Why MAGA Cult Boomers Are Selfish

There is a particular kind of hypocrisy in American politics that we usually explain as selfishness.

Someone takes advantage of a government program, then votes to eliminate it.

Someone receives financial assistance, then complains about other people receiving financial assistance.

Someone benefits from a social program for years, then suddenly becomes deeply concerned about government spending when someone else qualifies for it.

We call these people hypocrites.

But I think something more interesting is happening.

Because hypocrisy describes the contradiction.

It doesn’t explain it.

The better question is this:

Why would someone enthusiastically accept something for themselves, then become angry when somebody else receives exactly the same thing?

I recently came across an almost perfect example.

A conservative baby boomer was talking about student loan forgiveness. He explained that he had student loan debt himself and that his debt had been forgiven under Joe Biden.

He accepted it.

He benefited from it.

But now that Donald Trump is president, his position is that other people shouldn’t have their student loan debt forgiven.

His forgiveness was apparently justified.

Yours isn’t.

At first glance, this makes absolutely no sense.

If student loan forgiveness is morally wrong, why did he accept it?

If people have an obligation to repay the money they borrowed, why didn’t that obligation apply to him?

If forgiving debt rewards irresponsible behavior, why wasn’t his forgiveness rewarding irresponsible behavior?

You can keep asking questions like this forever, but you’re unlikely to find a consistent ideological principle.

Because the principle might not actually be the point.

The hierarchy might be.

The Difference Between Having Something and Having More Than You

Psychologists have spent years studying something called narcissistic rivalry.

Researchers Mitja Back, Albrecht Küfner, Michael Dufner and their colleagues developed a model of grandiose narcissism that separates it into two different strategies.

The first is narcissistic admiration.

This is the part that attempts to elevate the self. Someone wants to be impressive, successful, admired or exceptional.

But the second strategy is much darker.

Narcissistic rivalry is about protecting a superior position by devaluing other people.

That distinction is incredibly important.

Imagine two people who both want to feel successful.

The first person thinks:

I want to succeed.

The second thinks:

I need to succeed relative to you.

Those sound similar.

Psychologically, they are very different.

The first person can watch you become successful without losing anything. Your success doesn’t change theirs.

The second person has a problem.

Because if their psychological reward comes from occupying a superior position, your success threatens the distance between you.

They don’t necessarily need to lose anything tangible for this to happen.

They can have exactly as much money, exactly as much property and exactly as many opportunities as they had yesterday.

But if you move closer to them, their relative position has changed.

And sometimes relative position is the thing they actually value.

What If the Point Isn’t Winning?

Imagine you are the only person in your neighborhood with a swimming pool.

Every summer, everyone sees your pool.

You have something they don’t.

Then every house on your street gets one.

You haven’t lost your swimming pool.

It’s exactly the same pool.

It works exactly the same way.

Its usefulness to you hasn’t changed at all.

But one thing has disappeared.

The distinction.

You no longer have something everyone else doesn’t.

For someone motivated primarily by enjoying the pool, that shouldn’t matter very much.

For someone motivated by the status attached to owning the pool, it can matter enormously.

That difference helps explain a lot more than swimming pools.

It helps explain why people can support a benefit when it elevates them and oppose that same benefit when it elevates everybody else.

Because sometimes what looks like a fight over resources is really a fight over relative status.

Zero Sum Politics

There is another psychological concept that helps explain this.

Zero sum thinking.

Zero sum thinking is the tendency to interpret one person’s gain as another person’s loss, even when the situation doesn’t actually require that tradeoff.

If you win, I lose.

If your life improves, my position declines.

If your group advances, my group must be surrendering something.

Researchers studying zero sum beliefs have found that these perceptions can emerge even when resources aren’t objectively zero sum.

And this is where politics becomes interesting.

Suppose the government forgives your neighbor’s student loan tomorrow.

What happens to the student loan that was forgiven for you five years ago?

Nothing.

It remains forgiven.

Suppose someone else gets access to healthcare.

Do you lose your doctor?

No.

Suppose a poor family receives food assistance.

Does food disappear from your refrigerator?

No.

Suppose another person gets an opportunity that helped you earlier in your life.

Does your previous success disappear?

Again, no.

Yet these policies can still generate enormous resentment.

Why?

Because under zero sum thinking, we don’t necessarily evaluate outcomes according to what we possess.

We evaluate them according to where w