Trump, Energy and MAGA Brain

Drilling down on a right-wing delusion

One key to understanding many of the destructive policies coming down the pike is to realize that Donald Trump suffers from what I’ve been calling MAGA brain, although it actually predates Trump. I’d define it as the belief that effective governance comes from being harsh and unfeeling, putting aside namby-pamby, dare I say woke, concerns about stuff like protecting the environment or respecting civil liberties.

You can see MAGA brain at work on multiple fronts, but the immediate issue is Trump’s energy policy, which may ultimately be even more destructive than his tariff policy or his immigration policy.

In his inaugural address Trump declared a national energy emergency, even though we don’t have any such emergency. In fact, America’s energy position is the strongest it has been since Dwight Eisenhower was president. Seriously.

But if you suffer from MAGA brain you more or less have to believe that we’re in an energy crisis, just as you have to believe that our cities are being ravaged by migrant crime. MAGA says it must be so, so what are you gonna believe, MAGA or your lying eyes?

Here’s the relevant passage from the speech:

The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices. That is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill, baby, drill.

America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have: the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it. We’re going to use it.

We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world.

We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.

I do believe that we will a rich nation under Trump — because we already were, and he would have to mess up even worse than I expect to bring us down to other countries’ levels of per capita GDP:

But it takes some seriously delusional thinking to claim that we’re in a national energy crisis. U.S. energy production is thriving; in recent years we’ve become a net energy exporter, something that last happened in the 1950s:

And about those escalating energy prices: gas prices briefly hit $5 a gallon in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but they currently average just over $3. The ratio of gas prices to wages is as low as it has been for 20 years, except during severe economic downturns:

If this is a crisis, what would good times look like?

Furthermore, to the extent that Trump has offered any specifics on energy policy, they involve a promise to destroy one of the major sources of American success. From the new White House issues page:

President Trump’s energy policies will end leasing to massive wind farms that degrade our natural landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers.

Wind power has actually been a huge success story, a major source of rising U.S. energy production. It now generates 10 percent of our electricity, overall, and much more than that in some states — mostly, as it happens, red states. Trump is, in effect, promising to raise his own supporters’ electricity bills:

Source: Statista

But Trump hates windmills, because the government of Scotland once rejected his demands that it cancel an offshore wind farm that, he claimed, spoiled the view from a golf course he owned. Oh, and since when has he been deeply concerned about natural landscapes?

So what’s going on with the proclamation that American energy production, which is one of our economic strong points, is in crisis?

Partly it’s a cynical payoff to the oil industry, which more or less openly made a deal to give Trump $1 billion in return for reduced taxes and environmental regulation.

But I also believe that it reflects MAGA brain, the belief that the only way you can get results is by being tough and nasty, avoiding anything that might be considered woke. Thus, to achieve energy independence, we must put aside worries about pollution and climate change while blocking clean energy.

So administrations that care about climate change and the environment in general must be crippling the energy sector. Biden may have presided over record oil production and growing energy exports, but we’ll just say that we have an energy emergency anyway.

I’ve long been a fan of a very old quote from Sweden’s Count Oxenstierna: “Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?” Four centuries later, that remains as true as ever. But I might modify it to say, with how little wisdom and how much pettiness.

MUSICAL CODA

The opposite of MAGA brain