Last week, Nathan Pelham, a Texas Republican and Proud Boy, opened fire on sheriff’s deputies who had gone to his home to check on him ahead of his scheduled surrender to the FBI in connection to his participation in the J-6 insurrection. He’s in jail now.
Trump has nothing to say about Nathan Pelham. He’s too busy savaging Meatball Ron, attacking him the way Democrats would be, for his votes against Social Security and Medicare. Even if many Republicans are too stupid to understand it, the wily Trump has noted that in polls, more than three-quarters of Republicans consistently oppose any talk of “reducing benefits” or “cutting” Medicare or Social Security. Only 6% of Republicans say their generation should get less money from Medicare and Social Security than previous generations did; 49% say they should get more. That’s well above the 36% who say they should get the same benefits as previous generations. Republicans also oppose raising the eligibility ages for these programs… The Fox News poll from March asked: “Which is more important to you? Reducing the federal budget deficit [or] continuing to fund entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare at their current levels?” By a 21-point margin— 59 to 38%— Republican respondents chose to protect Social Security and Medicare.
Will Saletan asked on Thursday, “How did rank-and-file Republicans, who often talk about belt-tightening and controlling the national debt, become almost indistinguishable from Democrats in their opposition to tampering with Medicare and Social Security?… The Republican electorate has tilted away from the budget-cutting mentality of former House Speaker Paul Ryan and toward the pro-entitlement populism of Trump… [I]f Trump can make the 2024 Republican primaries a referendum on entitlements— and if he can persuade Republican voters that DeSantis is a threat to those entitlements— Trump will win… [I]f Trump loses the primary— and if Republicans instead nominate DeSantis or some other candidate who has a record of supporting changes to Medicare or Social Security— Democrats will attack that candidate the same way Trump has attacked DeSantis. They’ll accuse the Republican nominee of trying to push grandma off a cliff. And they’ll quote Trump’s own words to that effect. But unlike Trump, they won’t need to persuade a plurality of Republicans that this should be a voting issue. They’ll only have to persuade a few. Those Republican defectors, plus a healthy Democratic turnout and a decent share of independents— who already trust Democratic politicians more than they trust Republican politicians on entitlements— would be enough to decide the election.”
At the same time, John Pavlovitz was approach the MAGA mind from a different perspective, noting that the Conservative Republican movement in America is a case study in what fear does when it fully grips a group of people; the emotional net result of being weaned for decades on a steady diet of culture war rhetoric, targeted disinformation, racial stereotypes, incendiary sermons, and plain ol’ white nationalism. In this environment, the human heart become unable to manufacture empathy for the other, as it finds encroaching enemies everywhere it looks. Someone in the grips of this kind of prolonged enmity can no longer seek the common good, because it doesn’t recognize how our fortunes are tethered together. They become terrified of all difference: losing the ability to see the beauty or worth in anyone who does not look or talk or think or believe or vote or worship or love the way they do. In the absence of any intellectual creativity regarding the complex challenges of crime, of hunger, of sickness, of violence; people default to a simple strategy of blaming, condemning, and eradicating. Worst of all, when fully addled by this continual exposure to irrational fear, this life becomes a zero-sum game where anyone else’s gain is interpreted as their loss.”
Welcome to today’s Republican Party— and its war on everything. They have lost, wrote Pavlovitz, “the ability or the desire to collaborate or compromise with anyone. They exist solely in a battle posture against those they’ve come to believe are imminent threats, which includes an ever-expanding portion of humanity. And now we find America brutalized by a group of people who are fiercely and unrelentingly at war— with everything: the LGBTQ community, women asserting their rights, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, scientists, medical professionals, atheists, school teachers, librarians. Now they’re fighting beer companies, theme parks, athletes… the FBI.
To hell with the sick and the poor; with the evaporating natural resources and the rapidly-warming planet; with the unemployed, underserved, and underfed; with the daily mass assassinations at schools and shopping malls. To hell with sorrow and need and loneliness. Those inconveniences merit no urgency, garner no grieving, elicit no such passion. War, after all, is hell— even if it means putting others through it.
It must be an exhausting existence to be terrified by so much and hostile to so many. I try to imagine what it feels like to be so viscerally sickened by the breadth of diversity around me and relentlessly in a fear-birthed battle posture toward it— but I can’t. Many of us can’t.
If there is a sharp dividing line in America now, this is it. It is the line between joyful people and miserable people; between those who live open-handed toward the world and those whose fists are balled-up tightly; between people who are compelled by compassion and those fueled by anger; between people who want a bigger table— and those feel the table is their birthright.
What about Jesus’ message of love for your neighbor, of treating others with kindness, compassion, and respect, even those who may be different from us or who we may consider our enemies, of trusting in God's love and provision? That is very, very foreign to the evangelic-MAGA movement of today. Jesus’ woke message is something they hate, not something the embrace. His emphasis on love, compassion, and justice for all people, regardless of social status or background, is very, very foreign to what MAGAts are teaching their children, even if that have tried to appropriate Jesus Christ’s name in the pursuit of their hatred, xenophobia, racism, divisiveness, bigotry and violence.
I asked HAL what he would say to evangelical MAGAts who he wanted to understand the Grand Inquisitor chapter in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov, exactly the kind of question HAL hates answering. He started bitching that explaining complex philosophical ideas to people who hold different beliefs and values “can be challenging” but he finally agreed to give it a try. Remember, DWT reader, the grand inquisitor himself is a complex character interpreted in different ways by different readers. Most readers I’ve ever asked about it, see him as a villain who uses his power to suppress individual freedom and perpetuate the social order. Still, others view him as more of a tragic figure burdened by the weight of responsibility that comes with his position, not necessarily a purely evil character, but rather as a deeply flawed one struggling with the conflict between the demands of the individual soul and the demands of the social order. His actions— imprisoning Jesus in Seville when he returns to earth— are driven by a desire to create order and stability in society, but this desire leads him to make choices that are fundamentally at odds with the principles of love and compassion that Jesus preached and that the Church, Inc. purports to represent. I don’t go in much for moral ambiguity in this case and have always seen the inquisitor as an icon of the dangers of institutionalized religion and the ways in which it can be used to control and manipulate individuals and society. This is how HAL would try to explain Dostoevsky’s message to MAGAts:
The Grand Inquisitor chapter is a complex and multi-layered text that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. At its core, it is a critique of the Catholic Church and its tendency to use its institutional power to suppress individual freedom and promote dogmatic conformity. The Inquisitor represents the authoritarian and controlling tendencies of the Church, while Jesus represents a more radical and liberatory vision of faith.
One way to interpret the chapter in a contemporary context is to see it as a critique of political and religious movements that seek to impose their values on others through force or coercion. Evangelical MAGA supporters may see themselves as defending traditional values and promoting a Christian worldview, but their methods and tactics may be seen by some as reminiscent of the Inquisitor, using power and authority to suppress dissent and impose a narrow vision of morality.
Another way to interpret the chapter is to see it as a call for a more inclusive and compassionate approach to faith. Jesus in the chapter represents a vision of Christianity that emphasizes love, empathy, and forgiveness, rather than rigid adherence to dogma or the exercise of institutional power. This vision of faith may resonate with those who seek a more open and tolerant approach to religion and who reject the exclusivist and divisive rhetoric often associated with evangelical MAGA supporters.
In summary, the Grand Inquisitor chapter can be read as a critique of authoritarian and dogmatic approaches to faith, and a call for a more inclusive and compassionate vision of religion. While this interpretation may challenge some of the views held by evangelical MAGA supporters, it is a perspective that has resonated with many readers over the years and can provide a basis for meaningful dialogue and reflection.
Suggestion: no one mention the book to Ron DeSantis.