Tag Archives: MAGA

A Moment of Solidarity

A couple weeks ago, one of my wife’s college friends and her husband visited the Morehead, KY area for a couple days. Like us, they’ve been retired for awhile and have been traveling for weeks in their RV. While in Morehead, they camped for a night at Cave Run Lake, joined us and 20 of our other friends for an event outside a local brewery, and visited our home before leaving for their next stop. They’re nice people and we stood around chatting after they had us up in their vehicle and showed us their queen-sized bed and extensive storage space. It was all easy and familiar though my wife hadn’t seen her friend in 15 years and the husbands were meeting folks for the first time.

But there was a more serious moment just before my wife’s friend and her husband left on the next leg of their journey. At least three of us started talking about transsexuality. Even though my wife and her friend both had careers as nurses, the conversation about transsexuality wasn’t about transition or trans medical issues. Nor was it about the right-wing effort to erase transsexuality from American society, the fraught politics of transsexuality among Democrats, or the cis v trans distinction which I think of as a monumental cultural accomplishment. Instead, conversation focused on trans people we knew or had met. Trans folks are barely 1% of the population but all of us knew trans folks. I know five or six and mentioned that a couple trans teens from the local high school had been facebook friends from the early 2010’s. My wife mentioned the trans daughter of a family friend and how his transition had made him more comfortable with life.

Although this conservation was as easy and friendly as the rest of the day had been, there was also something more serious at play. First, the four of us were identifying trans people as part of our lives (although absent for this occasion). More particularly we identified trans folks as part of “us” in the sense of the multicultural “society” with which we affiliate and also identified ourselves as accepting trans people into our sense of our collective. It was really striking to me that the conversation about trans folks came after saying goodbye and served as a concluding affirmation of a moral bond among us.

If the trans conversation involved an affirmation of a bond among white lib/lefties, the same conversation was also another way to disaffiliate from white MAGA/conservatives and a broader sense of cultural or civilizational whiteness. If acceptance and identification of transness is a bedrock of white lib/left culture, the refusal to recognize trans people as “us” is a bedrock of MAGA conservatism. The MAGA reduction of human sexual identification to male v female, the effort to erase transsexual identification from government documents, and general bigotry toward trans folks is one of the defining qualities of MAGA conservatism and much of what makes white MAGA so repellant to white Americans who identify as liberal, left-leaning, or progressive. Because the same bedrock conflict exists for the white population in relation to race, acceptable roles for women, and LGBT, immigrant, Native American, and disabled acceptance, the idea that there is a general white culture, shared values, or opinion has become obsolete. In most of the ways that count, whites in the United States are no longer a “people.”

And as we were saying good-bye to our friends, we were once again indicating our rejection and repugnance for white conservatives.

Desperation in Trump Protests

With Trump’s indictment over illegally keeping classified documents in Mar-a-Lago, much of the dynamic shifts to whether the MAGA right will be able to mount a meaningful protest on short notice. As usual with the right wing, there’s a lot of big talk. Rep. Andy Biggs (Insurrectionist R-AZ) reacted with talk of “war” and saying it was time for “an eye for an eye.” Assuming the war metaphor, Rep. Clay Higgins (Insurrectionist R-LA) called Trump’s indictment a “perimeter probe from the oppressors” which must have surprised Trump who doesn’t view himself as the “perimeter” of anything.

In that light, “Pat’s” reference to the violence of anti-indictment activism making Jan. 6 “look like a playground” is consistent with the rest of the bombastic rhetoric from the MAGA/fascist right.

But a moment of sobriety also accompanied Pat’s bravado. At about the 46 second mark, Pat acknowledged that “It is what it is. This country’s so left right now but we got to bring it back to the right. We got to get right on the right path. We got to bring everything back. If we don’t, we’re gonna crumble.” Pat’s not speaking of MAGA as “THE PEOPLE,” as white conservatives being “the silent majority,” or the right-wing as “real Americans.” Pat’s speaking of an imperative to “bring it back to the right” rather than a certainty and acknowledging that the country is “so left.” I’m not sure what Pat means by “left” but it’s pretty clear that a super-majority of Americans favor the rights of trans kids to pursue their gender identity, the treatment of LGBT folks as normal Americans in school materials, and the teaching of real black American history. That’s in addition to the basic social liberalism of support for abortion rights for women, gay marriage, interracial marriage, and gender equality. Somewhat apart from social liberalism, people like Pat associate the “left” with the establishment of LGBT culture, black culture, and the vast web of immigrant, ethnic, and Native cultures as having an independent status within a multicultural American rather than being blended into the traditional “melting pot.” The DeSantis administration has conducted a non-stop cultural war against mainstream social liberalism and multiculturalism over the last three years in Florida. But Pat implicitly acknowledges that the right is still out of the cultural and political mainstream and may be tumbling even further into the margins.

The imperative of getting the country “back to the right” has a desperation that shouldn’t be discounted. But the MAGA/fascist right knows it’s at a disadvantage as long as the U.S. is a multicultural democracy.