MAGA is cooked. What's next?

[00:00:00]Maria Smith says people thinking thinking they doing something by reposting man but this is the thing like mechanisms in our culture and society have been designed and implemented such that reposting stuff feels good and seems valuable. Um the the metrics that make something valuable or worthwhile are analytic metrics that we can tie to algorithmic factors. So someone like you know reposts something and it gets shared a bunch of times and you all know this. Anytime you've posted something where you get more responses, more repost, more likes, more comments than normal, it makes your brain feel like someone put like a finger up your brain's butt and tickled around a little bit. It's weird, but I like this. Do I want more of this? I don't know. I don't know if I want to admit that to myself.

[00:00:56]Okay, this article is from Sarah Jones.

[00:00:57]It's called the MAGA Party is over. She looks like she's not having a very fun time. By Sarah Jones, my favorite writers. Hours before Donald Trump addressed the nation on its 250th anniversary. Happy birthday, America.

[00:01:08]The National Mall was in chaos. I'm sure many of you have heard about this. A storm was on the way. Law enforcement have ordered the MAGA faithful to evacuate. A process that did not go smoothly. I mean, you take all these people whose entire identity is like, "We don't listen to the government. We do what we want. We're sovereign citizens. Weather isn't real." And then you tell them that they have to move because you said that weather is real all of a sudden. I was watching clips of some of these people on TikTok and they were just like, "I'm not moving. Trump would not want me to move."

[00:01:36]They argued with the Secret Service and chanted USA out of fury. Like what is the implication there that that if you chant USA enough, you should be able to change or combat or fight against weather? Like do they think that in the movie Twister in the final scene that is it was it Bill Paxton?

[00:01:56]Right. Maybe. And Helen Hunt that rather than strapping themselves to that pipe in the field, they should have just screamed USA and America stuff at the thing. I don't know if that works. Oh, if you have a couch and work at a brewery with a projector, let's go. A Times reporter heard a man blame the order on liberals in the weather service.

[00:02:19]This is insane.

[00:02:21]Like yelling at the clouds. Isn't that like a thing people talk about as an example of being dumb? Crowd-seeking shelter found nearby buildings locked up for the holiday. An officer in front of the Commerce Department shrugged when someone asked him not to get inside.

[00:02:38]Others huddled inside the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Layers and layers and layers and layers and layers of irony. Although Trump eventually appeared on the mall for his speech, spectacle cold grown damp and strange, a fitting conclusion to months of disorder. It's one of those things where I do feel like, you know, the thing that we've been saying been saying since 2016 is some version of like surely when it gets so bad, everyone's going to chill out. Surely things are so insane, we're all going to wake up. I actually think, and I'm curious if if if Sarah gets into this in this piece, I actually think we're kind of getting there. And I think I think that this America Birthday thing helped get us to a tipping point because it was so bad.

[00:03:26]So bad. Some states didn't participate in the fair. Brett Michaels backed out.

[00:03:30]So did Martina McBride. Millie Vanilli wouldn't perform. When a Washington reporter visited the scene, an evangelical preacher was holding forth on the main stage without an introduction. The handful of other spectators said, "They don't know who he is." A mockup of Trump's triumphal arch oozed a puss-like substance. That's just perfect. That's pretty perfect right there. Uh, a robot dog danced alone in the mud. Like, this is America, you know? Not to quote that childish Gambino song that a bunch of us, myself included, acted like was really good at one point, but it actually wasn't that good. Nearby, the reflecting pool sat green and full of algae. Algae lethal to ducklings and irresistible to protesters. A grand jury indicted an Olympic canoe racer for touching a piece of the pool's bottom liner. Two days before the storm, a portion of the stage broke off and nearly struck dancers in the middle of rehearsal. And like all things, there's kind of crappy financial reasons for this. Like one of them is that it seems like most of the contractors that the Trump administration used for this event were just like Trump guys. Like I saw this on John Oliver that that the freaking um that the freaking uh company that did the reflecting pool. They're called Green Water and it's like a New Jersey guy that looks like a mobster who did the pools at Trump's country club.

[00:04:54]Trump's tastes have always been entertaining if garish. Lately though, the scenes are fraying. Let's see if I can read this out loud. Last week's semiquincentennial [ __ ] show is almost the least of it. The White House is now a construction site.

[00:05:10]The entrance of the Kennedy Center is covered by scaffolds and wrapping. A spokesperson for the center told The Atlantic that the tarps are there for a maintenance project, but they also hide the building's names. The landscape is ugly and it's dull. And now we jump back. No bid contracts. Yes. Now we jump back to the future. In 2015 and 2016, Trump's rallies were notoriously extravagant. It's a thing we got to think about to some extent, right? Like what was it about the cultural moment in 2015 and 16 that led to this? I think the simplest way to put it is that [ __ ] had been ass for a good amount of time.

[00:05:46]And [ __ ] had been ass in a way that had fostered sort of tensions and I guess tension and stress that showed up in this way. We had a a you know party in power, the Democrats who had lost their luster, had no one set up to replace Obama. A lot of people that were caught up in hope and change in 2008 lived through a financial crisis that made them feel like hope and change weren't real. There was a lot of factors. A lot of factors. I don't know.

[00:06:18]I don't know. Someone's written books about this. Many people have written books about this. Speaking of books, I read this one yesterday.

[00:06:25]It's pretty good. I'm going to add it to the reading list. In 2015 and 16, Trump rallies were extravagant. The crowds grew. They fawned as no one had ever fawned over Ted Cruz against a star spangled backdrop. And state after state, Trump made the mob laugh and channeled its libido hatred. He returned to the same lines, played the same songs, and it generated a kind of emotional bond among the crowd. I hope this happens with some of the streamer people that are famous online. People wept at times, the frenzy spilled into violence. Trump said he'd like to punch a protester in the face. Protesters walk in and they put their hands up and they put the wrong finger in the air and they get away with murder because we become weak, he said at one event in Fagatville. as election approached and stories of Trump sexual misconduct when public rallygoers started booing the press and urging for them it's war. Oh, the attack on the media. This has gone well. The vibe reminded me of worship services I've attended. Let me say this is why I think Sarah Jones is such a good writer and such a good writer for this particular moment. I I don't know her full background, but I know she comes out of the evangelical world. It's something she's written about. And I think to fully understand Trumpism or whatever this thing has been, having an understanding of evangelical culture and practice is very, very, very clutch. Uh, yes, the books I pulled up was called Muskism, a guide for the perplexed. Now, Sarah Jones references a worship service and says, "The Tea Party has known how to make itself the center of our attention, yada yada. In college, she attended a rally in Springfield, Ohio, and saw a middle-aged white man wearing heavy chains, which she would rattle to make a point about the injustice of taxation.

[00:08:02]Cool.

[00:08:03]A report in the New Yorker described the feeling as one of festive despair. Texas Monthly saw George Washington on horseback leading rallygoers in a rag tag march around the Capitol.

[00:08:15]Participants throughout through thought DC could not hear them, so they made themselves obnoxious. so successful they and their moneyed patrons reshaped the Republican party. The Tea Party was not a cult of personality, but theatrically was key to the movement that sparked interest. Oh yeah, that's a thing. Now, before the Tea Party, there was George Wallace and his third party run for president in ' 68. A vicious segregationist. That seems bad. It doesn't just seem bad. It is bad. We can confidently say that segregation is bad.

[00:08:40]Just in case I was going to clip that out of context, segregation a bad thing, except if we segregate Protestants from Catholics, but I'll talk about that later. Um, he, you know, this guy ran on racial hierarchy, yada yada yada. Wallace radiated a gritty nimbus of piety, violence, sex. I love that. That's like such a particularly American paradox, too. Like piety, and sex, because people love guys like Trump and guys like Wallace both because they think they're really godly and because they think they [ __ ] all the time, which is which is weird. But whenever there's been a politician who's just presenting themselves as godly, I think Republicans, every election cycle, we have like one or two Republican presidential candidates who are very like Christ forward. No one likes them because they don't they don't [ __ ] They just pray. We want them to pray and [ __ ] While it's reality against communist and journalists, I mean, that's happening again. And the ungrateful youth of America while supporters honked their air horns and shook their fist at hecklers in their mist. Their happiness is enough to break the heart, Willis wrote. Wallace lost, but the Equal Justice Initiative says he is still the most successful and popular independent candidate in modern presidential election history, having won 10 million votes during the election. That's awesome that 10 million people voted for an overt segregationist. That's cool. Great country we have here. Happy birthday country. As with Trump, hate was as much a part of Wallace's campaign as the spectacle. I mean, it is interesting now that Trump is is now turned on like communism as the thing. Also, if you haven't watched my communism video, can you please do it? If you haven't watched it, can you please do it? Thank you. But it seems like this, it's like one of the last things in his bag trying to convince everyone that a communism is an active threat in the United States and that B he is the one thing holding it back. You know, all of this happening at the same time. A lot of progressive candidates are doing really well in primaries across the country. Okay. So, the Tea Party began with Rick Santelli's rant against foreclosure aid to struggling homeowners.

[00:10:46]So, he didn't want foreclosure aid.

[00:10:49]Okay, so we're on the side of the banks.

[00:10:50]That's great. Love banks. Love banks.

[00:10:55]From there, it absorbed various outrages over big government and healthcare reforms and taxes. Remember the death panels when it was a thing? If you don't remember this, in America at the end of the Obama era, beginning of the Tea Party era, there was some overlap there.

[00:11:10]There was this idea that government healthcare or even just the Obamacare thing meant that there would be panels where they would decide who got to live or die like because there were there were death panels and people talked about it like it was a real thing. MAGA combines the same counter-revolutionary fervor and racial prejudice with standard conservative policies and the father worship of Trump plus a kind of devivve that anticipates better days ahead. Not an original thing of me to say right now, but it's going to be interesting to see what happens in 2028 when we look back and we can say to a large number of people for eight of the last 12 years Trump was in charge of the country. Even the years he wasn't in charge, he was exerting political influence. So to some level Donald Trump was running the country, you know, fully or mostly for for 12 years. What got better?

[00:12:13]Like what got better?

[00:12:16]Like is there going to be a reckoning with that at some point? I don't know. I don't even vote. I don't know anything about politics.

[00:12:22]If Trump can't sustain that energy through rallies and fun and whatever else he dreams up, he looks less like an idol and more like a man. Let me know in the chat. Does he finish his term for now? Grocery prices are high. People are losing their healthcare. The job market is weak. Deportations are up.

[00:12:36]Congratulations to all. But wailing children and dead protesters leave an impression. There won't be a mass epiphany within MAGA.

[00:12:46]There won't be a mass epiphany within MAGA. It has to be hard, too. Like the longer you stay in the [ __ ] the harder it has to be to look back and be like, "My bad, my bad." Um, and pork and sorry about your AI girlfriend. Just try to treat her right, okay? Make her feel good. Online, the most conspiratorial Trump supporters blame sabotage for the Fourth of July weather.

[00:13:12]Sabotage. The communist made the lightning and the rain to hurt Trump.

[00:13:18]Others may experience something more subtle like the sense of being had. And that's the thing that feels bad. Like it feels bad to feel dumb. People do not like to feel dumb. I don't like to feel dumb. I think I was wrong about something yesterday.

[00:13:32]And I felt dumb for a little bit, but that's okay. If there's anything you can do in life to make yourself more free, it's be comfortable being dumb and comfortably being wrong. That would solve so many problems. Trump understands his vulnerability on some level, which is why he is obsessed with the size of his crowds. Nick Jackson, thank you so very much. I really appreciate it. Without them, he's just another president. In the absence of spectacle corruption and cruelty, in the absence of spectacle, corruption and cruelty are more difficult to ignore. Oh boy. I mean, yeah. Like, I think we started this term and there were so many images of like parties with cool looking young Nazis and stuff in DC having a ball.

[00:14:18]And now we're in this era where the party's kind of over and it's not very fun and they can't even get good bands to play at their America festival. You know, like can there be any sort of recogn I'm more optimistic than most.

[00:14:34]I'm someone that thinks that if you actually sit down and talk to a person and look them in the eyes, you can get a lot of human beings to, if not agree with, at least be open to radical ideas.

[00:14:47]I also try not to be too hard on individuals because we live in a country, well, those of us who are in the United States live in a country where the media ecosystem and the educational ecosystem in many ways set people up to be dumb as [ __ ] And and I always want to acknowledge there are structural conditions that perpetuate this sort of stuff. You know, some of the most powerful people in the powerful in positions of power in this country are perpetuating these things. So that's important, but it's still hard sometimes to feel hopeful for this. My only hope would be politically is that if one of the quote unquote radical communist Antifa leftist, and I'm just talking about like your standard social democrat, get some sort of power and the ability to enact things that they could actually do some stuff that makes life a little better. And then people would be like, "Oh [ __ ] this rips." You know, maybe like maybe if people got paid more money and their cities were nicer and education was better and they had access to good parks and stuff. I don't know.

[00:16:01]Maybe maybe there's a way to do that.

[00:16:03]Cyber Smmith in the chat says, "I'm starting to believe it's true. They're manufacturing a permanent underclass." I 100% think that is real. If you look at the economic future we're heading towards, the one that you know I'm have this the book in front of me right now that's been largely shaped by the thing called muskism which the authors um Quinn Sloian and Ben Tarnoff identify as like a new version of forh forism. If muskism is to be believed or taken seriously as a political social economic ideology of our times it's an antihuman vision. You know, it's one in which under the old industrial neoliberal model, you know, even under Fordism, we needed or they needed consumers to an extent. you know, guys that worked at the Ford plant initially could buy a Ford car, but it kind of doesn't matter anymore because things are getting so immaterial and inhuman that they don't need us anymore. And I think we've seen this all throughout history. The more you create that permanent underclass and we don't do anything, why don't why wouldn't you keep pushing?

[00:17:21]And we like think about the encroachment of surveillance in our lives. Think about the growth of authoritarian power in the United States and all around the world. They just do this this they do the bad [ __ ] and we're just kind of like this sucks. And we post about it and this is so cliche. We all know this, but we post about it on the platforms that those people people, you know, own.

[00:17:46]Anyways, long and pork, I'm going to add it to the book list. You know, it's Yeah, this it's a this systemic thing that sucks and we need to figure out how to resist it. Next video kind of about that. Next video is kind of about that a little bit. Little teeny bit, but I don't know. But it does seem like the party is over.

[00:18:05]The question is now, and I'm 50/50 on this. Again, I know you don't come here for political analysis. I'm not even a US citizen. I cannot vote. I am here illegal. I'm I'm on Earth illegally, let alone America. But I'm probably 5050 on either the Democratic Party or those associated with it see the severity of what has happened and use 2028 as an opportunity to shift course in a radical way or at least don't get in the way when others try to do that. And I think there's a 50% chance they just comma 2028 or Pete 2028 and and it all sucks. And it all sucks. I mean Maria Smith says people thinking thinking they doing something by reposting man but this is the thing like mechanisms in our culture and society have been designed and implemented such that reposting stuff feels good and seems valuable. um the the metrics that make something valuable or worthwhile are analytic metrics that we can tie to algorithmic factors. So someone like you know reposts something and it gets shared a bunch of times and you all know this. Anytime you've posted something where you get more responses, more repost, more likes, more comments than normal, it makes your brain feel like someone put like a finger up your brain's butt and tickled around a little bit. It's weird, but I like this. Do I want more of this? I don't know. I don't know if I want to admit that to myself.

[00:19:44]And you know, so so it's all that to say is it's it's not as simple as like we're dumb.

[00:19:53]It's like we are imshed in a system that's done this. You know, I I'll do the thing where I I hint hint you guys about the next video by showing you some more books. Um I finally read this the CT Nen book, The Score, which I liked.

[00:20:07]I didn't love liked didn't love. But in this book, you know, one of the main arguments is that in in games, in forms of play, the rules of the game structure, and this is me projecting some of my own preferred language onto his argument, the rules of the game structure our desire. So, if we're playing basketball, we desire to score points, get assist, whatever it might be. Um if we you know of course are participating in work under capitalism like we desire the acquisition of capital or whatever it might be the systems that we participate in shape what we want. So we don't think that we want algorithmic engagement and attention. We might not rationally think that, you know, we want to be a part of this game, but it's hard to not internalize the values of dominant societal modes.

[00:21:10]And the more that our society takes on this this sort of financialized, algorithmized hybrid, the more that we are going to internalize those values and make them our own. that those values are going to structure our desires. And this gets into a much broader discussion about capitalism and desire. Many many very smart people have written about this. But you know that's one of the the beauties of of capitalism and in particular the beauties of of what happening of what happened when like capitalism and and modern media and marketing started banging each other that there's this ability to create and cultivate desire like never before which makes people act really dumb. I see yeah Maria Smith in the chat said normalization. I mean yeah that's 100%. Um, shout out Adam Curtis and hypernormalization and normalization more broadly. But we're experiencing this this process of like it's like the normalization of dehumanization across the nation. No penetration, masturbation. Hail hail Satan. Sorry, that was me trying to be Eminem for a second. Um, did not go well. Did not go well. Yeah, Eddie sees the desire and lack talk coming in here. Um, which is true. That's what I'm kind of thinking about in the back of my head as I say all of this. So again, things aren't as simple as dumb people need to be less dumb or um these idiots will learn their lesson because it's a it's a problem at the level of the structure of our society and the interweaving of economic systems, political systems, entertainment, media infrastructure. and then we're left trying to figure out what the [ __ ] we can do within that. I think that we should not underestimate the value of simply knowing what we don't know or calling things what they are. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but I don't know. Like I remember I'm going to get a little personal for a second.

[00:23:18]If you can't handle that, plug your ears. I don't know. The first time I got diagnosed with depression, it was nice because oh, now I know what the thing is.

[00:23:29]The thing has a name. It's not just like my brain is bad or something. I mean, it is, but there there's a name for this thing that can help me understand the thing. And even when the thing is operational and it sucks, I have a name for the thing and can understand the thing. I think that's important and why we need to keep analyzing society and being as aware as we can of stuff. I think I see someone bring up unknowns.

[00:23:53]unknowns in the chats in the chats the chat you know let's go all the way back to Socrates here the wisdom of knowing what you don't know is huge you know operating with a sort of like onlo ontological or like intellectual humility is so important because again look at the [ __ ] that we watch and read on the internet everyone knows everything and everyone's the smartest guy and you're either the smart guy or the dumb guy.

[00:24:23]And [snorts] none of this does anything other than fuel this really dumb, really bad system ruled by the logic of of immediacy.

[00:24:35]Shout out to the concept of immediiacy.

[00:24:38]Shout out to the book immediiacy, which we're going to start reading together when I'm done with vacation. And I think that will be nice. I think that will help. I think it'll be good to read that together. But all that to say is it's going to be very easy for a lot of people to convince themselves that in 2028 this will be over and it will not be over. And there's a hopeful naivity in thinking that it will, but it won't be. So, I think it's almost more important that we prep for what do we prep for that? We prep for the fact that we're going to be sold a bill of goods that like, oh, that that that happened now on to something better. It's like, no, man. This this country and because of the influence and power of this country, the the ripple effects gone all over. Oh, Quinn, I'm glad you read that. Um, and I think when we read it together, it'll be like my third time reading it. I think we'll have fun with it and then hopefully Anna will come talk to us some more. I know Anna's been on the channel before which is nice of her and we appreciate that.

[00:25:51]Um, the book I'm talking about by the way is Anna Cornbla's immediiacy. I'm going to have a discount code so if you don't have that book yet I I'll let you know over on the Patreon. Let me let you know as well, um, I'm going to be taking some time off of the mainstream, the mainstream, but I am going to do a couple of Patreon only streams with some fun gimmicks in the next few weeks. Hey, thanks for watching this. In case you didn't know, I have a main channel where I post video essays and stuff like that. It's just called Michael Burns. There's a link. Would love for you to check that out. If you want to support the channel more, I have a Patreon. You can also hit up either of my beverage partners. There's Yes, Please Coffee, who make the best gosh darn coffee in the world. You get 15% off with the code Burns Beans. And of course, my beloved new non-alcoholic beer sponsor, Years Beers. It's really good. There's a link below and if you use it, you get 10% off your first order. So, thank you so much. And if you ever want to watch these streams live, I'm live every Wednesday at 12:00 p.m.

[00:26:55]Pacific. Okay, now the video's Now it's really over. So now you can go. I'm gonna just I'm gonna finish this.

[00:27:07]Ah, now it's over. I'll see you guys for the next