One of the lawyers that defended a handful of J6 insurrectionists said they would give them a reading list to help them understand on a general level what any of the legal charges they faced concerned or what the consequences could be, or just how government worked, and because this was ‘‘you need to read this before trial so you can ACTUALLY have a chance of getting a plea deal or even a dismissal if you can actually convince a judge you now grasp what you did and how bad it was, and you’re super duper sorry’’ some actually read them. And they came out of it going ‘‘oh… I’ve been lied to and manipulated into doing very illegal shit by a political party that knows it can no longer win elections and needs to do very illegal shit to retain any level of power’’ and similar thoughts.
But yes. If they instead acquired a smidge of curiosity and interest in worthwhile pursuits they would probably stop being garbage ass people. Maybe we need to make reading cool? Possible dinosaurs reading on posters. That’s what got me reading.
And the main reason they’re not happy is that they got left behind by the evil fucks they keep voting for. It’s beyond maddening.
I had an old lady get emotional over a government subsidy offered to help reduce some of her septic system expenses. It was the first time in a long time the government ever helped her she said. It felt good to help.
Then I had another old lady tell me she was going to die and it was going to be my fault and I deserved to go to hell because that same rebate program ended and there was no funding left.
One step forward one step back.
The difference is, I support people to have any kind of sexuality or gender or life or love that they want, I actively want them to have those rights.
But I don’t hang those flags all over my car, my yard, my clothes, my pets, etc. Maybe a few people do here and there, but I don’t feel so threatened in my values that I need to constantly reaffirm it and display it to the world. Most people feel this way, even though the majority of Americans support these rights.
This is why you see far, far more Trump propaganda than ANY kinds of special awareness flags. Which are totally different anyway. One supports an idea. One worships a man who wants to police ideas.
gasp! But muh daddy ain’t know them flags, and we fear the unknown!
Plus they rejekted teh Jeezus!! Graar!
They don’t like to read
I argue that’s the issue right there.
Reading only headlines will get you there quickly. But headlines are click bait and insufficient.
I recall seeing a study on the demographics of who actually reads articles and MAGAs were among the most that did not read.
I’m never happy and it didn’t turn me into a MAGA dipshit. I don’t think I’m even an asshole most of the time or at least I try not to be.
Maybe you should blame others more, especially foreigners, liberals, and education. Your problem is that you’re not blaming the right people.
I’m never happy and just blamed everyone collectively, rather than specific groups. I’ve been around humans enough to know we’re all equally awful.
That’s so weird… with some exceptions, I’ve found most people to be pretty nice and friendly once you get to know them. I would never have said “we’re all equally awful”… I think I want to keep living in my world rather than yours.
I think the larger thing lacking is two-fold.
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Perspective. These people lack the ability to look at the world objectively and outside themselves to see the larger picture of where they fit in the world. They are unable or unwilling to comprehend anything remotely complex.
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Empathy. They are unable or unwilling to walk a step let alone a mile in anyone’s shoes but their own.
oh, number 2 is worse than you think. I picked up on a talk show on the radio the other night with a guest author who wrote, “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion”. They’re actively teaching to avoid empathy,
In Toxic Empathy, Allie Beth Stuckey argues that empathy has become a tool of manipulation by left-wing activists who bully people into believing that they must adopt progressive positions to be loving. She explores the five most heated issues through which toxic empathy is deployed: abortion, gender, sexuality, immigration, and social justice.
This is what fills the airwaves around here of which a lot of elderly and rural citizens are inundated with daily.
On 1, someone pointed out to me that a lot of people who are susceptible to MAGA are people who don’t know what it is to be an expert on something.
They don’t have PhDs and MDs and JDs in their social or peer groups. They assume everyone’s knowledge of complex things is as superficial and uncertain as their own; literally they do not recognize the difference between things stated as fact versus things stated as opinion. Their day-to-day practice, as far as anything complex, is to let their emotions rule; practice makes perfect.
The thing they exercise most is their amygdala, and that’s why conservatism causes an enlargement of the amygdala.
Compassion is a natural result of Empathy: those who feel as if their own a bit of other people’s emotions don’t want others to be unhappy if only because that makes them feel a bit unhappy themselves.
This also applies to positive emotions, so those with higher Empathy are more likely to want others to feel good as that makes them feel good hence their notion of A Better World also includes what’s good for other people rather than purely what’s good for they themselves.
MAGA is popular for the same reason other nationalist, fascist movements have risen over the course of modern history: as a response to Capitalist decay. MAGA isn’t popular for genetic reasons, intellectual inferiority, or other reasons like that, but as a common class interest. All of the descriptors in the OP are consequences of the driving factor of class interests, not the drivers themselves.
Fascism is most often represented as an alliance between the Petite Bourgeoisie and Bourgeoisie proper, driven by the Petite Bourgeoisie, as monopolization of Capital results in competition becoming more and more difficult, and the Petite Bourgeoisie faces Proletarianization. To prevent the Petite Bourgeoisie from joining the Proletariat in solidarity, the Bourgeoisie proper turns their hatred against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat.
What does this all mean, in practical, American terms? Small business owners, landlords, ie the “middle class,” is shrinking in power, so the Small Business Owners are aligning with billionaires like Musk and Bezos against immigrants, workers, unhoused peopled, gender/sexual minorities, women, ethnic minorities, and more.
How do we fix this? Grow the Petite Bourgeoisie and restore their position? Absolutely not! That’s when fascism is established. Trying to “turn the clock back to the good old days” results in dramatic reductions in worker rights and a solidification of power.
What we need to do is establish Socialism. A victory of the Proletariat, a folding of the large monopolist syndicates into the public sector so they can be centrally planned for the public good, rather than privately planned for profit, is the way forward. This is the way to escape fascism’s rise. This is the way to defeat MAGA.
I recommend reading the book Blackshirts and Reds, fascism’s irrationality has rational, material origins, that can be understood and defeated, and it isn’t in the “marketplace of ideas.”
Genuine question from someone socialism curious: my understanding of petite bourgeoisie was they were upper class but non capital owners, like doctors and lawyers, but i guess business owners and landlords fit too. But Trump’s support is largely non college educated white men. When I think of a Trump supporter I think a mechanic in Pennsylvania. I am thinking of the majority of teamsters based on their internal poll. To put a finer point on it, fascism under Trump seems to be driven by the proletariat. The petite bourgeoisie, if anything, is solidly in the Harris camp precisely because of its concern about fascism.
America is a bit unique, it’s made up nearly entirely of Labor Aristocracy, ie beneficiaries of Imperialism.
The Petite Bourgeoisie are Capital Owners that must labor, small business owners and the like. The lack of college education doesn’t mean they won’t be held back from becoming business owners, and the dominance among the religious and white is because of fascism’s cultural characteristics, explained in the first chapter of Blackshirts and Reds.
Fascism can also be described as Imperialism turned inwards.
Interesting, thank you for the response. I’ll give that book a read, and I appreciate the direct link!
Why not both?
Clearly some people are attracted to far-right ideals without being in the petite bourgeoisie and some people who are in it are even repelled by such ideals, plus there is the whole domain of the “highly educated” who tend to be less attracted to far-right ideals and yet are often generally more prosperous than most shop keepers and similar and some even work in similar business structures (such as Architects with their own Studios or Lawyers with their own small Legal Practices) hence would count a that kind of petit burgeouisie.
I would say that it’s a mix of what you point out (so people’s petit burgeouis status or, as I would put it: “people who have just enough material wealth to think they’re wealthy but without the education and worldliness to understand that they’re nowhere close to real wealth”), certain character traits such as one’s level of Empathy and Self-awareness, one’s breadth of life experience (not in term of years but of how many different things one has done and seen and kinds of people one has met, which would explain why city people are less likely be attracted to the far-right that more provincial types) and one’s style of thinking and practice with things like analysing real world situations and trying to solve real world problems (which would partly explain the effect of Education, the other part falling into breath of experience, specifically in the form of how much information one has the tools to understand).
This is without even going into the environment one grew up in and lives in: sometimes that kind of thinking is so widespread in one’s family and were one lives that showing the social cues of far-right belief and even believing it is a natural element of fitting in if only for one’s own protection, similarly to how people tend to be religious when coming from a religious family and living in a religious community.
This is why the Left always loses.
The Right puts forward a Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump. They give great speeches and stir up people’s emotions. The Left tells people to read a book.
People still talk about Emma Goldman and Rosa Luxemburg because then understood this; they stirred the people up and got them excited.
Instead of suggesting a book, why don’t you try naming an actual candidate that people can vote for? We’re going to have the 2026 election a lot sooner than we’re going to have a Socialist uprising.
Bernie would not have established Socialism either. Even if the DNC was in lock-step with Bernie, Bernie would have established a Social Democracy. Far better for the American people, but it would be a temporary solution just like FDR’s Social Democracy eroded over time.
Bernie was super popular among young voters who were too inconvenienced to actually go out and vote for him.
What happened?
The Left failed to get out and support him 100%. Pete Buttigieg, Warren, and a dozen other candidates split the vote and the regular Dem establishment got the most middle of the road candidate they could.
Which gets back to my original point. Instead of sitting around reading books and arguing about the Third International the Left should be a machine that can get people elected.
Instead of suggesting a book, why don’t you try naming an actual candidate that people can vote for?
$16 billion was spent on the political campaigns of the 2020 election. $16 billion! Roughly $8 billion per party. The deeply uncomfortable truth is that the oligarch class has nearly full control over which candidates have the funds necessary to have any chance at winning an election. There are rare exceptions, sure, but most candidates are either oligarchs themselves like Trump or Bloomberg, or they have sold out completely to other oligarchs (like JD Vance belonging to Peter Thiel)
The book is supplementary to the comment, I explained the big picture in my comment. Blackshirts and Reds isn’t a call to action or an explanation of what to do, but an examination of fascism and Communism, who they served historically, and the material basis for them.
Voting for Harris won’t stop fascism, because it won’t stop Capitalist decay. You can even see her trying to appeal to small business owners, attempting to “turn the clock back,” in her own campaign. Neither will voting for Claudia De La Crúz, PSL’s candidate, nor will Stein, and obviously nor will Trump.
Electoralism cannot solve the conditions giving rise to fascism.
The answer is to join revolutionary orgs like the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) or Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). Only through organization outside the electoral system does the Proletariat have any hope of steering the ship and seizing the reigns.
The Right puts forward a Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump. They give great speeches and stir up people’s emotions. The Left tells people to read a book.
The US Empire is far-right, they can field candidates supporting the status quo in both the DNC and GOP. Liberalism is the status quo, taught from birth. Leftism requires reading, because they don’t teach it in school, they censor leftism and shun it. It’s a struggle, yes, but it’s a winnable one.
Thanks for proving my point.
I ask for one simple thing; a candidate that I can support. You couldn’t do that one tiny thing.
Why don’t you try actually listening to what people want instead of telling them what they should do?
It’s what this person does. Check their post history and you will see how often they flog that specific piece of literature.
I recommend many. Blackshirts is just the most relevant both for understanding fascism and contextualizing AES, as well as being more accessible than Marxist texts. I encourage liberals and left-leaning people to read theory constantly. Heck, here’s an “intro to Marxism reading list” I commented earlier today that another user requested I make.
Thanks, but I’ll just disengage.
It’s sad but true that the Right falls in line while the Left waits to fall in love.
The Left beat Donald Trump. Even when Trump and his toadies cheated and staged a coup the Left beat his ass.
The Left has skins on the wall. Don’t fucking forget it.