Waiters And Gardeners -- Tom Sullivan

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/05/28/waiters-and-gardeners/

MAGA’s medieval dream

Drew Pavlou’s Iceberg Journal considered back in April how Chairman Mao’s crackpot war on “the humble Eurasian tree sparrow” resulted in a famine that “killed at least 40 million people in a disaster of world-historic proportions.”

Donald Trump’s cult is a kind of MAGA Maoism, Pavlou suggests:

Like Chairman Mao, President Donald Trump subscribes to a wide range of bizarre crackpot theories about economics, politics and world affairs. And like the Great Helmsman, he too has managed to concentrate an extraordinary amount of power in his hands, building up an immense personality cult so as to terrify other figures in his party into submission.

Pavlou argues:

Honestly, the right way to think about MAGA is through the lens of Maoism and other Third Worldist political movements and personality cults. It uniquely draws upon the dumbest, shittiest and most repulsive parts of each: Peron’s economic illiteracy; Mao’s ideological wars on reality; Juche’s exaltation of economic pain and hardship in service of national self-reliance; Idi Amin’s ethnic expulsions of minority groups.

I believe that the central motivating force behind the movement is a rejection of the Enlightenment and liberal modernity. In place of reason it exalts superstition, magical thinking and primitive suspicion of anything beyond direct experience. It is the ideology of the medieval peasant, the goat herder, the cab driver who blames all world problems on the Jews. Its motivating essence is simple: ‘‘Burn anything I can’t understand.’’

His conclusion:

These people have nothing in common with the civilisation they claim to speak for. They demand America abolish its 250 year old Constitution, abolish its liberal democratic heritage, so that the government can run Latin American tin pot dictatorship style paramilitary death squads.

This is MAGA Maoism. They hate everything good about Western civilisation: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, rule of law, presumption of innocence, trial by peers. They want death squads and struggle sessions against political enemies because they want to make America a Third World country.

They are going to fail, but my God they will inflict an insane and psychotic amount of destruction and suffering in the process.

Yes, but that’s mostly the plebs. The rich elite backing Trump want a kind of neofeudalism. I wrote over a year ago that Democrats want an American economy that serves you. Republicans want an America in which you serve the economy.

. . .

[chowmama]

1. The rich elite want to force the plebs to be limited to this kind of thinking.

I'm reminded of Osama Bin Ladin - all true Muslims under his rule were to be educated only to the level of a poor laborer, similar to an historical goatherder. Of course, he himself and those of the upper echelon all had a much higher degree of education. Good way to preserve power.

And I'm reminded of how the 'higher ups' think of their subordinates. Working through school and between jobs, I have been both waitstaff and a janitor. Nothing - NOTHING - will convince a middle management executive that you're half brain-dead faster than to see you emptying garbage and dusting desks.

The funniest was at a tire supply place. DH and I were doing our nightly rounds and a man came out of what we'd already figured out was an after-hours meeting. He was very concerned that we not disturb them. He tried his best to voice his directions in words of only one syllable, voiced rather too slowly and far too loudly. But he ran into a word he had no way to simplify. So he pantomimed it, while speaking even more slowly and clearly. He didn't want us to run the V-A-C-U-U-M-N. His arm went back and forth, indicating that he'd at least seen it done before.

At the time, I was achieving a 4.0 at tech school while working two part-time jobs and full time school, and wasn't exactly undereducated before that. DH has a JD (law).

We allowed as how we thought we could manage that, while keeping reasonably straight faces. Then we escaped into the lunchroom and fell apart laughing. We tried to keep it quiet, but the next room might have heard us.

An educated population can see what you're up to. They can mock you. And they can insist on their rights and vote against you. Yes, some of the uneducated and unthinking have chosen that for personal reasons. Low self-esteem will always try to claw everybody else down to their level, because it's easier than trying to climb up and risking failure. But when the upper class tries to eliminate education for the lower classes, it's a blatant power play. Education is power and restriction is repression.

And don't diss the janitors. They may know more than you do.

[erronis]

2. Thanks for your wonderful and very personal recounting of these types of interactions.

I always remind myself that the person driving the cab has a very good chance at being much better educated than me.

Another place that I get my comeuppance is in the "rooms" (AA, NA, etc.). When first meeting someone it is very easy to view them in a one-dimensional frame (the reason they/(I) are there). But with a little conversation I learn how multi-dimensional and talented they can be. These learning experiences are good for my humanity and humility.