MAGA's true believers don't understand capitalism -- Trump will teach them a hard lesson

[marmar]

MAGA's true believers don't understand capitalism — Trump will teach them a hard lesson
Today's Republicans have swallowed so many economic myths that reality has disappeared. They face a wakeup call

By Rich Logis
Published January 26, 2025 9:00AM (EST)


(Salon) America is a nation at war with its mythologies.

For all the electoral postmortems about the desire for economic change, what’s unsurprisingly absent is what seems, to me, an obvious omission: an all-enveloping misunderstanding of American capitalism.

....(snip)....

One delusional mythology about American capitalism that has been instilled in We the People is that we somehow have a guaranteed right to prosperity; this imaginary right has been deployed by politicians who are afraid of educating their constituents about how our model of commerce actually works. Our national press has largely been lazy on this score as well.

....(snip)....

Are gas prices high? Is insurance for health care, real estate and vehicles increasing? Are supply chain constraints harming your livelihood, or your quality of life? The person in the White House has very little to do with that. Let’s recall that gas prices steadily increased during George W. Bush’s second term.

Gas was cheap in 2020 because — hello! — tens of millions of drivers weren’t driving. In fact, Trump threatened the Saudis, in the early days of the pandemic: Cut oil production, or lose U.S. military support. Why? More oil flooding the market would have driven prices still lower, and “cheap gas” does not sound like “ka-ching.” ............(more)
https://www.salon.com/2025/01/26/magas-true-believers-dont-understand-capitalism--will-teach-them-a-hard-lesson/

[SARose]

1. Oh yes!

Wait until nobody is picking lettuce, tomatoes or strawberries in the US.

You can get them from Mexico you say? Add 25% to the cost.

Ohh and your Super Bowl party? How about 25% more for your Modelo, Patron, and avocados?

Welcome to Trumpland, suckers!

[Ocelot II]

2. This guy makes some very good points -

and he's founded a MAGA cult deprogramming organization, https://leavingmaga.org/ More from the Salon article.

Mythology tends to be more persuasive than discussion of policy, which brings me to something the Democratic Party should post in all their workplaces: Americans don’t vote based on policy. Sure, some liberals do, given what we know about their news and information consumption. Information bubbles exist on the Democratic side, too, but liberal voters are far more likely to encounter a diversity of sources.

MAGA culture, on the other hand, likes to espouse rugged individualism, but is wholly conformist: Anything that even remotely seems to refute the mythologies that permeate the MAGA congregation is shunned. I had a term, during my time as a MAGA pundit, for much of what we maligned as propaganda: It was the Democrat Media Industrial Complex. The lie we told ourselves, central to our myth, was that we were independent-minded, not susceptible to being influenced.

MAGA’s ethos includes trauma, desperation, panic, despair, hopelessness and nihilism. What I want MAGA’s opponents to understand is that no one in the Trump movement came to imbibe that toxic mixture all on their own. I implore you to resist saying, “I told you so,” when Trump’s benefits are handed out exclusively to his rich buddies....

I certainly don’t think that government can solve every problem, nor should try to. Perversely enough, Trump voters want it to try, although most would deny that or are not cognizant of it. The question we can keep posing to Trump voters is this: How much time does he get to fix your economic problems, and when will you understand that he never will? Expect no good answers; there aren’t any.