In the mind of MAGA
To understand MAGA we are going to conduct some thought experiments in the spirit of Einstein. Einstein was famous for being able to switch his point of view radically to understand physical phenomena.
From the point of view of an American elite most MAGA voters are falling further and further away from our lifestyle and frame of reference.
However a MAGA voter is not aware of this frame of reference anymore than most American elites come in contact with or understand the lifestyle of people who own private jets.
If we imagine riding along with a MAGA as Einstein once imagined running alongside a beam of light, then what do we see and feel? The MAGA person does not see elites and he doesn’t “feel” his falling further away from them:
He realized that a person in free fall does not feel their own weight, meaning a uniform gravitational field is entirely equivalent to accelerating through empty space.
However there are women and non-whites in MAGA’s frame of reference. Racism and misogyny cause the women and non-whites with no college degree to fall faster than him. So from a MAGA relative white male point of view, he is actually drifting upwards in a way that allows him to find a younger, prettier mate and a higher status.
Plus that upward relative momentum happens despite economic recession and, since recession hits the women and non-whites around him harder, sometimes because of economic recession.
There are caveats to this self perceived MAGA white male rise:
- Suddenly being unable to buy something that could previously be purchased, say due to inflation or unemployment, dispels the illusion.
- Anyone like an immigrant, who is in a MAGA frame of reference but then climbs out of it towards elite, will destroy the upward sensation.
- Rich people visiting MAGA land to rape teenagers, for instance from an Epstein predator ring, is disconcerting.
- American culture bending to elite thought is noticeable no matter what frame of reference. So “woke” or whatever the MAGA wants to call it must go. Any bleeding of information between the social classes is painful to the mind of MAGA, the same way most elites were not happy with Jeff Bezos and his penis shaped rocket.
- Obviously if women and non-whites don’t fall faster than him, there is a great risk of looking up and noticing he himself is falling.
In the mind of MAGA almost all of 1–5 are a result of a federal government out of control. The federal government causes inflation, gives immigrants a path to citizenship, creates the research and investment programs that lead to people elite enough to be in the Epstein circle, promotes woke, and reaches out to help women and non-whites.
If local governments held enough power then all reminders of MAGA white male smallness could be removed.
However in order to rationalize not needing the federal government you have to also simply disbelieve any problem bigger than local governments can handle. Climate change can’t be real. Foreign wars must always be unnecessary. Checking the power of corporations can be somehow handled by markets. Government run healthcare must be bad.
From the point of view of someone outside the MAGA frame of reference these local government beliefs are completely insane and just keep getting more and more out of touch with a globalized world.
Inside the MAGA frame of reference the intrusion of external forces can be blamed on “the left”. Your wife decided to stop letting you bully her? Must be the left. People want to unionize to prevent corporations from impoverishing them? Must be the left. Human sexuality not as simple as you thought? Got to be the fault of the left.
One result of Einstein’s elevator thought experiment is that when the elevator is large, like the size of a country, then someone inside the elevator actually can tell he is falling. By now even MAGA has noticed the decline in the American birth rate to 23% less than 2007.
In order to blame the declining birth rate on “the left” instead of global economic free fall, you really have to do some mental gymnastics. First, just as with sexual preference, everything shifts to individual “choice”.
The problem there is explaining how individuals in a country as different as Iran have suddenly “chosen” to have a fertility rate of 1.35 at exactly the same time as American cat ladies have supposedly made this choice. Imagining that “the left” have infiltrated Iranian schools is a tall order.
It’s also very difficult to ignore the related effect of a higher cost of education. Suddenly children are involuntarily living at home.
In short the mind of MAGA is a fortress besieged. There is an unstainable level of isolation that the MAGA reference frame requires. Something (could even be AI) will eventually break through.