Arising out of a conversation this week, I encountered a need to rehearse my impression of, What is MAGA? Concurrent with this, another topic keeps arising, particularly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, that of ‘Christian Nationalism’. A great many potential readers would likely regard themselves as experts on both of these topics and in due course, will disparage how I define them. If you, the reader fit these categories, back off. Every angle is going to look different to each viewer, which you’re free to do. I’m stating my own, non-dogmatically but with a general sense of its broad rendering or limitations thereof.
What is MAGA?
MAGA – Make America Great Again, was originally a campaign slogan for Donald Trump, one that appealed to a rural base in ‘flyover country’ that had been abandoned and thrown to the side by globalism, particularly in regard to economic disenfranchisement. It was the counter to ‘globalism’. MAGA got much of its original flavor from the people in that demographic because they (the deplorables) had been cast aside by the globalist which, incidentally, was totally embodied in the establishment Republican party as much as the Democrats. Much of contemporary globalism in the United States was implemented by George Bush and then ramped up by Obama.
MAGA evolved into ‘America First’, the more formal name for the anti-globalist agenda.
To understand America First, you must understand globalism. I was once a generic supporter of generic globalism as it loosely fit into the general matrix of Christian missionary goals that I endorsed at the time. Originally, it was: all the people of the world are equally entitled to opportunity, therefore, lower barriers to trade, free cultural exchange, mutual respect, etc. These objectives meshed well with more nuanced modern missionary objectives and encouraged reciprocating openness. What globalism really evolved into at ground level was ‘open trade’ where industries and jobs could pour out of the US but tariffs against the US could remain sky high but not the other way around. Our borders had to be open for the disadvantaged to come and prosper, but at the expense of American jobs and the subsequent destruction of whole communities and its families. Our universities would be filled with foreigners but with a lot less openings for our kids. Draconian climate rules applied to the US and Europe but India, China and everyone else could dump and pump billions of tons of pollutants into the environment with no consequences, effectively crippling our own competitive economy. All the other social movements and perversions counter to traditional American life had to be blessed and those traditional values had to be stigmatized because the left, now firmly bonded to globalism, said so. Whatever made America and Americans weak was good. Whatever made them strong was bad, especially your traditional family.
America First is a return to the idea that America is indeed special. As Alexis de Tocqueville said: ‘America is great because America is good’. The world benefited immeasurably because we could export our outputs, our values, our technology, and our strength from which the rest of the world benefitted and knew peace that had never occurred in thousands of years in prior history. America’s position is worth standing for and protecting. The United States believed and enjoyed an America First disposition until the 20th century at which point we gradually gave it up in increments, starting with Woodrow Wilson, up until Barack Obama, who nailed the last nail in the coffin. Trump and MAGA are about restoring it.
To those outside the MAGA movements (yes, because there are multiple constituencies within MAGA that find identity under that banner), MAGA means blind worship of Donald Trump and the ignorant affections of supposed ignorant and uneducated masses, aka, ‘deplorables’.
This brings us to one significant segment of MAGA, sporadically labeled by various others as ‘Christian Nationalist’, often construed as an accusation, and now, just as often leveled by one Christian segment against another. The term has reached the level of broad public scrutiny in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination as he was both evangelical apologist and fervent Trump supporter, to which now, some dogmatic Christians take exception, as if they should stand in the seat of judgement, as if they had the stature and right to insist that Charlie should have chosen one or the other as if doing both is an automatic foul.
And what sayeth the writer here?
Outside of an honest academic debate of what Christian Nationalist was historically, and should be or not be now, the term is primarily a dog whistle to say: Deep down, I hate Donald Trump, I hate MAGA, and I am better than all of them. Sure, there are a few guileless folk that can have an honest theological debate about whether it is a good thing or not, but the vast majority of folk, many Christians included, use the term to create a proxy strawman to disassociate their personal hate onto a concept. Furthermore, if one’s supposed academic debate of Christian nationalism is predicated by distaste of Donald Trump and MAGA, it is not an academic debate, it is a personal one.
The debate of Christian Nationalism is a parlor game for sophisticated enlightened Christians that view themselves as superior thinkers among their own ranks. However, their breath on the matter neither advances the cause of Christ, nor does it move the dial of nationalism outside the digital parlor.
To the left, strictly speaking, it is nothing more than two derogatory words thrown together to pronounce a fatal bias and hate on a wing of MAGA. They neither care for nor understand either of those two words.
While the word and concepts of ‘Christian’ has its own explicit impact, the word and concept of ‘nationalism’ is most often described as an evil, even while it shelters the occupant from the rain outside and secures the door from the violent enemy that would pillage his/her house; these rendering most arguments about it as insincere and hypocritical. Go and argue your case on a lawless frontier of borderless land that’s still up for grabs, then get back with me. I’d propose to at least regard it as a neutral concept instead of an indictment.
Lets go back to those MAGA deplorables I mentioned at the beginning, they’re still here but they care nothing at all for your parlor games. Those who play those games are so fixated on Donald Trump and their own image that they forgot and continue to forget the millions of people that were left behind by globalism. It is what used to be called, ‘a kitchen table’ issue only a couple decades ago, in a quaint era when people used to mainly worry about taxes and social security instead of whether the school teacher would try to change your kids gender behind your back and your local DA would let the next wave of illegals beat you then throw you in jail for resisting. What gets talked about in the kitchen is far more important than the parlor.
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