Make America Gagalicious Again
The "Fuck Your Feelings" crowd channels the stupid again
I may be an atheist, but I recall enough of my enforced Sunday School lessons to remember the story in Revelations about those who wore the mark of the anti-Christ on their foreheads. The red-capped MAGA crowd has me wondering if that red chapeau is the mark of the anti-Christ. It also had me wondering if Donald Trump might not BE that aforementioned anti-Christ.
Eh, who knows? I want to think the anti-Christ would be a fair bit smarter than the Donald, but who am I to pick and choose my anti-Christ, knowhutimean? Whatever the case may be, what surprises me about Trump is that a loser like him has somehow managed to retain his base of support, which has morphed into a cult.
MAGA exists in its own reality, one in which Donald Trump is the legitimate President and Joe Biden the usurper who stole the election from their patron saint and faultless hero. They’ll never acknowledge what those who call the reality-based world home know to be true- that Joe Biden won by more than 7 million votes and is the legitimate and legal President.
Despite many lost court battles and the futile January 6th insurrection, Donald Trump didn’t win the 2020 election and isn’t going to be installed as President. He can run in 2024, but 2020 is a settled matter. As the MAGAnauts told us in 2016, “Get over it!”
None of that is about to stop MAGA Nation from manufacturing its weird, twisted, self-contained “reality” that only it understands.
Add the humble Oreo cookie to the long and growing list of ordinary bits of Americana the self-declared patriots of the MAGA movement now are expected to shun. As Ashlie Stevens reported at Salon on Monday, the usual yapping heads of the right are so furious at the brand for sponsoring a pro-LGBTQ short film that they are calling on their followers to "boycott" the company. Well, not the actual company — Oreos are owned by a multinational corporation that owns hundreds of everyday brands — but just the cookie itself. Ideally, you also issue a lecture on the evils of homosexuality to the poor checkout girl who didn't even ask why you were going with Nillas instead of Oreos for your cookie purchase today.
Like every right-wing "boycott" before — from the one against Starbucks to the one against Gillette to the various Twitter "boycotts" to this current Disney "boycott" — the Oreo "boycott" isn't really a boycott. A genuine boycott is much like an economic sanction, except imposed by organized citizens instead of governements. It's an effort to cause economic pain for a company or other entity, with an eye towards pressuring them to change their political behavior.
At this point, MAGA has used its manufactured reality to focus heavily on a political landscape and conspiracy theories created out of whole cloth by QAnon. Those conspiracy theories are all they have. MAGA Nation can’t accept reality as it exists, and they’re not about to admit the truth that their guy lost fair and square, so they continue to marinate in conspiracies with no basis in reality.
Conspiracies are easy. They rely on ignorance, which requires no effort to learn, only ignorance and arrogance. One must work to obtain knowledge, but you may cast aside knowledge and rely instead on ignorance and arrogance at a moment’s notice. An entire taxonomy of conspiracy can be constructed out of whole cloth and lies in the time it takes the truth to roll its sorry ass out of bed.
MAGA’s biggest problem is that they take themselves far too seriously. They believe themselves to be of far greater importance than they actually are. Their totem is fading in influence, though he remains the titular head of the GOP. They believe themselves to be the rightful receptacle of political power in this country, the “kingmakers,” as it were.
In their prejudiced, self-important worldview, political power by rights lies with White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexuals. MAGA Nation believes that those who ask for equal rights are actually demanding special rights and that THEY are the ones who should determine who’s worthy of equal rights. Of course, when you’ve been on top of the food chain for so long, anyone demanding equality will be seen as trying to usurp your God-given superiority.
Truthfully, MAGA Nation doesn’t care about America. Though their slogan may be “America First,” what that phrase stands for is the continuation of White privilege and supremacy. Any policy is filtered through their expectation that White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexuals maintain their place at the top of the socioeconomic food chain and at the front of the food trough. It’s America of, by, and for angry, fragile, and not particularly intellectually agile White folks.
They’re the people with the “F*CK BIDEN” bumper stickers and flags. However, if you ask them what President Biden is doing wrong or how Donald Trump would be better, the answer you’d get is indecipherable and inaccurate propaganda. They’re so deep into pro-Trump propaganda that they can’t tell you precisely what he’s done, just that he’s SO much better than Joe Biden, who’s a senile hack.
It makes you wonder if they’ve ever listened to some of the verbal atrocities that Donald Trump has perpetrated upon the English language. Not that there’s a double standard at work or anything.
Sadly for America, much of MAGA Nation sounds like extras from the cast of “Dumb and Dumber.” While I don’t expect Joe and Ethel Sixpack to be able to speak with authority on policy initiatives, I don’t think it’s too much to expect informed opinions instead of uninformed emotional diatribes. Yet so much of MAGA Nation has been so thoroughly propagandized that they’ve either lost the ability (or refuse) to think critically.
This is how we end up with such erudite sentiments as “F*CK JOE BIDEN.” These people are STILL angry at President Biden because they STILL believe he stole the election from Trump. Despite a complete lack of supporting evidence, they continue to believe that Trump is the rightful President and that he should be restored forthwith. Nothing else matters because they’ve gone so deep down the rabbit hole that their whole world is “STOP THE STEAL!!”
Never mind that nothing was stolen.
So, MAGA will continue to freak out and demand boycotts against products and companies that refuse to march to the beat of their drum. And no one outside of their twisted reality will care, because the rest of America has moved on, even as they remain mired in their conspiracy theories and lies.
You could be forgiven for thinking this is beginning to sound like the sequel to “Idiocracy.” The only thing missing is President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho…and a six-pack of Brawndo.
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