MAGA becomes what it hates
Power over principle
The big news this week is the Cracker Barrel rebrand. By “big news,” I mean that’s what people are talking about, not necessarily that it’s important or impactful. I’m not going to write about that, except in passing.
Over the past decade or so, I’ve watched the Republican Party morph into something unrecognizable. The once-principled party now seems to have none except to be reflexively anti-Democrat and pro-Trump. That doesn’t really go far enough. The GOP has done more than abandon its core values. They have become what they professed to hate.
Take the Cracker Barrel kerfuffle as a prominent recent example (here’s the passing mention). For most critics, the rebrand is derided as “woke,” yet the biggest and most common complaints are the sign and logo changes that coincided with the onset of the dissent. While some have criticized the company’s DEI policies, which might be extended to include dropping a decade-long ban on gay employees in 2001, which seem pretty tame and average compared to other companies, most complaints that I have seen focus on the logo and interior redesign.
I mention Cracker Barrel as an example because it is representative of the MAGA cancel culture. From the MAGA perspective, “everything I don’t like is woke,” and everything woke is worse than anything the Republicans might do. For them, it’s a holy war to preserve what they see as American and Christian culture.
But American culture includes minorities, liberals, and gays. And Christian culture is not about forcing others to abide by our moral beliefs.
Or it shouldn’t be. If we look to Christ’s example, he sat down with sinners to reach them through his love. Rejecting sin is a consequence of coming to Christ, not a prerequisite. As the psalmist wrote, “As I learn your righteous regulations,
I will thank you by living as I should” (Psalm 119:7 NLT - cue the outcry that the NLT is woke).
Right-wing cancel culture has a pretty long pedigree at this point. Aside from the crusade against Bud Light, there have been attacks on the NFL, Disney, Target, and others. Even Chick-fil-A has been accused of going “woke.”
To me, it seems to be exhausting to be as angry all the time as activists on both sides tend to be. I don’t have the time, energy, or interest to vet every company I do business with for ideological purity.
My personal feeling is that the Cracker Barrel angst is largely another installment in the Outrage du Jour genre. The right-wing Outrage and cancel culture industry is a sleight of hand. In large part, it is an attempt to keep the base angry and distracted from what the Trump Administration is doing.
And what is the Trump Administration up to? One of the Administration’s most prominent activities is mismanaging the economy and raising prices. The producer price index (PPI) jumped sharply in July, and a third of businesses say they plan to increase prices within the next few months. Tariffs, the large number of immigrant deportations, and a number of other factors are placing upward pressure on prices and could cause a return of inflation.
The Republican fervor for high taxes is another way that the party has become its enemy. As I’ve pointed out numerous times before, and as Republicans used to point out in the past, tariffs are taxes, and taxes are paid by the end user. In the case of Trump’s tariffs, that is going to be the American consumer.
Some businesses have already started passing along the increased costs to consumers, while others have been trying to delay and camouflage price increases. The strategy is a two-fold one of trying not to anger either consumers or the Administration, but as costs continue to rise, it will be impossible for most retailers to avoid price increases. Some foreign companies have stopped shipping to the US entirely, and post offices in several countries, including the UK, France, and Germany, are no longer delivering to the US. Through it all, Republicans cheer Trump’s tariffs and the revenues they bring, while denying that the money comes from American pockets.
They have become what they hate.
And then there is Trump’s effective nationalization of an increasing number of companies. The trend began with a “golden share” of US Steel and was quickly followed by the DOD taking a stake in MP Materials, a rare earths company. These adventures in socialism have now been followed by the government taking a 10 percent stake in chip-maker Intel. Again, Republicans, who were extremely upset over Zohran Mamdani’s proposal for city-owned grocery stores, are fine with Trump’s federal socialism (or fascism to be technically correct, since the government is increasingly planning and controlling the economy, but private ownership is at least partially retained).
They have become what they hate.
Next on the list is another story from last week, the lawfare against former Trump advisor John Bolton. On Friday, the FBI searched the home of the former national security advisor-turned-Trump critic for alleged retention of classified documents. It seems likely that the raid was both retribution for his betrayal of Trump as well as a warning to other Trump critics. If there is actual wrongdoing on Bolton’s part, the FBI should make it clear as soon as possible, or else the reputation of the agency will be irreversibly tarnished.
It shouldn’t be lost on observers that unlawful retention of classified documents was exactly what led to the raid on Mar-a-Lago. In that case, the National Archives had sought the return of documents taken by Trump for months before the former president’s obfuscation and obstruction led them to refer the matter to the FBI.
They have become what they hate.
Beyond lawfare is the growing police state. In many American cities, masked officers, often without uniforms or badges, tackle people in the streets. Detainees, often legal immigrants, are disappeared into the system by an Administration that says due process is not a requirement. If this were the ATF or FBI, Republicans would be apoplectic, but since it’s ICE, they are okay with it.
They have become what they hate.
Several of the policies advanced by the Trump Administration were formerly in the province of right-wing conspiracy theories. The most obvious example is the Epstein files. For years, MAGA influencers connected everyone they didn’t like to the Epstein files, and Trump promised to release them if he was re-elected. Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed the files were on her desk, but they somehow disappeared after Trump was briefed that he appeared prominently in the documents.
Jeffrey Epstein and child-molesting, sex-trafficking Satan worshippers have figured prominently in right-wing conspiracy theories since the Pizzagate conspiracy of 2016. Now, MAGA has lost interest in the Epstein files, and some openly say they don’t care if Trump is a child molester.
They have become what they hate.
Other conspiracies are coming true as well. I’m old enough to remember the anxiety over Jade Helm and the fear that Barack Obama was going to invade Texas in 2015. I lived in Texas at the time, and there were rumors that a closed Walmart near my town was one of several stores being converted into concentration camps. The concentration camp rumors reappeared during the pandemic as well, when a lot of right-wing influencers were adamant that pandemic restrictions would never be lifted.
Fast-forward to 2025, and we not only have concentration camps, but we also have the military occupation of our capital city. “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida and another large ICE deportation camp at Fort Bliss, Texas, fit the definition of concentration camps. The Texas camp, officially called Camp East Montana but nicknamed the “Lone Star Lockup,” was used as an internment camp for Japanese-Americans in World War II. Both shame and irony die hard.
It should be noted that not all concentration camps are death camps, although we have come to equate the two after the Holocaust. In a simple definition, the term means “an isolated, circumscribed site with fixed structures designed to incarcerate civilians,” per Oxford Academic, i.e., to concentrate them in one place. In many cases, concentration camps house political prisoners or oppressed minorities, which is also somewhat fitting here since many detained immigrants have not been accused of crimes.
They have become what they hate.
And then there is the occupation of Washington, DC. The deployment of the National Guard was uniquely legal in the federal district, even if under false pretenses, but the federal crackdown on crime has yielded more immigration arrests than anything else. There is no tolerance for immigrant food delivery drivers by federal agents, but the National Guard troops are reportedly bored and far away from criminal hot spots. Their deployment may be more of a show of force for tourists than an attack on crime.
The bigger problem may be yet to come. Trump does have limited authority to take control of the District, but he has threatened both a “complete and total Federal takeover of the City” in response to complaints from the mayor, as well as a similar occupation of Chicago and other cities.
Remember that this is not a conspiracy theory. This is the president talking. And Republicans are fine with it.
They have become what they hate.
If Trump does move against Chicago, it will cross a major red line since US law generally prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. Trump’s plan may be to provoke violence that he can use to trigger the Insurrection Act. In any case, if Trump orders the occupation of Chicago, other cities will almost certainly follow.
I sincerely hope that this scenario does not come to fruition, but what we’ve seen so far is Trump pushing the boundaries of his emergency authority, and neither Congress nor the courts stopping him. He is likely to continue pushing until he meets resistance.
That brings us back to Cracker Barrel. The furor over the chain is partly to generate clicks and keep Republican voters engaged, but it’s also a distraction to keep all of us focused on a triviality while the sinister stuff plays out elsewhere.
I have to conclude that for most Republicans, it wasn’t a matter of believing in constitutional and limited government principles. For most, it seems to have been more of a matter of who got to be in charge of the authoritarian government. If the government is oppressing people they don’t like, they’re fine with it.
When the dust settles, MAGA may have triumphed over wokism at the cost of destroying the Republic. They’ll probably be okay with that… until the crocodile eats them.
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NOTES: Corrected “Alligator Alley” to “Alligator Alcatraz”
"If Trump does move against Chicago, it will cross a major red line since US law generally prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. Trump’s plan may be to provoke violence that he can use to trigger the Insurrection Act. In any case, if Trump orders the occupation of Chicago, other cities will almost certainly follow."
My personal plan at the moment is to carry around a sign that I can unfold to display to any active duty or National Guard members asking them how they feel being used as props to distract attention away from a creep who's working awfully hard at keeping his relationship with a convicted pedophile and human trafficker out of the public eye.
I suspect that a good part of the rest of the City has their tanks full of mockery before things devolve into violence. Once things do get to violence, look for something more akin to the Wide Awakes[1] emerging than gangbangers fighting Guard members. Also, keep in mind that Gov. Pritzker also has the power to reinstate the Illinois Reserve Militia, a 100% legal "state protection force" that operates under the direction of the Governor and cannot be federalized.[2]
I doubt that such a thing would be hurting for volunteers, given the temperature around here.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw6GHufQvUc
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Reserve_Militia
This entire post is a bit if a stretch. It would take an act of Congress to void home rule for Washington. I would favor such a change. We pay the salaries of city officials and are not getting our money's worth.
There may be a few people with legal visas detained in immigration enforcement activities but that is likely because they are involved with illegals. Illegals who are in the process of having their immigration status determined do not have legal status. Non-citizens have rights, but they are all here on probationary status and can be deported at any time for undermining government policies.
You might not care about the safety of law enforcement officers and their families but most of us do. Masks and no uniforms are justified. A uniform is no guarantee of safety. Just ask the surviving relatives of the murdered legislator and the legislator who survived a murder attempt by a cop impersonator in Minnesota.