The pathology of MAGA supporters continues to intrigue me. Just the same as the psyche of racists.
Last night I had an epiphany to write out all the things I think are happening in the minds of people who decide they “don’t want ‘illegals’ in the country” but have a very loose and strange definition of what “illegal” means, people who rave about the sanctity of true Christian values but support a genocide where thousands of children have been killed and a leader who should not be around children, people who believe in marriage but condemn love they don’t understand, people who cherish the Bible but hate thy neighbor.
By no means am I a professional, but I have been observant of behaviors over the last three decades of my life and have found some consistent ones in people holding bigoted beliefs. So these are just my thoughts.
Inability to look inward.
There is a profound lack of self-awareness when it comes to people who blindly hate others. It’s this uncanny way in which they believe the world is against them, but don’t do any self-reflection to understand if this victim attitude is stemming from a lack of something else in their life- love, success, acceptance. Instead of trying to understand themselves and why they’re so angry at people they’ve never met or know, they project a vileness onto others to ignore something deep down inside that is hurting or insufficient. I honestly feel like there is a true pain there. Something that happened to them or something they are actively trying not to face that creates this shell of hatred around what the real issues are. Examining yourself, your beliefs, how you show up for others and yourself is hard. It is. It’s so hard that people go their whole lives without truly understanding what they want or who they are. It’s so hard that people knowingly or unknowingly suppress parts of themselves they’re scared can’t be loved, accepted, or understood. In an effort to ignore the extremely difficult task of self-reflection and taking steps to heal trauma, they focus these feelings onto an outside force and place blame on strangers instead of themselves. It’s easy to point at someone and say they don’t like them because of the color of their skin, because they were taught to hate, because they’ve succumbed to prejudice. They get to continue living their life without interruption. Nothing stops them from questioning where these intense feelings of hatred may really be coming from.
Jealousy
This is an interesting one because it manifests in so many different ways. A white woman at the airport in Mexico looked at my braids and asked how long it took. I told her 6 hours and she responded with an exagerrated scowl, “I would never do that,” and then this weird look of satisfaction after she said it. I just stared at her with curiosity because I didn’t ask her about what she would do or care. I saw her sizing me up while I was waiting on the bathroom line, probably figuring out how she was going to put me down in some way. I have been in similar situations with white women who seem to have this sort of angry admiration of me. It’s really bizarre and chilling. Then there’s how white men look at black men in sports. Again, this angry admiration because these black men are successful athletes on teams they love but have to stomach giving kudos to people they feel shouldn’t be allowed rights or to exist in this country. It’s this mental tug of war that results in racist rants about players’ appearances and inferences about their personal lives. There is something that makes certain white people so angry when they see any black person enjoying their lives or having a good time that stems from something so miserable inside themselves.
Projection
This I’ve been seeing more and more of lately. The right calling the left “snowflakes” and saying that liberals are incapable of hearing other people’s opinions. They call the left violent and unruly. I won’t get into how the politics of left and right don’t always make sense in the context of what they’re saying because the political intricacies of left, right, democrat, republican feels so tedious at this point. I digress. MAGA supporters have been violent and unruly for years. January 6th wasn’t a beauty pageant, it resulted in death and violence at the capitol that was unprecedented. If anyone says anything critical about MAGA or their great leader, there are literally websites dedicated to getting people fired. Now, tell me if I’m wrong, but I thought that very concept of someone saying something you don’t like and getting them fired was called “cancel culture,” something the right was so against. And yet, here we are watching them have meltdowns because a certain podcaster is not being mourned in the correct ways or at all. Projection is a lot like the inability to look inward, but not as intrinsically sinister. It’s more of a lazy way to avoid accountability and pretend someone else is feeling what you are truly feeling.
This is certainly not a definitive list and maybe I’ll continue adding to it as we continue spiraling into fascism.
All this to say is, there is hope for those people. I know you may be rolling your eyes, but hear me out. There is hope to deprogram people but you know who should not be responsible? Black people or people of color. It should not be a responsibility of the oppressed to help racists (period) understand their own humanity. This is why I truly love the podcast I’ve Had It. They are two middle aged white women from Oaklahoma who are fed up with MAGA and Christian Nationalism and speaking about the political climate in a way that is not only entertaining, but powerful. They sound like two southern belles with sailor mouths and tell it like it is. They call the president all sorts of hilarious names and have really nuanced and thoughtful takes on the dystopia we’re living in. It’s not just them who can help with deprograming, but it’s also going to take family and friends to continue challenging and having these tough conversations. It will be frustrating and may take years, but it can happen.
HOWEVER, the alternative is also fine. No contact. No access. No forgiveness.
I just know I will not be engaging with anyone who doesn’t believe I should have rights and worse.
This felt good to get off my chest, but does not feel good to know this country is being taken hostage by this cult and there doesn’t seem to be any letting up anytime soon. Midterm elections are NEXT YEAR and the presidential one is even further away. Though my belief in this system is waning… As always, I am trying not to focus on the horrors of this world. I am spending time with friends and family and escaping into entertainment. Oh I almost went off on another tangent about the movie tariffs, but no! I will step away. I need to go listen to some music.
I’ll leave you with this very cute moment from the Chappell Roan show I went to last weekend.