Given that Aaron Rodgers has been in the NFL longer than helmets, or close enough, it is hard to remember that he was once a wily collegiate quarterback at Cal-Berkeley. So it is not surprising that one of football’s all-time great quarterbacks has some political interests, given that he grew up on one of the country’s most political campuses. It is surprising that Cal isn’t exactly known for football, nor for equivocation or abject hypocrisy in the political positions it does often espouse.
But Rodgers did exactly all of that when he recently went on Steeler teammate Cam Heyward’s podcast Not Just Football.
Now, the headlines focus almost solely on the fact that Rodgers threw a go-route right over Donald Trump in a scathing takedown of Trump’s lies, even going so far as to say that “MAGA doesn’t exist anymore.”
“There is no MAGA movement; there is no ’Make America Great Again’ movement because the guy you elected hasn’t done any of his campaign promises.”
Well, that’s the right sentiment. But it’s also a B-minus at best if we’re talking elite Cal-Berkeley insight, because an astute political ponderer would understand that Trump lied a ton from the beginning, except when he was telling the truth about his most abhorrent policies, and with Trump, it is very, very hard to know which is worse. But where Rodgers really gets sacked is when he associates MAGA with any sort of “politics,” or calling it a “movement.”
MAGA’s politics comes down to one non-negotiable position from a MAGA voter’s perspective. “Trump hates liberals as much as me.” Trump can enter a second war in the Middle East, fail to build a wall, oppose an Epstein investigation, and cause prices to rise — all lies, all political liabilities — but what he cannot do, what he won’t do, is ever drop his hatred of liberals below that of his supporters’ hatred. The only “non-negotiable.”
Trump can even go straight socialist and be loved for it — the tariff “dividend” he promises to pay, yet another lie. Not a problem.
Rodgers’ failure to recognize the only real promise, or maybe premise, is matched only by his characterization of MAGA as a political movement. As noted above, MAGA doesn’t have political positions beyond hatred of liberals. A typical MAGA couldn’t spell tariffs, never mind know their positions on them, until Trump told them. That MAGA is all about Trump’s hatred of liberals gives his supporters an identity, not ideals. This also explains why Trump truly can do anything and get away with it. MAGAs cannot leave Trump without abandoning a part of themselves, the part they love the most: many of them live to hate liberals.
(“Many” be key here, not “all.” As has been mentioned here before, some people who stupidly vote for “a better economy” are not necessarily “MAGA” at heart – and they leave.)
The only real danger area for Trump is perhaps making it too obvious that he loves himself more than he despises anything blue. Granted, the two positions go hand in hand in his mind, so the distinction is a bit weird. If Trump’s self-love gets in the way of cracking liberals, it creates a conflict of interest in a MAGA’s pointed head. As devoted to Trump as they may appear to be, nothing, even Trump himself, stands in the way of hating liberals first and only. Lately, Trump appears to be loving himself more than his hatred of Dems.
To be fair to Rodgers, it may be unreasonable for him to recognize even obvious dynamics, given that he is, quite literally, a moron — despite coming out of Cal-Berkeley:
“He described the pandemic as a massive, coordinated effort to test how much control officials could exert over the public, pointing to closed beaches, arrested surfers, and shuttered businesses in California as examples he considered disproportionate to any public-health rationale.”
Right.
Except no, because America has over one million fewer people now due to COVID, a disease that the CDC knew virtually nothing about except for perhaps how to best avoid it — and to the extent the CDC “missed,” it missed on the side of safety, which most people should appreciate. After all, how much “trust” would the public have in the CDC had they erred on the other side, and 40 million died? They didn’t project it as such, but it is biology and couldn’t be ruled out.
A quarterback, better than nearly anyone, should know the luxury of hindsight. Oh, and not losing people.
He was and continues to be a vaccination freak, but this again goes hand in hand with hating liberals. MAGA wholly supported a vaccine when it was under Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed,” and — true to their cultural identity — whipsawed around when “liberals” (Joe Biden) started telling them what they had to do to best help with public health.
(MAGAs were not automatically anti-vax before Biden and Dr. Fauci, not when they had to vaccinate their kids for school or to join the military. It took… hating liberals first to figure out a position they would literally die for, going anti-vax.)
Rodgers also inexplicably let his wild right side run straight into the rush by questioning whether Blacks were better off before President Barack Obama. To the extent any portion of that statement is true, it is owed to the fact that it took a Black president to awaken the real racist bent of the Right. In effect, Rodgers is saying that Obama, on the basis of being Black, did Black Americans no favors because the racists rightly rebelled against such audacity. The Right wanted neither hope nor change for Black Americans.
As is typical, Obama cannot win. He went way too centrist for his liberal supporters while apparently not appreciating that he could have proposed the biggest tax cuts in history, built a wall, and made the military straight-hetero-Christian-white males, and still been branded a flaming “commie” by the Right due to presidenting while Black. Again, it’s an identity, not political. But there is no question Black Americans are better off having had an Obama presidency.
The fact that anyone could acquire healthcare helped every American, Black or white, at levels even now not appreciated enough; same with solving the financial crisis, and yes, yes, indeed — continuing support for affirmative action on par with affirmative action for legacy applicants did help Black students.
His presidency also allowed Black Americans to give the racists one long and well-deserved “fffffffrog you,” which actually was and remains important, even if many of us white Americans have yet to sufficiently appreciate it.
But all of this escapes Aaron Rodgers, not because he couldn’t eventually figure it out; this isn’t a MENSA test, more akin to the MOC exam, pointing to camels and lions, almost literally, because it is fundamentally about identity, who is who, what is what.
And that’s ultimately likely where Rodgers fails. He just isn’t racist enough to really fit in with the identity — he works around and has befriended more Black Americans than many of us meet personally in a lifetime. Yes, he is often called out for seemingly not supporting Colin Kaepernick. But even that’s mostly wrong. Rodgers said Kaepernick “should be on a roster right now” and that he was “100 percent supportive” of teammates or other players who chose to protest.
There are people who are just morons, not racist. It is quite possible that Aaron Rodgers is one. After all, he went out for the football team again this year despite having long been washed up. Some powerful evidence, right there. Besides, genius comes in many types; a quarterback may make great downfield decisions while throwing a lot of political pick-sixes.
He did date Olivia Munn; that’s a great read, certainly leaning toward the right identity. Just never trust his vote or political rationale, even as a Berkeley guy.
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story columnist, author, political consultant, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at [email protected]
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