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
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.
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…
The left-right analogy was always about economics. And the backsliding of union participation and regulatory capture, lack of antitrust enforcement etc is definitely a shift to the right. Basically the New Deal has been allowed to be dismantled.
I mean, if right wing people want to admit they are against civil liberties and they want to go back to the good old days of no civil rights then I wouldn’t interrupt them while they make that mistake.
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.
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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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.
And there’s a bunch of proxy conflicts the US is definitely involved in and at least partly responsible for. Not to mention the “global war on terror”.
Just because US soldiers aren’t dying en masse doesn’t mean it’s peacetime.
There was never anything “great” about the US - unless you believe that the world’s largest experiment in white supremacism is (somehow) “great.”
I can promise you with 100% certainty that we aren’t all white supremacists
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.”
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.
WHAT ABOUT THE CLINTONS?!?!
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…?
in a position of power over you has a tantrum and refuses to use common sense…?
Oh lord. This is not how you approach thinking about anything remotely like this if you actually want to change someone’s beliefs.
Belittling them and their beliefs, no matter how deserving, is nearly guaranteed to just piss them off and not do much more. It doesn’t read as an attack on misguided beliefs, it will read to them as an attack on them and their own decision making/reasoning skills. Because you probably are internally thinking “what the fuck is wrong with you” and it probably come through to them loud and clear.
If it’s your boss, stop fucking talking politics at work. Not tomorrow, not now, yesterday. No, you don’t get a pass for correcting the abysmally wrong. Just shut the fuck up about politics and keep your head down. Work is for making a paycheck so you can survive, not for making an idealogical stand. If they keep trying to talk politics to you and won’t allow you to disengage, start looking for a new job. HR is not your friend and are most likely going to side with the more senior position, or at least will let it slip that you complained to them, making your job even more hell. Just cut your losses. Either get your shit together to be able to work around it, get a number of people together to all lodge the same complaint so it’s more costly for HR to ignore you than it is for them to, or find someplace else asap.
If it’s your parents or family, just avoid the fucking subject for as long as you are reliant on them for anything. If they won’t shut up about it, learn to “grey rock” or just smile and nod. Redirect. Change the subject. Do anything except try to meet them head on and “win” the argument. That’s not how conversations work in regards to convincing people of things, especially when there are strong feelings attached.
It is not your job to correct people’s misguided beliefs. The people who argue that it’s your duty to speak up whenever and wherever you can… they live a life that is either significantly divorced from reality, insulated by living surrounded entirely with like minded individuals, they are slowly alienating those around them, or they are only so outspoken online. Your first priority is to just get by, hopefully avoiding unneeded conflict in your daily life.
And before all the people come out of the fucking woodwork with extreme hypotheticals… Yes, if your boss or parent is literally using racial slurs, that changes things. If things are more extreme than some asshole just blabbing out their dumbass beliefs, re-evaluate. All I’ve said is under the assumption that the shit you’re complaining about is mainly just people talking stupid shit.
People don’t work like some sort of fucking debate club where you can beat them over the head with facts, logic, and gotchas until they submit and see things your way. It’s a very addictive thing to convince yourself that they do, but they overwhelmingly don’t
If it’s your boss, stop fucking talking politics at work.
I live in a country where I people can’t be fired over “talking politics” at work. A boss isn’t too much in a position of power, depending on the job. This is because here in Finland, we have regulation.
I’m an adult. Why would my family be in a “position of power” over me?
“It is not your job to correct people’s misguided beliefs”
So if a cop broke your rights because they got mad at you for making them have a tantrum and use an excuse to arrest you, you’d allow them and apologize and not do anything about it, since “it’s not your job” to correct the cops misguided belief that they were in the right to arrest you over simply having offended them?
If you’re in politics, and you’re in a session and the speaker has a tantrum, what do you do?
If you’re an American a few years ago, your president was Donald Trump, a drooling, diaper-wearing senior who can’t parse sentences together and refuses to believe in well established facts. That’s a deluded, misguided, and willfully ignorant man as the president, which I would consider a position of power (over the people in his nation, not me, as again, not American.)
You wouldn’t think it’s perhaps in the interest of greater society to not have people like that in positions of power?
People don’t work like some sort of fucking debate club
Oh gee whiz, kind internet-stranger, thanks for the words of wisdom, I never would’ve thought that otherwise.
Or perhaps I’m making conversation here about this subject you think you know so well.
Have a gander: 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.”
That’s a lot of words to ignore critical pieces of what I said.
I live in a country where I people can’t be fired over “talking politics” at work.
Awesome! Given this was a post about MAGA, I assumed you were from the US, dealing with people also in the US.
I’m an adult. Why would my family be in a “position of power” over me?
I don’t know you, and there’s more and more posts on lemmy each day from high schoolers and young adults still living with their folks. I very clearly said that was advice for if you were still reliant on them, so… just ignore that section I guess?
So if a cop broke…
If you’re in politics…
Read on to the end please, I tried to be clear that I was giving advice for a situation where someone is just dealing with annoying talk and poor political beliefs from a boss or a family member they may be dependent on. I’m seeing more and more of those posts lately.
I’m not interested in discussing extreme hypotheticals, as I hoped that it might not need to be made explicit that advice meant for one context does not apply outside of it.
If you’re an American… [orange man bad]… You wouldn’t think it’s perhaps in the interest of greater society to not have people like that in positions of power?
Absolutely.
Oh gee whiz, kind internet-stranger, thanks for the words of wisdom, I never would’ve thought that otherwise.
Oh, I’m very sorry that I mistook your comment worded as though it was looking for advice as though you might be looking for advice. Again, I don’t know you, who you are, or what you do and don’t know.
Have a gander… [stoicism stuff]
That’s a nice piece there, and effectively what I was trying to get at in a far less pretentious manner than that text. Can’t logic people out of beliefs that have a significant emotional component.
And because of that, I feel it’s best to not waste effort if there isn’t a pressing need. No single person is going to argue down enough Trump voters to impact US election results, so that effort is likely best applied elsewhere, rather than introducing unproductive conflict into your life.
Awesome! Given this was a post about MAGA, I assumed you were from the US
That’s understandable. Personally, I don’t comment on posts without reading them, but I understand the attitudes towards literacy are a bit different in the States. If you had, you’d have probably noticed the “as a non-American”, bit, wouldn’t you?
Read on to the end please
That’s a bit ironic, innit?
That’s a nice piece there
Oh as if you even browsed it, let alone read it.
Can’t logic people out of beliefs that have a significant emotional component.
Not what the point of the article, which again, you’d have known had you read it.
No single person is going to argue down enough Trump voters to impact US election results
Well, we’ll ignore the fact that the US doesn’t have direct presidential elections and pretend as if the popular vote was a de-facto direct vote. If it was, then even by affecting one voter, you could be affecting the outcome of the election. To say there’s literally no impact is disingenuous, because politics is all about, well, politics. To say that “what are you gonna achieve by talking about it”, in the context of politicians, is… rather silly.
Apathy is the greatest tool of the oppressor, and they’ve certainly gotten you. You should definitely have a look at this. https://medium.com/@annalloydc/how-fascism-and-apathy-are-linked-017c8a7b1e3d (And I use have “a look”/“gander at”, because I knew you wouldn’t be bothered to spend a few minutes reading them, but hoped I’d be wrong.)
Apathy can result in a lack of political engagement and interest, creating fertile ground for the rise of fascism. Corrupt people in political office love it when young people don’t vote, and become apathetic, because it increases their chances of winning.
“You can’t argue the opposition anyway since they’re idiots, so why bother”
Well, because while most idiots will stay idiots, not all do. Yes it’s a vanishingly small percentage you’ll experience doing it mid-debate, but to think that having discourse has no effect even if some MAGAts stayed magats despite the discourse, then you’re being apathetic, which is putting the US (and the world) at more risk of fascism. So… please stop.
It is from small streams that big rivers rise.
Would you rather fight 1 adult-sized MAGA jerkosaurus or…
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.
They must all be so miserable all the time
Miserable in a Sysiphean way. Like their existence is absolutely isolating and alone, but they get to be secure in their convictions by cutting ties to people that think differently from them or harassing others long enough they just leave them, further proving them right that everyone else is either duped by the conspiracy of overwhelmingly strong weaklings or is in on the conspiracy.
To be fair any extreme tends to be miserable.
Ohh, don’t forget the lazy uneducated immigrants who come and live off welfare while also stealing all the hard working jobs!
Yes… that’s exactly what it means. America is in bad shape domestically and internationally.
It’s a dog whistle for “Make slavery legal again” and “Woman into the kitchen”
It also means that it once was great but it also completely abdicates any responsibility for defining when that great period was in our timeline?
Was it great in the 50s when institutional racism was the law and a black girl going to college was justification for rolling out the national guard?
Was it great in the 70s when we were fighting in Vietnam for literally no reason?
Like what time period are they talking about?
Maybe they mean in the late 40s when we were rolling off the high of winning world war II? And the great majority of men had died to the point where wage inflation made even moderately capable men comparatively wealthy to today’s standard?
Is make America great again really just a code to try to start and win world war III so that 20% of all males in America would die and therefore the surviving 80% would have more luxuries given to them by default?
Reminds me of this No, you weren’t “born in the wrong decade”
Is make America great again really just a code to try to start and win world war III so that 20% of all males in America would die and therefore the surviving 80% would have more luxuries given to them by default?
Well, me being 40, without any military experience, I have no reason to think I’d ever be in the 20%. So by this logic, I would recieve more luxeries in my life.
That being said, fuck that.
You have to understand that they are not intellectually honest. They have no issues knowingly dwelling in a false narrative. The false narrative serves to normalize their movement and recruit people as they publicly repeat it unchallenged amongst each other.
Oh I do.
https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/
I understand they’re willfully ignorant, but I can’t honestly understand what makes them feel the need to do it. I understand reasons for it, but the deep meaning behind being like that… eludes me. And I’ve been thinking on this for at least a few decades.
America was pretty great before trump came along and ruined it.
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.
Kinda? LOL
Seriously though, it was pretty great for most of my life. Not without issues, but still a great place to live.
Your observation is astute. I kinda want to make red hats that just say COGNITIVE DISSONANCE on them
This is a really good idea though. And would kinda reclaim red hats.
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.
“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…!!!”
Great for whom? Billionaires? Convicted felons? Or what?
The meme works as a double dog whistle. Simpletons find camaraderie in nostalgia while actual traitors recognize and organize around the damage they intend to cause.
Yup. It was funny how during the 2020 election cycle they briefly had to change all their merch to say “keep America great” despite continuing to use the MAGA slogan throughout most of Trump’s administration. By their logic, America was only “great” during the first part of 2020, which is… questionable, to say the least, since almost nothing was “great” during that time.
Haha really? I hadn’t even heard. Brilliant.
In the British colloquial sense, not in the “wow how intelligent of them”-sense.
There’s just no end to the stupidity.
(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.
They actually took it from Reagan. But you could still maintain the same arguments, even though the times were a bit different. The “Again” is always a bit of a questionable part. “Make America Better” isn’t as aggressive in the goal, but it’s more honest and broad in who and what it’s referring to. I’d rather have some solid ideas than a slogan, any day.
