White Christians & MAGA The Cult
White Christian Propaganda
What is MAGA?
Make America Great Again morphed from an empty slogan to a repetitive grinding on the eardrums. I never imagined in 2016, conservative ideologues and sycophants proudly echoing their politics across a decade: noise any rational human identifies as hypocrisy, lies, and complete stupidity. Some on the left view this mantra as symbolic of a cult that snares the vulnerable with the promise of some thing that resonates with the MAGA. I hate referring to the MAGA as a cult because it absolves them of their responsibility for damaging, and continuing to damage, the nation and the world. Though the desire to call them a cult is understandable, MAGA is not a cult. You must believe about half of the country is spellbound by a charismatic leader who seduced them into chanting and wearing “MAGA” to display their steadfast loyalty. You would need to believe that approximately 80% of white American evangelicals (millions of people) and about 50% of most mainstream Christian sects (more millions of people) mindlessly goosestep towards their own, and more importantly, our destruction. Calling MAGA a cult is absurd. More realistically, MAGA is an irrational state of mind, a cultural syndrome, inflicted by Christianity.
City MAGA
On West 27th street in Baltimore City in a ‘whites-only’ neighborhood, circa 1970s, the men stood on the corners or outside the row homes lining the streets, intellectualizing the potential dangers of a “Black President” or a “woman President”. These outlandish discussions took the tone of debating the existence of Bigfoot or aliens. The N-word haphazardly flew about the talking heads which often invoked the Bible as evidence for what they believed: whether racist, violent, or wholesome. These blue collar sociologists shared white Christianity’s inculcation that affords young men the desire to only achieve high school degrees or less, while glorifying the superiority of lessons taught at the hard knock’s institutions — from which they all claimed to have graduated summa cum laude.
Spawned from the knowledge void arose ignorance cloaked as values and beliefs. Though their views lacked coherency, contained incoherent syllogisms, and thus proved anything and therefore nothing — they understood and related perfectly to these truths. For lack of better words, they spoke in self-generated, self-perpetuating, white Christian propaganda:
The coloreds are using up the welfare.
Black men are violent.
Those Chinese (any Asian will do) are smart but cheap.
If not for Christians, people all over the world would starve to death!
You can’t have a woman President because what would happen if it was that time of the month, and she has her finger on the nukes?
Christians are the most loving people.
We should nuke all them A-rabs.
I don’t go to church often, but I believe in Jesus.
Why do we support the entire world?
Did you know that when them foreigners come here, there are people at the airports with signs, telling them where to sign up for welfare?
When all them Hindus come to America, they are given loans by the government to buy 711’s, but we can’t get that money.
There are Black people and then there are N******!
If you don’t commit crimes, you won’t get put in jail.
If you work hard and pray, you’ll be rewarded.
The Mexicans are lazy.
Watch out for Frank at the store; he’s a Jew.
If you are poor its because you’re lazy.
It’s in the Bible!
Them Blacks are lazy.
They fired you because you are white.
Americans suffer because all the coloreds, spics, and foreigners get jobs because of the affirmative action.
Asians sure are smart, but they can’t drive.
Did you know that in Russia they have a cure for cancer, but our government keeps it from us because of all the money they make from treatment?
America is the greatest country in the world!
The government knows there are aliens, but they keep it from us.
Did you hear that… the list goes on and on…
I heard 27th street changed due to gentrification and diversification. Technological progress throughout the 80s and 90s seemingly mirrored attitude shifts, making me think society was changing. Hate appeared to decrease, and I believed it had. Yet, many areas of the country remained alive with white Christian propaganda. I am not sure why. Perhaps it is the insular nature of the religion that makes adherents believe themselves ever-persecuted despite controlling the most powerful military in the world. Perhaps it is simply the fact that overt hate gave way to more subtle phrasing, dog whistling, and occasional outburst. The unpopularity of being a hate-filled person lulled many observers into a positive outlook of the world improving. People can fool you in this way, but eventually you realize very little changed when you move to another place.
MAGA Country
It’s a big country and depending on where you reside impacts not just your economic position but your culture and perspective. Any place where white people gather, especially in generational enclaves, become at-risk of becoming silos of old racism, ethnocentrism, privilege, and ignorance masked in Christianity. The first time I understood this idea practically, rather than academically, occurred when I moved to Arizona from Baltimore. The realization took some time because you need to live in that culture awhile to see beyond the veneer of niceness that infects all red states or places where conservatism reigns.
Churches littered the landscape from which God-fearing, white Christian propaganda resounded. You begin to recognize the familiar passive aggressiveness: that hostility behind the smile facade. You realize small talk is the only talk these people understand unless speaking of church, the hellscapes of cities they never visited, or how the rest of the country is taking their tax money.
In a town filled with white, obviously cisgenered people, many coffee shop discussions could be overheard concerning the gay, communist, government conspiracy and violent Black culture. In a town with almost no crime, they complained about crime. In a place were everything was inexpensive, they bitched about the cost of everything. Though there were few non-whites, they bitched about the Mexicans and Blacks. Yes, the New World Order would soon force them to surrender their guns and turn America into a third-world nation.
Unsurprisingly, kids milled around the town square in the middle of the day because they went to online school, which the conservative leadership had implemented because it cost less then actual school and all you really need is a job, any job. Once while in store, a young man working the counter stared at a sheet of paper, then frowned vacantly to his coworker. “Fifty negative five?” The teen he questioned crinkled her face in confusion trying to grasp the meaning or the answer, who knows for sure. Finally, I said, “Do you mean fifty minus five?” Their faces washed with relief as though I unlocked some mind-bending cryptography holding a valuable secret.
You might be thinking this is just small town America but it is not.
The MAGA who stood on the city’s corners were the same MAGA working the small town stores, sitting in coffee shops, or using cell phones to pontificate the same white Christian propaganda, over and over.
This is MAGA
Liberals, leftists, and progressives continuously reveal the MAGA’s hypocrisy, lies, and actions as if this does anything to alter the conservative mindset. The left’s mistake is underestimating the religion that starts from the position of truth. If you are right, you cannot be wrong. When you possess the truth, especially one so simple to understand as Christianity, why do you need to investigate anything your culture tells you? Certainly, you don’t question Fox News because they are saying the same things everyone around you says. Everything they believe is reinforced by everything around them, and as a result, MAGA ceases to be a political ideology or even a religion. It is their reality. What we call white Christian propaganda is what they call the truth. They do not have a persecution complex, they are persecuted. This is not a problem solvable by reasonable argument because facts and evidence mean nothing to the truth bearers. This is why MAGA doesn’t care about hypocrisy because no matter how contradictory the messages they recieve, they believe them because white Christian culture says you must and it is the only truth.
As I have said, many, many times, if you surrender reason to the faith of Christianity, you will believe anything. Calling the MAGA a cult ignores the cultural religious influx that created this monstrosity of ignorance. Even if it is a cult, it is merely another Christian sect born of the same nonsense espoused throughout Christendom.
When I see polls similar to those during the election cycle, in which the needle has moved little in the direction of Democrats, my thoughts turn hopeless. Polls continue to show numbers, such as 41% of voters approving of Trump’s actions. While this is a change from the 48% or 50%, 41% represents an enormous number of people. Sadly, even if Trump were kicked out tomorrow, somebody would take his position, and even if they did not, all of this will happen again since we are not dealing with the underlying issue.
Is There an Answer?
Many on the left refuse to see the problem of Christianity, and they will argue the goodness of Christians or that I am stereotyping them. They take these positions because they are just as indoctrinated by this religion that dominates the US. Others on the left, who recognize the problem, fearfully dance around the issue or believe logic and argument can sway voters away from the MAGA fervor. I am unconvinced. Some of the MAGA will likely shift attitudes and lose zealotry, but this takes time, of which there is little. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, MAGA started an extinction level event for our Democracy. At some point, sooner than later, the left will need to make difficult decisions. Are we going to allow hundreds of years of nation building, civil rights struggles, and lives lost in wars fought for freedom to be wasted by people incapable of witnessing their own glaring hypocrisy? Will we allow the Christian juggernaut to blame and persecute immigrants, women, LGBTQ, and all nonwhites by trampling hard-fought equality? When the courts, representatives, and executive branch cannot or will not enforce the law, will the left, We the People, accept the duty?
No sane person could believe for so long the contradictory, nonsensical thoughts conservatism holds so dear. Our empathy and reason have limits, and this enemy has no rationality. It never did. Years have been generously wasted on discourse, and many hours given to peaceful protest — and for what? To reverse the gains achieved in freedom and equality?