Greg Olear – “This is also, I submit, the difference between MAGA and the rest of us. MAGA are incapable of turning off the default setting. They are automatically certain. They worship Trump, and Trumpism—which is to say, grievance and cruelty and white nationalism and bullying—and they abide by the First Commandment, which they have required to be displayed in schools in Louisiana: You shall have no other gods before me. They refuse to examine their assumptions (which, come to think, is likely one of the reasons for their contempt of science). And that is what makes them impossible to contend with.”
A recent opinion from journalist and author, Greg Olear, helped to clarify my question of why MAGA is now embraced by Republicans who are either complicit in their silence or have joined this cult. Sadly, it also makes me understand how good people became Nazis in the 30s and why we are seeing a rise in Christian nationalism today.
His entire opinion, one that includes passages from other writers as he reflects upon commencement speeches and his personal growth, might make you think he’s started a new novel. If time doesn’t allow for the full read, one I encourage, here’s the part that provided some deeper thoughts about MAGA and Christian nationalism. It begins with excerpts from a commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005 by David Foster Wallace:
Wallace – “Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.
They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.
…The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
Olear continues: “This is also, I submit, the difference between MAGA and the rest of us. MAGA are incapable of turning off the default setting. They are automatically certain. They worship Trump, and Trumpism—which is to say, grievance and cruelty and white nationalism and bullying—and they abide by the First Commandment, which they have required to be displayed in schools in Louisiana: You shall have no other gods before me. They refuse to examine their assumptions (which, come to think, is likely one of the reasons for their contempt of science). And that is what makes them impossible to contend with.
The value of education, Wallace says, “has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time…”
Read the entire opinion by Greg Olear at Prevail – https://open.substack.com/pub/gregolear/p/sunday-pages-this-is-water?r=2xyae&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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