The nation becomes less educated, less healthy, less productive, and less governed by law. Global leadership fades not through defeat but through neglect. MAGA promises greatness, yet what it delivers is fragmentation.
Make America Great Again is presented as a promise of renewal, competence, and restored national confidence. In practice, the MAGA movement accelerates American decline across nearly every institutional pillar that sustains a modern democracy and a stable economy. The distance between the slogan and its real world consequences is no longer a matter of opinion. It is visible, measurable, and increasingly difficult to reverse. Public education stands among the earliest and most damaging casualties. MAGA aligned policies divert public funds toward private and religious alternatives while weakening public schools through budget cuts, ideological interference, and culture war mandates. Educators are vilified, curriculum politicized, and academic standards subordinated to grievance driven narratives. The result is a less prepared workforce, diminished innovation, and a generation trained to distrust expertise rather than develop it. Public health follows a similar trajectory. Institutions once trusted to protect Americans during crises are hollowed out or publicly discredited. Science is reframed as opinion. During emergencies, messaging shifts from evidence to spectacle, producing predictable outcomes in excess mortality, workforce attrition, and rising long term healthcare costs. A nation that weakens its public health system weakens its economic resilience.
Threats of default, attacks on the Federal Reserve, and disregard for institutional stability undermine perceptions of American reliability.
The independence of the Justice Department, a critical safeguard against authoritarian abuse, is also undermined. MAGA governance recasts the rule of law as an instrument of personal loyalty. Prosecutors, inspectors general, and career civil servants are attacked when facts conflict with political narratives. Pardons become tools of favor, and accountability is reframed as persecution. Agricultural trade, long a strength of the American economy, suffers under impulsive tariff wars marketed as toughness. Farmers are caught in retaliatory crossfire as export markets collapse. Emergency subsidies replace stable trade relationships, effectively socializing losses created by self inflicted policy failures. Decades of trust with trading partners are disrupted, while competitors move quickly to fill the vacuum. Manufacturing is promised a renaissance, yet supply chains are destabilized without credible replacement strategies. While rhetoric celebrates factory jobs, automation accelerates and investment shifts elsewhere due to uncertainty and retaliatory trade measures. Growth that does occur is often driven by global market forces rather than MAGA policy. Perhaps most damaging is the erosion of confidence in the United States dollar and American financial stewardship. Exploding deficits paired with performative fiscal outrage signal incoherence rather than discipline. Threats of default, attacks on the Federal Reserve, and disregard for institutional stability undermine perceptions of American reliability. Currency dominance depends on trust, not bravado, and trust once lost is costly to regain. Internationally, the United States suffers reputational damage that will linger for decades. Allies are treated as adversaries, treaties as inconveniences, and democratic norms as optional. Autocrats are praised while democratic partners are disparaged. America’s moral authority, once a strategic asset, is exchanged for domestic spectacle and rally applause.
Recent developments suggest the MAGA movement itself is weakening.
The central contradiction of MAGA lies in its claim to strength while systematically weakening the systems that generate national strength. It promises efficiency while producing chaos, sovereignty while increasing dependence, and patriotism while corroding democratic norms. It brands itself as anti elite while delivering extraordinary influence to the ultra wealthy through tax policy, deregulation, and judicial capture. Responsibility does not rest with a single individual. Media corporations monetize outrage. Billionaires who benefit financially underwrite its spread. A Supreme Court that abandons institutional restraint in favor of ideological outcomes accelerates public cynicism toward the law. Political cowardice allows spectacle to replace governance. If current trends continue, the future is not marked by sudden collapse but by steady corrosion. The nation becomes less educated, less healthy, less productive, and less governed by law. Global leadership fades not through defeat but through neglect. MAGA promises greatness, yet what it delivers is fragmentation: institutions hollowed out and turned against one another, citizens sorted into rival identities, loyalty elevated above competence, and reality displaced by performance. This is not renewal. It is the slow dismantling of a great nation. Recent developments suggest the MAGA movement itself is weakening. Infighting is intensifying. Conservatives are reassessing. Politicians are departing. The political stage will likely reset in 2026, setting conditions for a broader reckoning in 2028. Whether that moment produces recovery or deeper decay will depend on whether Americans finally reject grievance politics and recommit to competence, institutional integrity, and democratic self government.
About the author ~
Van Abbott is a long time resident of Alaska and California. He has held financial management positions in government and private organizations in California, Kansas, and Alaska. He is retired and writes Op-Eds as a hobby. He served in the Peace Corps in the late sixties. You can find more of his commentaries and comments on life in America on Substack.
Peter Montgomery is a Senior Fellow at People for the American Way. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
