MAGA Isn’t A Movement; It’s A Gang

Trump and his now fully-owned, fully-MAGA-fied Republican Party is a juggernaut empowered by plutocrats, mafioso and foreign powers out to destroy the one-time lynchpin of the Western freedom alliance.

Make America Great Again or MAGA, is not really a political movement. A “movement” in the classic political science sense originates from among the people at the grassroots, spontaneously, and usually in response to a social problem easily-recognized by everyone. Eventually it picks up a political leader, often a public official, who gets in front of the parade and leads a campaign for change along the lines the movement is clamoring for.

MAGA from its beginning has not been that way at all. It is a cult of personality created by Donald Trump, seeking out the worst in the American spirit, to bring its dark underbelly to the surface just like Putin wanted him to. But with the evolution of the last nine years, it has become more than just a personality cult. It now functions more like a gang, as in a biker, street or cartel gang.

Although many astute observers have used this descriptive “gang” in describing the Trump phenomenon, this realization really hit home with me after watching the movie, The Bikeriders. Based on a true story, it chronicles the rise and fall of a Chicago-area biker gang called the Vandals during the 1965-73 era. They started out innocently enough, as a weekend bike club gathered around a common interest in motorcycles, dirt bike races and partying. Yet step by step they transformed in time (as the popular Evangelical term puts it), into a full-fledged biker gang, with all the crime, drama and moral dilemmas that characterize gang culture to this day.

Johnny its founder, played by Tom Hardy, is a married man with two young daughters no less. Yet he is shown “blown away” by watching The Wild One on TV. He’s transfixed by the scene where the Marlon Brando character is asked, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” Brando’s iconic American response is of course, “Whadda you got?

Hardy’s character no doubt is thinking, “Hey, my name is Johnny too. Maybe this is a sign from above?”

At any rate, his idea catches on like wildfire. More and more men join up, and the reason is obvious. The sight and sound of a small army of leather-clad guys on noisy Harleys rumbling into town intimidates everyone. In one scene, they burn down a bar, simply because one of their guys was beat up by two patrons there. Even the police and fire fighters stand back and do nothing. You can see by the look on Johnny’s face and his words, that he’s “feeling the power” of that moment.

In another early scene, the young man who eventually takes over the gang by killing Johnny (in a most dishonorable way), watches as the group rumbles through his neighborhood. He too is enthralled by the sense of power and impunity he sees. When he becomes the leader, he turns the Vandals toward hard core criminality, including international drug trafficking and murder-for-hire services.

The Essence of Satan’s Kingdom

In a time in which people are not taught the essential spiritual ideals of the Bible, but rather self-salvation, mind science, prosperity “principles,” Dominion, and political power over a world of unwilling fish, perhaps one of the Bible’s most central lessons gets missed—that the essence of Satan’s kingdom is the lust for God’s power, but not God’s ways. Almost every movie, lesson from history, or classical literary work features a villain who is obsessed with wielding power over other, more “normal” people.

Thus, the path historical demagogues often take is by gaslighting the public’s sense of reality, then getting them caught up in a steamroller effect wherein everyone is pressured to “get on board” the bandwagon, “cremate” any “sense of care”[1] about morality, conscience, or logic, and “get in on the action.”

The “action” here is to be a victimizer, not the victim. You may not wield much power in this scheme of things. You may only be able to intimidate or oppress your neighbors or your small circle of enemies. But you’ll be “the head, and not the tail,” one of the “winners,” not the “losers” in your little world. It is a complete replacement of the generous-hearted Paradigm of Liberty, of the old ethic of “live and let live” that was once, at least, America’s greatness.

The way this worked in Nazi Germany was that Hitler was originally a joke. He led a futile uprising and spent time in jail and became an apparent political footnote. But he wrote his manifesto, got out, built up a following and got elected. Then he manipulated events like the Reichstag Fire to consolidate his power. And instead of the public becoming rightly alarmed, they slowly drank the Kool-aid and got on board the “movement.”

During this phase, the excuses and rationalizations become pathological. “He’s restoring national pride to us.” “The rallies, the pageantry are just so impressive!” “All these uniforms and marching in order.” “Germans are disciplined again!” “The Feuhrer is such a blond haired, blue-eyed superman!” “Why has nobody ever before suggested ostentacious Fourth of July military parades like Soviet-style countries have?”

Yeah, gee whiz. Why?

Biblical Caveats. There’s Always Biblical Caveats

An example in the Bible of this phenomenon is the rebellion of Absalom against his father King David, of whom it was said “the conspiracy was strong, for the people increased continually with Absalom” (II Sam 15:12).

Another juicy word picture is found in the vengeance of God against king Joram when He sent Jehu the military captain to overthrow him (II Kings 9:5). When messengers were sent out to see why Jehu had come, he said to two different messengers, “What hast thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me” (II Kings 9:18,19).[2]

Indeed, there comes a time in a “movement” when its leader is telling everyone, “what has thou to do with peace?,” and you are expected to get behind him or die. We’ve seen this time and again with every charismatic warlord or gang leader in history.  Reality is gaslit,  good becomes evil, bullies are heroes, and you’re expected to convert or else.

With modern-day religious extremism, it’s the “sword to the neck” phenomenon, like, you know, the way ISIS does it. Why do you think MAGA “Christianity” isn’t capable of the same excesses when they’re willing to project onto their “enemies” all the railing accusations (Jude 1:9) their own leader is actually guilty of?

In Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, if you’re a defense chief who falls asleep at a meeting, you don’t just die. You’re machine-gunned to death while Kim and hundreds of witnesses are forced to watch.

A German medical doctor who visited North Korea once remarked that he’d never seen such an exhausted population in his life. It’s rough after all, getting up at 5 every morning to march around, singing the praises of the Dear Leader. I can’t imagine the stress levels from being daily terrorized by such an entitled, spoiled, out-of-control little brat like him. But he sure knows how to show them who’s boss!

Speaking of people who love to boss others around.

Absorbing “The Boss’s” Love For Violence

Trump and his MAGA-fied Republican Party are at a point now where they are beyond talking. They’re out for blood and they’re determined to get it. They make no pretense of caring about policy discussions because they know how unpopular their agenda is with the public.

They know they’ve sold their souls to right-wing billionaires who are eating everyone alive, and they don’t care. Nothing matters anymore but venting their spleens on everyone they hate, which is about half of the country.

Democrats aren’t normal people, they’re “Demon-crats”—demon-possessed extremists, card-carrying members of the Communist Party, and the “real fascists” after all, don’t you know? Why? Because they say so. Talking nonsense and jibberish doesn’t bother them anymore. They’re under the influence of the power of lies, spewing forth from right-wing media every day. They know it, and they don’t care.

Like all totalitarian, “get thee behind me” juggernauts in history, they absorb the psychosis of their own Dear Leader, for whom it was never about solutions or making America great anyhow, but replicating Putin’s scam for looting Russia.  It was always about his ability to tap into their endless grievances, about whining about how “Unfair!” everything is, about hating anyone who is an “other,” about the basic unhappiness of their own lives, pretending that politics and getting power over others is what will make them happy, complaining that they can’t get a date, yet not bothering to find out what women are looking for. These are the things that are really bugging them.[3]

They console themselves with all these heart attitudes if you will, knowing they’re spewing forth “lies in hypocrisy” (I Tim 4:2), taking consolation in the delusion that, like their hero who is actually just a bully, they can create their own reality by “talking something up,” by endlessly repeating it until it becomes reality.

It’s like the political version of the Word of Faith concept of “faith as a force” you activate through your words. All Donald Trump did was just perfect the political version of the huckster evangelist who “makes merchandise of you” (II Pet 2:3), and he has said so.

The Rolling Stones’ classic song Sympathy For The Devil just nails Satan’s true attitudes. He no doubt sees himself as “a man of wealth and taste” (actually an angel, a fallen angel), for whom “every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints.” This is the essence of Donald Trump’s restless soul. His deep cynicism about the rest of humanity is based on the lie, “I may be corrupt, but so is everyone else,” and he’s out to prove it every chance he gets.

One of the latest examples of how he tears every standard down is his penchant for lacing his conversations with House Speaker Mike Johnson with plenteous of F-bombs. He does this knowing that Johnson fancies himself a devout man (who is in fact deeply deluded). He loves to humiliate him this way to prove to himself that “they’re no better than me.” But if you resist his bullying, you go on his enemies list.

This is the pattern of every tyrant in history. They’re given license to unlimited power and they’re always testing its boundaries. When Roman emperors were told they were living gods, they tested it to the limit. The American Founding Fathers were students of the ancient Roman Empire and the lessons to be learned from its classic rise and fall. They would have concluded that anyone who admired a petty little tyrant like Kim Jong Un is either a fool, is gullible, or is like unto him, probably all three at the same time (II Tim 3:13). Just like their Dear Leader.

Notes:

[1] The infamous “Cremation of Care” ritual practiced every year at the start of the Bohemian Grove annual conclave of the world’s most powerful men, is sold to the public as a harmless “welcoming ritual,” yet it is soaked in hard core occultic symbolism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation_of_Care  

[2] Jehu too refused to follow God’s instructions and promises, and became a tyrant too eventually (II Kings 10:29-31).

[3] Extremists on the left of course do the same thing, out to fix “injustices” that are often the result of personal behavior failures. The difference is that they seek to guilt monger and brow beat the public to death. They don’t pick up guns, breathe out threats and slaughter, and form militias to rain death and destruction down on their fellow Americans. I can hear them all the time in the spirit, intimidating innocent, every day people with the most craven thoughts imaginable. The one is annoying; the others are dangerous.