The Negative Impact of the MAGA Movement on America
1. Introduction to the MAGA Movement
The MAGA movement has undoubtedly had its impact on the face of America. People within the movement feel that it has indeed brought them together, moving in the direction of making America great again. It has helped to offer a different vision of what America is and should be. While there were clear groups and classes that supported the MAGA presidency less demonstrably and fervidly, there were also African Americans, Hispanics, women, and gay men and women who felt that the movement also spoke to them, despite the fact that President Trump as the figurehead for the movement has at times issued openly derogatory statements about at least some of these segments of society. Both the president himself and some of his most ardent supporters have attracted criticism for racist, sexist, xenophobic, and nationalist rhetoric. This raised questions about the actual meaning of the movement behind the slogan. This text seeks to peel away the simple slogan and establish some of the genuine components of the broader MAGA movement that proved so powerful.
In 2016, a reality TV show host and businessman named Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. Throughout the campaign and since, President Trump and his followers have regularly used the four-letter acronym of MAGA. Trump insisted over and over that America had lost its way, that the establishment politicians had been making a mess of the country, and that only he was able to solve the numerous problems by making America great again. There are many Americans who feel that Trump has failed in his promise to make America great again and that the impact of the MAGA movement has been overwhelmingly negative. This essay explores both the causes of the rise of the movement and its effects, examining the political reality and the vision of America that could inspire people to such fervid engagement.
2. Economic and Social Consequences of MAGA Policies
The patterns of flexible trade and depreciation mechanisms in the world economy have always transferred some costs of production and consumption to other countries' citizens, but history has always demonstrated that costs imposed on locally affected companies fell on their home governments. US MAGA trade policies currently seek to impose higher costs on local consumers and prices. MAGA seeks to benefit some domestically affected companies at the expense of consumers and internationally-oriented trade partners retaliating in due course. The unfortunate truth in such an exchange is that the politically organized and exposed industries of the United States, notably traditional import-competing industries, are inevitably smaller than those of wider welfare benefits from lower prices to be paid by all consumers.
The most obvious way in which the MAGA movement is likely to have negative implications for the U.S. is through policy changes in taxes, trade, tariffs, and international relations. The implemented policies have the potential to lead to both economic and social instability. Such US policies raise prices for consumers, producers, and investors, with particular harm for less-wealthy workers. Reducing trade and foreign investment in the US could cause supply and demand problems, stalling markets for expensive exports and impeding the purchase of cheaper foreign products. These policies could reduce economic output, increase debt, raise interest rates, and intensify political and economic struggles. The result of such a trade plan, in combination with other MAGA policies, could lead to higher unemployment, lower job growth, lower capital stock, higher debt, and a decline in American international leadership. Not a pretty picture. Promises will be made, but they are unlikely to be met.
3. Rise of Polarization and Division in American Society
As was generally recognized on January 6, Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, white supremacists, QAnon, and other conspirational thinkers, according to FBI boss Christopher Wray, share the same conviction or reality, namely, that white people are the ultimate guarantee of the nature and future of American society. Therefore, white people are the group that the state supports. It is not just a lobby or a social pressure group, but the lobby of lobbies. These groups are inspiring and supporting the elaboration of bills at the state level that are able to prescribe a complete law system that secures the advantage for the white group in comparison with other racial groups. In comparison with the Plessy law system, we are not speaking about a law scheme of legal racial advantage, but a law system which provides white people with racial superprivilege.
The MAGA movement has the objective of making America great again, and indeed, it has done so. It has made America great again in such a way that excellence, honor, and trust are values presently overflowing at the highest level. This greatness is based on polarization, and individuals inhabit a world of "us" and "them". This political polarization is fed by stories of social division. In addition, the MAGA movement is accompanied by the rise of discrimination and violence. Strikingly, this happens at the local level of society, the family, or the neighborhood, but also at the national level.
4. Undermining Democratic Institutions and Norms
Members of his administration, private sector leeches, and elected officials pushed aside legal, ethical, and regulatory constraints in order to curry favor. Some aspired while they learned the habits, social engineering aimed at institutional change, and rewards and punishments from the top. Trump did not have to do any of this on his own, he had help. The magical transformation of concern over the deficit to record spending, unemployment, and trade deficits; pardons, commutations, and clemencies tied directly to Trump's personal interests; flouting of nonproliferation guidelines in the Middle East; unfettered international money laundering; the abandonment of Syria's Kurdish allies; the countries boasting of "success" in the Middle East helped to push through the Abraham Accords just before Trump lost the election. Some who initially decried Trump's approach abandoned their principles completely and ended up benefiting handsomely in their personal and electorally political life. Others attempted to hold on to their slog-wife, but they ineffectively clock in those potential future résumé building efforts. They cannot claim the moral high ground. Trump officials did.
The main surprise inside the capital region by January 6, 2021, was that he did not have to be successful in anything he identified on Twitter to inspire people to do his bidding. He has always demanded loyalty and punished those who failed to support him. Personal ambition came naturally to those feeding at the trough - subsidized housing anyone - and buying or receiving outright, or in-kind stealing, support for his ignoble behavior behind the shield of fear. Congressional Republicans and the private sector have treated Trump as just as much of a protected species.
Undermining democratic institutions and norms, the Turnkey Tyranny chapter notes that as early as the campaign, Donald Trump expressed his admiration for the "efficient" way Charles Lindbergh - one of those prominent Americans Lindbergh cited in 1941 as opposed to joining the allies in the fight against Hitler - got things done. Historian Fritz Stern said Lindbergh believed that democracy could not cope with colossal problems, or with a country called on to be a dominant power, or with urgent internal tasks. Only a dictator could do so. Stern concluded about Lindbergh, part political figure and part prophet of an unfolding national tragedy, that it is difficult to determine the degree to which he understood history and destiny, and how he tried purposefully to shape them. Trump made it clear that he aspired to be a dictator from the start of his campaign to the end of his first term.
5. Conclusion: The Case Against MAGA
These common points are what distinguishes MAGA from postwar pretenses of American exceptionalism and certainly from any form of social inclusion, except restricting social power and access to business interests loyal to the ruler and the business empire from which he came. The organized political muscle of this one man-one nation movement and the complete and possibly highly illegal lack of concern for the well-being of the American people are the reasons that we should fear for the survival of the American Republic.
MAGA has little in common with traditional populist movements. It has no labor backing, no programs for direct democracy, no breakdown of traditional party structures, no protection of local industries and individual livelihoods. The only common points are the anti-intellectualism, the paranoia about alien interference, and the leader that promises to lead his nation to disengage from the international world.
What is new about the MAGA movement, and both potentially dangerous and clarifying, is the mix between populist rhetoric and very strong pro-business policies in a capitalistic government with few checks and balances, that historically is dependent on business but almost uniquely in that history made possible by business interests.
As I have shown in this essay, the Make America Great Again slogan and movement can be traced to a long and troubling history of racism and white supremacy in the United States. It appropriates white, Christian history and symbols that were used deliberately and explicitly by white supremacists to distance other groups from status and privilege. The slogan then glamorizes a probably mythical past and denigrates undesirable alien cultures and ethnicities.