But what are they for? If MAGA succeeds in setting a cultural tone for the coming years, what will that tone be?
This isn’t an easy question because MAGA contains multitudes. The two strongest cultural poles in the MAGA world are embodied by Vice President JD Vance and billionaire Department of Government Efficiency boss Elon Musk.
Vance is a pro-life Catholic convert and a dedicated family man who puts his wife and children first. Musk is a Silicon Valley tech bro with children by at least four different women.
Vance is trying to convert the GOP to labor-friendly populism, which includes protectionism and regulation. Musk, meanwhile, pushes business-focused economics, where regulation is public enemy No. 1 and the cause of innovation demands more guest workers.
This is not merely the old GOP ideological clash between conservatism and libertarianism. It is not merely a Midwest populist versus a billionaire CEO. There’s a deeper divide here, and the different viewpoints would point us to a very different future for conservatism.
Underlying this tension in MAGAworld are two competing visions of the human person.
Are we, in our essence, autonomous and self-determining individuals who thrive most when we are freed from outside expectations and constraints? Or are we, fundamentally, relational creatures who naturally belong in family and community, and whose identities are properly formed by the roles we play in these institutions?
Is the American Right’s vision of the good life one of connection — raising a family in a tight-knit working-class, church-filled small town? Or is it a frictionless, ever-changing, extremely dynamic future of individualism and autonomy?
Using Vance and Musk as the avatars of these two visions is not quite fair to the men. Vance is no technophobe looking to “RETVRN” civilization to its premodern roots. He is, in fact, well-versed in modern technology and has been backed by futurist billionaire Peter Thiel.
Nor does Musk rail against community and belonging. He is not a strident atheist. While he rejects monogamous marriage, he shows affection for at least some of his children.
The two men are useful as avatars because of what they represent and, even more so, whom they represent.
The energy of the American Right in 2025 resides most strongly among young men, and that energy —the Greek word thumos is often used — takes two forms: rugged individualism and religious family-oriented conservatism.
One X account with a very large following bridges both camps in an often awkward way. “Giga Based Dad” is the name of the account, a variation on the semi-jokey term “Giga Based Chad,” describing a right-wing, or based, man who is extremely masculine, confident, and handsome.
Giga Based Dad posts pictures of walkable cities, backyard neighborhood barbecues, and families going to church. But more common are memes about escaping civilization and distrusting all strangers. A popular meme from this account highlights the question, “Can you remember who you were before the world told you who to be?”
It’s straight out of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This question implies that the curse of modernity is other people trying to mold us and that our authentic self is some presocial creature.
This Rousseauian hyperindividualism shows up in another Giga Based Dad post, one citing Elon Musk.
“Don’t ever attach yourself to a person, a place, a company, an organization or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose ONLY.”
While this line has repeatedly been attributed to Musk, often by right-wing accounts, it’s not his line. It is, instead, the motto of Erica Williams Simon, a liberal black female author and activist.
This sentiment has serious appeal, then, to both the individualist masculine Right and the liberationist, feminist Left. That’s worth considering when we think about the future about the future of the Right.
Right-wing hyperindividualism can be understood as a rebellion against socialism — recall Ayn Rand’s dichotomy between individualism and collectivism. It’s also a rebellion against critical race theory; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and left-wing identity politics.
The race hustlers want to reduce individuals to their groups, and so the young, right-leaning man responds that we should see people separate from their immutable traits and their group memberships— as individuals. They attack ambition and individualism as “white values.”
Of course, individualism really is an important and very American value. But American individualism and respect for autonomy properly exists in an environment of community, faith, and family.
America today has weaker community ties, less religious faith, and fewer and smaller families than ever in our history. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy was about the irreplaceable value of connection, belonging, and community. The scourge of the working class, the book argued, was alienation.
OUR AGE OF HEGELIAN CONSERVATISM
Yet at precisely this moment of peak atomization and alienation, the Trump-Musk Era could leave a legacy of a more individualistic, less communal, less religious, and less family-focused Right.
That is, unless the Right follows the path of Vance, toward a future in which the “based” take their families to the local parish church every Sunday and derive their identity from the roles they play in the institutions to which they belong.
