“To sum up, solving the housing crisis with freedom, like solving the immigration mess with compassion, could both be factors in a MAGA red wave in 26.”
I finished off the previous two posts about a possible red wave for MAGA in '26 with that sentence, but the operative word there is “could,” because there is only a slight chance that we will do the right thing on either issue.
I say “we,” but in all honesty I am only semi MAGA. I didn't even vote for Trump in '24, although I did vote (with trepidation) for him in '16, and (with some enthusiasm) in 2020. My mixed feelings toward the MAGA movement is because it resembles a cult of personality. That is, most of the folks involved are continuing their life long lazy habits of not engaging as citizens, and not really formulating plans about what we should do as a country. They are content to let Donald Trump do their thinking for them, just as they let the George Bushes and Ronald Reagan do in years past. In other words, most of my fellow conservatives act like dependent children, not realizing they have a duty to shoulder some of the ideological weight of citizenship.
The two issues brought forth in the previous two blogs are good examples of how we could, if we had the sense and determination, really bring our nation back to greatness. It is, however, highly unlikely that either approach will be tried mainly due to the fact that no one of real influence, meaning no one in the country club wing of the Republican party, is going to take the MAGA folks by the hand and walk them through it.
That is the real tragedy of this moment. Donald Trump has done us a great service in demonstrating that with strong leadership, the common folks, the backbone of this nation, can defeat the country club, establishment Republicans. Then, once we win the party, we can win the nation. However, while he won, and is President, long term he has only opened the door. It is up to us to walk through it, and this time we are not going to have the country club set helping us, because it is them we have to defeat.
Take the issue of illegal immigration. I know, the approach I talk about, of tempering a drive for justice with some hard headed mercy and compassion offends many. Even though it is actually straight from the heart of a Christian mind, it sounds to a lot of MAGA folks kind of vaguely un-American.
So what will probably happen is we will get a year or so of intense mass deportation. We will try to deport everyone in sight. In a typically misguided American manner, we will look like someone furiously trying to bale water with a sieve. When that effort exhausts itself, after a lot of unnecessary brutality and following the script, the next stage of the plan will unfold.
There will then be a slow curtailment of such actions, as both the Democrats take back the House, and big business takes back control of a demoralized Republican party. Already, we hear the case being made to not enforce immigration law in agriculture. Those voices will eventually carry the day. Then, there will have been two or three million deportees, and some few Americans who will have gained some jobs, but mostly things will go back to the way they were. Most of the workers will still be illegal, and working in the legal margins. Just the way the country club Republicans planned it. They don't want to get rid of those low paid workers, and they definitely don't want them to have the full rights of Americans.
Likewise, the housing crisis will most likely play out in a way that pleases the country club establishment. The ideas I proposed could work, but they are not the only free market ways to deal with the housing crisis. However, none of these ideas will get any real support because they would step on the wrong toes.
There will be a lot of crocodile tears and hand wringing, but at most we will see some ill fated rent control schemes, or another wave of government housing projects. Those will be overpriced, restricted to renting to the poor,(not allowing the positive dynamic of personal ownership to get traction) and quickly become crime infested hellholes.
Housing will remain wildly overpriced, with rent even worse. Crime and immorality will get worse. Just the way the country club establishment (the bankers, developers and mortgage brokers) want things to be. Their toes must not be stepped on since they are sacrosanct, much more precious than the hearts, minds, and lives of lesser Americans.
When the '26 midterms come and go, we will probably find ourselves once again in a 50-50 divided nation, with the polity balanced against itself on a razors edge. So there will once again, unlike this rare moment which we are allowing to slip through our fingers, be no time or intellectual space for new ideas to come forward. Like it has seemingly always been, we will be told to shut up and keep in step if we are to defeat those terrible folks on the other side. Just the way the country club Republicans like it.
We can expect the Deep State, and every other foul manifestation of the uniparty to once again raise their ugly heads. Just as the establishment wants it.
Then the globalism, and the slow decline of either secular or Islamic corrosion of our national culture will continue unabated, just as the establishment wants it to.
In other words, we had better wake up and recognize that the next 18 or so months could be, that is COULD BE, the era during which we take our country back. The bad stuff that has been happening will just keep happening, unless we have the sense to stand up and change the national course.
It really isn't about our sense though, is it? We are plenty smart, as a people. We have the intellect to figure out the truth, what we lack it the intellectual integrity. Along with the moral integrity. We just can't figure out how to hold on to the truth, and at the same time hold on to the material ease and privilege we have seduced ourselves with. So we abandon the truth, and pretend to not understand.
To stand up for the truth might lose us the esteem of the big boys, the movers and shakers (the country club types) in our local circles, in the state house, in the business agreements, and on the national scene. So if we dare to speak the truth, (or really even allow ourselves to think it) it is in hushed tones at coffee or family gatherings, with the inevitable caveat of, “I don't know,” at the end of every discussion.
Let's face it, we, the people, have lost our courage, or at any rate, the most vital component of courage, our intellectual courage. We, the people, have become intellectual cowards. We probably still have enough physical courage to stand up and defend our families, but without the fearless ability to look at the truth, what does that really get us? Without intellectual courage, as a people, and as individuals, we will continue to be reduced to what DeToqueville warned we would become, timid and hard working beasts, with a tyrannical corporate/ socialist government as shepherd.
In conclusion, and this is the last I want to say on this because it is starting to get me (and hopefully you) angry, you, the individual MAGA backer, had better get over your shallow triumphalism about Trump being in power. Instead, it is high time for you to take up your duty of doing the hard work, the courageous work, of actually rebuilding this nation of freedom. If you don't have the integrity, the intellectual courage, to stand up and do that, as an individual, (even if you stand alone at first) then you should get ready to wave guh'bye-bye to your quaint little pipe dream of ever making America great again.
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