Indifferent to the truth: MAGAReport 2/18/25

A note on belief and intent

The mainstream MAGA discourse misses something I think is critical: they do not believe in much of anything and they don’t care much about the truth.

I liked this tweet from Eric Nelson:

There is something pointless about engaging in good faith with MAGA. In the outcry about government efficiency, it’s clear that basically no one in the Trump administration really cares about it. They are cutting programs that generate more GDP than they cost. The people auditing have no training or background that qualifies them for the tasks they are undertaking. Their public comments are obviously incorrect. The only lesson to take from this is that they know they are wrong, they do not care, and they are saying/doing it for some other reason.

Consider this tweet from Elon. Musk claims these people are all alive and collecting social security. This is obviously untrue at a glance. First, these numbers say that 5% of the US population - 1 in 20 people - is over 100 years old. Second, the SSA literally says on their website that payments stop when someone is 115-years-old. Third, people doing a quick back-of-the-envelope analysis figured out that there’s no way these numbers work budget-wise. There’s no universe where a person who is looking at this data in good faith draws the conclusion Elon did. So he must have put this out knowing it was wrong.

Why would he do that? I do not think it’s to convince anyone he’s right, though some people may believe him. Instead, let’s put ourselves in the MAGA mindset: they are utterly indifferent to the truth and, when they say something, whether they believe it is not even a consideration. The goals are different.

In MAGA, the goal is to harm the other side. If they say things that are wrong, the other side still has to engage with it. They don’t care if someone disproves what they said because they do not care about being right. They can keep arguing, simply denying the truth. They can move on to another point at any time, because they are indifferent to the issue.

Within the community, they also use misinformation and conspiracy theories as a kind of improv. There’s a lot of “yes and” going on. Elon puts out this table of data, and they run with it, offering up ideas, totally indifferent to whether or not they are true. They make up other misinformation or conspiracy theories, and get a little thrill if they can find a piece of data or sentence out of context to make their story look more legitimate. Some of it sticks and they get it shared more widely. It’s a game of who can create the best sounding story that will upset the other side.

(I just finished an academic article about this that is out for peer review - I’ll be sharing lots more about it soon)

So as you consider arguing with someone from MAGA, keep in mind that your engagement and outrage is their goal. If you are angry, how can you channel it into preserving institutions or dignity or the rule of law? Trying to humiliate a MAGA hat on social media is both destined to fail and a waste of the precious resource of your energy. We can all do better.