I could go on forever with this issue….pandemics, well just about anything could be called a sickness, right?
But for this post I want to address the disease known as MAGA.
You read that right….it is a disease and needs a cure….and soon.
Multiple experts are warning that President Donald Trump is gradually eroding American democracy through his actions since resuming office in 2025. Now, a new study from the American Journal of Political Science explains how so many Americans are willing to go along with his authoritarianism.
To learn this, researchers turned to Norway in order to assess how ordinary people reacted when surrounded by individuals with authoritarian ideologies, reported PsyPost’s Eric W. Dolan on Sunday. In a paper co-authored by Sirianne Dahlum, Torbjørn Hanson, Åshild Johnsen, Andreas Kotsadam, and Alexander Wuttke, the scholars conducted a “field experiment [which] randomly assigned soldiers to different rooms during boot camp, so soldiers lived among peers with varying levels of openness to authoritarian rule. We found that many individuals adjusted their privately reported support for authoritarian rule to align more closely with their peers.”
As a result of their study, the researchers concluded that there are weaknesses in democratic cultures when it comes to combating authoritarian ideas.
“The social basis of regime preferences that we have identified could imply that support for authoritarian rule could quickly spread in a society when citizens realize that these attitudes are more widespread than previously thought,” the authors explained. “It also points to the potential for cascade effects, where initial shifts in attitudes—through exogenous shocks—can spread rapidly through social networks, potentially leading to widespread changes in political norms. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for identifying how authoritarian sentiments might proliferate even in seemingly stable democracies and for developing effective strategies to reinforce and sustain democratic values.”
https://www.alternet.org/beliefs-of-trump-supporters/
There is a cure….but not if you are sitting there shrugging your shoulders and whining about things will always be this way….that is fucking defeatism and it has no place in the democracy.
Time to become the antidote for MAGA’s sick policies….if you cannot do that then maybe sitting around eating a grilled cheese and watching stupid shit is all you are capable of doing.
Me? I will fight as long as I have breath in these lungs….and that is conditional on the cancer brewing….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Uneducated people are easily influenced. Also, appealing to emotions is a great persuader … as is the opinions of those one considers intelligent — which often includes close friends.
Plus the lack of critical thinking……a lost art chuq
It is similar to the herd mentality that makes people firecely support a sports team. They want to belong, to think they are a part of something. This is very prominent in people who leave education early, do manual or repetitive jobs, don’t study history or geography, and know little about the wider subject of politics. They choose a side, and stick with it, refusing to believe their eyes even if it turns bad on them. We have many examples of that in this country, and so far there seems to be no cure for that mindset.
Best wishes, Pete.
There is a cure…education. chuq
I agree that there is a bit of herd mentality in this. There is also a sense of superiority. Because they belong to a specific group it makes them feel that they are somehow superior to those who do not. The US seems to be especially prone to this kind of thing. “American exceptionalism” and all that nonsense. “My country, right or wrong” and all of the other jingoist propaganda that has been spewed into the popular culture over the years is a good example of how it insinuates itself into the society.
Many others have pointed out, correctly, that it starts to take on the aspects of a religious cult. Members are expected to blindly follow the leaders of the group without thinking, without criticism, and simply accept what they are told unquestioningly. Anyone who questions the belief is ostracized, even attacked violently.
And the primary driver of all of this is fear. The bravado, the aggression, etc. is all rooted in fear and doubt. Political leaders deliberately try to instill fear in the population. Fear of strangers, fear of immigrants, fear of certain religions, fear of certain political philosophies. There are bogeymen behind every door. Instilling fear is hugely important because it sort of short circuits the brain’s ability to think critically.