Does it strike you that we in the U.S. are embarked on a herky/jerky, stormy/risky electoral magic carpet ride? It seems that way to me. How are you navigating it? What are you thinking of doing about it? For what it’s worth, here’s where my mind’s been wandering. 

An eye-blink ago most everyone I know saw only a slim chance to stop Trump. Worse, many felt Trump’s near-inevitable election would usher in a fascist policies, conceivably for decades to come. Biden was the electoral obstacle. Biden had become a hot mess. 

We radicals and revolutionaries each occupied our own particular situations. About many things we thought differently, felt differently, and had different personal options. But regarding the election, there was little variation. It looked bleak. So, what might we do? It seemed to me that to stop fascism, we first had to stop Trump. For Trump to lose, Biden had to win. So should we volunteer to make calls to independents in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin to celebrate Biden? Or what?

Given my own situation and disposition, I felt however unlikely it was to succeed, an agenda with a larger upside would be to try to help foster a supportive political climate for radicals or revolutionaries who were rightly sickened by Biden’s tireless financing, cheerleading, alibiing, and macho-arming of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians. My idea was to establish that such people could vote for Biden and even urge others to vote for Biden without being deemed an imperial, colonialist, sell-out liberal lapdog. So I urged that as odious as our predicament was, to stop Trump was part and parcel of being radical. We were in a depressing predicament, true, but we needed to try—and then, BAM—the magic carpet began to move. Biden was no longer the obstacle. Harris was.

I felt it was a sudden and bumpy but relatively minor switch. Harris was Biden’s Vice President. I figured she’d carry the same baggage that he had, or worse. She wasn’t health hobbled and that was not nothing but it was also not much. So I thought we were still in roughly the same shape we had been in with Biden. But then the carpet picked up speed.

Right off, Harris was regarded positively. More, she was showered with incredible energy. She was seen as some kind of shining hope. At first, I saw no reason for all that excitement other than that she wasn’t moribund and was therefore likely to offer somewhat more resistance to Trump than Biden would have. So I thought my best prospect for having even meager effect was still to try to get radicals and revolutionaries who were understandably inclined not to vote or to even label others who did vote sell-outs, some space to entertain and hopefully arrive at a different view of things. 

But then something beyond the mere fact that Harris wasn’t Biden accelerated support for her. As various commentators noted, she was not just livelier. She was upbeat, excited, and joyous. The carpet flew. She appealed, and appealed greatly. She even laughed.

I had earlier felt there was pent-up but silent desire for an alternative electoral option, not just among Biden voters but even among Trump’s non-fascist voters. But I had had little hope it would quickly manifest. Then the carpet jumped and the pent-up silent desire surfaced. Many blue staters grabbed at Harris’s joyous mood. Even some red staters began to waver toward Harris’s laugh.

Okay, both trends raised my hope but I also still felt, let’s not get carried away. The Donald is still in it to win it. And he is still odds on to do so. So my personal agenda didn’t change. Increase the anti-Trump vote for Harris from angry radicals and revolutionaries by making the case that stopping Trump by voting Harris wasn’t supporting perpetual business as usual. It was preventing disaster to later pursue more positive change. It was being strategic, not selling out.

And then the magic carpet bucked again. Big time. Harris picked Walz—a youngish grandpa, caring coach, smiling buddy, feisty progressive for VP and hope exploded into passionate support. Trump appeared moribund. Harris/Walz would win unless they seriously fucked up. And they weren’t in a losing mood. They took to the field swinging. Competent. Their momentum built. No surrender. 

What’s more the other side began unraveling. The stench of fascism that emanated from Project 2025 had gone a step too far. Trump’s feistiness was losing its allure. Trump flailed fruitlessly. 

And so I began to think perhaps radicals and revolutionaries ought to have a new priority. To increase the Harris/Walz vote totals in contested states was still worthy, but perhaps less urgent. Maybe it would be better to try to reduce Trump/Vance votes and even more ambitiously, to communicate usefully with MAGA itself. Maybe we could help stop Trump but simultaneously and for the longer haul weaken MAGA’s worst inclinations. Maybe we could begin the necessary process of winning MAGA over to a forward-looking, eyes on the real prize mindset rather than MAGA’s current ill-conceived give me dignity, support my team, reactionary extremism? Perhaps we could work to not only aid election prospects, but to also aid post-election prospects by weakening MAGA. Maybe MAGA’s working class membership could begin to morph into a new, still militant mindset, still anti-establishment but now More Americans Care Again team. MACA.

But wait. I bet no MAGA member reads what I write. Or, for that matter, reads what anyone I know writes. Or even hears what I or anyone I know says. So how could radicals and revolutionaries reach MAGA members? Perhaps by way of seven, no four, no two degrees of separation. Maybe we can figure out and convey useful ways to converse with MAGA members on the road to really hearing and respecting their worries while also diminishing their self denying reactionary allegiances, or even changing them into MACA. Maybe new ways of engaging proposed by radicals and revolutionaries could help lots of folks constructively address their MAGA kin, MAGA neighbors, and MAGA workmates instead of uselessly fearing or dismissing them.

So that’s the kind of thing I am tentatively, cautiously thinking this morning, even as I know the carpet may buck yet again. How can radicals better address MAGA? Mostly any answers offered will be conjecture, I think, until seriously tested. But perhaps a few simple insights can help get some conversations started.

We know MAGA members are unlikely to react well to being called deplorable, much less to being called delusional, stupid, cruel, or cult-like. Indeed, such talk will more likely, and with good reason, cause MAGA members to entrench their allegiances, sure that their only alternatives are to stay the MAGA course with their buddies or to buckle under to supremely arrogant, dismissive, unhearing, completely out of touch elitists. Really. Put on their shoes and see what you would see. So first we should dump our dismissiveness. It really is the opposite of organizing.

But then what? My best guess is that we should put values first. We should offer up for discussion and hopefully for agreement that people should have a say over their lives. People should have a say over all that affects them. People should be free from rule by others. People should have worthy work. People should have fair incomes. People should not lie. People should not rape. People should get really good, really uplifting education and skills. People should have good food. People should have effective healthcare. So we should get values settled. Then, carefully, on that foundation, we should move on to consider policies and facts able to fulfill the values.

I am leaning toward trying that. MAGA thinks government, corporations, bigwigs, cheat and steal, and even science too, sometimes. Well, they are right. Maga thinks to stand up and fight back is needed. Right again. MAGA wants a better life. Right. Then proceed.

But, I still have a serious fear about the election and its aftermath that I’d be lying to leave out. Maybe the magic carpet bucks again. Imagine it is October. Trump hasn’t quit. There is a tsunami of videos, audios, and text that looks absolutely real. It emanates from every direction. It washes over everyone. People’s hands wave as if trying to single confused consternation, as if trying to get out from under. People’s minds explode in the jumble of it all. We all squeal, what is real? And then we all stop muttering because regardless of what is real, and even of what each person thinks may be real, everyone sees only rampant chaos, feels only adrift. No one confidently believes much of anything. All wonder what the hell is going on? The mayhem arrives compliments of AI unleashed. Maybe call it Musk-iness. 

Amidst the bedlam comes the vote. And then what? Trump’s hand-picked agents refuse to certify votes from various carefully selected counties. They exclude carefully selected votes. Their de-certifications plus supportive courts engineer sufficient vote alterations that reeling media says that Trump, who actually lost, won. Then what?

Is this paranoia? I hope so. But I think it may be their plan. And I think it may mean that getting people ready to withstand the chaos and getting way more votes for Harris/Walz and even decertifying the Trump-picked certifiers is more important than starting early on reaching out to MAGA. Or, well, maybe it means the opposite. Maybe it means that reaching out to MAGA is even more needed, now, to help redirect the potential de-certifiers. Honestly, I have no clue. 

One thing we do know is that to get too certain of our conjectures is a surefire route to sect-like certainty. So let’s avoid that. Let’s each do what we think we can do. And who knows? Maybe the magic carpet will buck our way again. Or keep calm. Or maybe, less passive, more active, we can grab the reins.

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