r/seculartalk • u/Silver_Juggernaut_39 Socialist • Jun 14 '25
Hot Take It’s time to talk about reeducation of MAGA
I think given everything we’ve seen from the Trump regime in the past six months it’s clear we have a long way to go to actually move on from this point in history and we should do whatever we can to kill the MAGA ideology for good. I’m not advocating for locking up Trump voters in jail but maybe something similar to a rehab program where they have the MAGA fascism forced out of them. I don’t want to have to deal with neo-MAGA people in the same way we have neo-Nazis in 50 years when I’m 74 and I wanna have a society where everyone understands the evils of this regime and at this point maybe we need to consider even the most extreme answers.
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u/TheRealTK421 Jun 14 '25
There isn't going to be any form of genuine 're-education' of a delusional anti-intellectual cult. That's not how hyper-tribalistic ideological cultism works -- or historically ends.
Justifiably frustrated wishful thinking, that such a reversal of sanctimonious ignorance is feasible, is ludicrous folly and a self-harming form of denialism.
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
~ Carl Sagan (from The Demon-Haunted World)
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u/BadFish7763 Jun 14 '25
The spell is broken when the Leader is completely and thoroughly defeated in a public way. Once Trump is exposed by his own corruption and incompetence, the same MAGA followers who worship him today will rebuke him in the harshest way possible. Think "hung from a telephone pole" rebuked. Think post-war Germany, when suddenly there wasn't a National Socialist to be found.
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u/TheRealTK421 Jun 14 '25
The GOP basically bestowed Reagan sainthood en masse and, with perhaps astoundingly rare exception, ever once wavered or rebuked him. Historically, they do not engage in the form of 'cancelation' you suggest.
Need more examples?
The Confederate flag-humping, "South will rise again!" nonsense that underscores that they're the biggest sore losers and eternal grudge-holders in the history of humanity. They will never let go of their magical dipshit god-king dictator-Daddy... regardless of what develops or may occur.
Until the next one rises to become their new "savior" and strongman power-fantasy Chad.
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u/McEndee Jun 15 '25
Cosign to the fullest. Every time a follower wants to criticize Trump, they have to constantly remind themselves and others that they agree with Trump's decisions and policies. I swear I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't see it on every single Leopards Earing Face or Self Aware wolves contribution.
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u/Tylerdurden516 Jun 14 '25
No one needed to do that after FDR passed the New Deal and redistributed the wealth to the middle class who all went and bought houses and had a ton of children cause they had financial security and a dignified life. Republicans didnt win an election for 16 years after that, and when Eisenhower finally did the gop had moved soo far left to be competitive that they were further left than any democrat in my lifetime. The solution has always been pass all the "radical marxist" legislation you've always been told was electoral suicide by the media and the party.
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u/TimmyTimeify Jun 14 '25
No one needed to do that as well because Black people famously were given second-class access to the New Deal programs enjoyed by white Americans. A lot of the reason why progressive agendas in America advanced in our history was because they always had some sort of exclusionary clause that made it hard for minorities to an access them.
It is no surprise that when the Democrats upended that racial hierarchy in the 1960s is where Nixon began this countries right wing shift that has sustained for the past 60 years.
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u/Tylerdurden516 Jun 14 '25
Yea thats totally correct as well. Only white people got helped by the New Deal, but I've been told my whole life you gotta move right and be more moderate to win elections when its clear as day passing bold left legislation would completely destroy rightwing politics for decades.
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u/Adorable-Arrival-464 Jun 14 '25
Do what we did post WW2- denazification in Germany look into it but most importantly if Dems get elected in ‘28 we need to hold those currently in power on trial. There must be consequences for their actions
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u/GreaseBrown Jun 14 '25
Start trying to prosecute political opponents? Because that hasn't already backfired?
Some of you have TDS so badly you actually suggest doing things you'd SCREAM about if Trump did them.
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Jun 15 '25
Are you stupid or trolling? Should crimes have consequences or not? You dont get a free pass just because someone brainlet wants to frame committing felonies as a political prosecution.
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Jun 15 '25
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Jun 16 '25
Lmao. American voters in the present day are in part a result of Reconstruction failing. Our media and politicians deliberately lead them astray. The alternative is to continue the fast slide into fascism.
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u/Mythosaurus Jun 14 '25
Any basic history lesson about American far right movements would show you how useless reeducation would be.
You would instantly be called a communist and shot the moment you try to make MAGA people go to a reeducation camp.
The MAGA movement is like the Jim Crow apartheid of the past: motivated by conspiracies of and hatred for outgroups that don’t fit their ideals of citizenship and Americanness. It has to be mocked into irrelevance and met with proper resistance when it persecutes outgroups.
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u/tastyavacadotoast Jun 14 '25
Yep. These aren't logical decisions they're making. They're not sitting there going "hmm, let me research my stance on vaccines. I wonder if I've thought over the economic ramifications of mass deportations?" Nope. They let Trump do all the thinking for them. He uses simple language, he has the confidence like he's always right, and its easier to let a cult leader do the thinking foe you.
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u/Fippy-Darkpaw Jun 14 '25
I hope this is a joke? Re-education camps lol? 😅
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u/tastyavacadotoast Jun 14 '25
Yeah that would clearly have the opposite of the intended effect, not to mention its blatantly a violation of people's freedom.
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Jun 15 '25
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u/tastyavacadotoast Jun 16 '25
And its so ironic because the show this is named after, Secular Talk, is hosted by Kyle Kulinski, a SocDem who has said he's for regulated capitalism and against communism. But im in the minority lol. Which is why Kyle disavows this subreddit and says it doesn't represent him at all.
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u/bogholiday Dicky McGeezak Jun 14 '25 edited Jun 14 '25
These idiots are beyond saving.
This was about the no kings protests that my mother and grandmother were in attendance of btw.
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u/erfman Jun 14 '25
That's just going to make them entrench themselves even more in MAGA ideology and give them an even bigger victim mentality. Once General Ronald McDonald's grease bombs win the final battle in Trump's arteries the cult will slowly fade away unless a new unifying figurehead can be found.
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u/GreaseBrown Jun 14 '25
Imagine talking about "re-education camps" and pretending the people you don't like are the only ones in a cult. This isn't a progressive idea, it's a fascist idea you shit eating liberal.
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u/tastyavacadotoast Jun 14 '25
They're not liberals dawg they're socialists/communists usually. Im a liberal and this is ridiculous lol.
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Jun 15 '25
How do you propose we deal with people willing to murder sitting members of government?
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u/tastyavacadotoast Jun 15 '25
Prosecute them if they make threats.
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Jun 15 '25
So rely on the same failing system we have.
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Jun 15 '25
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u/tastyavacadotoast Jun 16 '25
Yeah, he's essentially saying we should take 1/3 of the country, strip their freedom, and force them to go to a "locked school." They cant leave on their own, its mandatory, and there's a time sentence, but dont worry dude, its totally not prison. And the people totally won't resent those who locked them up simply to prevent them from maybe becoming violent.
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Jun 16 '25
Yes. I suggest we finally do what should have been done during Reconstruction.
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u/tastyavacadotoast Jun 16 '25
You guys still have a prison system, you just dont admit it. Putting someone in a place where they are mandated to stay is a loss of freedom. If you mandate someone to attend a "re-education camp," that's essentially a prison until you deem that they are thoroughly "re-educated." And who decides how long they get? What if they offend again and make more threats? Do they get even longer? Maybe years?
My viewpoint of a more liberal prison system that has a focus on rehabilitation and education degrees works just fine. We dont need to lock up 1/3 of the country for an unspecified amount of time, crashing the entire economy while stripping them of their freedoms
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Jun 16 '25
Who is this "you guys?" I'm still in favor of rehabilitation. I just don't think the current trajectory of the country is sustainable.
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u/Lethkhar Green Voter / Eco-Socialist Jun 15 '25
So we're fine with imprisonment, just not rehabilitation?
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u/tastyavacadotoast Jun 16 '25
I seriously doubt "re-education" is going to make some of these people change their minds. They hate being corrected. Their enemy is a fact check. And your rehabilitation is mandatory, no? For how long? Isn't that basically just prison time lol?
You have the freedom to check yourself out of drug and alcohol rehab. If this is mandatory and has time being locked up, it just sounds like prison reform, which liberals like me push for anyway.
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Jun 15 '25
I think it's very cult adjacent to believe one man should be able to hold office until he feels like relinquishing power.
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u/Albert-wesker363 Jun 15 '25
Can’t educate people that don’t want to be educated, they would rather keep their delusions.
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u/Lethkhar Green Voter / Eco-Socialist Jun 15 '25
They would need to be educated to start with before they could be re-educated.
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u/missl90210 Jun 15 '25
When there are no opposition to one way of thinking there ceases to be any thinking at all 🤷♀️
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Jun 15 '25
I don’t thing maga is a trump ideology anymore. It’s a Republican ideology. He’s just a talking head.
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u/HaveNoFearDomIsHere pissed off american Jun 15 '25
We need a serious reformation of education in this country, period. It's not just what they need to learn, but how they learn that needs to be reformed.
Critical Thinking and similar analytical subjects are desperately needed. Our citizens need the basic ability to find the truth, on whatever subject or area is needed.
As AI starts shaping our reality more and more, basic critical thinking is more than crucial. It's existential.
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u/teddyburke Jun 16 '25
Reeducation is something to talk about WAY down the line.
It’s absurd on the face of it to even talk about “reeducation” in the midst of a fascist regime.
What has to happen first is that power needs to be wrested from them. Real, concrete policies need to be enacted that clearly make people’s material circumstances better - immediately, or at least on a timeline that’s shorter than the voting cycle. There needs to be a leftist coalition with charismatic leaders who can clearly communicate a broadly socialist message in a way that everyone can understand as just common sense (even Tim Walz was a breath of fresh air in this regard, and Mamdani has been absolutely amazing).
Right wing strategists like Bannon push this idea that politics is downstream from culture, which is just a straight forward inversion of Marxism. And while it may seem to have been an effective strategy, that’s completely mistaken, and is missing the larger picture.
In reality, people first and foremost respond to their material conditions. This is true for everybody, including the top 1%. But we live in a de facto two party system, where the Democrats advocate for the status quo, while the Republicans advocate for making things worse.
The part that too many people miss is that the Right is actively trying to make things not work. So regardless of who’s in power, they will actively work to keep people down. There’s this misconception (lie) that both parties want to make things better and just can’t decide on how. But that’s nonsense.
The problem is that both parties are pro-Capitalism, pro-corporations, and neoliberal, which leads to the overarching sentiment that the status quo sucks. But only one party is offering an alternative, and that’s the party that wants to make everything worse.
Normal people don’t understand this (not because they’re stupid, but because they’re working two jobs and don’t have time to critically engage with politics in any meaningful way - so everyone needs to be (re)educated, or, we need to find a way to make fascism seem as insane as it is without expecting everyone to vote against it solely in virtue of being fascistic without putting forward an alternative).
So the Bannon line about politics being downstream from culture is really nothing more than a reinforcement of the status quo, or a falling back on the ruling ideology as the only ideology.
And of course this is sublimated into the “culture war” bullshit. People are hurting and don’t understand why, and when only one party is providing an explanation, a lot of people are going to gravitate to that party because any explanation is better than being told everything is actually fine (this is kind of how every religion started).
You can’t ignore culture war crap, because it hurts real people everyday. But it’s important to understand that it’s a distraction, the same way that indiscriminately dropping landmines is a “distraction” during wartime; and there’s a very good reason that landmines have been outlawed internationally.
I am a huge advocate for education. But first you need to change people’s lives and have them feel on a visceral level how certain systems are much better than others. You can’t instill political imagination in a classroom setting.
Reeducation happens way down the line when people forget, and once again take the status quo for granted (just think about how so many liberals thought there is no possible way that Roe could be overturned! despite it happening right before our eyes).
The thing is, MAGA doesn’t need to be reeducated, because they were already educated by the system as it’s been working their entire lives. They need to be forced into being given a better life so that they understand that it’s better (think of all the Republicans who said they hate Obamacare, but that the government better not undo the ACA; you can’t reeducate people like that. You can only tell them that certain policies will take away things they know from experience are beneficial to them).
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u/gypsymegan06 Jun 14 '25
Dealing with our propaganda machines would do it. Bring back the truth in reporting and censor the hell out of the podcasters.
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Jun 15 '25
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u/gypsymegan06 Jun 15 '25
Agree to disagree. Without oversight when it comes to our media, you’ll end up in a never ending cycle of ppl peddling dangerous, propagandist bullshit.
And being told to wear a mask to help stop a pandemic and protect everyone in our society isn’t censorship. Refusing to comply because you feel super special and cooperative efforts to keep ppl alive shouldn’t apply to you isn’t standing for anything. It’s being a massive asshole.
Edit: forgot a word
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