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Ask Rich: Think MAGA members are unintelligent and uncouth? They’re not.

Ripped MAGA sign
Ask Rich: An ex-Trump supporter and MAGA activist answers your questions
Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

In this ongoing series, Logis, a former Donald Trump supporter and founder of Perfect Our Union, answers our readers' questions about leaving the MAGA movement. Send your questions to AskRich@thefulcrum.us.

I spent more than half a decade meeting or communicating daily with fellow MAGA Americans. Those myriad exchanges and conversations were often with highly intelligent, educated, successful and accomplished professionals.

Attorneys. Doctors. Financial executives. Small-business owners. Former public sector workers. Ivy League graduates.

I left MAGA in the summer of 2022. I’m working to build a new community for those who have also left MAGA, or are having doubts about support for Trump and Trump-endorsed elected officials and candidates. Given my activism, I got to know many members of the community well and I want to dispel the myth that most MAGA Americans are unintelligent, uneducated and uncouth.


I’m withholding the writer’s name, but here’s a comment (unedited) a recent “Ask Rich” column received:

I'm wondering if any MAGA CLAN members have an IQ above 20? I'm sure it's going to take awhile to find one. I'll be waiting for your answer. The over/under is 6 months.

Do I understand, to some extent, why MAGA Americans and those in opposition provoke “us versus them” reciprocal acrimony (even if most who believe such comments don’t publicly state it)? Yes, because all of us, whether we care to admit it or not, are capable of disdaining those with whom we disagree, those we deem as threats to ourselves and our democracy. Impugning anyone not on our side is opprobrium that, at times, is easy to succumb to.

Millions — perhaps, billions — of words have been written and spoken about Trump voters being uncouth and of low intelligence. To those who say such things, I guarantee that by doing so you continue pushing them away from you, and strengthening the already-strong bond between Trump and his supporters.

Though I was responsible for my actions and rhetoric, I can also acknowledge that I allowed myself to be influenced by those who were well-intended – but, as I came to determine, mistaken.

If those with impassioned pro-Trump and anti-Trump feelings converse long enough, they’ll discover (maybe uncomfortably, at first) that there are a number of issues where they concur. I know, I know — the horror!

And in those exchanges, I’ll venture to say, the antipathy derived from “educated vs. uneducated” preconceptions will dissipate. None of us have come to our political conclusions and outcomes wholly on our own; this is actually great news, for it confirms that we can change our minds, or at least try to understand each other’s sincerely held beliefs. Attempting to see another’s perspective does not mean accepting it as correct; each of us is an amalgam of experiences, upbringings and a variety of inculcations. One doesn’t have to change one’s mind to reasonably compromise.

Our political climate would be made less antagonistic and divisive by de-stigmatizing the supposed “weakness” of changing our minds about issues, policies, candidates, etc. Reconsidering our previously held beliefs, or even just admitting a mistake, doesn’t indicate a lack of intelligence or good character; it reflects maturation and evolution. In fact, it takes a lot of mature thinking to question statements we hear ad infinitum rather than just accepting them as fact.

Progress in our history — the continued perfection of our Union — would have been impossible without the majority of Americans realizing that a modernization of some of the laws and opinions of yesteryear was mandatory.

What a smart approach, don’t you think?

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Angelica Salas has long been a leading advocate for immigrant rights in Los Angeles. Since becoming Executive Director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) in 1999, she has transformed the organization into one of the most powerful immigrant-led advocacy groups in the country. Her leadership has redefined what grassroots organizing can look like, mobilizing communities around issues ranging from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to voter outreach and legal services.

Salas’s journey into activism is deeply personal. Born in Durango, Mexico, she arrived in the United States at the age of five, undocumented, to reunite with her parents who had migrated for work. Growing up in Pasadena, California, her family lived in the shadows of deportation until they were able to legalize their status. In 2008, Salas became a U.S. citizen, adding a powerful chapter to a story she shares with many of the people CHIRLA serves. Her own experience navigating the U.S. immigration system informs her commitment to building dignity, not dependency, in the immigrant rights movement. After graduating from Occidental College with a degree in history and sociology, Salas joined CHIRLA in 1995 and became its executive director just four years later.

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My colleague, Meghan Monroe, a former teacher and trainer in the Dignity Index, went out to lunch with a friend on the 4th of July. Her friend was late and Meghan found herself waiting outside the restaurant where, to her surprise, a protest march approached. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t immediately clear what the protest was about. There were families and children marching—some flags, and some signs about America being free.

One group of children caught Meghan’s eye as they tugged at their mother while marching down the street. The mom paused and crouched down to speak to the children. Somehow, Meghan could read the situation and realized that the mom was explaining to the children about America—about what it is, about all the different people who make up America, about freedom, about dignity.

“I could just tell that the Mom wanted her children to understand something important, something big. I couldn’t tell anything about her politics. I could just tell that she wanted her children to understand what America can be. I could tell she wanted dignity for her children and for people in this country. It was beautiful.”

As Meghan told me this story, I realized something: that Mom at the protest is a role model for me. The 4th may be over now, but the need to explain to each other what we want for ourselves and our country isn’t.

My wife, Linda, and I celebrated America at the wedding of my godson, Alexander, and his new wife, Hannah. They want America to be a place of love. Dozens of my cousins, siblings, and children celebrated America on Cape Cod.

For them and our extended family, America is a place where families create an enduring link from one generation to the next despite loss and pain.

Thousands of Americans in central Texas confronted the most unimaginable horrors on July 4th. For them, I hope and pray America is a place where we hold on to each other in the face of unbearable pain and inexplicable loss.

Yes. It’s complicated. There were celebrations of all kinds on July 4th—celebrations of gratitude to our military, celebrations of gratitude for nature and her blessings, and sadly, celebrations of hatred too. There are a million more examples of our hopes and fears and visions, and they’re not all happy.

I bet that’s one of the lessons that mom was explaining to her children. I imagine her saying, “America is a place where everyone matters equally. No one’s dignity matters more than anyone else’s. Sometimes we get it wrong. But in our country, we always keep trying and we never give up.”

For the next 12 months as we lead up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’re going to be hearing a lot about what we want America to be. But maybe the more important question is what we the people are willing to do to fulfill our vision of what we can be. The answer to that question is hiding in plain sight and is as old as the country itself: join with others and do your part, and no part is too small to matter.

At our best, our country is a country of people who serve one another. Some may say that’s out of fashion, but not me. Someone is waiting for each of us—to talk, to share, to join, to care, to lead, to love. And in our time, the superpower we need is the capacity to treat each other with dignity, even when we disagree. Differences of opinion aren’t the problem; in fact, they’re the solution. As we love to say, “There’s no America without democracy and there’s no democracy without healthy debate and there’s no healthy debate without dignity.”

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Henry Bolingbroke contends that party spirit inspires “Animosity and breeds Rancor.” Talking of his countrymen, he wrote, “We likewise derive, not our Privileges (for they were always ours) but a more full and explicit Declaration”; Whigs and Tories can unite on this alone. That Declaration of Ours was penned by Thomas Jefferson when his colonists repelled the redcoats at the Siege of Charleston and when Washington’s troops were awaiting battle in Manhattan. The American Declaration set out those principles, which united the diverse colonies. And the party system, as Bolingbroke said, brought animosity and weakened the Union. Critics disputed these claims. William Warburton attacked Bolingbroke as an evil-speaker with “dog-eloquence”—claimed his calls for party reform were an aristocratic conspiracy to cement the power of elites. An anonymous critic argued that the government is a union of unrelated people where laws supplant the natural bonds between families. Then, the government of the United States would not exist, or would not exist long.

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PART TWO

PRINCIPLE #4: KEEP SHOWING UP. It has been said that 80 percent of success in life is showing up. For social entrepreneurs, this means continuing to stay engaged without dabbling or parachuting. Like a child’s toy windup truck that moves forward until it hits an obstacle and then backs off and finds another way forward, social entrepreneurs should be persistent—and adept at finding work-arounds. They must be willing to commit for the long term. I found that this was particularly important when working with Iranians, who tend to view the world in terms of centuries and millennia.

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