WOW! This piece is so over the top excellent, well articulated, and spot on! Worth posting again! And deepest gratitude to Tony Pentimalli and to every courageous truth-teller, wisdom-keeper, writer and activist who empowers us to recognize, see, absorb, and consciously respond to the larger pictures of what is impacting us all during these deeply traumatic times. — Molly
Leased Power: Why MAGA Never
Believed Anything at All
America First was never a governing principle. It was a dominance signal. Once you see that, MAGA’s contradictions stop looking confusing and start looking inevitable.
The mistake many observers continue to make is assuming that MAGA ever had a coherent belief system. It didn’t. What looks like ideological contradiction is something simpler and more dangerous: a movement organized around loyalty to power rather than principle. Its only consistent values are dominance, control, and the satisfaction of seeing others put in their place, at home and abroad. Everything else-policy, rhetoric, even law-bends around that core.
That misunderstanding has led many people to wait for a reckoning that is never coming. Belief systems break when they contradict themselves. MAGA does not break, because it was never built around beliefs. It was built around alignment with whoever looks strongest in the moment.
That is why there was no internal reckoning when chants about ending wars gave way to open military escalation abroad. You could see this clearly in early this month, when the United States crossed a line that no amount of branding could hide. After years of “no new wars” rhetoric and public rejection of regime change, the administration authorized decisive force in Venezuela and openly asserted control over what came next. The details mattered less than the reaction. There was no pause, no moral hesitation, no debate worth the name. The applause came easily. The justification shifted instantly. Because the chant was never about peace. It was about dominance.
For a movement long defined by opposition to foreign entanglements, that silence was not a contradiction. It was confirmation. “America First” was never a governing philosophy. It was a statement of rank. It announced who was on top and who existed to be pressured, punished, or pushed aside.
Once dominance becomes the central value, the rest follows with grim clarity. Foreign aid becomes weakness. Alliances become burdens. Sovereignty becomes conditional, so long as it belongs to someone else. Peace is praised when it flatters strength and discarded when force offers a stronger emotional payoff. What looks incoherent from the outside feels consistent on the inside, because the measure is not principle, but posture.
This posture is not confined to one place. The administration has openly discussed offering lump-sum payments to residents of Greenland as part of an effort to draw the autonomous Danish territory closer to the United States, citing security, resources, and strategic advantage. Greenlandic and Danish officials have rejected the idea outright. But the significance lies less in feasibility than in expression. Territorial acquisition is no longer taboo. It is said out loud, tested, normalized.
The same instinct appears wherever leverage can be applied. As protests unfold in Iran, the administration says it is watching closely, issuing threats that have little to do with concern for the Iranian people and much to do with pressure and energy interests. Human rights language surfaces when useful and vanishes when it does not. Oil remains the constant.
At the same time, rhetoric about drug cartels has expanded beyond cooperation into open saber rattling. Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, and Panama are now routinely discussed as potential targets of intervention, control, or punishment. Sovereignty is treated as an inconvenience. Exploitation is framed as security. Different pretexts, same impulse.
This is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy requires a standard someone knows they are violating. What MAGA shows instead is identity submission. The movement’s sense of self is not anchored internally or tied to consistent values. It is shaped from the outside, by power. When power shifts its language or targets, followers do not struggle with the change. They adjust.
The emotional reward stays the same. Whether the signal is withdrawal or escalation, restraint or aggression, the feeling does not change. Permission to dominate. Permission to expel. Permission to dehumanize without guilt. Permission to cheer cruelty so long as it is framed as strength. The applause does not depend on outcomes, only on the sense that power is being used decisively and without apology.
This pattern is not accidental. It is reinforced by elites who know better and proceed anyway. Party leaders back escalation to stay relevant. Media figures dress domination up as realism. Donors and institutions treat authoritarian behavior as a manageable risk as long as markets remain calm. What looks like grassroots hunger for strength is cultivated from above, rewarded with access, and protected from consequence.
The cost is not abstract. Civilians become collateral when they threaten the story power needs to preserve. Renee Good is a clear example. Rather than confront the authority and violence that shattered her life, MAGA figures and this administration chose to vilify her, distort her words, and turn her into a target. Not because she was dangerous, but because acknowledging her humanity would have disrupted the narrative. It was easier to smear a civilian than to admit that state power had done harm. In a system organized around dominance, truth becomes a liability and ordinary people are sacrificed to maintain control.
What is often missed is that the damage does not stop with the obvious targets. Authoritarian dominance destabilizes everything it touches. Markets lose reliability. Workers lose leverage. Healthcare becomes conditional. Retirement security turns into a bargaining chip. Education is treated with suspicion. Legal consistency erodes until even those who believed themselves insulated feel the ground shift beneath them. There are no permanent spectators in a system that treats power as its only value.
This is what separates the current moment from earlier periods of American cynicism or opportunism. This is not simply a party contradicting itself or leaders manipulating language. It is a movement that has abandoned the idea that politics should rest on shared standards at all, following a familiar authoritarian pattern in which loyalty replaces belief and power replaces truth.
Democracy cannot survive under those conditions. Democratic systems depend on citizens who hold beliefs, argue from values, and can be persuaded, restrained, or corrected. When identity is handed entirely to power, elections become rituals. Law becomes conditional. Violence becomes acceptable the moment it is authorized from above. Democracy does not fail because people disagree. It fails because disagreement disappears.
If there is never going to be a gotcha moment-no revelation, no contradiction, no final escalation that shocks this movement into clarity-then waiting for one is not strategy. It is denial. MAGA is not confused. It is not conflicted. It is not secretly uneasy with what it supports. There is nothing to wake up from. This alignment is the point.
If no contradiction will break the spell, then waiting for one becomes its own form of surrender. The task is no longer persuasion as we once understood it. It is no longer exposure, or hoping escalation finally feels like too much. What remains is refusal. Refusal to normalize. Refusal to comply quietly. Refusal to treat authoritarian behavior as just another opinion to be debated into exhaustion. Democracies are not preserved by convincing those who reject them. They are preserved by those who still believe in them, deciding that defense is no longer optional.
The chant will keep changing. The targets will keep shifting. The applause will remain steady. Not because minds are being persuaded, but because persuasion is no longer part of the arrangement.
*Tony Pentimalli is a political analyst and commentator fighting for democracy, economic justice, and social equity. Follow him for sharp analysis and hard-hitting critiques on Facebook and BlueSky
@tonywriteshere.bsky.social
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