Don’t Succumb to MAGA Fatalism

We need to see things for what they are. When a president seeks to undo an election by spreading conspiracy theories and inciting a violent assault on the Capitol, when his every transgression deepens the devotion of his followers, when his party rallies behind him and becomes a battering ram against reality—America is in quite a bind.

Many Americans are, rightly, gravely concerned about the threat posed to our nation by the MAGA movement, which started with Donald Trump but has now engulfed almost the entire Republican Party. In recent days, I have heard from men and women whose level of alarm is rising fast.

“Each morally or legally wrong act only seems to give Trump’s soldiers more energy and cohesion,” I was told by a clinical psychologist who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “Their general can do whatever he wants now, and they will take up arms if he tells