(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



On MAGA Stupidity [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-19

I published my first diary yesterday, with a skosh of success. I say success because I was called, or my writing was denigrated and received more than one unhappy comment. All in good fun and in the hope of generating thoughtful discussion. So, take two.

FAFO, face-eating leopards, karma. Stupid, idiots, morons. These are different words to describe Republicans, Trump voters, and MAGA. I have to agree with these adjectives. Like many readers, I enjoy and delight in reading about karma coming full circle. It gives me a little (very little) sense of peace that there is justice (again, very little) in the world. I love raging against these groups: “They get what they deserve.” Right? “They have no care for others, so why should I care for them?” Right?

Those are my first impressions, my animal instincts. The non-rational, visceral response. And, it feels good. Then, the rational brain takes over. The side that makes humans different from the other animals on the third rock from the sun. I ask myself, “Are these people (the GOP, MAGA) stupid?” The answer is a resounding yes. But, because I remember my Bonhoeffer, I say they are no more stupid than the rest of us. (Cue gasps and angry comments). Even now it hurts to write or even think it, almost like it is against human nature.

Who is Bonhoeffer? A pretty smart guy, living under circumstances far worse than any of us. Look it up if you’re interested. The point, however, is that he was the one who said, “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.” I agree. In his essay on stupidity, he says that stupidity arises when stupid people are “deprived of their inner independence and, more or less, give up establishing an autonomous position toward emerging circumstances.” Sounds right when you put this in the context of today. For me, the best part of the essay is his description of interacting with stupid people:

In conversation with [the stupid person], one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.

See, that aptly describes a lot of the Right, right? For Bonhoeffer, there is no defense against stupidity. Science agrees (see, cognitive dissonance). It takes an act of internal liberation to be free from stupidity.

His point is that people become blind to their own stupidity, leading them to act in an evil way. For me, my stupidity is not having sympathy or empathy for Trump voters. He fears that because people don’t think about it or become immune to it, they stop thinking and act without question. I recall reading a study that supported this conclusion in the corporate setting. (Commenters fire away for me not citing my sources.) Evil is created through thinking without question. Or, to borrow from another great author (Hannah Ardent), the “banality of evil.” To summarize Ardent, Eichman was not a villainous character, he was ordinary. His evil acts arose because the beliefs, actions, and feelings toward the Jews were normalized. There is a good Black Mirror episode on this concept using technology. Scarily, it is happening with MAGA and Trump voters.

However, this normalization is not just with them. Look back at the assassination of Brian Thompson. Several comments and articles said Thompson deserved it or that his killer was somehow justified because he killed a lot of people. A friend of mine was one of those people. It scared me how violence has been normalized against those we disagree with politically. I understand why people would say this, especially those who lost loved ones because of coverage denial.

This leads me to the point of my article. If you made it this far, a lot of you are thinking it took a lot of BS for him to get here. (Sometimes, I remind myself of the Billy Madison clip here). Probably so, I fear that we become what we ridicule on the other side. We call names, we condescend, we laugh at misfortune all in the belief that we are somehow better, more educated, and smarter than the person across from us. I know I do, and it feels good, it feels right.

But I remember my Bonhoeffer:

[A]nyone who inwardly and outwardly joins in this struggle for this confession knows that such a struggle for faith carries a great temptation with it—the temptation of being too sure of oneself, of self-righteousness and dogmatism, which also means the temptation to be unloving toward one’s opponent. And yet this opponent can never truly be overcome if not through love, since no opponent is ever overcome, except by love.

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: Fix scrivener's errors.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/19/2304778/-On-MAGA-Stupidity?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/