What\u2019s the most important difference between MAGA Republicans and Democrats?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: MAGA Republicans have a program for change.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, it\u2019s a terrible program: a toxic mix of pro-oligarchy economic policy, tribal nationalist politics, patriarchal social values, and hatred of the public sector. \u00a0But the Trump policies are based on a relatively coherent ideology that identifies what right-wingers consider the main sources of oppression \u2013 the administrative state, left-leaning universities and news media, undocumented immigrants, street criminals, and foreign competitors \u2013 and that promises to eliminate or transform them.<\/p>\n MAGA leaders believe that the American system is broken and that they know how to rebuild it.\u00a0 Therefore, once in power, they implement immediate measures to change existing institutions. True, these initiatives tend to be poorly thought through, arbitrary, and inhumane, and they generate legal challenges to the authority of the President and other executive officials.\u00a0 But social movements with a program for change frequently strain or violate existing norms.\u00a0 Furthermore, their advocates tend to take strong action, while defenders of the established status quo seem content just to talk.<\/p>\n Talk about role reversals!\u00a0 By acting as change-agents, the MAGA-pols have maneuvered the Democrats into the position of acting as backward-looking defenders of the Establishment.\u00a0 The anti-Trumpers mean well, but all their hand-wringing about the President\u2019s authoritarianism, venality, and cruelty will not change the fact that his forces have a program for change, and they do not.<\/p>\n Most Democratic politicians do not think that the system is broken, only that it needs minor repairs. \u00a0As a result, the policies and public actions they envision for the future differ hardly at all from those of a Joe Biden or a Bill Clinton. Most of them embrace a mishmash of liberal (but not too <\/em>liberal) attitudes regarding domestic political issues and militaristic flag-waving (which they call \u201cAmerican global leadership\u201d) in foreign affairs.\u00a0 Raise the minimum wage they say \u2013 but not too high, and don\u2019t even think about altering the established system of private financial power and \u201cmanagement rights.\u201d\u00a0 Tax the rich, but not too severely, and never talk about redistributing wealth to poor and near-poor working people.\u00a0 Support clean energy and environmental protection \u2013 but protect the fossil fuel industries!\u00a0 Work for international peace \u2013 but don\u2019t antagonize the military-industrial complex!<\/p>\n This sort of vacuous thinking, not just the benighted views of the MAGA base, were responsible for the disastrous decline in Democratic votes in the last election and, therefore, for the Trump victory. \u00a0On the other side, MAGA leaders working through right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and correctly assessing the high degree of civic discontent developed radical policies purporting to solve working people\u2019s problems.\u00a0 That these policies made no sense was politically irrelevant.\u00a0 In 2024, there was no leftist alternative to the rightists and their Project 2025.\u00a0 When there is no Left, and when the existing system fails to satisfy people\u2019s basic needs, discontented voters predictably turn Right.<\/p>\n The Urgent Need for New Discussions and Organization<\/strong><\/p>\n What would a genuinely progressive program look like?\u00a0 I have a few ideas about this \u2013 and I\u2019m sure readers do, too \u2013 but Trump\u2019s opponents desperately need discussions starting immediately and continuing through the year to surface key ideas, assess their effectiveness and practicality, and convert them into workable policy proposals. Think tanks can sponsor some of these exchanges, but people of all ages and backgrounds can meet in churches and clubs, high schools and universities, town halls, popular bars, and other public forums to let their views be known.<\/p>\n One goal crucial to these deliberations is the need to unite key sectors of the population that Trump and MAGA-ism have divided: in particular, workers in high tech and public service industries and those in older industries and occupations.\u00a0 Note that the need for unity does NOT require that one become more \u201cmoderate.\u201d\u00a0 On the contrary, it means developing problem-solving solutions radical enough to make problems based on unnecessary scarcities and manipulated insecurities disappear, and to change key elements of a dysfunctional market-driven system.<\/p>\n Here are a few of the specific issues that I would raise at a public discussion. But make up your own list \u2013 the more, the merrier!<\/p>\n Problem: The Oligarchy.\u00a0 Solution: Redistribute wealth and power. \u00a0<\/em>Like drunks after a bad night before, most Democrats now declare themselves allies of the People against the Bad Oligarchs. But raising the minimum wage and taxing the rich a bit more will not change the system that has produced fifty years of wage stagnation, deep urban poverty, rural decay, and gross inequality. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Why not consider a 100% income tax on incomes over $1 million, and a wealth tax designed to lessen exploding social disparities?\u00a0 Why not talk about nationalizing Big Pharma and the high-tech giants that depend on government grants and research to survive?\u00a0 Oligarchical capitalism inevitably produces authoritarian politics designed to serve the billionaires\u2019 interests by crippling the labor movement and privatizing social services. Why not reverse the Supreme Court\u2019s Citizens United <\/em>decision, finance election campaigns publicly, and stop the legalized bribery of American politicians?\u00a0 How about slashing the administrative state\u2019s vast corporate welfare programs instead of the public interest programs that MAGA hates?<\/p>\n Problem: Unnecessary scarcities. Solution: Democratic planning<\/em>. \u00a0Politicians of both major parties spend most of their time arguing about conflicts that need not exist at all if the scarcities that generate them could be eliminated.\u00a0 But it takes planning to reduce scarcity, and to all Reps and most Dems planning is a dirty, \u201csocialist\u201d word.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t this absurd?\u00a0 Since economic planning is tabooed, deep poverty persists, along with the street crime and mass incarceration that it generates.\u00a0 Because Trump hates industrial policy, he relies on tariffs (i.e., corporate welfare) to stimulate domestic industry and gives us — ta dah! — trade wars.\u00a0 With a modicum of community-controlled planning we could develop a rational, humane immigration policy \u2013 but the politicians would rather play anti-immigrant games.\u00a0 In one of the world\u2019s richest countries, marginalized social groups compete against slightly better-off groups for jobs and college admissions. \u00a0Why fight over DEI, when with popular control over our economy we could easily create enough jobs and college slots for everyone?<\/p>\n Problem: The American Empire and its endless wars. Solution: Positive peace. <\/em>\u00a0Many of Trump\u2019s opponents are enraged by his apparent unwillingness to maintain the system of \u201cglobal order\u201d instituted by regimes since World War II \u2013 a system designed to maintain American hegemony as the world\u2019s leading military power and international decision-maker.\u00a0 They don\u2019t seem to understand that most of the world\u2019s people consider Trump\u2019s weird mix of selective imperialism, nuclear militarism, and \u201cAmerica First\u201d isolationism an improvement over Biden-era warmongering.<\/p>\n The progressive opposition needs to consider what America\u2019s foreign policy should be other than a revival liberal gun-running masquerading as democracy promotion.\u00a0 What does working-class internationalism look like in an era of increasing nationalist prejudice and threats of war? \u00a0How can peaceful conflict resolution leading to positive peace become the chief driver of U.S. global policy? \u00a0Reducing the trillion-dollar U.S. military budget by at least half would open the door to secure funding of social security and other needed public services.\u00a0 In international as well as national politics, there is nothing to fear but fear itself.<\/p>\n It’s time to talk together about all these issues \u2013 and many, many others.\u00a0 Some influential liberals will no doubt warn that \u201cdivisive\u201d discussions are dangerous since they could split the party and strengthen Trump \u2013 but listening to this sort of \u201cwise advice\u201d is what got us where we now are.\u00a0 By contrast, right-wing ideologues like Steve Bannon risked splitting the Republican party to give it a philosophy and program reflecting their values and capable of energizing a mass base.\u00a0 On the strategic level, the left-hating Bannon understands Marx and Lenin a good deal better than most of those declaring themselves leftists! To prevent Trump and his successors from consolidating a permanent dictatorship of the oligarchs, the Democratic Party needs to become a force for systemic change \u2013 or else yield to those capable of forming a genuinely progressive party.<\/p>\n This is why anti=Trump Americans need discussions now.\u00a0 Reacting to every Trumpian initiative with anger and despair, while refusing to formulate an alternative program to change a broken system, simply plays the MAGA game.\u00a0 Let\u2019s not hear any more denunciations of Trump by outraged Congresspeople or cable news anchors longing for a return to power by the \u201cgood\u201d oligarchs and \u201cresponsible\u201d generals and spy chiefs.\u00a0 You don\u2019t defeat the Far Right by sentimentalizing the Respectable Center.<\/p>\n Americans need to learn from their mistakes.\u00a0 They need a genuine people\u2019s party.\u00a0 And a people\u2019s party needs a credible program for positive change.\u00a0 Progressives need to stop obsessing over the Demagogue-in-Chief and get on with the business of creating that program.<\/p>\n __________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n Progressives in the United States need to put aside their justifiable detestation of Donald Trump long enough to answer this question: What\u2019s the most important difference between MAGA Republicans and Democrats?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1731,109,1639,249,70],"class_list":["post-290638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-left-politics","tag-politics","tag-right-politics","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290639,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290638\/revisions\/290639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/richard-rubenstein.jpg\")
<\/a> Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a> and a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University\u2019s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. A graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School, Rubenstein is the author of nine books on analyzing and resolving violent social conflicts. His most recent book is <\/em>Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems Can Be Transformed (Routledge, 2017). <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"