They will wonder: What was it about MAGA?

When future generations study our times, they’ll struggle to make sense of some things.

They’ll read about Mitch McConnell and ask why Donald Trump-worshipping MAGA Republicans hated him so much. They’ll point out that McConnell, the longtime Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, manipulated the levers of the judicial confirmation process to get Trump three Supreme Court picks in four years.

They’ll point out that those justices enabled the GOP to achieve its half-century dream of overturning a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

They’ll surely notice that McConnell’s Taiwan-born wife, Elaine Chao, served as transportation secretary under Trump, and that even after Trump took to social media and ridiculed her as “(McConnell’s) China-loving wife, Coco Chow,” McConnell endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

It will occur to them that McConnell’s endorsement came three years after Trump-loving election deniers stormed the

U.S. Capitol and tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. McConnell correctly stated at that time that the insurrectionist mob had been “fed lies” and “provoked” by Trump, whose desperation to stay in office trumped any regard for this country’s tradition of peaceful transfers of power.

They’ll ask why so many Republicans humiliated themselves by pandering to the Trump crowd, as McConnell did this past week with his endorsement announcement.

U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, referred to Trump in 2016 as “an idiot,” “noxious” and “reprehensible.” Vance is now, however, such a dedicated Trump bootlicker that on March 2 he issued this social media threat to any colleague who is not a fellow passenger on the MAGA train: “If you’re fighting Trump and his endorsed candidates politically today, don’t ask for my help in a year with your legislation or pet projects.”

Future generations will wonder why all this pandering was done to appease a corrupt (91 pending criminal charges), narcissistic man with a minimal understanding of public policy and a track record of political failure.

In Trump’s only generalelection victory, he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes. He had a disastrous 2018 midterm, became only the third elected American president in 88 years to be voted out of office, and caused the GOP to fumble away a golden chance for major congressional and statehouse gains in 2022.

With a semi-reasonable GOP nominee two years ago, Arizona would have elected a Republican governor. With delusional MAGA crackpot Kari Lake on the ballot, the office went to a Democrat.

People of the future will scratch their heads and contemplate the fact that in the game of politics, where the objective is to build your support and grow your base, the Trump MAGA ethos is to exclude, reject and insult anyone who does not meet the requisite levels of loyalty to dear leader.

Exhibit A: Trump’s Jan. 24 Truth Social post, in which he, for the zillionth time, referred to his GOP primary rival, Nikki Haley, as “Birdbrain” and warned her donors that they would be “permanently banned from the MAGA camp.” He added, “We don’t want them, and will not accept them.”

Those future generations will see video clips of Trump gushing over North Carolina Lt. Gov. (and 2024 GOP gubernatorial nominee) Mark Robinson.

Robinson is a Hitler-quoting basher of gays and lesbians (describing them as “filth”) who considered it cute and charming to put out this 2017 Facebook post suggesting that the first

African American first lady in this nation’s history, Michelle Obama, is a man: “Michelle Obama is an anti-American, abortion and gay marriage supporting, liberal leftist elitist and I’ll be glad when he takes his boyfriend and leaves the White House.”

This past week, during his Super Tuesday victory speech, Trump lauded Robinson as “Martin Luther King on steroids” and “better than Martin Luther King.”

Future generations will be baffled and disgusted, in equal measure, by Trump’s praise for Robinson. For that matter, they’ll find much to baffle and disgust them about the totality of Trump and his political movement.

It won’t be possible to explain it to them, any more than it’s ever possible to explain a cult of personality to those who didn’t experience it in real time. Then again, plenty of us experiencing it in real time also could use an explanation.