@interfluidity The idea that #MAGA seeks exclusively to hold power for power’s sake doesn’t really map onto rhetoric I’ve heard from #MAGA extremists (using #RealAmericasVoice hosts like #SteveBannon or even those adjacent to them such as #JackPosobiec and #CharlieKirk, as my baseline)

I think #MAGA is a cult that, like many other cults, offers a grand vision of turning the world into a utopia. The cult members feel a nearly divine calling, and since many of them have also been sold the line that the #MAGA mission of following #Trump is endorsed by #God, they feel uniquely emboldened to bring forth that vision through any means necessary.

@realcaseyrollins Bannon sometimes says idealistic things. No matter how elaborately those things are betrayed, he toes the line. Musk is a transhumanist, a threat to traditional judeochristian ideas of virtuous living, he says. OK. Where's the pushback?

There are lots of grand visions, but no constancy in pursuing anything but expanding and demonstrating power. A movement is what a movement does, destruction of institutions, manufacture of fear, consolidation of power.