Until now, all political attempts to undermine the MAGA movement have failed. To the confusion of both political experts and casual observers, MAGA’s supporters have remained undeterred by unshakeable evidence of the movement’s disregard for morality, patriotism, and even conservativism. This is because none of these principles actually relate to the main premise of MAGA. Its true guiding theme is not a value or principle at all, but the dark spirit of male sexual frustration.
From the beginning, MAGA has invoked sex as a central rhetorical focus. Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign by referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and has never trailed in GOP primary polls for three election cycles afterward. Since his ascendency, Republicans have largely ignored traditional politics and have instead focused bizarrely on instances of perceived sexual perversion. They accuse their opponents without evidence of sex trafficking and pedophilia. They viciously and persistently attack transgender people, a tiny group with little representation in powerful circles. They embrace QAnon, an online conspiracy that theorizes that pedophiles control the government and Hollywood.
And their preoccupation with sex always carries overtones of rage and resentment. Consider MAGA supporters’ most infamous and identifying insult: deriding non-MAGA men as “cucks”—short for cuckolds. Such language conveys that MAGA men view mainstream culture and politics as not only emasculating but as sexual dead ends, as routes to celibacy. For them, MAGA is the solution to a sexual problem, not a political one. Its actual political stances (where they can be found) lie downstream from this. Take its push to restrict abortion rights, a thinly veiled effort to restrict young women’s sexual behavior. Or its notorious animosity toward illegal immigration: as Trump’s original “rapists” comment indicates, MAGA perceives immigration as a sexual threat—or, more accurately, a scapegoat for lived sexual dissatisfaction. Conservative media outlets regularly parrot dubious claims about immigrants raping and attacking young women. Never do they run stories about immigrants usurping low wage jobs. Thus, the mantra that immigrants are “stealing American jobs,” already factually questionable, can and should be interpreted as a euphemism for sex. Even if taken generously at face value, sexual paranoia looms large: women prefer men with jobs.
The rise of MAGA coincides with the dual explosions of internet pornography and Instagram. The media has highlighted the negative impacts of these developments on female body image and self esteem. However, it has not yet appreciated the corresponding impact on men, for whom the gap between sexual ambitions and reality has now become, for much of the population, outrageously wide. Some coverage has been dedicated to “incels” and violent offenders who lament sexual failure, such as school shooters. This coverage has characterized such individuals as belonging to a fringe. Perhaps. But a fringe of what?
Trump himself is the perfect avatar of sexual frustration. He regularly degrades women. He has been divorced several times and has been credibly linked to embarrassing affairs, all of which have the flavor (if not the formality) of prostitution. His wife shows him no affection, let alone desire, and she is rarely present at his events. Her frostiness toward him passes with no comment from pundits, who consider the subject out of bounds, but their courteousness blinds them to the crucial dynamic at play. That his wife detests him is the secret ingredient to his popularity. And it helps explain the failure of his copycats, who unknowingly torpedo their own appeals by flaunting (or at least feigning) healthy relationships with their wives.
Beyond the rhetorical and aesthetic evidence, simple intuition can easily discern the true heart of MAGA. Any outsider can recognize its atmosphere as dysfunctionally male. Trump and his acolytes are boorish, tense, and insecure. Few young women would wish to find themselves alone with one. In fact, several MAGA leaders including Trump have been accused or even convicted of sexual assault, which, far from disqualifying them, serves as a stamp of authenticity. At Trump’s rallies, to his supporters’ delight, he jeers powerful women and their male enablers. These events have an increasingly ritualistic feel: missing only are the witches burning at the stake.
A subset of women, of course, identify with MAGA, but their devotion is zealous, cultish, and unrelated to its premise. They revel in the cultural fervor of MAGA, not its ideas. MAGA men allow women to participate so long as they reject femininity, either by masculinizing themselves (a la Marjorie Taylor Greene) or playing the prostitute (a la Lauren Boebert). A relatively healthy female role model has no place in MAGA, as Ivanka Trump’s departure and Nikki Haley’s political flop exemplify. Indeed, to date, Ivanka’s main contribution to MAGA has been her role in resurfaced old videos in which her father awkwardly expresses unfulfilled sexual desire towards her. These clips, despite heavy play from Democrats, did not dampen the enthusiasm of his supporters. It is at least possible that they boosted it.
Eight years after Trump’s unexpected presidential victory, the Democratic Party may finally be coming around to the true nature of its opposition. Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz has characterized MAGA as “creepy” and “weird,” and this branding has resonated across the political spectrum. Far from being shallow or reductive, it pegs the movement more accurately than anything before it. When footage emerged of Walz’s counterpart, JD Vance, deriding childless women as selfish and miserable “cat ladies”—a rant soaked in MAGA sexual rage—Walz’s labels afforded Democrats the appropriate shorthand they had previously lacked. Vance has been accordingly helpless to stop the media shellacking. Trump, seeing this, has uncharacteristically reduced his profile, possibly hoping that Vance will discover a counterattack for him to borrow before being similarly tarnished. But the hope is futile: Vance, dumbfounded, can only double down on his angry, judgmental persona, the only political posture he has ever known. With every appearance he digs himself deeper into the hole that Walz has made for him.
Is this the end for MAGA? Not quite. The social trends that fueled its rise remain active, and the potential antidote—a mainstream, non-moralizing confrontation of men’s mental health struggles in an increasingly digital world—is not on the horizon. Black men, a longtime Democratic bastion, have begun to drift rightward, to the puzzlement of pundits who had theorized racism as the main pillar of MAGA. Trump himself may be fading, but one worries about his replacement. He has always been limited by his deficiencies and failures as a man—which, paradoxically, comprised his qualifications to lead the movement. But what if his successor is less limited? What if the next Trump, blood-related or otherwise, not only embodies sexual frustration but has the ability to marshal it towards its natural conclusion?
It could well again be time again for the witches to burn at the stake.
–Jim Andersen
It’s no wonder, then, that Fleck soon thereafter commits the alarming blunder of bringing the gun into a room full of children. It’s clear based on this act that he’s already attached to the weapon; it must go with him everywhere. When he’s justly fired for this misstep (and he’s lucky this is all that happens, as he’s already fired the gun in his own apartment by accident), we sense something brewing: the ostracism induced by the carrying of the gun has actually led him deeper into the very social hole of which it already seemed to him that only the gun could lift him out.
In fact, it seems that the city’s media has largely misinterpreted the entire uprising that progressively envelops Gotham throughout the film. While newspaper headlines and Thomas Wayne dismiss the increasingly numerous protesters as jealous have-nots, the event that eventually sparks virtual anarchism on the streets has nothing to do with wealth inequality. Instead, it’s Fleck’s lament on live TV that there is “no civility” anymore, followed by his (likely true) accusation that Franklin merely invited him on the show to laugh at him—followed, of course, by Franklin’s brains landing on the back of the set. When Fleck is arrested, he is rescued by protesters from the cop car and raised up as the movement’s leader.
This admonishment to the audience is completed when, during Fleck’s ensuing talk show appearance, he complains to Franklin: “I’m tired of people telling me what is funny and what isn’t.” He’s thus challenged us to some introspection, a rare happening in contemporary film: can we justify laughing at Gary for failing to reach the lock? Maybe we can’t; maybe we were wrong to do so. But if that isn’t funny, what is? Does the real humor lie, as Fleck contends, contrastingly, in the demise of the bullies, like the Wall Street friends on the subway? After all, we’re going to laugh at someone—who’s it going to be?
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