MAGA End-times from a Psychoanalytic Perspective

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 9 Mar 2026

Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens - TRANSCEND Media Service

Exploration of Neglected Implications with AI Assistance

Introduction

8 Mar 2026 – There is considerable focus on the person and psychology of Donald Trump in provoking unpredictable change globally and evoking controversial reactions — with the support of a power base identifying with the MAGA slogan, namely Make America Great Again. Various efforts have been made to question the megalomaniacal psychology of Trump — whether in terms of his fitness for the role of leader of the free world, or as meriting appreciation as the primary peacemaker justifying the Nobel Peace Prize. These include: (Bandy Lee, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, 2017; Tanya Lewis, The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists, Scientific American, 11 January 2021; Joshua Kendall, The Psychiatrist Who Warned Us That Donald Trump Would Unleash Violence Was Absolutely Right, Mother Jones, September+October 2022). Such assessment is of course disputed by specialists (Kali Holloway, Trump isn’t crazy, he’s just a terrible person, Salon, 27 January 2018).

It is far less evident whether appropriate psychoanalytic skills could be fruitfully brought to bear on the MAGA movement collectively — and any problematic propensity for “magalomania”. There is systematic avoidance of any application of such insights to groups and collectives. This reflects the traditional focus of psychoanalytic practice on individual pathology rather than on collective psychological dynamics.

The exploration below should not be understood as a conventional psychoanalytic diagnosis of individuals or movements. Rather it is a speculative exercise in which questions are posed to contemporary AI systems as a form of cognitive probe. The responses are treated not as authoritative interpretations but as stimuli enabling the articulation of neglected implications and paradoxes. In that sense the exercise resembles a form of dialogical thought experiment.

This avoidance is especially curious in that considerable emphasis in psychoanalysis is deployed in the interpretation of dreams and how these offer a window on motivations by the “unconscious” — whatever that may be variously held to mean — especially in terms of controversial insights regarding a “collective unconscious“. The motivating aspiration of Making America Great Again invites recognition as a form of collective dream or fantasy of restoration meriting psychoanalytic attention — as with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (Systemic Coherence of the UN’s 17 SDGs as a Global Dream, 2021). As explored here, the dream of a Greater Israel invites similar attention — whether or not it is decried as a collective fantasy. Such fantasies to be “great again” are evident in other countries and cultures, variously referring nostalgically to a remembered “golden age” or longing for an era with such characteristics — whereby they are distinguished from others framed as problematically secondary.

Curiously the MAGA movement is especially associated with evangelical Christianity, whereas that of Greater Israel is a feature of the Jewish faith. Rather than the technical combination of Judaism and Christianity as “Judeo-Christian” (faced with its traditional challenge of “Islam”), especially relevant in this period is the entanglement of such dreams as Christian Zionism. As “Abrahamic religions“, it is of course the case that Christianity, Judaism and Islam have long been recognized as “siblings” — whose violent rivalry over millennia is a primary tragedy of human civilization (Fundamental Need for Human Sacrifice by Abrahamic Religions, 2018; Root Irresponsibility for Major World Problems, 2007).

Future historians may find it remarkable that the leadership of these traditions has proven largely unable — over millennia — to deploy their spiritual insights in ways capable of enabling sustained reconciliation beyond symbolic gestures.. They constitute a trio unable to “get their act together”, despite having enabled “science” as a fourth perspective — a science which has proven similarly incompetent in reconciling the disciplines variously claiming to be “scientific”. In their correspondence, and as a further irony, interfaith and interdisciplinary initiatives are seemingly incapable of informing each other fruitfully — whilst replicating each others pathologies.

Such considerations could be framed as irrelevant to the challenges of global governance at this time, were it not for the fact that Christian Zionists are now a primary factor in the drive toward conflict with Islam — a drive which commentators see as potentially heralding World War III (Mesut Hakkı Caşın, Is the US-Israel-Iran war the beginning of World War III? Daily Sabah, 4 March 2026; Are we close to WW3, Factually, 3 March 2026). Purportedly in pursuit of enduring peace, initiation of that conflict immediately followed the founding meeting of the Board of Peace — supposedly envisaged as a means of regulating the Israeli-Palestinian challenge of Gaza.

As a playbook, the dynamics recall those of the earlier invasion of Iraq (for similarly fabricated reasons) — itself framed explicitly as a “crusade” by Christian leadership (New UK records reveal Bush viewed Iraq war as a ‘crusade’, Arab News, 22 July 2025; George Bush Saw Iraq War As ‘Crusade’ By ‘God’s Chosen Nation’, News18, 22 July 2025). The crusade framing echoes that of religious wars of millennia past (Sarah Shamim, Why are the US and Israel framing the ongoing conflict as a religious war? Al Jazeera, 4 March 2026). There is some irony that the “III” can now be considered usefully indicative of the ultimate problematic interaction of the three siblings in their spiritually preferred modality of religious warfare — for which they have proved incapable of imagining any viable alternative.

On this occasion the Judeo-Christian engagement with Islam is framed by the MAGA movement (and for it) as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy regarding an “end-times” scenario — epitomized as the final battle between good and evil at Armageddon. Indications in this regard include the allegation that US military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical “end times” to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops (Sara Braun, US troops were told war on Iran was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’, The Guardian, 4 March 2026; Jonathan Larsen, US Troops were told Iran war is for ‘Armageddon,’ return of Jesus, Asia Times, 4 March 2026; Leo Hohmann, Are Trump and Hegseth carrying out holy war in accordance with Bible prophecies leading to ‘Armageddon’ and ‘return of Jesus’? 6 March 2026 ).

This framing is particularly consistent with the Christian supremacist roots of the approach of Trump’s new Secretary of War to Zionism (Pete Hegseth’s belief in Christian dominion should deeply trouble American Jews, Forward, 30 January 2025; Crusader-in-Chief: Pete Hegseth’s Christian Zionist Mission to Help Israel Confront Iran, BeforeItsNews, 4 March 2026). The “end-times” focus is curiously echoed by the high-tech preoccupation of science with a predicted “singularity” (Emerging Memetic Singularity in the Global Knowledge Society, 2009).

Whether as aspiration or dream, significantly absent from the current crusading dynamic — and from its eschatological imagination — is any articulation of the systemic dynamics required to sustain the imagined golden era once achieved.. What is the sustaining dynamic once full-spectrum dominance is achieved militarily — together presumably with its religious analogues, if their apparent incommensurabilities can be reconciled? These analogues are the Great Commission for Christianity — to which the Tabligh of Islam and the Tikkun olam of Judaism may be held loosely to correspond in their respective aspirations for “spiritual dominance” in some form. Such aspirations, when framed as civilizational restoration, invite interpretation through a psychoanalytic lens concerned with collective fantasies, symbolic projections, and unconscious compensatory mechanisms.

The challenge has been remarkably illustrated following the expenditure of trillions of dollars by the USA and its allies over two decades in nation-building in Afghanistan — seemingly with minimal collective learning (Transforming the Unsustainable Cost of General Education: strategic insights from Afghanistan, 2009). In that light the new challenge has now become apparent at this time given the absence of any long-term vision for Iran — in the event that the current regime can be successfully overthrown (Majid Asgaripour, The Iranian Regime’s Existential Crisis — and What Might Come After, Foreign Affairs, 28 February 2026; Robert Reich, What is Trump’s endgame with Iran? The Guardian, 3 March 2026).

As with any “revolution”, other “dreams” merit exploration in that light (Paradoxes of Durable Peace, Heaven and a Sustainable Lifestyle, 2023). The recourse to “substance abuse” is similarly indicative of the need to dream “otherwise” — and the propensity to a new form of “exodus” from the current reality (Future Global Exodus to the Metasphere, 2022). History may see this to have been extraordinarily exemplified by emergence of evidence of the extent of complicity of the world’s elites in sexual abuse, as indicated by the Epstein file scandal — and potentially more controversially by the role of sexual expletives (Mysterious Complementarity between Capitalism and Arsenalism, 2020; The Coalition of the Willy: musings on the global challenge of penile servitude, 2004) Ironically the current imaginal deficiency is simply highlighted by the widespread incidence of divorce — despite vows of permanence and expectations of “happily ever after” (Geopolitical Breach of Commitment in the Light of Divorce, Pederasty and Pedophilia, 2026). Many face related challenges in retirement — even after a life of gainful employment.

The dilemmas in the purported quest for an enduring peace are evident in the manner in which rivals now readily evoke hatred as enemies — potentially even as the embodiment of “evil” — but paradoxically as the primary motivation for an engaging psychosocial dynamic, as especially evident in popular entertainment. The paradox has evolved into a new form in the legislated indictment of hate-speech, typically conflated in practice with anti-semitiism and criticism of the policies of Israel. The assassination of national and spiritual leaders so framed is however variously approved and deemed appropriate. It remains totally unclear what form “love-speech” might take in political discourse — with “love” as a primary feature of Christian belief — how it could be recognized, and who might exemplify it, especially within the MAGA movement and its allies.

There is particular irony to the fact that adversarial parliaments are necessarily characterized by hate-speech (for the other) and the absence of love-speech (other than for those of their own persuasion). Curiously distinct from deprecated forms of hate-speech are the framing of other cultures offered by Judeo-Christian leaders in sympathy with the MAGA perspective — even by the leader of a “One Nation” party (Ali Mamouri, Pauline Hanson’s no ‘good’ Muslims comment shows how normalised Islamophobia has become in Australia, The Conversation, 25 February 2026). Readily seen as a qualification for his appointment as Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth is reported both as chanting “Kill All Muslims” (Jane Mayer, Pete Hegseth’s Secret History, The New Yorker, 1 December 2024), and as bearing multiple tattoos consistent with that view (Alley Galanis, 7 Pete Hegseth Tattoo: The Stories, Meanings, and Symbolism Behind Each Ink, TattooLeads, 22 October 2025).

In assembling arguments potentially relevant to a psychoanalytic perspective on MAGA, the following exploration makes extensive use of AI in the form of Claude-4.6 and ChatGPT-5.2 (and Perplexityto a lesser extent). There is a degree of irony to deriving insights via such resources in that the use of such AIs in the military engagement with Iran has been explicitly noted in this period.

Global conflict can be understood as driven fundamentally by religions — each convinced (with a divine mandate) that it is unquestionably right (and “good”), with those in disagreement as necessarily wrong (and “evil”). There is however a fundamental irony in that each of the religions in question attaches particular value to “humility” in some form — but without that being understood as a counterbalancing corrective to the excesses of arrogant “righteousness“. The AI exchanges proved suggestive in identifying countervailing cognitive processes and the possibility of reframing the righteousness–humility complementarity of the 8 Beatitudes of Christianity (and their equivalents) through the lens of viable system theory (discussed separately). This frames the question as to whether the righteousness of the MAGA movement is appropriately complemented by requisite humility — in systemic terms — and the viability consequences of imbalance in that regard.

The questions explored below therefore examine MAGA — and related civilizational narratives — not primarily as political programmes but as symbolic structures through which collective anxieties, fantasies of restoration, and projections of righteousness are expressed. Central to the argument is that political movements promising restored greatness rarely imagine the dynamics required to sustain that condition once achieved. The questions can of course be asked otherwise by readers — of other AIs, now and in the future.

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