Among the MAGA Avant-Garde
26th January 2025
That weekend, the centre of Washington was largely deserted, thanks to an elaborate “security bubble” around the White House and the Capitol. Other areas also seemed empty, possibly because the more enthusiastic Democrat voters decided that the best way to protest Trump’s inauguration was to leave town and avoid the incoming crowds. On Saturday night much of the city seemed to have been partly abandoned to visitors in bright-red “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” baseball caps, most of whom aimed to get roaring drunk.
Undercover Trump supporters in wealthy liberal areas like Georgetown decided that it was safe to come out of the closet. They have long signalled their unacceptable views by smoking certain brands of cigarette, or using nicotine pouches. But that night, you could see chubby young Republican men in glasses walking around the streets in MAGA caps, either in small groups or (occasionally) with dates. Many had just left victory parties, and were wearing evening dress. They tried their best to ingratiate themselves with their fellow Trump supporters from out of town, who might have voted for the same presidential candidate, but did not seem to be on the same team.
MAGA-cap men who didn’t live in or near Georgetown, or work in politics or media, or ostentatiously read books, adhered to a code of masculinity that had been established by 1980s action films, and professional wrestling of the Hulk Hogan era. By contrast, those who aspired to be their overlords in the Republican Party inclined towards a kind of nostalgic Anglophilia with literary pretensions. The relatively few women who could be seen in Georgetown that night were evidently more interested in the men who weren’t trying to impress them by quoting G. K. Chesterton.
The Crustian condescension just drips–that’s an awfully long nose to look down on the part of a fashionable minority from the Turd World.