Taming the Crazy

The MAGA cult can't control its own madness. We need to step in

Who knew the deep end could go this deep?

Since the FBI executed a search warrant on Mar a Lago, the MAGA right has gone off even more unhinged than before.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Consider: the people who cried “lock her up,” most loudly are coming to realize that the former White House resident most likely to hear a cell door slam shut behind them up is Trump himself. The Justice Department’s long-delayed action on January 6th kingpins, Monday’s FBI search warrant, and Wednesday’s New York deposition (at which Trump took more fifths than a liquor store delivery van) all signal more legal trouble to come, landed like a gut punch to their self esteem. Gone is the certainty that they are part of an in-the-know group supporting the guy who defies every rule and beats every system that college boys, Social Justice Warriors and big government referees have put in place to restrain his impulses, or theirs.

Meanwhile the elites of MAGA world are weighing consequences far worse than any identity crisis likely to happen outside prison walls. Whether the enablers were opportunists like Lindsay Graham, True Believers like Josh Hawley or amoral sociopaths like Alex Jones, all have lost the certainty that working for Team Trump made them members of a protected class, able to defy all constraints, evade all accountability and dodge all consequences.

How do you deal with people like this?

Impunity is a heady brew, but the hangovers are terrible. And now crowds of people who were once merely drunk on the stuff have gone full wet brain, so they’re talking even less sense than usual. So along with of their usual contempt for facts, evidence, and representative government MAGA people are also rage-addled and terrified. So they are, in Steve Bannon’s deathless phrase, “flooding the zone with bullshit” hoping to change the subject, engage us with their lies and get us back on the defensive. Like belligerent drunks screaming abuse and throwing wild punches at anyone who comes near, it’s dangerous to confront them directly and just as dangerous to leave them alone.

Time to stand firm and hit back hard

Right wing fanatics usually pretend to be the level-headed and mature people in the conversation, on the theory that irrational ideas sound so much better when delivered in a pompous tone. Today they’re threatening civil war, tweeting about defunding the FBI and making death threats against judges. These are not the tactics of people who think they’re winning the argument. To use an old boxing term, the MAGA crowd are “throwing haymakers:” wide, obvious and unfocused punches.

By throwing a wiide and wild punch (“haymaker”), and missing the boxer on the right has left herself open to a retaliatory body blow.

Scientific Boxing and the “Please Explain” Technique

The MAGA crowd is throwing as many crazy punches at us as they can, but they’re not strong punches. They lack any single, solid argument that will withstand a moment’s scrutiny. So the counter-puncher’s trick is to press them for explanations. Force them to justify the very thing they can’t justify, and think hard about the things they would prefer to avoid. When pressing them, be sure to ask open questions, which usually start with “what” or “how” and can’t be answered with “yes,” “no,” or any other single-word answer. And above all, keep drilling in on the same question. Don’t let up or get distracted responding to the wild punches that will follow.

Stay on target and remember the two key phrases:

1. “Please explain”

2. “Go ahead”
   

Here’s how that works:

The “Please Explain” Technique in Action

MAGA Nut:
”The FBI raid was illegal and unconstitutional witch hunt!”

Color commentary:
This person is talking out of their oh-so-capacious ass but likely doesn’t know it. The very thing that makes them so stupid and annoying—their tendency to state their own ignorant opinions as indisputable facts, also makes them vulnerable to the “please explain” technique that follows

You:
”Explain precisely how a judicial search warrant authorized by a Federal judge and executed by federal law enforcement is illegal. Go ahead. Explain that.”

Color commentary:
Notice what didn’t happen here. You didn’t explain how probable cause and search warrants work. Instead, you demanded that they explain those things to you. Big difference. Instead of doing cognitive labor for their wilfully ignorant asses, you’re demanding that they work for you. This shifts the balance of power, and they hate it. Watch what happens next.

MAGA Nut: (flailing)
Hillary committed thousands of felonies and murdered Vince Foster! Why isn’t she in jail with all those BLM terrorists? Huh? Answer me that!

Color commentary:
When confronted with a question he can’t or won’t answer, the MAGA Nut responds with a classic Gish Gallop, which the linked website describes as, “a rhetorical technique that involves overwhelming your opponent with as many arguments as possible, with no regard for the accuracy, validity, or relevance of those arguments.”
Human-adjacent sociopath, Steve Bannon calls it “flooding the zone with bullshit.” But fortunately you know how to counter this tactic.

You:
”Nice of you to share all your opinions that way, but what I’d really like you to understand is what you said before: how precisely can a judicial search warrant authorized by a Federal judge and executed by federal law enforcement be called illegal. Please explain. Go ahead.”

Color commentary:
Congratulations! When he tried to flood the zone, you maintained messaging focus. He knows he has to provide some kind of a coherent answer. Even if his next two or three non-responses consist of calling you a “libtard” while reference Hunter Biden’s laptop, you can still keep focus on the question he won’t answer.

MAGA Nut: (flailing)
It’s illegal because Dems have had it in for Trump from the beginning! They’ve tried and tried to get him and have just been waiting to cook up something against him because they hate real Americans!

Color commentary:
Pay attention to this. It’s the classic fascist argument from intent. You’ve wrong-fotted him so he’s hoping this exchange will devolve into a back-and-forth about the DOJ and FBI’s purity of motives which he can dominate with his gift for rapid-fire character assassination.

You:
”Nice of you to share your opinions that way, but I don’t see how your imaginings about about the motives of people you’ve never met, have any bearing on the question, which again is, ‘how precisely can a judicial search warrant authorized by a Federal judge and executed by federal law enforcement be called illegal?’ Please explain. Go ahead.”

Hopefully you get the idea by now. If you need more reality-grounding question prompts, check out Jennifer Rubin’s opinion piece in the Washington Post.

And always remember that you have far more power than you think. As a person who values evidence-based reasoning over authoritarian groupthink, human dignity over bigotry and the rule of law over the whims of dictators, you hold in your hands a Terrible Swift Sword. It’s the same terrible swift sword that Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Julia Ward Howe and countless abolitionists and Union soldiers wielded to behead the serpent of the human trafficker’s insurrection.

Pick it up, feel its heft, admire the keen edge of its blade. and start loosing some fateful lightning. Jessica Craven’s substack is a great place to start.

Talk to you soon.