Trump And MAGA Aren't Strong People, They're Total F*cking Cowards
These weenuses are scared of their own shadows, and it shows.
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There are a number of studies out there that seek to discover, on a physiological and psychological level, why people are the way we are. Why we vote the way we vote, why some of us are taken in by certain conspiracy theories while others seem more immune, and so forth.
This week, I want to briefly talk about fear. As is the Moral High Ground way, I like to do what I can to peel back the layers of our enemies — yes, enemies, we’re fighting Nazis and fascists — and figure out what makes them tick. And I would argue that this current incarnation of MAGA/white supremacists/Christian nationalists is the way it is in large part because of fear.
Because they’re fucking scared of everything. They’re scared of their own damn shadows. And it causes them to lash out, in the voting booth and in daily life, and support atrocities.
This Psychology Today article catalogues a few of the studies that have been done on the subject. One from 2012 found that conservatives tend to focus on negative images, suggesting that the world they perceive when they look out their front doors is simply more terrifying that it is to liberals. One from 2008 found that they’re more scared by things that go BOOM! and in general that they startle easily.
2008, they’re scared of new things. This study, they have larger amygdalas, which could suggest they’re more reactive to fear. That they’re scared of change. This article talks about how conservative extremists are scared of things that literally don’t exist. There are studies that help explain why liberals are more motivated by empathy, whereas conservatives are motivated by in-group belonging and authority. (I’m not kidding when I say they all have Daddy issues. There’s a reason these people absolutely love an authoritarian, whereas the rest of us, um, don’t.)
Now, there are also articles and studies out there that seem to caution us not to view it quite so simply through a left/right lens, suggesting that the true ways we all tick are far more complicated than can be reduced in that way, especially when you look at politics from a global perspective. Fine. Point taken. We won’t automatically assume every MAGA figure is walking around with an underwear load full of poo because they saw an immigrant and it scared them so bad they shit.
But some of them are.
Check out that look that’s always on Stephen Miller’s face and tell us if you think he’s one of them.
Seriously, I think this is a good thing for us to remember as we assess several things that are happening in the news in the Trump era.
I’m sure many of us saw that video that went viral of Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, telling her constituents that “we are all afraid,” that the fear of retaliation from Trump and his followers is reaching a fever pitch among her and her colleagues, that she is “oftentimes very anxious” to speak up for fear of reprisals. Many saw her comments as eye-opening, some were struck by how vulnerable it was.
But we’re always seeing articles about this, every five seconds Politico or somebody says, “privately many Republicans agree that Trump is a fascist Nazi felon who’s destroying the country, but they’re scared to say so.” Scared of primaries, scared of Elon’s money, scared of death threats from MAGA, scared of God knows what else.
Joni Ernst was threatening to have integrity and oppose Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary, but they got to her, they terrified her into staying in line. Same with Thom Tillis.
Meanwhile, all these Democrats out there are fighting — OK, some of them are fighting — and liberal and progressive activists, out there in the streets and in other ways, fighting back against the Trump regime, fighting for justice, fighting for truth, fighting for human rights. People like Jasmine Crockett are leading the way, fearlessly, and their response to Trump and Elon Musk and the rest of MAGA is “fuck off.” People like Adam Kinzinger are like PFFFFFT, I am not afraid of that piece of shit’s threats. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “I’m not going to give them my fear.”
What gives?
Is there something special and different about the threats against Republicans? Blink twice if Trump’s daddy Putin is sending Russian spy goons out to threaten to drop you out of windows, Republicans!
Or are they just total cowards?
Or is that all just an excuse, because they’re too cowardly to admit to their constituents that actually they’re just fine with Trump’s authoritarian takeover?
Some combination of all these things?
Whatever it is, what I’m suggesting is that one of the reasons we’re finding so many cowardly Republicans in this day and age is because so many Republicans are fundamentally, at their core, total cowards.
Which brings us to …
There’s An Immigrant Moving In Next Door, AIYEEEEEEEEE!
Speaking of Stephen Miller, watch him in the clip below melting down in the Oval Office about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the innocent dad from Maryland that Donald Trump had abducted and disappeared into a torture prison in El Salvador without due process.
Hear him fearmonger for the cameras about how MS-13 — which is literally the MAGA catchall term for immigrants who speak Spanish at this point — “rapes little girls, murders women, murders children,” and in the very next breath says of Abrego Garcia that “I can promise you if he was your neighbor, you would move right away.”
Um, OK, wussy-ass racist pantload MAGA crybaby. Maybe you would move right away if a man from El Salvador lived next door.
White House Nazi Barbie Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has been pulling this same shit, speaking about Abrego Garcia in the same context as criminals who brutally murder and rape women and children.
Meanwhile, the Republican canned response to any Democrat or otherwise decent person who believes people should receive due process before Trump ships them to a concentration camp is “WHAT ABOUT LAKEN RILEY?!!?!?1!!11!” or “YOU WANT MORE DUE PROCESS FOR THESE CRIMINALS THAN YOU WANT FOR LAKEN RILEY111!!!1!!!” (They don’t know what “due process” actually means, they are morons.)
Their immediate response — just like the Birth of a Nation white supremacists they’ve been since the founding of this country — is to immediately pivot to shitting their pants about a white woman who’s been a victim of a horrific crime perpetrated by a person with the ethnic background of whoever they’re demonizing that day.
Why? Because when it comes to communicating with the people who follow them and vote for them, people who lap up conservative media like dog vomit, people who are scared of their own shadows, scared to go outside, scared of the big city, scared of minorities, scared of going to a store late at night, they know it works.
IMAGINE HIM MOVING NEXT DOOR TO YOU! And all the Fox News viewers immediately shit their pants.
These are the people you meet in local news comments sections. These are the people who actually buy all the Republican shit about “groomers” preying on children, because they actually believe there are scary men around every single corner, ready to throw on a dress and use the women’s restroom so they can either 1) molest your wife and daughter or 2) beat Riley Gaines at swimming.
These are the people who fell for the Satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s.
Republicans use fear to motivate their voters, because it works, because these people are scared of fucking everything.
Fear isn’t the only thing in the mix, obviously. There’s good old white supremacist hatred. (Much of which is itself motivated by fear.) Click here for an excellent thread from a few years ago that explains Republican messaging and traces how it works. Spoiler, the punchline is white supremacy.
But it’s a big thing in there, and it would do us all well to remember that these MAGA people trying to control us are, at their core, fucking cowards. They just are. Stephen Miller does what he does because he’s a white supremacist fucking coward.
They’re not doing this from a place of strength, but from a place of profound weakness and fear.
Never forget it.
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If that Nazi collaborator moved next door to me....I wouldn't spend one more night in my house. And now, he found someone with whom to reproduce??
I hate what happened to Laken Riley. Who wouldn't? But my response is: Richard Speck. Native born white American. Who remembers the names of the EIGHT student nurses who died at his hands?
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” - Frédéric Bastiat