Unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of any culture.

Derrick Jensen

Amidst the accelerating chaos that even has GOP senators and reps spooked, a couple things jumped to my attention this past week. First, even with Trump’s overall approval rating down to 36%, with the disapproval number at 60% (from Gallup), his support among Republicans remains almost 90%. And in trying to understand how 90% of GOP voters can look around at our current poly-clusterfuck and think, “I like what I’m seeing,” I came across some polling that sheds light.

In a CBS News poll last week, only 19% of those same Republicans think that ICE is being “too tough” in its conduct. That immigration snippet is a perfect window into the continuing loyalty that Trump commands among rank-and-file “conservatives,” even as events spiral into what most people see as an authoritarian nightmare.

Jumping off of this ICE-immigration example, our question for this post is, “Can that MAGA nut ever be cracked, and if so, how?” Is there literally anything that could change the hearts and minds of the MAGA faithful? Now, many, or even most liberals would say, “Fuck ’em, they’re beyond redemption. They’re all just brainwashed cultists who can’t be saved.” But I think this is a crucial mistake, and is largely the unproductive mirror-image of MAGA’s demonization and dehumanization of the Left. What’s more, Trump’s power ultimately derives from those MAGA faithful. As long as they stay loyal, then the dysfunctional electoral college, the compliant Congress, and the toady-filled SCOTUS can continue to catalyze Trump’s insanity. But if that MAGA crowd could ever be fractured (because I don’t think winning over the whole bunch is possible), then Trump’s base of power would be crippled. Even if the Dems have a successful 2026 election cycle, providing Trump doesn’t declare martial law and cancel the midterms, those tens of millions of MAGA folk will still need to be reached somehow, to have any shot at a national recovery with staying power.

The Origins of Outrage

In trying to ferret out a potential strategy for cracking the MAGA nut, we need to start at the beginning of the modern conservative movement, to the chain of events that has culminated in Trumpism. For that, we need to go back to the mid-to-late 90s, when the Three Horsemen of the Polar-pocalypse began their ascent. Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Rupert Murdoch unveiled a new strategy to combat Bill Clinton’s triangulation project, which had turned the Democratic Party into a second party of big money, rivaling and even outearning Republicans for campaign cash. Needing a way to distinguish the GOP from the emerging Clintonian machine, Limbaugh, Murdoch, and Gingrich hit upon a new way to define conservatism: outrage.

Limbaugh was the pioneer, dominating the then-emerging sphere of talk radio, which trafficked in conflict, confrontation, titillation, and outrageousness. Many of the current features of the MAGA universe were there in Limbaugh’s early radio work: relentless attacks on Dems, open and blatant racism, alleging that illegal immigration was a liberal tactic to win votes, intense misogyny (he popularized the term “feminazi”), conspiracy theories galore (including Obama birtherism later on), a mocking of the gay community and even AIDS victims. Limbaugh was shameless in his cruelty and provocation, and it was wildly successful, raking in tons of cash for himself and the Republican party.

Seeing this successful blueprint, Gingrich carried the approach into Congress when the Republicans took the midterms in 1994. The freshman GOP class even made Limbaugh an honorary caucus member, as instrumental in helping them win. Gingrich went full scorched-earth against the Dems, vowing to block any and every Clinton attempt to get things done. He went after the Clintons personally, as they were the perfect foil for conservative outrage: a smooth-talking, philandering president and his uppity, unladylike wife. Of course, Congress has never been a Shangri-la of peace and love between parties, but even up through the Reagan and George HW Bush administrations, the two sides had worked together and compromised to get at least some things done. But Gingrich made it his mission to oppose anything Clinton wanted, a foreshadowing of Mitch McConnell’s pledge to obstruct everything Obama. Gingrich ushered in the modern age of the two parties always working to undo the other side’s accomplishments, and a full commitment to obstruction at every turn.

Rupert Murdoch completed this polarization trifecta, launching Fox News in 1996. From the outset, Fox floated the idea that not only was the traditional media biased, it was actually purposefully lying to the American people, to serve some kind of shadowy liberal agenda. Again, all the things that are commonplace with MAGA today were there from the beginning with Fox: conspiracy theories, mocking of all things liberal, a heavy focus on hyperbole, often shading into outright fabrication, and a commitment to conflict as editorial policy.

Here we have the birth of the conservative outrage project, the origins of the crippling polarization we have today. How so? Because outrage needs a target. Free-floating anger is not particularly productive until it is harnessed and directed towards an enemy. And these Three Horsemen gave conservatives plenty of targets for their outrage: blacks, women, gays, coastal elites, the Deep State, Jews, George Soros, the Clintons, Hollywood, scientists, city people, Latinos, and so on. Indeed, the early years of the conservative outrage project can be seen as the gathering up of enemies, the creation of a big tent of adversaries who could be attacked for profit and power. This strategy has reached its seeming zenith in the rise of Donald Trump, who is a living, breathing collection of grievance, outrage, and vengeance.

Why Does Outrage Work?

When reviewing the origins of modern conservatism in the mid-to-late 90s, the immediate question is, “Why was outrage a successful unifying theme in the first place?” Why was there so much free-floating anger, so much fuel for polarization and demonization of perceived enemies?

The short answer? Capitalism. After the high-water mark of egalitarian economics in the mid-70s (strong unions, government regulation with teeth, heavy taxation of the rich, corporate commitment to stakeholders and community responsibility), the titans of industry had had enough. Under Reagan, and Thatcher in the UK, capitalists struck back. Unions were busted, regulations rolled back, taxes slashed for the rich, and a general push to see government as the enemy and the free market as the only salvation. Needless to say, the money moved upwards, and that wealth never trickled down. By the mid-to-late 90s, economic inequality had surged, and the working lives of regular people had become more precarious and stressful. The result? Lots of free-floating anxiety, anger, and frustration. Into that scene stepped the conservative outrage machine, pulling people’s gaze away from the plutocrats who had been screwing them, and towards a smorgasbord of scapegoats.

The Genius of Outrage Conservatism

There are three facets of this conservative outrage project that make it virtually impenetrable, all but immune to counterargument. First, it is anecdote-based. Fox News realized early on, learning from Limbaugh, that people are story-loving animals. When confronted with a bunch of graphs and squiggly lines on some egghead’s chart, most regular people will tune out or just change the channel. But if tell them a good tale, preferably with some ominous music and scary video, and they will move closer to the screen, grab some popcorn, and crank the volume. This is not just a matter of “if it bleeds, it leads,” although that is part of it. More specifically, in service of the outrage project, we’re talking about juicy examples of liberals doing outrageous things. A simple equation: outrageousness produces outrage.

As I have mentioned many times on this blog, if you go looking for outlandish, crazy shit, of any kind, you’ll be able to find it in America. The United States is the third largest country in the world, by both population and geographical area. We’re a huge, sprawling entity, chock full of every kind of ethnicity, religion, language, philosophy, national origin, sexual orientation, and so on. If you want to find examples of literally anything, be it fraud, criminal activity, hypocrisy, betrayal, heroism, cowardice, valor, virtue, or vice, you’ll be able to find it in the United States. Do liberals sometimes do stupid, devious, horrible things? Sure they do. But you know who else does? EVERY-FUCKING-BODY! I’m sure I’d be able to find, if I looked hard enough, examples of Amish people doing reprehensible things. Everybody does good shit, everybody does bad shit. No one has a monopoly on any type of behavior in a country as big and diverse as the United States.

But the genius of Fox, and all its later imitators, is to just go all-in on gathering as many examples of liberal misconduct as possible, no matter how obscure or unrepresentative of liberalism in general. And as an added bonus, it doesn’t even have to be true. Just use whatever is at hand: hearsay, sketchy “eyewitness” stories, debunked conspiracy theories — whatever it takes to flesh out the picture of liberals as evil traitors. And then just gather up all the outrage cash. People “learn” from these stories much better than they do from boring scientific claptrap and (alleged) expert opinion. The conservative information ecosystem has been pounding away with this anecdote-based approach for three-plus decades now, and it has worked brilliantly to cement the base’s loyalty to the Good Guys.

A recent example of this is Karoline Leavitt’s response to a reporter asking about the murder of Renee Good by an ICE agent. She asked the reporter if he was familiar with the statistics on violent crime committed by undocumented immigrants, but then immediately pivoted to the specific stories of Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray. As far as I know, no one followed up with her to ask, “yah, what are those statistics you mentioned?” Which is too bad, because the actual statistics don’t exist at the federal level, as federal agencies do not keep track of immigration status for criminal offenders. However, every study done at a more local level, including Texas, indicates that undocumented immigrants commit far less crime, per capita, than US citizens do. And further, studies indicate that crime actually goes down after an influx of immigrants into an area, because immigrants, legal or undocumented, generally keep their heads down and just work hard at their jobs. But in the conservative outrage universe, stats are for suckers, especially if they don’t corroborate your “migrant crime wave” assertion. So they just stick to the gory, horrific anecdotes (echoes of Willie Horton), and that’s what sticks in people’s minds.

The second brilliant feature of the outrage project is that it is evidence-proof. Building off of the anecdote feature above, the actual success or failure of Trump’s policies really don’t matter, because any bad features that hang around (inflation, skyrocketing healthcare costs, economic stagnation, lack of social mobility, unaffordability of housing, etc.) can just be blamed on previous bad actions by libs or current obstruction by libs. But if anything goes well, even it is obviously the result of some liberal or Democratic prior action, Trump can take credit. It’s the classic Heads-I-Win/Tails-You-Lose approach. And because people’s minds are made up beforehand, confirmation bias kicks in, and only things that ratify your prior beliefs will even enter into the frame anyway.

And that brings us to the last durable feature of conservatism today. Focusing on threat, outrage, and an enemy-centric approach to everything activates some of the most ancient features of primate evolution: in-group loyalty and out-group hatred. As covered in an earlier post, there are two competing tendencies in the human psyche: love for one’s immediate tribe, and hostility to outsiders who threaten your tribe. This was a useful adaptation in our environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA), when pre-human and human populations were very small, and when technologies were not expansively powerful. But in today’s world, where we live in groups that are completely the wrong size for our brains — households are too small, and nations are too big — out-group hatred can be leveraged by bad actors to activate broad, free-floating hatred for millions of people you will never meet. This is the animating force of the MAGA crowd, the absolute certainty that everyone on your team is angelic, and anyone not on your team is demonic, even subhuman. This is the warped manifestation of ancient traits applied in the wrong settings. It is the reason that upwards of 80% of Republicans think that the brutal and cruel actions of ICE against immigrants and even US citizens is an acceptable price to pay for ridding our country of vile enemy scum.

Cracking the Nut

So if this conservative outrage machine is so tightly sealed off, so resistant to outside information, is it even able to be punctured at all? I think it can be, but not through the usual liberal channels. While the default stance of rank-and-file conservatives towards libs is one of disdain or outright hatred, the reverse view, of libs towards conservatives, is not exactly the same. Because most liberals don’t view the world through the us-vs-them, good-vs-evil lens, their opinion of conservatives is more akin to hair-pulling frustration than to hatred. Libs think conservatives are just ill-informed, not evil, and they desperately want the MAGA crowd to just wake up, hear the ridiculousness of their ideas, and have a come-to-Jesus moment, where they start looking at the actual evidence and statistics that refute all of their unfounded conspiracy theories and anachronistic beliefs about society, sexuality, and the economy. In short, libs want conservatives to read and listen to different stuff, stuff that will educate them and lift their veil of ignorance.

Not only is this approach condescending (and MAGA peeps have excellent radar for liberal condescension), it just won’t work. There are rafts of studies that show that people don’t respond well to new information that challenges their beliefs. In fact, contradictory facts make people more entrenched in their existing opinions, on both the conservative and liberal sides. Also, the conservative information ecosphere is so expansive, so all-encompassing, and so ideologically sealed off that the contradictory realities can never even make an inroad in the first place. Just like I would never wake up one day and say, “You know what, I’m going to spend the next week watching Fox News and OAN, just to see what they’ve got to say,” you also can’t expect many MAGA conservatives to suddenly wake up and decide to immerse themselves in Mother Jones and The Bulwark. It just won’t happen. People like what their tribe feeds them, and there just aren’t enough hours in the day to ingest a bunch of stuff that is telling you that you’re wrong about everything.

An alternative approach to reaching the arid plain of the MAGA-verse is to just hope that reality itself will intervene, and that successive election cycles will flip the power dynamics once and for all, or at least long enough for Dems to block the worst aspects of Trumpism, buying time until the Orange One kicks the bucket or (gasp, is it possible?) passes the MAGA torch to someone else. The idea here is Trump’s recklessness will so damage the United States, economically and culturally, that conservatives will be forced into realizing the error of their ways, and start voting for more moderate Republicans again, or even flip to Democrats.

I just don’t see this happening either. As mentioned above, the outrage machine is able to handle bad results by simply blaming libs for their previous sins and for obstructing in the present. In fact, if the Dems manage to flip the House in 2026, this would give Trump and his goons cover for their own failures, because they could blame the House for derailing all the glorious stuff that was just about to happen. Also, because the MAGA-verse is so tightly sealed, Trump can just continue to gaslight, telling everyone that inflation is going down when it isn’t, or that gas prices have been cut in half when they haven’t, or that millions of jobs are being created when they aren’t, or that a couple thousand bucks is plenty of cash for people to buy their own health insurance, when it obviously isn’t enough to cover a half-hour in an emergency room. But the echo chamber will just keep telling people that up is down, so that actual reality would not intrude on that MAGA bubble until our whole system itself collapses into anarchy.

The point here is that winning some elections, or temporarily derailing the plans of Trump himself, does not touch the core of MAGA resilience: outrage over capitalism’s destruction of our economy and society transformed into out-group hatred via steady and disciplined storytelling about the depravity and evil of liberals and their parasitic clients (immigrants, poor people, trans weirdos, smart-alecky scientists, etc.). This is the nut that has to be cracked. How do you get people to STOP channeling their outrage into hatred, and START channeling it into something else? We’re not talking about trying to get MAGA to direct their hate towards a different target: onto Trump, or Vance, or Lord Baldemort Stephen Miller. We’re talking about transforming righteous and justified outrage into something completely different than hate.

Well, for regular readers of this blog, there is no surprise coming here at the end. I think the only alternative mechanism for reaching MAGA, and for salvaging any kind of liberal movement in the US, is to embark on a very specific project, laser-focused on creating a completely different way of life for Americans. I have proposed the building of 15-20 model communities around the country, what I call Bigger Home Bases. These communities would have 150 residents each, and they would be supported by a Basic Income, maybe $1200-$1500 a month. This would be a privately-funded project, backed by donors from across the political-ideological spectrum, and there would be a heavy push in social and traditional media to get these community stories out into the public consciousness. Residents would also be from across the social spectrum, with liberals and conservatives living together, young and old, people from different religions and no religion, different races, ethnicities, and languages. Each community would have a charter, where residents commit themselves to a basic set of values: non-exploitation, self-sufficiency, reduced ecological impact, etc.

For more details on this project, and how Bigger Home Bases, Universal Basic Income, and Modern Money Theory (MMT would be necessary to implement UBI and support for BHBs at the federal level) would fit together as a larger national mission, just go back and check out some older pieces on this blog. There are lots of specifics on how these communities would work, and what the long-term goal is for the project, how it spreads to a wider scope, etc.

But as far as cracking the MAGA nut, I think only a concrete, embodied project like Bigger Home Bases, supported by Basic Income, a demonstration that different kinds of people can actually live together and pursue a common goal, would be an antidote to the anecdote-based outrage machine. The BHBs would manifest a more powerful story than all the evil-lib tales compiled and spewed out by Fox and their ilk. Instead of pushing a nebulous idea like hope, these communities would embody actual cooperation, partnership, and success. This is fighting a negative story with a positive story, leveraging the ancient power of in-group loyalty to squelch out-group animosity, and replacing hate with real-life examples of people working together to eliminate the very conditions that create our outrage in the first place.