Anti-Bullying and the Rise of MAGA

I have long been interested both in the phenomenon of bullying and the role of the anti-bullying movement in the modern left. (Just type "bullying" into the search bar on this blog and you'll see what I mean.) I think anti-bullying movement is a great way to understand modern left-liberals and the ways they want to change the world.

On the one hand, bullying is bad; there is now a lot of data showing that bullying scars many people for life, leading to their having shorter lives, lower incomes, and so on, plus it just sucks to be bullied. We have seen many organizations torn apart by accusations of bullying and mistreatment. So doing what we can to limit bullying seems to me like a good idea.

On the other hand, this can be taken too far, leading to absurdities like not letting children play games in which one side wins, and bans on using words like "fat" or "stupid." At the far end of this we have seen some adults trying to keep children from forming close friendship pairs, because this might leave somebody out.

Watching MAGA in power, I keep wondering if this is the key to the contemporary political landscape. People sometimes say that Trump's appeal is "just racism," but to me that leaves a huge amount unexplained (including his appeal to non-white voters). Does it maybe make more sense to see MAGA as a defense of bullying? Or, less radically, as an attack on the apparatus liberals have put into place to prevent it? Or as a celebration of the tough characters who shove everyone else down on their way to the top?

The first point to notice is that from Trump on down, MAGA's leadership is full of bullies: Hegseth, Musk, Stephen Miller, etc. One of their battle cries seems to be, "Yes, we're assholes, and there's nothing you can do about it." In that sense MAGA is a direct reaction against the anti-bullying movement from people who think that we have too many weak pansies in the country and not enough toughness.

Consider "free speech." Some of the points where conservatives have shouted the loudest have to do with liberal attempts to ban speech we consider harmful, like sexist jokes. Against the sort of sweet liberal schoolmarm ethic of "we're nice all the time and nobody says anything bad to anybody," MAGA sets "real men need to be able to both dish it out and take it."

Anti-bullying is about being careful. Having been trained in this multiple times, I can tell you that the program is largely about thinking before you speak. Don't speak in anger. Limit your sarcasm. Tone down your criticism. Try to see every situation from everyone's point of view. Is that not the opposite of MAGA?

True, some MAGA people also seem to be thin-skinned and whiny when anybody criticizes them, but it is hardly news that many bullies are like that.

I don't want to seem cavalier about this; "MAGA is for bullies" may be true, but if so that simple statement may be short hand for a deeper sort of human division. MAGA people don't care about Ukraine because they don't want to hear from weaklings who can't defend themselves. Part of the appeal of RFK and his wacky medicine to MAGA is his insistence that being healthy is all up to you; you don't need doctors and hospitals and vaccine factories. MAGA people don't want to talk about complexity; their solutions are always simple and direct. Build a wall. Fire the bureaucrats.

One might define liberalism, in this context, as the belief that, no, actually, you don't stand alone, your whole exitence depends on unbelievably complicated systems and crazily huge bureaucracies, and taking care of those systems is a big part of why we have governments.

You don't have to tell me how hypocritical this is; I see it, too. But I do believe that the contrast between a sweet elementary school teacher who wants everyone to be kind and Donald Trump mocking female reporters for being fat and ugly says something important about the US today.