“Look, Bill, if this is about reliving the '60s, you can forget about it, buddy. The movement is dead.”
“Yes, of course! Hence the name: movement. It moves a certain distance, then it stops, you see? A revolution gets its name by always coming back around in your face. You tried to kill me, you son of a b***h, so welcome to the revolution.”
Ah, that wonderful slice of dialogue from the classic American film, “Under Siege.” (Like so many of you, I turn to Steven Seagal flicks for their pearls of philosophical wisdom.) In the scene above, actor Tommy Lee Jones (who, coincidentally enough, was college roommates with future VP Al Gore) feigns being a radical revolutionary to mislead government officials over his true intentions. (I’m hesitant to reveal anything else; as I’m sure you know, Steven Seagal movies are globally renowned for their clever plotting and subtle literary allusions, and I’d hate to ruin all the twists and turns.)
Oh, also: Playboy Playmate Erika Eleniak plays a Playboy Playmate. (And I gotta say, she was super-believable in that role.)
But this snippet of dialogue raises a compelling question: When does a movement become a revolution? And what does the future hold for MAGA?
Revolutions and movements are both time-tested vehicles of social change. If you wanna shake up the status quo, a movement and/or revolution is the fastest way to go. The difference between the two is often a matter of scope.
Movements are usually meant to reform a societal failing — to preserve what’s good and modify what’s bad — while retaining most of the infrastructure. Revolutions have loftier, more far-reaching ambitions, seeking to overhaul society from top to bottom. You’re not just attempting to modify the old infrastructure; you’re tearing it down completely, building something entirely new.
Because revolutions have such far-reaching ambitions, revolutionaries feel entitled to utilize far-reaching tactics. A movement relies on propaganda, PR, and persuasion to make a point; a revolution uses a point to put heads on a spike. Movements are associated with political and social pressure; revolutions are associated with political violence and assassinations.
What, then, will be the future of MAGA?
Right now, MAGA is still a movement. For all the Republican chest-beating about “draining the swamp” — and all the Democrats’ incessant blathering about Trump being “an existential threat to democracy” — most of MAGA’s agenda has been mainstream GOP policy points since the 1960s. Tonally, Trump adopts the persona of a wild-eyed revolutionary, but policy-wise, the MAGA agenda is squarely within the traditional camp.
You could even make an argument that beginning with John McCain in 2008, EVERY Republican presidential nominee since then has been a moderate: McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012, Donald Trump in 2016 through 2024 — for all three men, NO ONE thought of them as conservatives before they ran for president. It was only after the liberal media chewed ‘em up and spit ‘em out that their image changed.
Hardcore conservatives aren’t really clamoring for a true conservative revolution anyway. I mean, sure, we wouldn’t rebuff a chance to set our country’s feet on a more honorable path, but for the most part, we’re happy with simply keeping the liberals out of power and slowing the never-ending encroachment of Big Government. That would be a win!
Anything beyond that is icing on the cake.
So does this mean that MAGA is a movement and not a revolution?
Not so fast: MAGA will be a revolution. That’s our ultimate fate. But it won’t be because of us.
When future historians write the epitaph of our era, they’ll be fascinated by the irony of it all. The Democrats were so convinced that Donald Trump — and thus, MAGA voters — were threats to their power, that they changed the rules of the game.
They treated Trump differently from every past candidate. They mobilized the media to drop the façade of impartiality and attack him directly. They booted him off social media. They threw bogus legal challenges at him, wielding lawfare for the first time in American political history. They tried to lock him up. They scratched their a**es while Trump was nearly assassinated — repeatedly. They switched presidential nominees when the sitting president was shellacked in a debate. They even altered the voting procedures, purely to benefit Trump’s opposition.
MAGA was a political movement that sparked a revolution, but the Democrats led the revolution. They responded to MAGA by going nuclear, completely outside the parameters of proportionality. And now, whatever happens in 2024 election, the MAGA faithful won’t forget the Left Tiananmen Square-ing them.
We’re a different movement now than we were before.
The Democratic Party doesn’t realize it yet, but they just planted the seeds of their own destruction. Because, eventually, we ALL reap what we sow.
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