MAGA |
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Created: 2024-01-05
MAGA is the zero-sum concept in political form. What’s good for immigrants is bad for the American-born. What’s good for Black people is bad for whites. Trade deals are exploitation. Our NATO allies are out to screw us. Every day for Trump is an Us/Them dominance game.
Zero-sum thinking is surging on the left as well. A generation of college students has been raised on the dogma that life is a contest between groups — oppressor versus oppressed, colonizers versus colonized.
Vladimir Putin doesn’t seek to recapture Russian greatness by leading a nation that cures cancer or produces technological innovations; he seeks glory by conquering Ukraine: You lose, I win. Xi Jinping no longer talks of the U.S. and China as friendly competitors; he describes a world in which we are locked in a zero-sum war for supremacy: He wins, we lose. As my colleague Thomas Friedman has noted recently, Hamas could have turned Gaza into Dubai — a land of capitalism, growth and opportunity. But Hamas rejects the whole ethos of modern capitalism for a more primitive ethos: Jews die, we dominate
--David Brooks
''2024-01-05 10:52''