Trump supporters are evil, not stupid.

Evil is the lack of faith. If a person cannot believe in the worth of others. If they cannot tolerate what is not immediately understood from others. If they cannot envision a possible world where working with others may create plenty for all. There you have Evil. Strip away these basic notions from a person and their behaviors settle into seeing the different as an enemy, believing another’s gain is definitionally your loss, and acting as if everyone else is as narrow and grasping as you. Evil is not created separate from the good, it is the remainder of us when stripped of empathy, curiosity and hope.

I do not pretend this is an original thought, but as it is in a Substack newsletter, not a dissertation, commenters are left to hash any archaeology. However, it leads me into how the Left is too circumspect regarding MAGA supporters writ large. Outside of a cousin at Thanksgiving dinner perhaps, the tendency is to pathologize them as rural, less educated, or from less diverse communities who would not be MAGA if knowing all the facts. Set aside this does not cover billionaires supporting Trump, it is the general leftist belief: MAGA supporters know not what they do. We just need to carefully talk to and about them, as one might a person standing on a high ledge, and they would change. Hence the feeling everyone has that the left believes MAGA supporters are stupid.

But this pathological view is prejudiced against the white rural to suburban demographics supporting MAGA. And, as all prejudice does, it clouds vision and bars revelation. These voters are grown adults who get married, buy houses, hold skilled jobs, raise kids, smoke, drink, buy guns, collect Social Security— and these grown adult voters have taken a good look at their world and have decided, yes decided, to be MAGA.

MAGA voters choose to fuck the Other. Deportations make sense. Throwing leftists in jail is a good start. Nothing Trump says gives them pause because they have chosen to agree with his worldview. Simple and evil. But, no one would catch a break on, say, a murder conviction based on what they do not know. If I knew more about John, I wouldn’t have killed him. Prosecutors and juries have no sympathy for what you did not know. No, you would still be convicted because you chose to kill John. MAGA voters are guilty because they choose to fuck the other to control a world they hold bereft from empathy, curiosity and hope. In short, it springs from Evil.

Over twenty years ago I was in council chambers when Cleveland civil rights veteran and Councilwoman Fanny Lewis railed against Mayor White “You don’t talk with a demon, you cast it out!” Her marching for justice delivery made it touchstone for me. We are at such a point now politically. Any engagement with demon MAGA will just sow confusion in the days before an election. There is no talking, we just need vote and cast them out of politics.

But moving forward, if we have a forward after Election Day, the Left needs to come to an uncomfortable understanding of fascism. It is Evil. Progressives do not like talking this way, sounding all superstitious and non-inclusive, and preferring instead psychopathologizing such issues. But people chose to follow fascism. And much like the Problem of Evil that has dogged philosophic thought since thoughts began, fascism is the same concern within a different frame. A political left and right is found in democracies since democracies began. What does this say about the constant struggle in elected democracies between fascism and freedom except that it is a political expression expression of Good and Evil?

Some of us walk every day on clear sidewalks on sunny days while others always deal with icy paths and cold weather. The trek towards morality varies by person. There are laws and public policies in our country that stifle empathy, impede curiosity and quash hope and changing these will make a difference over time against fascistic tendencies. But the United States of America is no logical country. No explaining will advance any cause within MAGA, for any such changes—especially today when people easily hide from the uncomfortable in FOX News or a Sinclair station.

This country is a revivalist nation, the land of the Great Awakening. MAGA is not a way for a peaceful, prosperous life. We are bringing the real Good News for a better tomorrow. Progressives, albeit substantially populated by atheists, agnostics, or covered-dish church-goers, must put the anti-fascist political struggle into a larger moral frame with a more evangelical presentation. If you want to meet MAGA where it is (excluding the rich ones) the frame is not some pedantic, psychopathological one, but rather that of revival and salvation. Less logic and more homiletics.

The Left gets lost in the weeds and then fails to see the forest from the trees. Standing up to MAGA, to fascism, to Evil is preaching the world can be better tomorrow than it is today. That we all choose how we treat each other and if we chose to do so with care and respect, a better world will follow. Face it, the Left is always talking about what is not there yet—it is all faith. That is the gap we must cross to reach MAGA and cast the demon out.