A few days ago, Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, a MAGA hardliner and sometimes mentioned as Donald Trump’s running mate, said President Biden is “remaking” America and turning us into Europe. he warned. My first thought was, “So he’s going to extend our life expectancy by five or six years?” But the context made it clear that Noem believed, or expected her audience to believe, that Europe was the scene of a catastrophe brought on by hordes of immigrants.
Coincidentally, I spent a lot of time wandering around various cities in Europe last year, and none of them were hellish. Yes, broadly speaking, Europe has a problem dealing with immigration, and immigration has become a major political issue. And indeed, Europe’s economic recovery lags behind the United States. But the vision of a continent ravaged by immigration is a fantasy.
But such fantasies are now the common currency of American right-wing politics. Remember when pundits solemnly declared that the cause of Trumpism was “economic insecurity”? Well, despite the economic boom, there is still a lot of legitimate anxiety in the world that reflects the real-life struggles of many people. America remains a country of inequality, insecurity, and injustice. But the anxiety that causes MAGA isn’t caused by reality. Rather, it is driven by a dystopian vision that has no relation to real-life experience.
So the Republican political strategy at the moment is largely about intimidating voters who are doing relatively well personally, not just by official statistics but by their own accounts, by telling them that terrible things are happening to other people. It means it depends.
This would be most obvious if the U.S. economy was doing very well in 2023, almost miraculously so, in fact. Economic growth not only defied widespread predictions of an impending recession, but also significantly exceeded expectations.Inflation is depressed And that’s more or less what the Federal Reserve wants. And people feel it in their own lives. Sixty-three percent of Americans say their financial situation is good or very good.
Yet a few days ago, Nikki Haley was in trouble, declaring that “the economy is in shambles and inflation is out of control.” And perhaps the Republicans who heard her believed her. According to YouGov, almost 72% of Republicans say our country’s 3-2 economy (growth rate of about 3%, inflation rate of 2%) is getting worse, but it’s getting better. That’s just over 6%.
Again, this negative verdict does not reflect personal experience. In December, YouGov asked Americans to assess the year 2023 in general. Republicans said this year was the worst for the country, with 76% saying it was a bad or worst year. But oddly enough, 69 percent of Republicans (a close number) said this year had been a fair, good, or great year for them personally.
Now, that last survey was not specifically limited to economic conditions, but probably also reflected perceptions of crime. But in 2023, crime was significantly down, which in a rational world would have created a sense that things were improving, further fueling the economic boom.
But the world, especially MAGAworld, is not rational. And Americans tend to say that crime is increasing, even when national crime is on the decline, and even when they acknowledge that crime is decreasing in the areas where they live. This is a long-term observation.
Again, these misconceptions are strongly tied to partisanship and involve an incredible willingness among Republicans to believe things that are not true.
It’s another thing to mistakenly believe that Europe is a continent on the brink of extinction (though millions of Americans visit Europe each year and get the chance to see it for themselves) ). It’s much harder to excuse the belief that New York, one of America’s safest big cities, is some kind of urban wasteland. After all, it’s estimated that more than 50 million Americans visited the Big Apple last year, and many of those who have never visited New York are likely to be more likely to share their experiences with people who have visited New York or with you. I know people who actually live here as well. But only 22% of Republicans say the city is safe to visit or live in.
The New York vandalism raises questions about the extent to which MAGA supporters are willing to ignore the evidence they have seen with their own eyes. People buy gasoline all the time. “Gasoline prices are now $5, $6, $7, even $8 a gallon,” Trump said, roughly double the price clearly displayed on large billboards across the country. But will his supporters believe him?
And, of course, there’s the coronavirus pandemic, and MAGA’s politicization of the vaccine appears to be contributing to higher death rates for Republicans.
What does this suggest about America’s future? It’s not good. A large part of our political community has effectively become part of a cult of personality whose beliefs have little bearing on reality.
So why did something like this happen to us? I don’t really know. But we can’t seriously talk about the current state of America without acknowledging the pervasiveness of his fear-based MAGA worldview.