What exactly is MAGA, anyway?

The great puzzle about the current moment is that the cult leader has no ideology and keeps no promises other than enriching himself and taking revenge on people he believes have slighted him; while his obsessed cultists don't seem to care what he does -- or rather, like cattle ranchers right now, they may object to whatever he does that harms them directly but that doesn't stop them from worshiping him. The so-called conservative movement in the U.S., as embodied in Ronald Reagan, did have a coherent, thought fatuous ideology and governing program, but "conservatism" nowadays has abandoned all of that and doesn't seem to stand for anything except whatever the last person to talk into Dear Leader's ear had to say to him.

 

Mark Lilla, reviewing John Ganz's "When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the 1990s, quotes him describing the so-called paleoconservatives, the precursors of MAGA:

 

Their imagination resembles nothing so much as the rainy-day transports of a boy who lines up all his toy soldiers from different periods in a grand alliance -- here's a knight, there's a cowboy, here's Davy Crockett, there's a Special Forces commando.

 

Which brings us to the insane secretary of HHS. I seriously doubt that many people bought the red hats and the faux gold sneakers or went to the interminable rallies because they were worried about chemtrails, but here we are. KFF's Stephanie Armour writes:

 

The concept posits that airplane vapor trails, or contrails, are really “chemtrails” containing toxic substances that poison people and the terrain. Another version alleges planes or devices are being deployed by the federal government, private companies, or researchers to trigger big weather changes, such as hurricanes, or to alter the Earth’s climate, emitting hazardous chemicals in the process. . . . HHS is expected to appoint a special government employee to investigate climate and weather control  ... . The agency has interviewed applicants to lead a “chemtrails” task force . . .

 

Armour actually makes a fairly serious scientific mistake. The white trails you see following airplanes are not vapor trails. They are ice crystals. Airfoils create low pressure areas, which means the temperature drops, and water vapor -- which fortunately is completely invisible or you wouldn't be able to see the back of your hand -- condenses. Steam and fog are also aerosolized droplets of liquid water, not water vapor. But anyway, that's all it is -- water that condensed out of the atmosphere. Kennedy and his fellow nutjobs believe that what they are seeing is a conspiracy by the Deep State -- Kennedy specifically blames DARPA, the DoD research arm -- to control the weather and poison people. Read the KFF article if you must, but believe me, the craziness is beyond the power of words to characterize. It's total Alcoa sombrero stuff, that would normally get people committed.

 

But that's today's "conservative" movement. That's what it means: utter lunacy. There's nothing more to it.