Andrew’s piece gets to the heart of one of the things that (literally) keeps me up at night now: How does a society walk itself back to a place of broadly valuing tolerance once it has become socially acceptable—if not actually “cool”—to openly practice hate?
At least, I don’t see how that society resets itself without some sort of convul…
Andrew’s piece gets to the heart of one of the things that (literally) keeps me up at night now: How does a society walk itself back to a place of broadly valuing tolerance once it has become socially acceptable—if not actually “cool”—to openly practice hate?
At least, I don’t see how that society resets itself without some sort of convulsion. Maybe we’ll be the first to figure that out but it feels like the viability of civil society in the US is hanging by a thread now.
I'm not sure it can, not on its own. Germany had to be thoroughly defeated in WWII. What will do that to America now, no matter how much America needs it?
MAGA is collectively the girl who falls for the abusive "bad boy". It's really as simple as that. They want to taste coercive bullying power and imagine they will be protected by it.
Like the Joker and his mentally ill followers in "The Dark Knight" these are the personalities Trump and Musk attract. They must feel immense relief to be as hateful and antisocial as they have always wanted to be, but could never get away with in a marginally civilized society. Now they have complete license to be savages.
This is so true of some blatant MAGA I know. Racists and misogynists who appear decent cover up with simple-minded righteousness and bury their heads in the sand so they can deny the sadism.
This is a fair point. Not all are swept away by the awesomeness of the bad boy for protection. Some want to be released from civilized norms and get the rocks off on other's suffering.
It will be up to the non-Trumpists to relentlessly name Trump as the culprit when his cult finds themselves unprotected. Otherwise, their faith will be unshaken, even as they suffer at his hand.
The answer is simple, but also out of our power: they have to "touch the stove", as people like to say colloquially these days. Trump needs to cause real damage that affects their lives directly & makes them regret supporting him. If he flames out and becomes a very unpopular President, it will discredit him and his supporters.
Once Trump is gone, I think there is a real opportunity for the sane adults to grab the wheel back. Trump is very much so an emotional cult & those are very difficult to replace. It's quite likely that many of the Trump cult voters simply won't turn out anymore (they already don't during midterms).
Building back will be incredibly difficult after the destruction of careers we are witnessing. From a purely practical perspective, experts will be very reluctant to join an organization (U.S. civil service) that can evaporate on a whim from an authoritarian. And worse; there’s a real fear of imprisonment lurking if a new leader such as Trump comes again. Our guardrails have been exposed as worthless. “Normal” isn’t returning in my lifetime. They’re just getting started.
What will be hard to replace are the people who are being fired now and the young people who will leave this country for others that appreciate their intelligence, talent, and desire to work for the common good.
That’s a harsh characterization for someone you don’t know. I’ve attended every local protest. I belong to my local Indivisible chapter. I’m very involved with supporting my local community. I write to my Congressional delegation regularly. What I wrote wasn’t a road map for surrender; it was a statement of truth.
I think this is incredibly optimistic. William Sherman burned down Georgia and it didn't stop Georgians from hating the US government to this very day. Hate is an emotion, and you can't tamp it down with making conditions terrible. That just increases hate.
Great, albeit bleak, point. I grew up in GA and the “culture of honor” (as the academics call it) is bone deep there. I remarked to my wife the other day that not even the Civil War was able to eradicate that worldview. As Andrew said in the last paragraph of his piece, the most disturbing thing is not that these latent “impolite” beliefs are now coming to the surface—it’s that people are developing a taste for them and drawing relative normies into that worldview. Social proof is an under appreciated influence on behavior and I fear it is going to accelerate this trend.
I don't think wallowing in "we are doomed, everything is going to be awful forever" is productive. I don't expect them to become better people, I just expect some of them not to vote. That's not optimism, that's based on empirical voter data that shows us there are a lot of Trump-only voters who do not turn out when Trump is not on the ballot.
Also, Georgia is a swing state that Biden won in 2020 and Harris almost won in 2024.
I completely agree with this viewpoint, with one caveat - what will trump do with his virtual authority over the Republican state governors to affect the 2026 elections in their states? If there is any way to impede the House elections in those red states, he will have them do it. From voter suppression all the way to candidate suppression or worse. Trump is an authoritarian yearning to become a dictator before he dies, and the House in congress can only change if some districts in Repub. states turnover (Senate will always be Republican in Republican majority states -we're stuck with those useless Senate freeloaders forever).
You’re exactly right. They have to feel this shit. Even if the “opposition” party could effectively communicate, just the nature of being a young man would prevent them of even hearing it. It has to be felt & people have to let them feel it. No fuss should even be given. There can be no illusion of anyone else being to blame. They have to know who is responsible for their pain.
Well, sadly, the US seems to be regressing to the mean of its own history - that is, white, male supremacy, dressed up in the flag and the Cross. I don't know how we counter something that spreads like a disease among people once the social barriers are crossed.
I've remarked before that the process we've seen in Republican elected officials becoming more and more MAGA each time they ultimately accepted whatever the latest outrage was is also happening to Republican voters. Family members I used to argue with on matters such as the law, foreign policy, trade etc. are now fervently defending actions they once opposed.
I think you're right. At some point it's too much for a person to simply wave away and say it was done by 'the government' and go back to 'normal'.
Andrew’s piece gets to the heart of one of the things that (literally) keeps me up at night now: How does a society walk itself back to a place of broadly valuing tolerance once it has become socially acceptable—if not actually “cool”—to openly practice hate?
At least, I don’t see how that society resets itself without some sort of convulsion. Maybe we’ll be the first to figure that out but it feels like the viability of civil society in the US is hanging by a thread now.
I'm not sure it can, not on its own. Germany had to be thoroughly defeated in WWII. What will do that to America now, no matter how much America needs it?
MAGA is collectively the girl who falls for the abusive "bad boy". It's really as simple as that. They want to taste coercive bullying power and imagine they will be protected by it.
I don’t like this analogy. I think maga members are just as abusive and bullying. They aren’t victims of poor decisions
Like the Joker and his mentally ill followers in "The Dark Knight" these are the personalities Trump and Musk attract. They must feel immense relief to be as hateful and antisocial as they have always wanted to be, but could never get away with in a marginally civilized society. Now they have complete license to be savages.
This is so true of some blatant MAGA I know. Racists and misogynists who appear decent cover up with simple-minded righteousness and bury their heads in the sand so they can deny the sadism.
This is a fair point. Not all are swept away by the awesomeness of the bad boy for protection. Some want to be released from civilized norms and get the rocks off on other's suffering.
'and imagine they will be protected by it.' That will prove to be a big mistake.
It will be up to the non-Trumpists to relentlessly name Trump as the culprit when his cult finds themselves unprotected. Otherwise, their faith will be unshaken, even as they suffer at his hand.
The answer is simple, but also out of our power: they have to "touch the stove", as people like to say colloquially these days. Trump needs to cause real damage that affects their lives directly & makes them regret supporting him. If he flames out and becomes a very unpopular President, it will discredit him and his supporters.
Once Trump is gone, I think there is a real opportunity for the sane adults to grab the wheel back. Trump is very much so an emotional cult & those are very difficult to replace. It's quite likely that many of the Trump cult voters simply won't turn out anymore (they already don't during midterms).
Building back will be incredibly difficult after the destruction of careers we are witnessing. From a purely practical perspective, experts will be very reluctant to join an organization (U.S. civil service) that can evaporate on a whim from an authoritarian. And worse; there’s a real fear of imprisonment lurking if a new leader such as Trump comes again. Our guardrails have been exposed as worthless. “Normal” isn’t returning in my lifetime. They’re just getting started.
What will be hard to replace are the people who are being fired now and the young people who will leave this country for others that appreciate their intelligence, talent, and desire to work for the common good.
"“Normal” isn’t returning in my lifetime. They’re just getting started."
This is a very bad preemptive surrender mindset. It's not going to work because we are not going to let them. Stop wallowing and fight.
“Normal” isn’t returning.
Something else will replace it. But the status quo ante is dead.
That’s a harsh characterization for someone you don’t know. I’ve attended every local protest. I belong to my local Indivisible chapter. I’m very involved with supporting my local community. I write to my Congressional delegation regularly. What I wrote wasn’t a road map for surrender; it was a statement of truth.
I think this is incredibly optimistic. William Sherman burned down Georgia and it didn't stop Georgians from hating the US government to this very day. Hate is an emotion, and you can't tamp it down with making conditions terrible. That just increases hate.
Great, albeit bleak, point. I grew up in GA and the “culture of honor” (as the academics call it) is bone deep there. I remarked to my wife the other day that not even the Civil War was able to eradicate that worldview. As Andrew said in the last paragraph of his piece, the most disturbing thing is not that these latent “impolite” beliefs are now coming to the surface—it’s that people are developing a taste for them and drawing relative normies into that worldview. Social proof is an under appreciated influence on behavior and I fear it is going to accelerate this trend.
I don't think wallowing in "we are doomed, everything is going to be awful forever" is productive. I don't expect them to become better people, I just expect some of them not to vote. That's not optimism, that's based on empirical voter data that shows us there are a lot of Trump-only voters who do not turn out when Trump is not on the ballot.
Also, Georgia is a swing state that Biden won in 2020 and Harris almost won in 2024.
I completely agree with this viewpoint, with one caveat - what will trump do with his virtual authority over the Republican state governors to affect the 2026 elections in their states? If there is any way to impede the House elections in those red states, he will have them do it. From voter suppression all the way to candidate suppression or worse. Trump is an authoritarian yearning to become a dictator before he dies, and the House in congress can only change if some districts in Repub. states turnover (Senate will always be Republican in Republican majority states -we're stuck with those useless Senate freeloaders forever).
You’re exactly right. They have to feel this shit. Even if the “opposition” party could effectively communicate, just the nature of being a young man would prevent them of even hearing it. It has to be felt & people have to let them feel it. No fuss should even be given. There can be no illusion of anyone else being to blame. They have to know who is responsible for their pain.
Well, sadly, the US seems to be regressing to the mean of its own history - that is, white, male supremacy, dressed up in the flag and the Cross. I don't know how we counter something that spreads like a disease among people once the social barriers are crossed.
I stress that unlike disease, though, this is a conscious choice of fellow Americans.
I've remarked before that the process we've seen in Republican elected officials becoming more and more MAGA each time they ultimately accepted whatever the latest outrage was is also happening to Republican voters. Family members I used to argue with on matters such as the law, foreign policy, trade etc. are now fervently defending actions they once opposed.
I think you're right. At some point it's too much for a person to simply wave away and say it was done by 'the government' and go back to 'normal'.