MAGA’s Betrayal in Plain Sight
This is not hatred—it is pity. MAGA voters will be the first to suffer from policies that gut healthcare, destroy farming, raise prices, and militarize communities. The oligarchs will escape untouched, while families, farmers, and small towns inherit poverty, humiliation, and fear.
No, I am not one of you. But I will not pretend hatred where none exists. You are, after all, fellow Americans, kin in a shared experiment. And because of that, I cannot bring myself to wish you harm. But nor can I blind myself to the fact that you are not only being led to slaughter, you are cheering your butchers as they sharpen their knives.
We may disagree—ferociously—about politics, policies, even the very definition of freedom. But disagreement alone does not make you my enemy. What does break my heart, and insults my intelligence in equal measure, is that I can already see the ruin that awaits you. It will not touch the gilded elite who bankroll this circus—they will have their accountants, their offshore accounts, their private jets. No, the blow will land squarely on you: the working families, the small towns, the church pews and farmhouses, the people who cast your ballots in good faith but who will be repaid in penury and betrayal.
Food prices are climbing, and they will climb higher. The gasoline that keeps you employed and your families fed will become a luxury. Rural hospitals—already on life support—will shutter when Medicaid is gutted. Clinics will vanish. Doctors will flee. Mothers and children will be abandoned, not by fate but by policy. And when asked about such cuts, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa—one of your own champions—dismissed the matter with nihilistic banality: “We are all going to die.” That is not a plan; it is a shrug. It is the clarion call of a government that no longer bothers to conceal its contempt for you.
Your farmers—the very backbone of America’s myth and reality—are being throttled. The immigrant laborers who picked your fields, tended your stock, and, yes, became something like family, are being driven out. Their absence will not just leave your crops to rot; it will leave your communities hollowed. And how does your “family values” government propose to fill the void? By lowering the working age so that your children can toil in the fields in place of the immigrants you once despised but now desperately need. This is not policy. It is regression, a return to child labor dressed up as patriotism.
And the tariffs—those supposedly “tough” measures—are not toughness at all. They are a coward’s tax. They bleed the working class while enriching the very swamp creatures you were promised would be drained. Inflation grows. Jobs vanish. And as always, the working poor foot the bill while the oligarchs toast your loyalty with champagne.
Meanwhile, beyond our shores, the world looks on with a mixture of scorn and amusement. India and China, who supply the medicines you rely on and the minerals without which your economy collapses, are not cowed by bluster. They are not “bowing” to America—they are bypassing it. They are building new alliances while we wall ourselves in. Soon, the drugs you need will either be extortionately priced or simply unavailable. When your child requires insulin or your spouse needs chemotherapy, you may discover that a red hat and a flag lapel pin are not legal tender.
We are being led toward not freedom but its parody: a fortress America more reminiscent of Pyongyang than Philadelphia. Barriers at our borders. Scarcity on our shelves. Violence in our streets. And, most obscene of all, American soldiers deployed not against foreign enemies but against American citizens—while those who once wailed about the tyranny of a face mask applaud the arrival of tanks in their towns.
And here lies the ultimate obscenity: you were sold this ruin as strength, as patriotism, even as God’s will. You were promised prosperity, dignity, and respect. Instead, you will receive poverty, humiliation, and fear. Your wages will be devoured by inflation. The comforts you once aspired to will become memories. And should you travel abroad—if you can even afford it—you will not be met with admiration but with ridicule, suspicion, and contempt.
“The oligarchs will toast your loyalty with champagne.”
I do not write this to condemn you. Condemnation is too easy, and you will condemn yourselves soon enough. I write because I pity you. I pity the families who will suffer, the children who will inherit a nation hollowed out, the honest men and women who gave their trust to a mountebank, a confidence man, a false prophet in a cheap suit and a cheaper slogan.
But most of all, I pity America. Once—however imperfectly—it was a beacon, a flawed but genuine bastion of democracy, freedom, and humanity. Now, under your watch, it edges toward becoming a cautionary tale, another republic to be studied by historians as an example of how nations die—loudly, stupidly, and to thunderous applause.
I write now because the window is closing. In 1933, Germany made its bargain, and the price was ruin, war, and atrocity. Today, in America, the same bargain is being signed in your name. Soon, voices like mine may no longer be heard. Dissent will be muzzled, truth criminalized, and obedience enforced not by persuasion but by incarceration.
My brothers and sisters, you do not yet understand what you have done. But you will. And when you do—when the bill comes due—I fear it will not only be too late for you. It may be too late for all of us.
Why it Matters
MAGA voters were promised strength and prosperity but are inheriting ruin and betrayal. When dissent is criminalized and obedience enforced, it won’t just be blue America that suffers—it will be farmers, workers, and families who discover too late that their trust was weaponized against them.
Key Takeaways
- MAGA voters are being led to policies that devastate working families and rural communities.
- Rising prices, collapsing healthcare, and labor shortages will hit hardest in red America.
- Tariffs, child labor proposals, and anti-immigrant crackdowns hollow out the very communities MAGA claims to protect.
- Authoritarianism cloaked in patriotism threatens dissent, truth, and democracy itself.
Further Reading
- Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right – Arlie Russell Hochschild. A deep dive into the worldview of MAGA voters and the paradoxes of their politics. https://civilheresy.com/strangers in their own land
- Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism – Anne Applebaum
Examines how democracies collapse when citizens trade truth for loyalty. https://civilheresy.com/twilight of democracy lure of authoritarianism - Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America – Nancy MacLean. Traces the ideology driving attacks on democracy, freedom, and equality. https://civilheresy.com/Democracy in Chains
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