After sitting and observing my local town's MAGA base for the better part of two years straight(by attending town meetings and joining all their facebook groups) it is clear that there is no real long term plan. They just love to get a rile out of others and deeply believe that Trump is doing great and that any problem is caused by someone else.
Its depressing trying to steelman that behavior because you realize that the country you grew up in had these people there. Growing up in the same town, everyone I interacted with was serious about excellence. My parents, my neighbors, my teachers and my classmates. There was this minimum standard where everyone from the businessman to the garbageman may have had different views on life but everyone still did their best every single day and still had this mentality of growth.
Its gone now. The cracks started to form after 9/11 when the quiet racists came out but it really seems like one grievance after another built up until Trump came along and caused all these people to put all their chips on supporting him do or die. Man going back to 2016 if Hillary had won, I wonder if the temperature would have come down. Part of the current hubris that they have is the same thing I saw under Bush(many Trump people are former all in on Bush supporters). They think they can do no wrong but eventually reality set the Bush people straight because when the economy crashed and people started to feel real pain, all those people went back into their caves for a while. I think the only thing that will stop MAGA is that the coming crash has to really really hurt. Thats when the jokes stop and they become serious again. It has to be absolutely obvious that Trump caused it which means that it has to be severe.
I often hope that maybe if Trump just peacefully passes away that it will finally fizzle out. Maybe thats a better outcome?
The movie Fahrenheit 11/9 builds up understanding of the theory using specific case studies on the behavior you describe. They also discuss efforts to try and fight back. It is a recommended watch for anyone interested in understanding the underlying reasons for how we ended up where we are now. I can't believe the film is now eight years old yet feels like it was produced right now. Some of the people who were high school kids in the movie graduated college and are now even running for congress to try to fight back against neoliberalism! :O
Maybe we should stop steelman them all the time. That is how they got enabled by centrists and pundits and moderates so much, they became the rulers. Steelmanning obvious bad faith actors is just another fallacy.
Steelmanning consists of ignoring disturbing claims conservative right says, not listening to what they are actually saying and replacing what they are saying by some feel good fiction of good intention.
Thats why I was so depressed. I have an engineering mindset of finding out how to improve things and there seems like there is no solution to this problem that involves remaining with this group as part of your society because it takes two to tango (ie. both sides need to put in genuine effort at growth).
The only person challenged by such steelmanning is opposition to MAGA. They now have two opponents. They are made look as if they were exaggerating or were crazy when they accurately report to what MAGA does or says. They now have an additional, basically unintentional bad faith, rationalization to deal with against them.
> there is no solution to this problem that involves remaining with this group as part of your society because it takes two to tango (ie. both sides need to put in genuine effort at growth).
The problem is that what happens is that the opposition to MAGA is constantly asked to do growth, to steelman, to concede and move more to the right to accommodate MAGA. It is highly asymmetric and provably does not work.
> I have an engineering mindset of finding out how to improve things
I think that making it clear what MAGA wants says and supports to moderates and center is way better strategy then basically helping them.
I think you misread what I wrote. Yes Steelmanning them is not challenging them. What I said was that if you go the other direction and challenge them it does not work either. It might makes you feel good but no progress gets made.
You put way too much emphasis into my original comment of steelanning them. The original goal of sitting and observing them for two years was to try to understand their mentality, their point of view to then figure out how to convert at least some of them. Thats where the depression came in when I realized that there is no plan, no ideology, and no real end state: just vibes in the moment. This is not a cohesive vision for the future of a country.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a25795665/gov...