Adam Serwer

You are my neighbor.

I will defend you.

And that is a level of commitment to social cohesion that I have yet to see from anybody in the entire MAGA coalition who all seem to be about stating these things, not so much as a matter of like principles they wanna see lived in the world, but as a question of like,

brand building and political identity, which is, I think, what J.D.

Vance is doing.

We're going to get masked men to shoot people dead in the street, and that's going to lead to social cohesion.

No, look, I mean, what they are doing is they are trying to come up with what sounds like a morally justifiable argument for violence against undesirables, people they want to leave the United States, people they want to force out of the United States by means of terror, whether or not they're actually citizens.

That's so masculine.

There's nothing like screaming I'm so hardcore while your voice rises an octave.

It's amazing.

Yeah, look, you know, I think part of the cognitive dissonance here is that, you know, here's Stephen Miller screaming about how hardcore he is.

But the people who are dying in defense of their ideals are people like Rene Goode,

And Alex Pretty.

They're the ones who have proven to be tough, who have proven to be brave, who have been willing to defend, you know, the redeeming ideals of Western civilization, like due process, like equal protection under the law.

like individual liberty, those are the things that are being defended by the people on the ground in Minnesota.

They are not and cannot be defended by men with masks and guns who have, quote unquote, total immunity to exact violence on a civilian population.

It's just not possible.

The person who is staring down a gun

with empty hands is always braver than the person with the mask and the gun.

But what has happened is that MAGA has adopted this juvenile definition of masculinity where it's simply a question of dominance.