{"id":24794,"date":"2025-05-30T17:47:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T00:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=24794"},"modified":"2025-07-22T13:40:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T20:40:04","slug":"maga-and-human-nature-how-trump-thinks-everything-is-about-loyalty-to-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/05\/30\/maga-and-human-nature-how-trump-thinks-everything-is-about-loyalty-to-him\/","title":{"rendered":"MAGA and human nature; How Trump thinks everything is about loyalty to him"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Reconsidering the definition of MAGA, and how it relates to base human nature;<\/li>\n<li>Recalling the David Brooks essay from yesterday;<\/li>\n<li>Trump thinks an honest economic forecast is &#8220;unpatriotic&#8221;;<\/li>\n<li>A Christian boy band preaches to public school students, and denies it;<\/li>\n<li>How RFK Jr.&#8217;s battle against autism reveals simple-minded thinking;<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;re all going to die anyway, says a Republican defending Medicaid cuts;<\/li>\n<li>How Trump makes the immigrant crisis worse by simply redefining legal immigrants into illegal ones;<\/li>\n<li>And about that Facebook guy Justin, who asks basic questions of people on the street who cannot answer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"center\">&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/div>\n<p>So perhaps we can refine the working definition of MAGA. It&#8217;s coming clearer into focus, though it should have been obvious all along.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Make_America_Great_Again\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/3\/3a\/Trump_MAGA_2024_logo.svg\/330px-Trump_MAGA_2024_logo.svg.png\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What MAGA folks are yearning for is a return to small town life where everyone is like they are, the same race, more or less the same religion. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>They don&#8217;t want to deal with people unlike themselves. And their working view of reality is comprised of myths from one holy book. They don&#8217;t want to be bothered with what people from other places tell them about how reality really works. Thus flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers and anti-intellectuals in general. And never mind the internal contradictions of their favorite holy book. They make it that much more useful.<\/p>\n<p>MAGA is about loyalty to an authoritarian leader. They prattle about meritocracy, but don&#8217;t mean it for a moment; look at Trump&#8217;s cabinet. And it&#8217;s about purity of the tribe (of America Christian whites). Look at them flouting the law at every opportunity to get brown-skinned &#8220;foreigners&#8221; out of the country. It&#8217;s *so* obvious, that few state it that plainly. They regard the Constitution with veneration similar to that for their Bible, but don&#8217;t follow the principles of either; veneration doesn&#8217;t entail understanding. Both documents are just markers of tribal bonds. Icons to wave over the crowds.<\/p>\n<p>So this is not, I think, strictly an American yearning. It&#8217;s American only to the extent that, by virtue of being an expansionist nation over the past few centuries, that has spread out across a largely empty continent (except for the natives, of course), they have recreated a small town, frontier existence that much the rest of the Western world had already been through, and settled down from.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all about base human nature as evolved over a million years, and the way it struggles to live in the modern environment, which is so different from where that human nature arose.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/05\/29\/opinion\/trump-vance-morality.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K08.9nDw.tujfy7kWYW5L&amp;smid=url-share\">Brooks essay<\/a> I linked yesterday goes into this in analogous detail. Which I&#8217;ll quote a bit more of.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If America is built around a universalist ideal, then there is no room for the kind of white identity politics that Trump and Stephen Miller practice every day. There is no room for the othering, zero-sum, us\/them thinking, which is the only kind of thinking Trump is capable of. There\u2019s no room for Trump\u2019s immigration policy, which is hostile to Latin Americans but hospitable to the Afrikaners whose ancestors invented apartheid. There\u2019s no room for Tucker Carlson\u2019s replacement theory. &#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Last, there are at least two kinds of morality. There is a kind of morality based on universal moral ideals, and then there is tribal morality. Deneen and Vance say they don\u2019t think people are motivated by abstractions. They might try reading the Bible. The Bible is built on abstractions: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Sermon on the Mount contains a bunch of abstractions: blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the merciful. Believe it or not, down through the centuries, billions of people have dedicated their lives to these abstractions.<\/p>\n<p>What Deneen and Vance said about men in combat is a manifestation of tribal morality. They take a sentiment that is noble in time of war \u2014 we take care of our own \u2014 and apply it in general to mean that we don\u2019t have to take care of the starving children in Africa; we can be cruel to those we don\u2019t like. Trumpism is a giant effort to narrow the circle of concern to people just like us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\\\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>Trump, as we see daily, filters everything through a lens of loyalty.<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>The economists do their thing and make projections of growth over coming years. They do this all the time.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Trump2025ovalofficeNBCscream-2-660x330.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>JMG, 30 May 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/2025\/05\/trump-rages-over-unpatriotic-us-growth-forecast\/\">Trump Rages Over \u201cUnpatriotic\u201d US Growth Forecast<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe Democrat inspired and \u2018controlled\u2019 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) purposefully gave us an EXTREMELY LOW level of Growth, 1.8% over 10 years. How ridiculous and unpatriotic is that!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>This big theme explains the self-righteousness of Christians too. Support for the tribe is more important than those wishy-washy &#8216;woke&#8217; laws meant for other people.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff2635dbb-0eb4-4212-b1a8-e4b98fdb7b3b_1400x782.png\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 30 May 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.friendlyatheist.com\/p\/a-christian-boy-band-denies-trying\">A Christian boy band denies trying to win converts at a public elementary school assembly<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;The Davidson County Schools superintendent says he was &#8220;hoodwinked&#8221; by the 3 Heath Brothers&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Members of a Christian boy band insist they didn\u2019t preach to children during a daytime assembly at a public school even though the district\u2019s superintendent and <em>everything the band has ever said publicly<\/em> suggest otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>One side is clearly lying and it\u2019s the one that believes you need God to be a moral person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>Primitive thinking is simplistic thinking, as I&#8217;ve discussed time and again. To MAGA conservatives, the world is black and white, and every complex problem has a simple (simplex) answer.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/05\/new-RFK-autism-updated-JPEG.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=1200\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Vox, Dylan Scott, 30 May 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/health\/414740\/rfk-jr-autism-kids-causes-diagnosis-meaning\">RFK Jr. is looking in the wrong place for autism\u2019s cause<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;The autism commission is doomed to fail.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cGenes don\u2019t cause epidemics. You need an environmental toxin,\u201d Kennedy said in April when announcing his department\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/16\/us\/politics\/rfk-jr-autism.html#:~:text=He%20argued%20that%20genes%20could,that%20are%20associated%20with%20autism.\">new autism research project<\/a>. He argued that too much money had been put into genetic research \u2014 \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/shots-health-news\/2025\/04\/16\/nx-s1-5366676\/autism-cdc-rates-rfk-research\">a dead end<\/a>,\u201d in his words \u2014 and his project would be a correction to focus on environmental causes. \u201cThat\u2019s where we\u2019re going to find an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">But according to many autism scientists I spoke to for this story, Kennedy is looking in exactly the wrong place.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Surely it&#8217;s been explained to him that there is no &#8220;epidemic&#8221; of autism. The rise in numbers of diagnoses is a matter of changing definitions and changing methods of diagnosis. The article goes on and on about them; nothing new. Conservatives think there is a simple answer for every problem; there isn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>In Lakoff&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/01\/06\/george-lakoff-the-political-mind\/\">take<\/a>, recall, progressives are about empathy and government as about protection and empowerment, while conservatism is about obedience and discipline (and not empathy).<\/p>\n<p>This has been widely reported.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/05\/30\/multimedia\/30trump-news-ernst-medicaid-town-hall-topart-qtvw\/30trump-news-ernst-medicaid-town-hall-topart-qtvw-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>NY Times, 30 May 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/05\/30\/us\/politics\/medicaid-cuts-joni-ernst-iowa-town-hall.html\">Defending Medicaid Cuts, Ernst Tells Iowans, \u2018We All Are Going to Die\u2019<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;Senator Joni Ernst\u2019s flip response in an exchange with constituents about the effects of Trump\u2019s domestic policy bill spread quickly online.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The point being&#8211;? Why not spend *nothing* on health care and let everyone die as early as they would have millennia ago? That&#8217;s the traditional way.<\/p>\n<p>This reminds me of some of the conservative response to the COVID crisis. Just let grandma die! So the rest of us don&#8217;t have to wear masks!<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>Once again, MAGA is about white tribalism, white supremacy. &#8220;Alas, to Trump, every (non-White) immigrant is a threat.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/UNOZFRGDPNRGNSAX6MLHGBMXFE.JPG&amp;w=916\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Washington Post, Catherine Rampell, 30 May 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2025\/05\/30\/trump-immigration-tps-venezuelans-afghans\/\">Trump might become the most pro-illegal immigration president ever<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;The president is rapidly turning legal immigrants into illegal ones.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\" data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"ZM2SJE4SGJDQFGGC6WDZALSUNQ\" data-el=\"text\" data-scroll-pos=\"0\" data-scroll-measured=\"true\">You might not have noticed it, but last week the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States surged by 350,000.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wpds-c-PJLV article-body type-text\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\" data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"WFBDRUMLPRCIBHT3IF43CNQ62Q\" data-el=\"text\" data-scroll-pos=\"1\" data-scroll-measured=\"true\">Don\u2019t worry, an army of gangbangers and other criminals didn\u2019t charge the border. Rather, President Donald Trump <a class=\"js-itid-click\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2025\/05\/22\/venezuelans-temporary-protected-status-supreme-court-economy\/\">simply decided<\/a> to turn 350,000 <i>legal<\/i> immigrants into <i>illegal<\/i> ones.<\/p>\n<p>Trump has been fearmongering about an \u201cinvasion\u201d of unauthorized immigrants for years. Since retaking the White House, he has attempted to manifest those <a class=\"js-itid-click\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2025\/01\/28\/trump-inflation-fight-plans\/\">fever dreams into reality<\/a> through a \u201cde-documentation\u201d campaign. This is not an immigration agenda that targets criminals; it\u2019s one that criminalizes immigrants who have followed the law, by stripping them of their existing visas and work permits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wpds-c-PJLV article-body type-text\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\" data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"V4E6NAQLXNB23GWNBEJUNMZLDY\" data-el=\"text\" data-scroll-pos=\"3\" data-scroll-measured=\"true\">The <a class=\"js-itid-click\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2025\/05\/22\/venezuelans-temporary-protected-status-supreme-court-economy\/\">350,000 people de-documented last week<\/a> are Venezuelans who had permission to live and work in the United States \u2014 subject to screening and other conditions \u2014 under a program known as temporary protected status. TPS was created in 1990 to shield immigrants from countries experiencing war or other catastrophes that make it unsafe for them to return home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Given the tribalistic thinking of base human nature&#8230; most of MAGA probably agrees that anything that can be done cleanse white settlements of brown people is worth doing. They may not even realize what their motivation; like Trump, they rationalize this by supposing all those brown people are criminals, despite all the evidence otherwise over decades.<\/p>\n<p>And:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Alas, to Trump, every (<a class=\"js-itid-click\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/2025\/05\/23\/trump-ramaphosa-afrikaners-refugees-south-africa\/\">non-White<\/a>) immigrant is a threat. He first tried to cancel protections for Venezuelans in February, and last week the Supreme Court gave him the <a class=\"js-itid-click\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2025\/05\/22\/venezuelans-temporary-protected-status-supreme-court-economy\/\">green light<\/a>. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called this development \u201cthe <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social\/post\/3lpk2gzgbnk2z\">single largest mass-illegalization event<\/a> in U.S. history.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But racist whites from South Africa are welcome immigrants! Because they support Trump. Here we are again.<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>I may have mentioned this Facebook guy before, without having a link. Here&#8217;s a link.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/justininterviewfb.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/justininterviewfb.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Facebook,<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=61561583384573\">Justin Interview<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Justin is a guy who does live interviews in shopping malls, in Times Square, on city streets. He asks people questions with very obvious answers. Their answers are always wrong, and not trying to disabuse them, he always responds &#8220;yes!&#8221; The significance here is that so many people on the street can&#8217;t answer very basic questions. &#8220;How many states are there in the United States?&#8221; &#8220;In what country is the Great Wall of China?&#8221; &#8220;What language to people in Montana speak?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It verges on cruelty, to expose these peoples&#8217; ignorance (though they&#8217;re all anonymous). And I&#8217;m sure that Justin must do hundreds of such person-on-the-street interviews and selects only the very few that reveal their ignorance. So there&#8217;s a huge selection bias here. Still: why are there *any* such people? How did they glide through high school and get on in modern life without being aware of such basic things? &#8220;Who did we fight in the war of independence?&#8221; The lady in the supermarket suggests &#8220;&#8230;Vietnam?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And these people vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reconsidering the definition of MAGA, and how it relates to base human nature; Recalling the David Brooks essay from yesterday; Trump thinks an honest economic forecast is &#8220;unpatriotic&#8221;; A Christian boy band preaches to public school students, and denies it; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/05\/30\/maga-and-human-nature-how-trump-thinks-everything-is-about-loyalty-to-him\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,96,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives","category-human-nature","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24794"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25294,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24794\/revisions\/25294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}