Use of derogatory names for politicians and groups of people

[Belsnickel]

(03-15-2024, 10:57 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: Is that the MAGA movement though? Perhaps I'm uninformed here, but I always just saw the MAGA movement as the people who support Trump and not necessarily a group of people who are strangely devoted to him. I mean, I voted for Trump twice and I considered myself "MAGA" but I never saw myself as anything other than someone who supports Trump. And I think a lot of people that I would consider "MAGA" feel this way as well. 

Maybe this is something where I need to reconsider the terms used. I'm really just trying to articulate that the cult of MAGA is a smaller subset of Trump supporters. What makes it difficult is the mercurial nature of Trump because what really is the MAGA position? But that's a whole other discussion and derails even further.

(03-15-2024, 10:57 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: I'm not so sure I agree with the bold here.

What I find interesting about the whole MAGA thing is that it literally was just a slogan for Donald Trump's campaign, something that is not even remotely close to being unique to Trump. Yet, people ralllied behind the slogan and it somehow morphed into this derogatory term for Trump supporters. Trust me, I get that there are people who  have really extreme and racist views that are "MAGA", but what I don't understand is why those people are the ones who got to define the slogan when that's really all it was to begin with. 

For Obama it was "Yes We Can". Or "Change".

For Bush it was......whatever Bush's was.

For Hillary it was "I really suck at this!".

Joking aside, I feel like Trump just heavily marketed the slogan and made some hats and then people sort of lost their minds with the whole "MAGA" thing, when in my opinion it was just a slogan/rallying cry for his presidential efforts like every other campaign that came before and that will come after his days as a presidential candidate are over. 

At the same time..... I'm not sure we should continue this discussion here. Seems we've wandered into the territory of derailing the thread, but I do enjoy the discussion on this. 

What I would simply add here is that there are several researchers on cult behavior that would tell you there was a cult of personality around Obama, also around Bill Clinton as well as Ronald Reagan. The most popular politicians almost always have a cult of personality around them. Trump's is considered more extreme for a number of reasons. As you said, though, we should probably leave this discussion for the time being.