Carito △⃒⃘

“Is this just a big circle jerk?” Jon welcomes Ed Zitron (@edzitron), host of the podcast Better Offline, to make sense of the financial house of cards propping up AI and big tech. New pod out now!

I live in a small MAGA town. I know MAGA people. I drink with them. I talk to them. I study them. They’re not the loud Twitter yappers, at least most of them. They’re quieter. Slower. But the delusion runs deep, just bottled up in passive smiles and soft voices. A few weeks ago, one of them tried to convert me at a bar. He knew I wasn’t into the Trump cult, but he started soft. Calm voice. Friendly tone. “Mario, you’re white. You can drink a lot, you eat meat, “he was just surprised that I was eating rare burger” and drinking vodka chasing it with Guinness. He also said, “You’re one of us. You should feel proud.” That’s their seduction tactic. Not facts. Not logic. Just subtle tribal grooming. “You’re white. You drink. You belong.” It was almost sweet, in a sad, culty way. Like a Jehovah’s Witness trying to sell you eternal life with a shaky brochure and cheap suit. But let’s talk about the whole ecosystem. The truth. MAGA men? Most are not warriors. They’re out-of-shape, insecure, jealous small-town boys who peaked in high school, still clinging to stories from when they “almost went pro” or “should’ve been in the military.” They’re proud of being able to drink a case of light beer, drive a truck, and scream about freedom while their knees buckle from sugar and rage. They’re easy to manipulate because they don’t ask questions. They don’t read. They react. They memorize memes like scripture and repeat them like gospel. They think being loud equals being right. They think the world is laughing with them. It’s not. The world’s laughing at them, when it’s not just ignoring them entirely. MAGA women? They’re caught in a brutal paradox, constantly screaming about how proud and strong they are, while reshaping every inch of their body to meet a fake beauty standard pushed by the very system they claim to hate. Plastic lips. Inflated cheeks. Eyelashes thick as windshield wipers. Trying to look rich while shopping clearance at Walmart. They scream about “natural family values” while injecting Botox and collapsing into MLM scams that promise empowerment through overpriced lipstick. They mock liberals for being “gender confused” while wearing more synthetic parts than a Barbie made in a Russian factory. Here’s the thing: MAGA America isn’t just backward. It’s boring. MAGA folks are simply subsimple. There’s nothing imaginative about it. No new culture. No innovation. No ideas. They don’t invent, they imitate. They don’t challenge, they chant. It’s the same five phrases over and over. The same flag. The same truck. The same outfit. Patriot cosplay. And that’s why the world doesn’t just hate MAGA. It forgets it. Because once the shouting stops, there’s nothing under the hood. Just cheap beer breath, fake smiles, and a belief that whiteness and loudness are still enough to matter. You want the brutal truth? Even without Trump, even without the cult, most of them would still be irrelevant. Not because they’re evil. But because they chose comfort over growth. Tribalism over truth. Imitation over imagination. They don’t want to understand the world. They want the world to stay small enough to understand them. And that’s the saddest, most humiliating part.

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