“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” – Audre Lorde
4 hours ago
#5
Speaking broadly, I'm pretty sick of these kinds of articles because they usually boil down to how we need to coddle people leaving the MAGA cult so that they'll do the right thing for once in their lives. However, given that this guy has founded an organization/community for people who want to leave MAGA, and assuming that it's not just a cynical cash-grab, I feel that he's at least walking the walk in addition to talking the talk. I also found that the tone of this particular article wasn't objectionable; it was less like "you mean old liberals bullied people into the MAGA cult, you should be nicer!" and more like "if we want to fix any of these problems, someone has to try to engage with people like this." And, unfortunately, he is right about that. I appreciate his straightforward and relatively humble summary of his own political views and the overarching issues here:
Quote:I was interested in politics before 2015, but I was also ignorant and cynical. I believed both parties were the same, and felt a misguided desire to see our established political order obliterated. That was my entrée into MAGA, a movement that inarguably appeals to the disillusioned, especially those whose disenchantment manifests in both personal and political terms.
Quote:There are three primary reasons, I believe: Misinformation and disinformation; a tendency to believe the worst about the "other side"; and a profound misunderstanding of capitalism and free markets, which has created widespread financial dissatisfaction. I support capitalism, to be clear — but its mythology has instilled a conviction in many people that they are somehow entitled to do increasingly better, year after year, throughout their lives. Unfortunately, that’s not how an unequal-outcomes model of commerce tends to work.
That's not to say that anyone who reads this article needs to immediately go out and start getting into verbal fisticuffs. As tater pointed out, some individuals in the cult are going to be less safe to talk to than others. But for those who will not be put in danger by trying to discuss this with the MAGA heads they know, he does provide some reasonable tips on how to engage them in a conversation. It looks like he has
an e-book on his org's website about how to talk to people about leaving MAGA, but I didn't have a throwaway email address on hand, so I haven't checked it out yet. If anyone gets their hands on it I'd be interested to know what's inside it.
Honestly, on some level, I am just glad to see some ex-Republicans trying to do this work too. God knows we could use the help.
