What Exactly Do MAGAs Love, Anyway?
(Spoiler: It Isn't truly God or Country)
As someone who is regularly branded a hateful leftist by self-identified God and Country MAGA Americans, I’ve been thinking a lot about what these people actually love.
MAGAs love God.
Well, not God, per se. They love God with caveats and asterisks, with qualifiers and conditions.
Not the “love your neighbor,” “feed the hungry,” “care for the sick,” “don’t live by the sword,” God of the New Testament.
And not the “do not kill”, “do not lie,” “do not worship false images” God of the Old Testament either, for that matter.
Not the God who warned of the dangers of wealth or the adoration of money or the corruption of power.
They certainly don’t love the God who spent his life teaching his followers how to live an empathy-centered existence that sees every other human being as bearing the image of their Creator and worthy of respect and protection.
They don’t love the God who said that the way they treat the vulnerable, oppressed, and disregarded was the way they treat him.
And they don’t love God revealed through any other religion outside of the most narrow, rigid, and fundamentalist version of Bible Belt Evangelical Christianity. Those other Gods and the people who find meaning in them merit only contempt and eradication.
MAGA Americans do love the Bible…. well, not reading it or studying it or learning its history or understanding its cultural context, or doing much of what it says—but it makes a great hammer with which you can beat the hell out of your neighbor while feeling righteous in the process.
The God MAGA Americans do seem to love is the vengeful, joyless, avatar of a deity they can fashion in their own bloodthirsty, morally inverted, miserable, and malicious image; one who justifies their cruelty and consents to their hatred.
They love a God who is white, straight, American, and Republican. Period.
And MAGAs also love America.
Well, not all of America.
I mean, not its Constitution or its Bill of Rights (outside of the 2nd Amendment, of course)—but not the rest of the stuff about the inherent worth of every human being or about each person’s inalienable rights or about the ability of each human being to live freely and fully.
Not the “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” America etched beneath the feet of Lady Liberty.
They don’t love America’s freedoms of speech and expression, at least not for anyone to the Left of them.
They don’t love due process or habeas corpus or body autonomy or voting rights or marriage equality.
MAGAs don’t love immigrants in America—or Blue voters or people with brown skin or Muslims or queer people or disabled people, or those in poverty or hunger or illness.
They don’t love tens of millions of people who call this place home or who wish to, branding them as threats and enemies and monsters because their pastors and politicians tell them to.
MAGA Americans love a white Christian nationalistic America; a flag-waving, bottle rocket-flying, chest-pumping gated community where diversity, critical thinking, Science, and compassion will find no welcome.
And that is the irony here.
It turns out that the God and Country Americans who accuse people like me of being hateful have very little love for the wide, sprawling, disparate community of human beings whose theology and politics do not align completely with their own.
They love their vulgar, amoral messiah of misery through whom they can vicariously injure and erase others.
They love the whitewashed nostalgia of a past iteration of this nation whose greatness was defined by the number of people it excluded.
They love the bullies and braggarts who mock the vulnerable and ridicule the outcasts.
They love the brimstone-breathing preachers who spew the Jesus-less culture war sermons that now sound like God to them.
They love the network that daily rots their brains with an unceasing feed of porn, prejudice, paranoia, and propaganda that allows them to condemn three-quarters of this nation as evil and inhuman.
As a hateful Leftist, I can readily tell you who and what I love, and that expansive list includes the very people who despise and condemn me. I love people to the Left and to the Right of me. I love them enough to fight for education and healthcare and personal liberties for them as much as for me. I love this country enough to believe that no one here should have fewer rights than I do.
I wish MAGA Americans had the same love.
I read your article, then went to shop at the local grocery store. In the produce was a high school kid stocking carrots, proudly sporting a wild curly mullet hairdo and earrings. (Took me right back to 1980’s high school!) An elderly lady was asking the stocker to go find the specific carrots she was seeking. This woman then turned to me with an exasperated look and said “I don’t know if the stocker was a boy, girl or what the heck IT was!” I put on my brightest smile and calmly said “How about a fellow human?” She looked confused and I repeated “The stocker was a fellow human being. Like you and me.” She stared, then pushed her cart away.
A little victory in basic reminders of decency. Thanks John for always nudging our better angels!”
I put your description of the 'deity' MAGAs worship ("The God MAGA Americans do seem to love is the vengeful, joyless, ...") into Copilot, and it said this,
"That description doesn’t point to a specific deity from any traditional pantheon—it’s more of a distorted reflection of divinity shaped by human projection. It reads like a critique of how people can twist the idea of a god into a mirror of their own worst traits: vengeance, cruelty, hatred.
This kind of portrayal often appears in:
🔥 Literature and Philosophy
- William Blake’s “Nobodaddy”: A satirical figure representing a tyrannical, joyless god created by oppressive religion.
- Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity: Where he argued that some believers worship a god that reflects their resentment and moral inversion.
- George Orwell’s dystopias: Where authority is deified in grotesque, violent ways.
🕊️ Theological Commentary
- Some theologians warn against creating a “god in our own image”—especially one that sanctifies hatred. This is a recurring theme in critiques of religious extremism, where divine authority is used to justify violence.
🧙♂️ Fictional Deities
- In fantasy or horror genres, gods like Moloch, Ares (in some interpretations), or Lovecraftian entities are portrayed as bloodthirsty or indifferent to human suffering.
- In video games or comics, gods like Kratos (as a god) or Darkseid embody vengeance and malice.
So rather than describing a real deity, this seems to be a warning against idolatry of the worst kind—where people fashion a god that validates their own cruelty. It’s not theology; it’s psychology."
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