When waving flags is just pretense
I believe it would be easy to convey that Trump is bad if people genuinely cared about American values. There is simply too much evidence that Trump is not a champion of those values, and worse: he undermines them.
So the issue, to me, is not that self‑proclaimed patriots disagree about assessments of Trump using a truly American standard. The issue is that they disagree on whether those American standards are important to them at this moment.
I conclude that they simply don’t care about American values right now.
They might not even know what American values are, nor care to learn more about their importance. They may just want the American banner. It would be better if they openly admitted that they don’t care about American values, but they won’t. They want both: MAGA and “Americanism”—like an irrational person who wants hot and cold at the same time.
I don’t think I need to convince these people that Trump is bad. The fact is that they do not share my standards for judging Trump. They don’t take American standards seriously.
What I need to do is tell others who have some remnants of concern with American ideals that certain people do not care about advocating for American values and should not be considered representatives of them. If it’s unavoidable and I do debate MAGA‑“patriots,” I begin by reframing the discussion—first by asking what American values are, and then by asking how MAGA brings us closer to those values.
They might say that “MAGA fights the left.” This is a compelling argument to them because I believe the left goes frontally against American values.
At that point I will say, “What if MAGA is destroying the values you are attempting to protect, and perhaps even more effectively than the left?”
They might also come up with their own version of American values that go frontally against values declared in American Declaration of Independence.
I have been noticing that they recognize their own confusion very early, and many of them will avoid discussing American values and their importance almost immediately.
Once they clearly evade, I leave them behind. Even if they wrap themselves with an American flag. A symbol means nothing when it’s devoided from its true meaning.
A wolf may appear to be a sheep. I need to learn how to differentiate. I need an explicit standard to judge, and I will use it.
