How Trump and MAGA illustrate Fundamental Principles

Posted on Monday 7 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How my posts about current politics, including Trump and Musk, are about illustrating fundamental principles;
  • Trump simply doesn’t understand trade;
  • David Brooks on how conservatives have changed;
  • How the religious think “critical thinking” is about teaching about God;
  • Short items about cherry-picking the Bible to justify tariffs, how an expert on tariffs claims Trump got his research all wrong, how DOGE has defunded a program to boost American manufacturing; how Trump channels Lee Iacocca; and how a MAGA prophetess claims everything bad is about Satan.
  • Music: Sibelius #1
– – –

Virtually all of the items I post here are meant to illustrate some of the fundamental principles, or provisional conclusions, that I’ve developed over the past decade. And one of the most fundamental is this idea of a range of human perception and understanding: that some people simply aren’t very bright and/or cling to a tribal mindset, while other people can take long-term consequences into account, and appreciate a broader cosmopolitan or species perspective, and/or are smart enough to perceive the world in other than the black and white terms and/or short-term thinking. And how this has consequences as explored in science fiction, because short-term, tribal, dim-witted thinking will doom the species, as problems like climate change occur that cannot be solved without global cooperation. The oligarchs will milk the system, denying or ignoring long-term consequences, as long as they think they can get away with it until the world burns (after they die), perhaps literally. Their followers will repeat their religious reassurances back and forth amongst themselves, because that’s what their ancestors have always done, and they survived! Humans are not good at understanding change, or perceiving long-term consequences.

\\

So then. Trump simply is not very bright. But he possesses lots of “emotional intelligence,” which is a nice way of saying he’s a brilliant con man who has convinced many people (who are style-oligarch or style-not-very-educated-or-worldly themselves) that they should believe everything he says.

Salon, Heather Digby Parton, 7 Apr 2025: Trump’s tariffs are the ultimate MAGA loyalty test, subtitled “Self-preservation may start to look a little different to Republicans if the country is mired in a recession”

Trump simply doesn’t understand trade. Republicans used to believe in free trade — with no tariffs without very good reasons — because done rightly trade is a win-win situation. Trump doesn’t believe in that; to him, the world is a zero-sum game (as in sports): for someone to win, the other(s) must lose. Trump is more a mafia-type guy.

Parton:

On Friday, I wrote about President Trump’s motivation for this daft tariff scheme. It has almost nothing to do with trade, which he doesn’t understand. He’s running a protection racket, shaking down other countries (as well as universities, law firms and corporations) to force them to do his bidding. If you want more proof of that, listen to him on Sunday night talking about holding up Europe for “a lot of money on a yearly basis but also for past.”

…

His belief that other nations have been “ripping off” America for decades and that global leaders are laughing at us is sincere. He’s been pounding that drum for 40 years. But he’s wrong. Of course, the world has not been ripping “us” off or laughing at “us.” America is the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth and has been since at least the turn of the 20th century. We created the rules under which the global economy operates, the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency and we are the world’s only military superpower.

We have problems, naturally, not the least of which is the massive wealth inequality that distorts our economy, our culture and our politics so much that we are now perilously close to full-on oligarchy. But to characterize America as a poor, downtrodden nation exploited by the rest of the world is fantasy.

And she quotes The Economist:

IF YOU failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.

So the real question is: how did a moron like Trump get elected president? Well, I’ve collected evidence, in the form of links and quotes on this blog, about that too. But I’m not going to summarize that at the moment.

\\\

At the same time, there are social trends. As explored in a couple books I’ve posted about here recently, most people are not only not very good thinkers, they don’t think independently, but rather think as their community does.

The Atlantic, David Brooks, 7 Apr 2025: I Should Have Seen This Coming

Subtitle: “When I joined the conservative movement in the 1980s, there were two types of people: those who cared earnestly about ideas, and those who wanted only to shock the left. The reactionary fringe has won.”

A typically-long Atlantic piece. Brooks is a conservative idealist (not a MAGA folk) and resents the loss of what used to be conservative principles. I’ll quote a bit.

If there is an underlying philosophy driving Trump, it is this: Morality is for suckers. The strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must. This is the logic of bullies everywhere. And if there is a consistent strategy, it is this: Day after day, the administration works to create a world where ruthless people can thrive. That means destroying any institution or arrangement that might check the strongman’s power. The rule of law, domestic or international, restrains power, so it must be eviscerated. Inspectors general, judge advocate general officers, oversight mechanisms, and watchdog agencies are a potential restraint on power, so they must be fired or neutered. The truth itself is a restraint on power, so it must be abandoned. Lying becomes the language of the state.

This, of course, is pure strong-man, authoritarian, tribal thinking. It’s the antithesis of democracy, or the fundamental idea that America was built on the proposition that “all men are created equal” which though not literally true, and not even metaphorically true at the time (women and blacks), has grown into the idea that ‘all people are equal before the law’. (Note my different quote marks; the second is a characterization, not a literal quote. I know different marks are use different ways.)

Long piece which I have not read entirely, but will try to capture a bit more.

The pathetic thing is that I didn’t see this coming even though I’ve been living around these people my whole adult life. I joined the conservative movement in the 1980s, when I worked in turn at National Review, The Washington Times, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page. There were two kinds of people in our movement back then, the conservatives and the reactionaries. We conservatives earnestly read Milton Friedman, James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Edmund Burke. The reactionaries just wanted to shock the left. We conservatives oriented our lives around writing for intellectual magazines; the reactionaries were attracted to TV and radio. We were on the political right but had many liberal friends; they had contempt for anyone not on the anti-establishment right. They were not pro-conservative—they were anti-left. I have come to appreciate that this is an important difference.

There was a time when it was possible to respect Republicans, intellectually. That time is long past.

\\\

Here’s an example of clinging to the tribal mindset, in denial of what humanity has learned about the real world.

Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 7 Apr 2025: Minnesota lawmaker’s bill to “advance critical thinking” actually pushes Christian mythology, subtitled “State Senator Glenn Gruenhagen wants schools to teach disease as divine punishment”

This is another example of using words to mean the opposite of what they actually mean. (As in “Christian Scientist.”) Mehta quotes the text of the bill, in two parts:

To advance critical thinking skills in history and science, a school district must provide instruction to students in grades 9 to 12 exploring the contrast between the scientific facts on how sickness, disease, pain, suffering, and death relate to the existence of complex living organisms…

… and how sickness, disease, pain, suffering, and death are a consequence imposed by the Creator of complex living organisms.

And there’s a running sub-theme here: How Christians (in particular) think their religion is privileged, and/or do not understand the establishment clause. They are either dim, simply not understanding these things, or arrogant, in thinking they can get away with ignoring that clause.

The idea that diseases were imposed by gods was abandoned centuries ago. Because scientists explored the real world and discovered the actual, biological, causes of diseases. This Minnesota lawmaker is expressing deep superstition.

\\

Shorter items.

\\\

Sibelius, Symphony #1

This is one of my favorite symphonies of all time, possibly because I first heard it in a particular circumstance that I can remember. It’s a classical sort of symphony, perhaps like Tchaikovsky. In contrast, I’ve never warmed to all the other Sibelius symphonies, a couple of which struck me as bombastic. What I love here is the opening phrases, on a clarinet, several magical moments that remind me of Mahler, and the final phrases of the first and last movements — those soft “plump plumps” on the violins which you won’t hear if your sound isn’t turned up.

This entry was posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Human Nature, Lunacy, Music, Religion. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *