MAGA has a dim view of humanity.
The Trump administration views the world as a dangerous place. Trump’s belief is that America can only become great again by building walls (both real walls on the borders and figurative walls embedded in trade and foreign policy, military strategy and immigration law). And America will become great again by cleansing itself of everyone who is neither white nor Christian. (see Alabama’s Senator Tommy Tuberville’s repeated warnings about Muslim Americans “as the enemy already inside the gates”).
MAGA churches view everyone has deeply contaminated by original sin, and badly needing the salvation that only they can provide (and without which they will certainly go to hell).
MAGA has appropriated the white Christian view that humans as ruled by dangerous impulses that can only be contained by strict adherence to God’s rules and have substituted Donald Trump for God.
It is MAGA’s view of humanity that drives its “take no prisoners” approach to politics and foreign affairs. MAGA literally believes that they are saving America, despite growing opposition from the majority of Americans. This fanatic belief explains why MAGA’s base (of 39% of the electorate) is unshaken by the facts that everyone else can plainly see.
Minnesota has shown us a profound lesson: most people in the United States, indeed everywhere in the world, do not subscribe to MAGA’s deep suspicion of humanity. And for that reason, I now feel confident in saying that MAGA’s view of humanity will be their undoing.
Here’s what I mean: when ICE began its surge in Minnesota, very few people were prepared to oppose them. ICE really thought that if they were aggressive enough, they would intimidate everyone into submission to their rule. But they completely misread humanity. They didn’t get that when people see their neighbors, coworkers and friends treated inhumanely, they feel an urge to help them. This urge is simply the recognition of the shared status of being human beings, the deep belief that everyone is equally deserving of having their dignity protected. And if the law and law enforcement wouldn’t protect them, people would find other ways to do so.
The more atrocities ICE committed, the more the resistance to ICE grew. As every observer has marveled, this resistance was not well-organized or coordinated by a political movement. Groups sprang up spontaneously and everywhere. People just started to raise rent money for people they knew who couldn’t safely go to work, or got organized to send food to people who couldn’t leave their homes, or to stand watch on street corners (in crazy cold conditions) to warn neighbors when ICE showed up, etc. etc. And of course, coming out in growing numbers for protests after the murders, after the atrocities at the Whipple detention center became known, people could see that hundreds of thousands of other people stood with them, giving them the courage they needed to continue to stand up for decency.
Minnesotans were driven to act less by politics than by their own understanding of humanity. And as they took action, their connections to their neighbors and friends and families were deepened in new and previously unimaginable ways. Even as they risked arrest and even their lives, ordinary Minnesotans found meaningful connections. I have read hundreds of posts from Minnesota, and virtually every one of them says the same things: that facing an invading fascist army is unimaginably hard and scary, but that the gifts of coming together in this way are truly amazing.
ICE’s war of attrition failed to stop the surge of humanity. And as a result, ICE is under serious political attack for the first time and has already begun a small tactical retreat in Minnesota. And even more broadly, Minnesotans’ standing up for humanity has had a significant impact on the rest of the country. Now, fully 65% of Americans think ICE has gone too far, and perhaps most importantly, 52% of Americans now say they strongly oppose Trump’s policies as a whole.
When MLK said “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice” this is what he meant. Most people are not attracted to MAGA’s view of humanity. Most people believe that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and feel compelled to act on their belief when confronted with challenges such as ICE’s invasion of Minnesota.
It is this fundamental idea, that as Martin Luther King put it, “we are bound together in an inescapable network of mutuality, a single garment of destiny” that drives justice movements and dooms authoritarian ones. It is this simple idea that will sink MAGA.
The long view 