It's become clear that MAGA is whatever Trump says it is. What with Trump disavowing Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens as fake MAGA, it's pretty clear that MAGA is a cult. Where identifying oneself as a member of the movement trumps all other concerns. But this is the way of politics. That one distinguishes oneself as superior by identifying what they are not. Hispanic immigrants aren't real Americans. Liberals aren't real Americans. Which is to imply that they are real Americans and thereby better.
This is not a new phenomenon. On an individual level, such authenticity has used slogans advising to be true to yourself, to your real self, and so on. But this is not far from the political usage. That by identifying what we are at bottom, and claiming that is better than the cluttered mix of true and superficial self, and identifying with it, we can claim that we ultimately are better than we are. But how do we identify this core self, and is it not simply what we want it to be, much like MAGA is whatever Trump says it is. The authentic self, or authentic movement member, is the one who follows the bouncing ball wherever it leads.
And this seems to be a mirror reflection of the notion of purity. That an authentic person has excluded the impure, inauthentic elements from themselves and their behavior. In politics this takes the form of purity tests wherein you give up, or risk giving up, valuable things to demonstrate ones commitment to the politics, ideal, or optimum self. (Why do we have so many self-help movements and rituals?) So in a sense, the move toward embracing a politics or a metaphysics of self seems to be an attempt to shed oneself of the messy nuances and complexity of reality in favor of a simplified ideal that provides identifiable direction.
Is this what the function of these identities is, to eschew the dirtiness of reality for an image of self as superior because it is 'real', 'authentic', and 'true'?
This is not a new phenomenon. On an individual level, such authenticity has used slogans advising to be true to yourself, to your real self, and so on. But this is not far from the political usage. That by identifying what we are at bottom, and claiming that is better than the cluttered mix of true and superficial self, and identifying with it, we can claim that we ultimately are better than we are. But how do we identify this core self, and is it not simply what we want it to be, much like MAGA is whatever Trump says it is. The authentic self, or authentic movement member, is the one who follows the bouncing ball wherever it leads.
And this seems to be a mirror reflection of the notion of purity. That an authentic person has excluded the impure, inauthentic elements from themselves and their behavior. In politics this takes the form of purity tests wherein you give up, or risk giving up, valuable things to demonstrate ones commitment to the politics, ideal, or optimum self. (Why do we have so many self-help movements and rituals?) So in a sense, the move toward embracing a politics or a metaphysics of self seems to be an attempt to shed oneself of the messy nuances and complexity of reality in favor of a simplified ideal that provides identifiable direction.
Is this what the function of these identities is, to eschew the dirtiness of reality for an image of self as superior because it is 'real', 'authentic', and 'true'?
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