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Notes -
The Rightful Caliph has blogged over at ACX that The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs.
He is arguing that while tariffs are an "idiosyncratic obsession of Trump’s" which are not a load-bearing part of the MAGA platform, the fact that he can push through them is a consequence of his cult of personality and him being surrounded by yes-men who will not risk his anger by telling him an idea of his is terrible. So the tariffs in particular point to a broader failure mode of right-wing populism, which he contrasts with the ideological capture of institutions by the left.
He is then saying that he prefers to salvage institutions captured by the left to Trump's approach of starting without institutional knowledge and just see how things go.
As usually, this is compellingly written. It did not make me update a lot on Scott's politics -- he had explicitly endorsed anyone-but-Trump for the presidential election, and extrapolating that he would not be a fan of the tariffs was not exactly hard. I like how Scott took this issue which has been discussed to the death on the object level, then took a step back and asked "but what is the deeper truth about that political system beyond the object level stupidity?"
As usual for Scott blogs about CW-adjacent topic, there is a lot of discussion going on at ACX.
Hard agree with Scott here: MAGA's refusal to try to rein in Trump when he does something silly is not a fluke, it's an essential part of the cult of personality that MAGA has become. The fact that the usual suspects are working backwards trying to justify it from nearly any angle (many of which are mutually conflicting, but they broadly don't bother trying to rationalize their defenses) should update the priors of anyone who thought MAGA was an ideological movement rather than a cult built around aggrandizing the whims of a single capricious man.
I get that sneering at populists is whole reason you made this alt account, but this is hilariously out of touch even for you.
MAGA is not "failing" to reign Trump in. MAGA is cheering him on because he is following through on his campaign promises. He is pursuing thier objectives.
MAGA is not Trump. MAGA became the rallying cry of a Tea Party that is done asking politely and has now adopted an attitude position of "Fuck it, we ball". Trump is the avatar of that attitude. The guy who will actually say "Fuck you, we did in fact build that" on behalf of all the construction workers, architects, structural engineers, real-estate developers, Et Al. who did in fact build that, and are fed up with crime, inflation, and constantly being lectured by idiot wordcels about race, gender, and whatever else is on the menu this week.
I know it's an unpopular position but again I urge theMotte to consider the possibility that Trump (and Trump-voters) know what they are doing.
I'm sure Trump's doing what he's doing on purpose, and MAGA supports him in it. But tariffs are still bad.
As for "cult of personality", that just gets an eyeroll. There's some of that, it comes with any charismatic politician (which is most Presidents, Gerald Ford and Bush Sr. being notable exceptions). But being lock-step with Trump really isn't a characteristic of MAGA, the biggest split being on vaccines, where Trump yielded to his base.
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