In Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” pilots who fly dangerous missions are categorized as crazy and are therefore ineligible to fly dangerous missions. But when they recognize these missions are dangerous and ask not to fly them, they are demonstrating their sanity, and can no longer claim the exemption.
President Joe Biden faced a similar paradox in his decision to speak last Thursday in Philadelphia.
As president, Biden has a responsibility to call out dangers to the nation. MAGA extremists are such a danger. They refuse to recognize the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, and they are increasingly comfortable advocating for violence to achieve their ends.
Yet calling out a small but nonetheless significant sliver of Americans risks further entrenching their MAGA identity and could serve as a catalyst for the very violence the president seeks to prevent.
Catch-22 territory, for sure.
Biden’s speech was laudatory in many ways. He noted the zero-sum fallacy that motivates many far-right radicals: the mistaken belief that there is only so much freedom to go around. “The MAGA Republicans believe that for them to succeed, everyone else has to fail,” Biden said, the opposite of a nation that is “big enough for all of us to succeed.”
He noted legislative successes that will make life better for all Americans, including a new gun safety law, health care reform and a climate initiative.
And he was correct in noting that American democracy is not guaranteed. Election deniers are working “in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies.”
We need a president to speak out forcibly about such issues, even if by so doing he can no longer claim to be above the fray when it comes to politics.
However, Biden’s speech had significant missteps, too.
The first was a failure to separate hardcore MAGA supporters from Republicans. The president was clear that only a very small number of Republicans are truly aligned with MAGA philosophy, despite the party today being “dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.”
However, we’ve reached a point where it is helpful to more forcibly separate rank-and-file Republicans from this extremist faction, which seeks to align itself with the GOP as a means to an end, since their numbers alone are insufficient to win elections.
Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. Many rank-and-file Republicans have also felt it necessary to align themselves with MAGA supporters to win elections. This allegiance has proven somewhat effective in the short-term but threatens to delegitimize the party in the long-term.
Similarly, Democrats have done themselves no favors in instances where they have supported MAGA candidates in primaries because they believe that such individuals will be easier to defeat in general elections.
All these “politics-make-for-strange-bedfellows” moments have helped to solidify and legitimize the MAGA brand and bring the weird QAnon-inspired theories that motivate many followers into the mainstream. Biden shouldn’t have called them MAGA Republicans; they are just MAGA.
Biden also erred in branding their extremist perspective a fait accompli. “MAGA Republicans have made their choice,” he said. “They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live, not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.”
This may be accurate, but it doesn’t have to be permanent.
I recently read that instead of asking why MAGA supporters believe what they believe, we should ask what they gain from believing it.
One answer is that MAGA provides an identity, a place of belonging. Better to think of MAGA supporters as fervent fans of a sports franchise. No matter how many times the Cleveland Browns disappoint, most fans aren’t going to one day show up in Steelers jerseys.
But even for super-fans, there is a breaking point. If a team moves to another city or signs a player whose off-field actions are too appalling, some fans jump ship.
No matter how many times Trump lies about the election, foments dissatisfaction with anybody who disagrees with him and leads crowds in chants of “Lock her up!” after the FBI has removed hundreds of classified documents from his home, many fans are going to continue to wear his jersey.
But just as with sports franchises, a movement’s supporters can reach a breaking point. Republicans are increasingly removing Trump references from their websites and distancing themselves from his extremist views. And some MAGAs are awakening to the realization that where there’s so much smoke, there might be a fire. That’s a heartening sign.
Instead of writing off an entire demographic, Biden and the Democrats need to ask how to better publicize what they’ve done to help MAGAs. Then they need to ask themselves what else they can do to make their lives − and the lives of all Americans − better.
Listening and finding common ground is the first step. Consigning them to oblivion only makes the MAGA agenda, such as it is, more appealing. And that’s a Catch-22 to which Biden can’t afford to succumb.
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