The Gaslighting of the Majority (And the Truth About MAGA's Death Spiral)

A few days ago, I opened my Threads feed and was greeted by the post of a young woman, featuring a couple of resolute carseat selfies, along with the caption:I AM….. PRO ICE PRO Military Pro Law Enforcement Pro Trump Pro Charlie Kirk Pro Voter ID Pro Accountability [sic]Immediately below that post was another, absolutely identical to the first, except for a different account handle.I continued to refresh my feed, greeted again and again by the same image, the same quote, yet from different accounts. (I’m currently at 26 and counting, by the way.)Scrolling through my timeline, this morning alone, I encountered, not only five more greetings from my now ubiquitous brunette, shapeshifting female MAGA warrior, but at least four other different versions featuring other white women, supposedly also declaring their love for their Predator-In-Chief, his barbaric ICE foot soldiers, and MAGA’s anti-immigrant, anti-Black, Anti-Democracy agenda. A cursory glance at my newsfeed, and no one would blame you for thinking a massive number of young white women are inexplicably assembling around a court-adjudicated rapist and likely serial predator, whose misogynist regime is trying to take away women’s body autonomy and voting rights.And it’s all a mirage, just like everything about this President, his Administration, and their barbaric, yet rapidly shrinking white supremacist movement, but it’s an exhausting mirage.Being gaslit will wear you the hell out, which of course, is the plan.I think we all need to collect ourselves and understand what’s really happening here.We need to inventory the emotional and mental toll of being inundated throughout our waking moments with an endless stream of repeated lies, Right-Wing propaganda, bot proliferation, and Conservative algorithm manipulation.It’s critical that we don’t allow ourselves to be defeated by an alarming, terrifying, and infuriating fiction. We are not outnumbered.Donald Trump’s current approval rating is hovering between 28 and 36 percent, depending on the source, and his support is never going to rise from here. This is his absolute ceiling. His covering up of the Epstein Files, the lawlessness of ICE’s domestic terrorism, his starting of an unnecessary, sickeningly expensive war with Iran, stratospheric gas prices, and a cratering economy that has been in a tailspin ever since his disastrous tariffs began—these are mortal wounds to Trump and his party, and they know it.Republicans have known since 2024 that the window was going to be incredibly short; that their policies have been wildly unpopular, their base has been dwindling, and that their quickly-collapsing, cognitively-addled, lame duck wanna be dictator has been steadily losing his capacity to bulldoze criticism and manipulate reality. Trump’s broken campaign promises regarding transparency around Epstein, his vow to end wars, his asinine boasts to bring gas and food prices down, his wasteful ballrooms and national mall desecrations are not playing well with the former faithful who can barely keep the lights on or put food on the table.The MAGA arrow is pointing down, and nothing can prevent that.Friends, what this all means is that we are the majority and it ain’t even close. Well over two-thirds of this nation despise this Christo-fascist regime, their assaults on black and brown people, their endless persecution of the LGBTQ community, their attacks on free speech, the Arts, diversity, and Democracy.A massive portion of America is disgusted with their coddling of the wealthiest one percent, their pillaging of the Public School System, their poisoning of Health and Human Services, their polluting of the CDC, and their absolute refusal to address affordable healthcare or housing.We have the numbers. All we need to do is start acting like the majority. If we can all transcend our wars of preference, our purity politics, and our relatively superficial differences, we can defeat this minority movement. If we wield our collective power and unify our voice in November, it won’t matter how much they gerrymander, how difficult they make it to vote, or the violence they resort to in order to try and intimidate us.The United States isn’t in hopeless peril; we’ve all just been fooled into believing the myth of our impending doom curated and amplified by those who have nothing else but lies, spin, fake followers, and paid rally crowds. Donald Trump’s entire life, his supposed success as a businessman, and his disastrous presidencies have been fool’s gold; the smoke and mirror illusions of disinformation and media malpractice. Beneath the partisan propaganda and the prolific gaslighting, MAGA is in its last days. It is a crumbling, self-devouring, rapidly evaporating niche movement of a small percentage of this nation who are being swallowed up by time and progress.Don’t be disheartened by your newsfeed or distracted by the bombast of the propagandists.The vast majority is anti-MAGA, anti-Trump, and pro-Democracy.Let’s act like we know. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe