MAGA and Maturity

JD Vance vs the Pope was a revealing moment

Recently, J.D. Vance and the soon-to-be pope had a direct disagreement that may reveal a great deal about the emotional maturity of the MAGA movement.

To me, maturity tracks with the natural growth of babies into kids into adults, and never really ends, if people are open to it. For most people, our first intimate contacts as babies are with our mother and father, We then embrace others we come into daily contact with, especially if they treat us reasonably kindly — our siblings, our pets.

As we grow in experience, our circle expands to include other relatives, friends, teachers, and other community members. If the maturing process is allowed to continue, we bring into our awareness and appreciation those who are in our community who are different from us in terms of outlook, background, appearance, customs and traditions. It is common to initially dismiss the unfamiliar ways of others as odd or quaint, until we gain respect for those who live differently from us. Our gaze then begins to embrace a sense of yet other cultures, other regions, states, countries, and if we continue to mature, through experience and education, we increasingly recognize the humanity of all.

J.D. Vance, a Catholic since 2019, attempted to represent his religion, party, and country, when he spoke on Jan 29 of “a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.”

Is that really a “Christian concept”? It seems a description of how a human being from any background learns to grow up. But once mature, do people really “prioritize” and mete out their appreciation and love for others in a prescribed order based on proximity?

Cardinal Prevost, soon to become Pope Leo XIV, did not care for Vance’s priorities. His response to Vance’s comments was simply “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

Pope Leo was asking people to aim for full maturity, to have love and respect for all people, rather than to budget whether they’re willing to feel sympathy for people in the order J.D. Vance laid out. Vance’s prescription is simply the order in which children grow to perceive their world as they develop emotionally and gain experience in the world.

Vance’s statement echoes the persona of Trump and his Republicans followers. They seem to have matured to the level of appreciating family, neighbors, community, and citizens (though they indulge in picking and choosing which ones they care for), but have rejected the care and effort it takes to move to the next step and embrace the value of those who are unlike them.

Ukrainian president Zelenskyy criticized Vance at the White House for having strong critical opinions about Ukraine despite never having visited the place. Some observers have noted that Vance is typically satisfied to view countries like Ukraine online, via Google Earth and reports from his favorite news sources. He actually suggested his own online contact was better than a real visit, telling Zelenskyy that visiting Ukraine in person would amount to a “propaganda tour.” Presuming that one cannot exercise critical thinking when experiencing a place in real life suggests a strange perspective on propaganda vs critical thinking. Could he not trust himself to believe what he saw, or to evaluate what he was told? Does he believe that his followers need not believe what they see, nor think critically? Quite possibly he lives in a bubble that needs to see the world in that way.

When I co-led walking and music tours of Scotland, I always tried to interpret Scottish culture for Americans, many of whom presumed that things were more or less the same there as at home, because English is spoken in both places. But there were many instances of Americans making jokes about or being dismissive of various traditions, customs, or even words routinely used by Scots. It is common for anyone in a new culture to come across unfamiliar ways of doing things, or strange words to describe common items or services. But I noticed that some travelers seemed to enjoy belittling foreign ways, making standing jokes that sometimes made me wonder about their attitudes. Traveling often expands perspective, but perhaps only if you’re open to gaining that extra bit of perspective, or perhaps we could call it maturity, regarding people who are not like us.

Trump is a coarse example of someone who can’t accept other people’s ways without belittling them, often relentlessly, mercilessly, and without remorse (unless they have proven their value by making a lot of money, of course). Many parents will recognize this behavior from dealing with adolescents who have something to hide and are afraid of being embarrassed. We might cut some slack for kids, but such behavior in a grown man with huge responsibilities for others is much harder to condone.

What’s the attraction in refusing to value strangers? Perhaps it’s just a relief not to have to do what you’re “supposed to,” not to have to extend yourself to be thoughtful of others, empathetic, sympathetic, not to expend the energy to suppress primal urges in order to be fair and rational toward others. It can be tiring for some to reserve energy for repairing misunderstandings. They may regard it weak or exhausting to maintain humility.

Is MAGA appealing because it gives people permission to be like children, to follow their leader, stay within their bubble, see and hear only those with whom they’re comfortable, to blame and even hate those who are different or who make them feel uncomfortable — instead of making the effort to learn new things, accept past mistakes or biases, cut new people some slack, or even try to understand them? Does MAGA give people the permission to avoid accountability, responsibility, guilt?

I’ll add a caveat here that I know plenty of immature folks who are not MAGA followers and who find lots of ways to stay in their own bubble and even strive to avoid feeling accountability or guilt! But MAGA seems to celebrate these weaknesses as if they are strengths, values, or as if refusing to understand people and dehumanizing them is somehow “badass.”

When Elon Musk said he wanted to “legalize comedy” again, he was talking about not having to put the effort in to avoid saying offensive things, not having to fear criticism. When he claimed “you can’t make fun of anything” anymore, he was basically saying he was tired of (or bored with) being an adult who has to keep other people’s needs or sensitivities in mind. In fact, he opined famously that "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy." Indeed, Musk has often acted and spoken like an adolescent. It’s probably no accident he hires young men without enough experience to criticize him. He is the embodiment of childlike impulse. In one interview, he even declared, “I am become meme. There’s living the dream. And there’s living the meme.” It is said that Musk views most people as NPCs — Non Player Characters, the characters in a video game that are only there to further the story about the hero (himself).

To behave and believe in a childlike behavior against migrants, strangers, the poor, while claiming this is a Christian thing to do, as J.D. Vance did in his dispute with the Pope, requires redefining Christian values to suit the occasion. The cardinal/soon-to-be pope wouldn’t let Vance get away with this, much the way members of Congress wouldn’t let Kristi Noem get away with redefining the Constitutional right to “habeus corpus” to mean the opposite of what it actually means, without correcting her publicly in a hearing.

I once was asked to play music at the opening of a photography exhibition about life in Scotland, in this case, Jewish life in particular, and the British Consul was invited to speak. This was during the term of Boris Johnson as prime minister. Everyone there was very interested in the exhibition and about Scotland, and yet this “diplomat” let fly her amazement at having just visited the New Hampshire Highland Games, feeling free to make fun of how many people there actually cared about Scotland. She clearly lived in a bubble where belittling Scotland was routine, and despite being a diplomat, had no ability to read and respect the room. She apparently couldn’t see anything wrong with making fun of Scotland in front of people who clearly cared about Scotland and its culture. We expect diplomats to be the most mature people in the room, able to understand complex situations and find the best peaceful way through them. This British consul didn’t seem to rise to that level of maturity.

J.D. Vance’s clueless claim that Christian values somehow require a budgeting of sympathy and love according to their proximity was unabashedly slapped down by the cardinal soon to become Pope Leo XIV. It belied an emotional immaturity that the pope had no time for.

It’s not that you can’t find a basis in Christianity for Vance’s ideas, but Christianity, like all religions, human institutions, governments, and human beings, has matured over the centuries. Going back to “original” documents of the religion, as evangelicals like to think they do, can yield some immature concepts. But the papacy, along with many Christian sects, has had a long time, and the input of a thousand brilliant minds, to make smoother the hard edges, make progress, gain maturity about how to get along with others in the world. There is no end point, and there are ups and downs, but as people and organizations mature, there is perhaps a tendency toward less raw impulse and more of what we might call “civilization” in the mix. Viewed in this light, the MAGA moment seems like an adolescent rebellion against maturity.

Vance’s six years as a Catholic might not have allowed him to keep up with, or even learn about, 2000 years of religious development. His disingenuous hierarchy for which people are worth caring about were more the words of a kid or young adult, than of a mature leader.

The consequences of immature leaders giving followers permission to not bother growing up are yet to be understood, but as parents of difficult children can tell us, the road ahead is likely to be a rough one.