Their claim is that the country has been ruined by the left, and they want to restore it to its former glory. It requires ignoring the fact that the country has taken a hard right shift since the time they are idealizing.

As for the cognitive dissonance, Stephen Colbert (during The Colbert Report) played around with this self-contradiction. His book is titled "America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't"

Edit: autocorrect

Welcome to the paradoxical nature of fascism the greatest and most powerful country on earth is at risk from a secret cabal of highly intelligent, highly organized criminals led by the dementia riddled criminal mastermind Joe Biden crime family who's actually being being puppeted by AOC and is a mouthpiece for Obama, and who are sending lazy, job stealing, taxpayer benefit robbing Mexicans to bring hard core drugs like marijuana and fentanyl across the wide open red carpeted border so that they can vote for democrats in elections that are also rigged in favor of democrats because that...

So yeah you get the point, fascists don't make any sense to anyone who stops and thinks for more than a minute. Their logic is non-existent, they parrot whatever talking point they hear on their propaganda network of choice is convenient.

Doublethink is a core feature of fascism.

Not only is cognitive dissonance not a problem, they take pride in believing two mutually exclusive things at the same time. It's proof to how willing they are to align themselves with the party.

One of the funny things about the whole MAGA thing is that they’re clamoring for a return to something like the 50s or 60s… but only the shitty parts. These idiots seem to be under the impression that everything will be better once we re-implement institutionalized racism and sexism, but ignore the fact that the “better times” they want to bring back ALSO included like a 90% tax rate for the wealthy, and pensions for, like, literally everyone (or more accurately, every white male). But of course, that’s communist talk, and we can’t have that!

This one is easy to explain away... If you're ranking countries on greatness, then you put America at the top. But then unfortunate things happen, like minority presidents and gay marriage and solar panels, so that makes America not quite as great, but still far better than everyone else. But if we could roll back the clock, maybe to some time before women's suffrage and the civil rights movement, that would make America return to the extra high standard that it's capable of achieving.

The way I've always interpreted it is far more abstract, and probably far more kind, than most people.

It doesn't take a genius to see that there's some fucked up shit happening not only in the world, but in the USA. Most people realize and accept this to differing degrees. Most people will disagree on the specifics of what, even if they might have significant overlap with others.

One thing also almost universally believed is that "things didn't suck so much when I was younger". The reality is that it's a combination of nostalgia, the fact that you were less aware of everything when you were younger, and you had less to worry about when you were younger. But most people can't shake the feeling that things were better when (insert something from earlier in their life).

To me, MAGA preys on that nostalgia for simpler times. It doesn't define what was so great before, when it was so great, or what specifically has changed. Only that something has changed to diminish the greatness, and we have to change it back.

People may not like me saying this, but it has a lot of parallels to Obama's campaign slogan, change. It doesn't define what's wrong, it doesn't define what needs to change, but again it taps into that generally shared concept that things would just be better if something changed. People fill in the blanks themselves with whatever allows them to connect with the concept. The main difference is that "change" as a slogan is not tied to the concept of "going back" to make things better, leaving conceptual room for forward movement.

Ultimately the individual gives both sayings meaning and emotional content themselves, even if they may not be able to explicitly parse it back out to specifics.

Your observation is astute. I kinda want to make red hats that just say COGNITIVE DISSONANCE on them

Casting themselves as victims is a critical part of the movement. What makes me sad is that many of them are victims, but of their own leaders. Progressive policies would actually make life better for the majority of them.

"America was great once... before the libruls took it over! Things were so much better when I was young... not like this weird shit now around me... it's not ME who's grown older...! ...it is YOU who've gone weird! Why should I change! I refuse to change! That would require... making an effort! I refuse to change! Damn libruls! Damn libruuuuulssss...!!!"

I mean... It's not great. But the reasons the MAGA people think it's not great and the actual reason it isn't great are mutually exclusive.

Well if you think about the wording of it, then yes.

But fortunately for the far right, MAGA people aren't burdened with such troubles.

Instead they get to think about how great it would be without blacks or Hispanics or Jews or women's rights or gays or trans people or any of the myriad of other things whose mere existence sends them into a purple faced rage on a daily basis. And if you fit into one of those categories, then you just think "well surely they don't mean me, I'm one of the good ones" while ignoring the last century of evidence until it's way too late.

You are literally nine or ten years late.

They want America to be more racist, sexist, and or transphobic

I think MAGA is an unspoken admission that there are a lot of easily swayed people in this country that have been failed by the existing system.

Even if deep down they know it is all BS they can't allow themselves to acknowledge it because that would mean having to face the reality that they don't have much of a future to look forward to for various reasons.

A lot of people can't take that mentally and keep going day to day, so they just go along with the crazy because it seems easier to go with the delusion.

Are you really trying to make sense of cultish gibberish?

(Paraphrasing an old comment from the Bad Site)

"Make America Great" would be a fine, if bland slogan. Everybody wants that. It's not controversial, but also not distinctive in any way.

"Make America Greater than Ever" would be better. The implication being that we can do better, and be better. But they intentionally went with something else.

It seems to me, and as you have identified, that the "Again" is the key part of the phrase that drives the whole narrative. Here's the kicker: by nearly every objective measure, the country is safer, richer, more equal, and has a better overall quality of life today than at any point in history[1]. The only thing that has significantly declined over the last 40-50 years is "the percentage of total societal influence held by straight white men."

"Again" is the dog-whistle of misogyny, racism, and homophobia, wrapped up in the plausible deniability of nostalgia for an objectively worse time.

[1] There may be some room for disagreements here, primarily because of the first Trump administration and the pandemic years causing some backsliding, but this was especially true in 2016 when the slogan first really appeared, which is when it should be judged.

It's a dog whistle for "Make slavery legal again" and "Woman into the kitchen"

Yes... that's exactly what it means. America is in bad shape domestically and internationally.

I thought MAGA was coined when he was demonizing immigrants and campaigning on building a wall and making Mexico pay for it.

It was a racists dog whistle from the very beginning. It meant expelling the ~~Jews~~ Mexicans to make America White again. After 8 years of a Black president.

Did people really miss this? This was like... the main focus of his campaign.

Yup. It was funny how during the 2020 election cycle they briefly had to change all their merch to say "keep America great" despite continuing to use the MAGA slogan throughout most of Trump's administration. By their logic, America was only "great" during the first part of 2020, which is.... questionable, to say the least, since almost nothing was "great" during that time.

America was pretty great before trump came along and ruined it.

Without expressing an opinion on it: some people believe that it is meant to say that America was greater during times when women and minorities were more oppressed than they are now.

My own interpretation at least in 2016 was always that it was meant to say that Obama was a weak leader in terms of foreign policy and that Trump would restore America's place in the world to be stronger. This may have been my interpretation because I am not from the US and so mainly care about it because of its foreign, not domestic, policy.

Great for whom? Billionaires? Convicted felons? Or what?

It also means that it once was great but it also completely abdicates any responsibility for defining when that great period was in our timeline?

Was it great in the 50s when institutional racism was the law and a black girl going to college was justification for rolling out the national guard?

Was it great in the 70s when we were fighting in Vietnam for literally no reason?

Like what time period are they talking about?

Maybe they mean in the late 40s when we were rolling off the high of winning world war II? And the great majority of men had died to the point where wage inflation made even moderately capable men comparatively wealthy to today's standard?

Is make America great again really just a code to try to start and win world war III so that 20% of all males in America would die and therefore the surviving 80% would have more luxuries given to them by default?