Why Is MAGA Against The American Way?

A post at Quora has a thoughtful take on why the MAGA movement is opposed to so many fundamental American ideals.

Tomaž Vargazon ·

Practicing atheist 

Sep 10 [2025]

Why are MAGA so opposed to the very principles on which the United States are based -- liberty and freedom? Why does MAGA want to surrender their freedom to an authoritarian loser like Donald Trump, who only wants to use and destroy them?

My personal opinion, after spending an unhealthy amount of time looking at various extremists over the past 20+ years, is a significant minority of people who are simply not capable of modern human civilization. 

ISIS

Take the Islamic world for example. Various studies have been made as to how many Muslims support the crazies and it’s usually in the 10–20% range, depending on the country, region and time in history. They are a minority, but a very sizeable and vocal minority that has the ability to control the narrative, due to their vicious nature.

But this is not limited to Islam at all. In Europe we have various kooky-looney parties that look different, behave differently, but share the same core disdain for modern human civilization. In Germany they’re the ones who support AfD, across Europe they’re the main provider of various neo-Nazi gangs and so forth.

These same people, born in a Muslim family, would become the radical crazies of ISIS. In Europe they fawn over Michaelle Le Pen. In Britain they bend over for Nigel Farage. Born in an America, they become MAGA. It’s the same kind of mindset, right from the stone age: my way or the highway, my leader is perfect, your side has no redeeming qualities, anyone who opposes us is evil or crazy, we will solve everything and nothing you do is worth talking about.

The reason why I think this is intrinsic to humanity is because whereever you look, the numbers are always hover at approximately 20% of the population. Sometimes it’s a bit more due to temporary surges when people don’t really know what they’re voting for (Hitler in 1933 had about 33% support), sometimes it’s a bit less because there are several competing groups for the stone age vote and they steal the stone age vote. Sometimes the excesses of one such groups also drop their support, because they get percieved as bad - this certainly happened to ISIS.

But in the long run the crazies, once they’re known to everyone, end up with ~20% support. It’s not that odd if you think about it, approximately 99% of our history we’ve spent in tribal groups and endemic warfare in prehistory. It was your way or the club or spear of the other tribe. Of the recorded history we’ve spent a clear majority, certainly over 5500 of the past 6000 years and likely more, in one dictatorship or another. Keeping your mouth shut and head down in front of the powerful leader was the way you kept it on your shoulders, questioning authority being something positive is a new development.

In light of this the fact 1 person in 5 is not okay with the modern state of affairs and wants to have a strong ruler that will tell them when to shit, when to eat, when to clap and when to kill, should not be surprising. They don’t function well when disconnected from the hive and feel lost. Making choices and taking responsibility is hard and tiring, just following orders unquestioningly is easy. No, the most surprising fact should be is 4 out of 5 people do want modern society, with all that entails.

Unfortunately that means we have to contend with 20% support for crazies, like MAGA or what have you. What Trump did in other words was not to convince anyone of anything. He just rallied the deplorable vote under one banner and make them vote consistently for the return of the stone age.