this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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I see posts like this and wonder if I'm looking at an outlier, or if this is genuinely 80% of their voter base
The MAGA base is almost entirely people who are so reactionary to their own feelings that they will never, ever listen to arguments from places of reason like the joke in the meme OP posted.
"If it makes me feel good, it's good. If it makes me feel bad, it's bad." - American conservatives broadly.
What they don't get, and will never understand, is that the narratives for how they feel are being supplied to them from outside sources. A tactic that only grifters on the right seem to have the balls to employ, despite it being the easiest thing in the world to change how these clowns feel and thus what direction they're pointed at.
Isn't trying to change people's attitudes (Wikipedia) notoriously difficult?
Broadly maybe, but we're talking about a specific demographic of people who have been studied to be more reactionary, more emotional, less educated and less informed broadly. These are people who run off narratives supplied to them to explain their feelings, and there is only one group who are supplying these narratives directly to them about why they're unhappy.
The left and liberals have both been hung up on civility and honesty to a fault, almost as if setting up every engagement to fail, because we've known for decades and decades that you're not going to change Cletus's attitude towards immigrants with statistics and facts, he already feels awful, scared, overworked and insecure, if you try to explain to him that he's also wrong about his feelings, you're going to hit a wall and make him double-down. If you try to make him feel empathy for others especially people who are very different from Cletus, you will only make yourself a living personification of the picture of the "enemy" which they've been given.
Meanwhile, if instead of arguing you redirect their dissatisfaction towards the right targets, you won't have to change their feelings towards minorities or women or whatever, if you point them at the billionaire class who are actually stripping away their benefits and raising their taxes, they will stop caring about race and gender and identity politics. You can channel that rage at specific targets instead of trying to constantly tell a huge segment of the population that they're wrong and dumb. (Despite them being factually wrong and dumb. Again, just telling dumb people they're dumb won't change them, it will only make them worse.)
This outcome, of the left pushing the dumb towards corporations and billionaires is exactly what the actual ruling class fears so much and why they depend so, so much on creating as much division as possible, and why we now have bots arguing on social media and adopting the most radical positions of both sides of every issue.
Just to check if we're on the same page, do you consider US Dems as "right" or something else?
The American Democrat party, for the most part, are completely compromised or have capitulated to the same donors who donate to Republicans. Particularly the establishment members who have run the institution for many decades.
I don't think Republicans or Democrats are actually "left" or "right" I don't think they have values at all, at least not since the last principled political figures all died off. With a couple exceptions they're almost all entirely a media management company with two branches, but have the same goals.