MAY 19, FRIDAY

MAGA ATTITUDES TO LIBERALS

Yesterday I tried to empathize with the MAGA perspective while at the same time not being charitable to them. And of course the MAGA attitudes toward liberals weren’t and aren’t too charitable either. The embrace of globalization has cost them the factory jobs that used to be in rural towns like Swannanoa. Factory jobs which moved to Swannanoa from Boston when cheaper labor moved south have now moved to Mexico or China which is a terrible threat to my rural community.

Liberal people who champion all kinds of civil rights of marginalized people are a direct threat to MEGA Americans who are afraid of being outvoted.

In addition, educated liberal people look down on and even mock rural blue collar, hard working Americans. Education is blamed for liberalizing people and causing them to be woke, causing Americans to lose their traditional values. MAGA people bitterly resent this and want to do what they can to return educational institutions to teaching what they feel are proper American values.

In next door Black Mountain rich nothern liberals have moved to the mountains where they gentrify the town and raise the cost of living and vote in threatening liberal laws. My barber can’t stand this northern liberal invasion.

So what I am getting to, if I empathize with MAGA people and the threats to their identities and the try to see liberals from their perspective, is that their feeling of being threatened and their resentment of liberals and their efforts to protect their values in any way that they can makes sense.

So where does this leave me? From the MAGA perspective their feelings of being threatened, their need to defend themselves, and their resentment of liberals makes sense. It seems pretty hard to persuade them otherwise. But in any discussion that aggrieved perspective may be where the conversation has to start if they are going to listen to me and me to them.