses my feelings about the non-“true believing” Republicans who have enabled America’s flight from democracy and rational government–the GOP elected officials like Indiana Senator Todd Young. No one sane expected anything better from the crazy “Christian” MAGA morons like our other Senator, but–as the author, a former Executive Director of the Michigan Republican Party writes–our current situation can be firmly laid at the feet of the quislings who know better.
Permit me to share some of his diatribe, with which I entirely agree.
This is a pox on every current or former Republican elected official, every D.C. policy wonk, every think-tank libertarian, every “principled” conservative, every consultant and operative, every comms flack who flinched at Trump in 2016, held their nose in 2020, and now in 2025 are all-in, pretending they never saw the flames. They saw the incompetence. The ignorance. The corruption. The racism. The appeals to violence. The fascist cosplay. They watched Trump mismanage a pandemic that killed a million Americans. They watched him try to shake down Ukraine. They watched the tear gas fly at Lafayette Square. They watched January 6th.
After Trump lost to Biden, he writes,
They let the tumor grow back. And now that he’s returned to power — with a vengeance, a vendetta list, a castrated Congress, and a perverted and retributive Justice Department in his pocket — they’ve decided to go along to get along. Because “we need to win,” because “it’s about judges,” because “Biden was too old,” because their taxes will be lower, because “Harris was too progressive,” because of some freshman DEI policy at Oberlin College or the University of Michigan…
There is no Trump 2.0 without these Vichy collaborators. He doesn’t have the IQ or impulse control to govern without them. They write the policies. They run the agencies. They polish the lies. MAGA isn’t a grassroots movement — it’s a fascist aesthetic wrapped around a cynical, calculating elite that knows exactly what it’s doing: Dismantling democracy for profit and power.
Look around. The Department of Justice is now a MAGA war room. News agencies are threatened with being frog-marched into courtrooms for asking the wrong questions. State National Guards have been federalized — and active duty Marines deployed — to occupy Los Angeles. And those “respectable” Republicans? The ones who were “uncomfortable” with Trump before? They’re writing op-eds praising his “leadership.” They’re spinning the gutting of civil liberties as “order.” They’re appeasing tyranny but collecting paychecks.
These aren’t rubes at a rally in Sheboygan or the MAGA meth chorus from Bumfuck County. These are the guys in the green rooms and boardrooms, at the Capitol Hill Club, in the donor retreats and Capitol cloakrooms. They know better. They knew better.
This piece isn’t about the true believers. It’s about the Quisling converts. The ones who once winced when Trump called the press “enemies of the people,” and would now cheer if he arrests them. The ones who once said, “This is not conservatism,” and now insist, “This is what the people want.”
If and when we emerge from this dark time, the most important question we’ll need to ask won’t involve the manifest pathologies of Trump. It won’t even focus on the intellectual and emotional deficits of the MAGA faithful–after all, numerous humans in every generation have joined cults, clung to their tribal affiliations and hated the “other.” What is new–or at least seems unprecedented to my inaccurate historical memory–is the wholesale defection of an entire cohort of public figures from anything resembling integrity.
There was, of course, the author’s absolutely accurate reference to quislings, the French who submitted during WWII, a term defined as a citizen or politician of an occupied country who collaborates with an enemy occupying force. It is a perfect description of today’s GOP lawmakers. If any reader is aware of a psychological profile of those collaborators, I hope you will point us to that scholarship in the comments.
As the author notes, “They were in the house. They saw the fire. And instead of helping us put it out, they grabbed a lawn chair and roasted hot dogs. ” What explains that reaction?
I know I keep harping on the subject of our media environment, but as more research becomes available, I become more and more convinced that an enormous amount of political and voting behavior is the result of the fragmentation facilitated by the Internet–a fragmentation enabling people to occupy a chosen bubble of “news” that reinforces their ideological beliefs and prejudices.
That phenomenon in recent U.S. elections has mirrored voter movements elsewhere, and the research was an effort to determine whether those movements had causal commonalities. The scholarship cited was all interesting, and I encourage you to click through and read it in its entirely, but one conclusion stood out. The article noted that Trump’s inroads into the Black and Hispanic communities was tied to the nature of the media sources those voters consulted.
The declining influence of television news, for example, has been stark. As the article noted, Democrats have always done well with U.S. minorities who follow political news on television, and they still won 73 percent of those voters in 2024. But their support among those who didn’t follow the election on TV was only 46 percent.
And, for perhaps the first time, the share of Americans following the presidential election on TV began to fall in 2024. It dropped from 85 percent to 81 percent. We don’t know what’s replacing it, though we do know that the share who got political news on TikTok soared from 22 percent in 2020 to 33 percent in 2024 — and that TikTok is the only medium through which U.S. minorities were more likely to follow politics compared with Whites.
Similarly, a March poll from the Pew Research Center found that 30 percent of minority voters who supported Trump got at least some of their news from “The Joe Rogan Experience” — putting the Trump-endorsing podcast behind only Fox News in that group. (To be sure, other sources were also close enough to be within the margin of error, and Pew’s Elisa Shearer cautioned that our media choice can be an effect of our political views as much as it is a cause of them.)
Minority neighborhoods traditionally tended to coalesce around a given candidate when residents of those neighborhoods got their news from similar, predominantly mainstream, sources. But as the media environment has balkanized, the electorate has split into smaller and less predictable units.
Over the last decades, as culture war has consumed American politics, minority voters who are culturally conservative but economically liberal —a cohort that includes many working-class minorities and immigrants — have begun to base their votes on cultural issues rather than economic ones. That trend has been supercharged by what the article called the “algorithm-driven fragment of the media,” the social media platforms that turn cultural concerns into cultural outrage by constantly amplifying moral- or emotional-based messages, a practice that encourages user commitment to the platform. (Yes, follow the money…or in this case, the business model.)
As one scholar explained it,
“Social media can subtly shape people’s information diet because algorithms are attuned to what people are engaging with online…. “So if someone’s paying attention to content that leans a little more socially conservative, the algorithm will feed you more and more of that. And before you know it, you’re in an informational ecosystem that’s pretty different from what you’d see tuning into mainstream media.”
In other words, the dramatic changes we have experienced in our media environment have fostered ideological, educational and gender divides, splintering communities that were once defined first by racial or cultural identities.
I have no idea what can be done about the balkanization of the media. I am very afraid that we can’t put that genie back in the bottle– allowing government to determine the content of internet sites would be even more dangerous than today’s environment of propaganda and disinformation. Fact-checking sites are only useful for people who care about facts, and that is an unfortunately small percentage of the population.
Perhaps legislation dictating what algorithms can and cannot do would avoid violating the First Amendment, but from where this digital novice sits, it’s unclear how such a law would be framed or how it could be enforced.
We live in a world where people who desperately want to believe clearly untrue things– that climate change is a myth, that vaccines cause autism, that “chemtrails” are poisoning us, that “woke-ism” is the reason they missed out on that promotion–can find confirmation of those beliefs in the Internet’s growing never-never land.
