I had a moment recently that unsettled me more than any argument with a MAGA supporter ever has.
I said something mild. I said the Democratic Party has problems and could be improved.
I have voted Democratic for about fifty years. This was not a declaration of defection. It was not a “both sides are the same” provocation. It was a statement rooted in care, not contempt.
The response I got from friends shocked me.
“Are you calling me a pedophile?”
That question did not come from anything I said. It came from what my words threatened.
For years, many of us have looked at MAGA politics and named what is obvious: a cult-like identity structure. Loyalty replaces thought. Criticism is treated as betrayal. A leader becomes fused with the self, so questioning the leader feels like annihilation.
That part is easy to see because it is loud and extreme.
What was harder to see was how the same psychological mechanism shows up in spaces that feel morally safer.
Political identity does not just organize beliefs. It protects innocence.
For MAGA, the psychological wage often looks like righteousness through loyalty. If Trump is wrong, then they are wrong, so Trump must be defended at all costs.
For Democrats, the psychological wage often looks like moral distance. “We are not like them.” That distance matters deeply. It reassures people that whatever is broken in this country is not because of us.
So when someone says, “Our party has problems,” the nervous system does not hear policy critique. It hears moral accusation.
You are complicit.
You are no better.
You are accusing me.
Once identity becomes fused with goodness, accountability feels intolerable.
This is not new. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about psychological wages more than a century ago, showing how people are compensated with status and moral superiority when material conditions do not improve. Henri Tajfel later demonstrated how easily humans defend in-groups, even when those groups are arbitrary.
The point is not that Democrats and Republicans are the same. They are not. The stakes and consequences are radically different.
The point is that identity defense operates by the same rules everywhere.
Once a group becomes central to how we understand ourselves as “good,” criticism stops being information and starts being a threat. Improvement gets reframed as betrayal. And the group closes ranks, not to solve problems, but to protect self-image.
That is the rude awakening I had.
After fifty years, I realized I was not just a voter. I was a member. And membership comes with reflexes.
Democracy requires criticism. Movements require internal accountability. Parties that cannot tolerate critique cannot correct course. They can only defend themselves.
If we cannot hear, “We have problems,” without translating it into “You are accusing me of being evil,” then we are no longer practicing democracy. We are practicing identity maintenance.
I am not leaving my values. I am not abandoning the party I have voted with for decades.
I am saying something harder.
If we want better outcomes, we have to loosen the grip of identity long enough to look at reality.
That work is uncomfortable. It always is.
And that discomfort is often the first sign that something important is being touched.
I am not an expert, just an avid learner. Please join me.
Get Curious.
