Why MAGA?

 

Sometimes I think I understand the MAGA Movement, other times I don't. ChatGPT (here) reports that there are a handful of reasons. The best I can say right now is that it is complicated. My favorite explanation, that aligns with historical analysis of the Nazi Movement, is Right-Wing Reactionism. The failure and humiliation of loosing World War I led Germany to Nazism. The failures for the US are not so clear, but let me just explore Economic failures in this post.

Everything seems to have come to a head during the COVID-19 Pandemic which was a strong shock to the US Economy and was handled very poorly by the first Trump I Administration (2017-2021).

MAGA and Big Tech

To me, the alignment of the MAGA movement and Big Tech continues to be surprising. I have worked in Tech all my life because of the intellectual challenges and the ability to get things done (estimating statistical models, specifically) that couldn't reasonably be done on a desktop calculator. I don't find anything about the MAGA movement intellectually challenging but the Tech Bros seem to see MAGA as a way to get things done. What exactly are they trying to get done and, what if anything is the intellectual attraction?
 

Boiler Plate

Notes

The first six indicators in standard scores are taken from the World Development Indicators (WDI). KOF = KOF Index of Globalization, EF = Ecological Footprint, HDI = Human Development Index. 

See the rest of the Boiler Plate here.

Why is it Important to Study Spain?

 

Right now, in the US, there is a lot of anti-Latin American sentiment being stoked by the neoFascist Trump II Administration. I live in the US Southwest have spent a lot of my life doing statistical analysis of Latin America (for example, here). My off-the-cuff explanation for the animosity toward the Southern Border is that Washington DC elites have little understanding or interest in what is happening in the US Southwest. The struggles of dark-skinned Latinos and Native Americans are just of no interest to the White power structure in the US.

Whatever the real reasons for nativist hostility, it would seem to me useful to study the history of the US Southwest starting with the Hapsburg Monarchy after the discovery of the New World by Spain. The map above (from Spain: the Center of the World 1519-1682) shows that the Hapsburg Empire initially controlled the US Southwest and the Spanish influence is evident everywhere in the present. Xenophobic politicians and their supports cannot simply get rid of Spanish culture by harassing Latin American immigrants. It is too deeply entrenched in the Southwest and too widely embraced by Americans living there.

In future posts, I will just reference this post rather than repeating my reasons for studying Spain in the US.

The Decline and Fall of Elon Musk and Steve Bannon

Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, two fellow travelers with the Trump II Administration, have gained a lot of notoriety for embracing pseudo-Nazi imagery and arguing (here) that the US will Decline and Fall for the same reasons that (supposedly) destroyed the Roman Empire: declining birth rates and declining morals. My analysis of the Decline of Rome (here) and that of a lot of historians, says they are wrong and deluded.

Tweaking the George Santana quote a little: Those who deliberately mis-remember the past are determined to repeat it. Because History is not the unbiased record we might wish it to be, it will always be selectively used and misinterpreted for political purposes. On the other hand, public misinterpretations of history offer an opportunity to educate citizens on things they evidently did not learn in school.

According to Steve Bannon (here), everything changed for Elon Musk when the Trump II Administration refused him access to a briefing on China. After that, Musk started to disappear from the Trump circle and appears to be going back to his troubled business interests (Tesla, SpaceX and StarLink). As for Bannon, the Anti-Defimation League (ADL, here) reports his fall starting in 2020, after which he was charged and jailed multiple times.

Evidently, the Trump II Administration prefers political operatives who do not draw too much public attention but still push the racist and draconian immigration policies of President Trump, operatives such as Stephen Miller.

So, where does this leave the analogy between the Fall of Rome and the current problems of the US Empire? The current Barbarian Invasion in the US involves the MAGA movement, the J6 attack on the US Capital, the Trump Administrations, the Proud Boys, the entire Alt-Right, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Elon Musk.

ChatGPT reports that:

..the so-alled "barbarian invasions" were a mix of forced migration, opportunistic conquest, and reaction to Roman decline, rather than aimless destruction. Many of these groups sought to become part of the Roman world, not just destroy it.

The entire Alt-Right is filled with people who want to be in power and want to impose their views on the US. Throughout the Late 20th Century, they have failed. Now is their moment and if they do not succeed, they may well be happy just to destroy the system. 

Binyamin Applebaum, in the NY Times (here), provides an interesting analysis of Donald Trumps role in the growth and potential collapse of the US Empire. When Empires decline, barbarians see their opportunity. Let's hope that the US can stabilize itself after it's Empire has peaked in the same way that Amsterdam or London have. 

 

Magnitude of Trump Shocks

 

It seems that the US (and maybe the World System here) are in for some shocks from the Trump II Administration. Just yesterday, Trump seems to have imposed strong tariffs on every country in the World-System (except Russia) and countries (such as China) have instituted retaliatory tariffs. It's hard to understand why Trump is doing this: tariffs are against economic orthodoxy and against Republican economic free-trade orthodoxy. Maybe he was asleep in ECON 101 or maybe there is no explanation.

Here's another idea: Trump learned to like the botched COVID-19 Pandemic Response at the end of the Trump I Administration (2017-2021) and decided to impose his own Shock Therapy on the US and the World System. For a needy narcissist, it does get everyone talking about him!

The graphic above shows a time plot of Quarterly US GDP residuals from (2005,1) to (2024,1) produced by the USL20 policy model. The largest shock to GDP during this period was the bungled Trump Administration response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Can we expect another shock like the COVID-19 Pandemic shock from the Trump II Administration? Time will tell...