For your own sake, stop calling yourself MAGA

 People should stop calling themselves “MAGA”. I’m not asking you to give up Christianity, conservatism, or the Republican Party. I’m asking you to drop the MAGA handle. You weren’t born or raised MAGA. It was just a fad that started 7 years ago, and you are free to leave it behind.

The phrase “Make America Great Again” implies that America is not currently great, but it used to be. The goal seems to be to change America back to that bygone era of greatness. 

To imply that America used to be great could be considered insulting. Imagine you are traveling in another country, and someone walks up to you and says in fluent English, “Hey, you’re an American right? Man, your country used to be pretty great.”

Consider that if you have ideas that would improve the country, insulting the country as a whole is probably the wrong way to go about having them implemented. You can insult the President or any individual you like, but insulting the country itself won’t get you very far. Ever see a picture or a video of someone burning the flag? Did you care what they had to say next after that? 

What makes the past better than the present? Was it the economy? Back when a man could buy a house and support his whole family on factory wages by himself, because unions were stronger back then? Except MAGA doesn’t seem keen on unions. MAGA does pay lip service to grievances about taxation and inflation. But that was the Tea Party’s focus. MAGA absorbed the Tea Party and expanded its scope. MAGA is really about culture. Many people my age want the culture that we were raised with. But the biggest cultural changes of the 21st century have been due to the Internet. We can use it to connect to people who share the same interests, beliefs, and values. We also become very aware of people with contrary viewpoints. 

There are people in rural areas who did not have high speed internet until recently. They are experiencing a huge culture shock; like showing George Washington a train or Abraham Lincoln an automobile.

There have always been gay people and trans folk. We’re just more aware of them now than we were when we got our information from three TV networks and the morning paper.

There have always been people of other races. We are seeing them star in more movies and TV shows. You can watch these shows if you like. If you don’t want to watch the new stuff, there are decades of older stuff that you might be more comfortable with.

Cancel culture has always been around. When people don’t watch a TV show, it goes away. When an actor acts like a jerk, it typically (but not always) tends to wreck his career because people don’t want to see his movies anymore (or at least until he redeems himself in someway).

Common courtesy is changing. It’s now common to hear words like “fuck” and “shit” while in public. We hear them so much that they have lost all meaning. A child who says “fuck that shit” doesn’t intend to have intercourse with excrement; he just doesn’t know what the words mean. If you use words like “n*****” or “f*****”, that can end a career if the wrong people hear them. We’ve always known to watch our language, it’s just now the vocabulary of vulgarity has changed.

Pronouns aren’t hard. When you are talking to a person, as I am talking to you right now, the proper pronoun is “you”. When you are talking about a person, “they” and “them” is fine if you don’t know what their gender is. If they want you to know what they want you to use, they’ll let you know. If you don’t know them well enough to know what they want to be called, that’s fine. But if you don’t care enough about them to find out, why continue to talk about people that you don’t care about?

When you call yourself MAGA, you offend two very large groups of people: 1. Americans who think America is currently great, 2. Americans who would have experienced discrimination in the past that you are nostalgic for. You can certainly continue to be white and Christian, as every US president has been one or both of those. But you should consider refraining from calling yourself MAGA. You can be the same person you always were, but just choose a different label.