The gullibility of those folks predates MAGA and predates President Ineptstein. They are sad people, full of inferiority complexes, ignorant. MAGA is the cristallisation nucleus where they are coalescing right now, but they will still be gullible when MAGA folds, only fragmented into sub-sects. The cristallisation around MAGA is the new phenomenon, but it cannot last. The people will, but the movement is bound to fail.
And then there is also the daily brain-washing by the media they consume. Rupert Morlock and his ilk (Fucker Carlson, Alex Jonestown, Silvio Burlescoglioni in Italy, social media in general, and I could go on), are co-responsible.
Fuck them all, and scam them all you can. They want it, it confirms their prejudices and world view. They enjoy being suckers.
It’s deeply ingrained in our psyche
It’s the same sort of thing that convinced a bunch of poor dirt farmers to fight for the sake of landed gentry during the Civil War (and also the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights Era - there seems to be a theme here…).
And not just then but dating to a bunch of the fervor around the revolution and independence rhetoric. And even before then to a lot of the death-cult-adjacent religious stuff in the colonial period. Even before we were a nation, we were a land of the gullible unwashed masses playing into the hands of various flavors and factions of demagogues and American-style aristocracy
LBJ put it more eloquently than I ever could, even down to the questionable financial choices: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you”
And it’s not like Americans are special about this: every area has its share of ignorance that’s exploited by the powerful. It just happens that our share is racist.
I wouldn’t even say American exceptionalism applies to our racism. Other countries have plenty of that.
I’d say the difference is ours have an outsized influence around the world due to our post-war economic prosperity and military strength, so that affects others around the world more. Also, we had a bit of an unusual post-war period that let us forget some of those issues were still there when other countries confronted them more directly, either successfully or not.
I also think that the USA’s unique history of comparatively recent economic and ideological investment in race-based chattel slavery, and the post-Reconstruction “slavery lite” social structure of Jim Crow discrimination, have made race issues into a HUGE septic pimple on our collective national consciousness.
Americans as individuals on average may not be exceptionally racist compared to individuals elsewhere, but I think it’s fair to say that as a national culture we are exceptionally fucked up about racism.
Asking why there is so much gullibility in MAGA is sort of like asking where all the filth came from that folks built a gutter around.
I also think that the strong influence of Evangelical Christianity plays a role. When you are taught that blind faith in your beliefs is a virtue even when especially when they are challenged by rational thought, its very easy to transform that irrational unwavering allegiance to a political party.
This, exactly.
It’s an entirely different way of approaching how to think. If you’re a rational thinker, you start from a neutral place and let facts and evidence guide you to a conclusion – even if it’s one you don’t prefer.
But if you’re a faith-based thinker, you start with the conclusion you want to reach (“there is a God,” or “Donald Trump is the best president who ever lived,” e.g.), and then you cherry-pick information you believe supports that conclusion. It doesn’t matter if it really does support the conclusion, only that you believe it does. Gotta have faith, y’know?
Also, I think an issue is that unlike a lot of nations, we haven’t been hit hard enough by something like the World Wars or throwing off a colonial government to actually break down civil society to the point it had to rebuild. We never had a real “reset”. Even the effects of the Civil War were deliberately softened, helping the slavers maintain their power and influence. We’re still stuck with government and cultural leftovers from the 1700s and 1800s that are poisoning society.
Australia says ‘hold my beer’.
South Africa has entered the conversation.
Ask @MrDibble how his family “prospered” under apartheid.
I was fortunate enough to be born “white” and so escaped anti-black racist oppression in Rhodesia (early youth), Zimbabwe - less overt - and South Africa - still prominent, but thankfully decreasing, albeit slowly.
I think the founding point of my attitude towards people with different skin colour was attending government junior school in the early 80s with a very mixed class. My parents, having lived through the war (Zimbabwean Liberation War, my dad was conscripted) were fairly racist…
… but I enjoyed junior, senior, and university with a bunch of all races. I think that early exposure as a child is the easiest solution to the problem.
The Black kids were really fun, no issues. When I got to drink with adults, after I turned 18, one of the most common things I ever heard in the dive bars I frequented was “we are all Zimbabwean” - this from Black men old enough to have faced my father in a gunfight (although he - my father - was colour blind, so spent much of his time on duty in remote lookout posts in the mountains to the east of Zimbabwe)
My former colleague, another human geographer, liked to point out that places that went through British settler colonialism – the US, Australia, South Africa – tend to have a particularly fucked-up history (and current grappling) with skin-color-based racism.
Of course there are many examples outside this realm, but his main point was that these are societies where race (rather than, say, ethnicity or nation) is the salient driver of hate, exploitation, and inequality.
Let’s end this hijack with my post here. If someone wants to create a thread about this, have at it.
Insert Fawlty Towers scene where The Major explains the difference between Indians and West Indians here.
Just in case you were wondering about Devin Nunes:
Former Rep. Devin Nunes is out as CEO of President Donald Trump’s social media company, in a major shake-up.
&
The company recorded a net loss of more than $712 million and revenues of $3.7 million in 2025. Trump Media shares have struggled all the while as well. The stock, which trades under the ticker “DJT,” closed at $9.82 on Tuesday — marking a more than 75 percent decline since Trump’s inauguration.
Another one of the many successful business ventures of the Trump empire. /s
Link to Politico
In the sense that he spent other peoples’ money to build it and he collected something as part of it, it’s a pretty successful venture. (for him)
There are quite a lot of things that could apply to, including Trump himself.
Trump is an example of how to personally profit despite being an absolutely incompetent businessman. Take all the rewards and get other suckers to take on the risk.
I have heard faith described as “believing in something that you know isn’t true”..
I’ll remember that to steal use it when it’s appropiate because it is true.
I seem to remember Piers Anthony using that line in one of his books, I believe God of Tarot.