MAGA: Who's Your Daddy?

I was reflecting on Driftglass’ characterization of Republicans as “reprogrammable meatbags” – people who have been soaked in right-wing propaganda for so long that they believe whatever their media or their church or Donald Trump) tells them. I realized this is what traumatized people do, this is what children do: believe only close family or trusted adults rather, even, than their own thinking or even experience. So taking this thought seriously, is that what happens? Are these people somehow so broken that their boundaries revert to childlike patterns?

I consulted Mother Bones, a psychologist I know through the Fediverse. She commented:

What it looks like to me is when someone is abused in childhood and instead of escaping the dynamic, introjects the abuser and buys into it as an adult. But the overall dynamic is fear-based motivation. If you don’t trust your own judgment then you may pick whoever yells loudest and is meanest to you as a likely bet for the boss who knows what they’re doing. A determined widespread effort to propagandize people to lean into the injury is basically the opposite of getting therapy. [In a large population] some will succumb.

So instead of comforting and supporting people, propaganda which encourages people to cling to their trauma, and even causes new trauma, may actually make people more vulnerable to authoritarians, which perhaps explains why we don’t see right-wingers coming to their senses. This suggests that even horrific consequences of their conduct will not change their thinking; instead it will further traumatize them, and lead them to cling more tightly to their abusive authority figures. Arguing with them will not be helpful.

Perhaps it would be best to treat the ones who are not strongly bought into one or more of the fanatical right-wing ideologies as traumatized people, and encourage them to reestablish healthier boundaries, so that they could then be reached. It would take time and propaganda. Perhaps the Episcopalians could send them missionaries. One reviewer suggests that churches which intervene in politics ought to be stripped of their tax-exempt status. I’m not sure I agree, it would affect liberal as well as conservative churches, but it’s an interesting idea. It would take much of the profit motive out of traumatizing end times preaching.

If this is not done, then perhaps they will “hit bottom,” much like an alcoholic who realizes that they’ve destroyed their life, but they will be vulnerable when they do so; Mother Bones pointed out that it takes time to rebuild healthy adult boundaries. In that case, we also must be ready with support as well as protection from further demagoguery. And of course we can’t just allow them to run roughshod over the country while we try to bring them back.

Well, no-one said this was going to be easy.