I have experienced this too. Over the past eight months, I’ve felt a surge of energy and drive. I’ve doubled my income. I’m doing more than I thought possible. Every day, I wake up happy and full of drive and it keeps pumping all through the day. <\/p>\n
From Politico<\/a>:<\/p>\n On a morning in March, a 30-year-old computer technician named Nathan was tapping at the keyboard in his Pittsburgh home when he had a breakthrough with his support group. He wasn\u2019t in rehab. And this wasn\u2019t exactly AA. Nathan told me that for years, he\u2019s fought alcoholism and an addiction to crystal meth, without much success\u2014until he discovered the online self-help network that changed his life, a Donald Trump-themed discussion forum on the website Reddit. It was there that, two months ago, after weeks of reading messages of self-improvement and positive visualization, Nathan declared he had been saved, pecking out a message of hope and encouragement to his group under the title: \u201cQuitting Drugs Because of Trump<\/a>.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cTrump has inspired me,\u201d <\/i>he wrote. \u201cI\u2019m getting sober and doing my bit to Make America Great Again. Thank you Donald!\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n Nathan, who did not want his last name to be used for this story, is one of a substantial number of young men <\/b>tapping into a growing informal online network: A dedicated denomination of self-improvement, built on the \u201cteachings\u201d of one Donald J. Trump. From his books, public statements, and general attitude toward the world, they\u2019ve extracted a highly motivating philosophy of positive thinking and the virtues of self-love and brazening things out, as real men do. <\/b>Their numbers are unknown, but the trend exists in the form of dozens of their posts flourishing online, bouncing across Trump discussion threads and Twitter and the right-wing blogosphere, peppered with buzzwords and moments of epiphany. \u201cDonald J. Trump has already won, and changed my life,\u201d declares<\/a> one poster. \u201cHow Donald inspired me to be a great American once again\u201d proclaims another<\/a>. And many more: \u201cTrump inspired me to change my life<\/a>.\u201d \u201cStory of how Donald Trump changed my life around<\/a>.\u201d \u201cDonald trumps campaign has changed me<\/a>.\u201d \u201cTrump saved my life!<\/a>\u201d \u201cHey Brigadiers, stop wasting your time and learn what this is. Make Yourself Great Again!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n In a phone conversation, Nathan told me that he had been able to turn his life around thanks to Trump\u2019s \u201chigh energy\u201d persona, his refusal to give in or be pushed around\u2014and his declared abstinence from alcohol, tobacco or drugs. \u201cI\u2019ve had an ongoing fight to get off drugs, but this is the most successful I\u2019ve ever been,\u201d he said. \u201cI was given the strength and the resolve of spirit to not buy drugs again.\u201d He took a deep breath. \u201cThrough the Trump campaign.\u201d <\/p>\n When Nathan posted his message to his Trump discussion thread last month, he was smothered by a wave of positive responses, each a variation on a familiar theme. \u201cI\u2019m also quitting booze for many reasons, Trump being one of them,\u201d commented one user. Wrote another: \u201cIt might sound lame, but trying to be more like Donald has led to positive changes in my life.\u201d A commenter described his own years-long drug habit, chiming in, \u201cAfter reading 2 of Trump\u2019s books I decided it\u2019s time to quit.\u201d And then, about two-thirds down, the prevailing leitmotif appeared: <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cI just tell myself \u2018it\u2019s time to make myself great again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In gargantuan, all-capital letters: \u201cMYGA!\u201d<\/p>\n MYGA, of course, stands for \u201cMake Yourself Great Again,\u201d a riff on the Trump campaign slogan that appears frequently in these posts. Nathan\u2019s message, and dozens like it, are appearing as a new strain of Trumpism on forums like Reddit and 4Chan, and echoing on darker corners of the Internet like the white nationalist forum TheRightStuff. Posters take turns soliloquizing on the lessons of self-reliance and perseverance from Trump\u2019s life story, from his childhood and adolescence, to his early days as a struggling businessman, to his seemingly constant high energy as a 69-year-old man who refuses to drink or smoke (and who required the same of his children).<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of an AA meeting, what you\u2019re seeing here are good habits being broadcast as popular. It\u2019s cool to make yourself better, to be trying to improve yourself, because of Donald Trump,\u201d Jon Sharpe, a 36-year-old lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, told me. After seeing a tide of inspirational Trump-themed messages, Sharpe formed a Reddit group and called it MYGA, intending to vacuum up the people and posts espousing the philosophy. (His other Reddit adventures include moderating the forum HottiesForTrump.) He later spiked the idea, partly for lack of time, and partly for redundancy, citing the esprit de corps that already exists organically on Reddit. \u201cYou get the satisfaction that I\u2019m part of this club,\u201d Sharpe explained. \u201cI\u2019m doing something because of this, and everybody\u2019s around to pat you on the back and say, yeah, this is awesome. Make yourself great again.\u201d <\/p>\n MYGA posts cover topics as wide-ranging as they are banal: Themes include going to the gym, asking out beautiful women or asking for a raise. In one post titled, \u201cLife Tips I\u2019ve Learned from Watching Trump!!\u201d an Illinois man lists<\/a> a dozen areas of personal improvement in which he looks to Trump, including \u201cBeing a great parent\u201d and \u201cNO DRUGS AND NO ALCOHOL.\u201d In a now-deleted post<\/a>, a user noted that watching Trump inspired him to get into the \u201cgym 5 times a week from 0,\u201d adding, \u201cno more pot, cigs, cut drinking a lot.\u201d Finding Donald Trump, writes<\/a> another poster, \u201cinspired me to become the high-energy person I used to be,\u201d adding, \u201cI decided that I want to get back into running 10k races. … Remember guys, you can\u2019t make America great again without feeling great yourself.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWe take Trump\u2019s energy and just magnify it,\u201d Nathan told me. \u201cWe\u2019re constantly feeding on each other\u2019s energy. It\u2019s great. It\u2019s fantastic. It\u2019s positive.\u201d<\/p>\n The most common thread in the world of MYGA is a feral obsession with Trump\u2019s domineering maleness. In posts and interviews, MYGA writers express varying degrees of the idea that the Trump campaign is helping them become real men\u2014in similar terms as their understanding of Trump\u2019s unapologetic, aggressive <\/b>vision for the country. <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s this alpha kind of guy, and I do think that resonates with young men,\u201d a 21-year-old professional athlete from Idaho and a MYGA poster who uses the name HighlyVenomous, told me. (He didn\u2019t want me to identify his event, but instructed me to describe it as \u201cextreme sports.\u201d) Sharpe said the same. \u201cHe comes across as an alpha male. He\u2019s sure of himself, and whatever flaws he does have, like his hair, he doesn\u2019t care, and he runs with it,\u201d he said. \u201cMainstream politics requires that sort of demure attitude, you have to almost apologize for whatever good you have. Trump doesn\u2019t do that.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe Apprentice really showed me what a world class alpha male looks like and operates,\u201d writes one poster in the Reddit thread LifeProTrumpTips<\/i><\/a>. <\/i>\u201cAs a group of dominant alphas you can achieve impossible things.\u201d <\/p>\n As the MYGA crowd\u2019s open obsession with dominance, manliness, and alpha-status suggests, the gospel can quickly turn down a dark corridor. The deeper one ventures into the strange world of MYGA, the more the country\u2019s problems become laced with an array of white-male-themed anxieties\u2014men are apologizing for their maleness, the users say; policies are lifting up the weak and punishing the strong; and culture at large is becoming more feminized. Go deep enough, and you\u2019ll hit the so-called alt-right movement<\/a>, an online waystation where MYGA has thrived most principally as an ideation <\/b>of male virility. (The world of the alt-right is best known for creating the \u201c#Cuckservative\u201d hashtag\u2014a racially tinged portmanteau of cuckold and conservative, created to call out those who are insufficiently far-right.)<\/p>\n Christopher Cantwell, a controversial anarchist-libertarian blogger from New Hampshire who has also credited Trump with helping him treat his drug addiction, is one of the denizens of this site. \u201cThere\u2019s certainly an attitude toward the striking back against the emasculation of men,\u201d Cantwell told me. \u201cLet\u2019s promote rugged masculinity\u2014and that would be striving to be a more dominant strong, assertive person.\u201d In an hour-long conversation, Caldwell riffed on the MYGA theme to describe his frustration that transgenderism isn\u2019t treated as a neurological disorder; why taking the stigma out of mental illness was misguided; and how he was fired from his job as a radio host when his boss worried he was insinuating that other races are genetically inferior to whites. All such things, he suggested, violate the principle of MYGA. (He also, in a Trumpian effort to grab the initiative in our interview, recorded an introduction that tried to frame the interview as a \u201cconversation,\u201d as if I had been a guest on his online radio show, and told me he\u2019d release it if I misquoted him.)<\/p>\n Much as it resembles the generally anodyne subgenre of Internet self-help, MYGA is also driven by a current of the aggressive politics that underlie a Trump rally. For starters, much of the posting is an uninhibited gush of patriotic intensity. At long last, I was told repeatedly, Trump has finally made it politically viable to say how much you love America. \u201cIt\u2019s really a lot about pride,\u201d says Sharpe, the Columbus lawyer who started the MYGA page. \u201cWe don\u2019t hear a lot of people who champion a nation that we love very often. Trump kind of oozes it.\u201d As one Reddit MYGA writer from Kansas put it: \u201cTrump\u2019s campaign has rekindled the fire of American patriotism in my heart, and the sense of purpose in my life. Trump and all his supporters Make America Great.\u201d For many, incipient notions of self-betterment are linked to love of country. \u201cThis group reaffirmed that by staying off of drugs, I was doing something to help our country,\u201d Nathan told me. \u201cAnd that by helping ourselves, we helped to make America great again.\u201d There\u2019s no reason to think the entire high-energy MYGA crowd shares Cantwell\u2019s obsessions with cuckoldry and weight training, but then again the young-male-righty Internet is a messy place, where personal chest-puffing can easily bleed into race resentment and misogyny. Whatever the motives, the subtext of the movement seems clear: Society taught us to behave one way. Then Trump came into my life. Now I can be a real man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have experienced this too. Over the past eight months, I’ve felt a surge of energy and drive. I’ve doubled my income. I’m doing more than I thought possible. Every day, I wake up happy and full of drive and … Continue reading
\nAnd bound up in patriotic obligation is the greater moral duty to fight political correctness. Again and again, I heard, Trump\u2019s refusal to bend to the whims of \u201csocial justice warriors\u201d\u2014an all-purpose designation for liberals, feminists, professors and other identity-sensitive types\u2014is the stance desperately needed for a self-indulgent country obsessed with its victimhood status. \u201cSo fucking tired of the political correctness that has stiffed this country,\u201d one poster writes. \u201cWRONG. That is the kind of attitude that has poisoned this country.\u201d For many, it seemed, Trump\u2019s triumph over and above the basic decorum of politics served as an analogue for their own self-confidence.
\n\u201cNo longer into sluts. Looking for a good Christian girl,\u201d writes one poster, in a now deleted 4Chan post titled Trump has inspired me to change my life. A discussion in another post is revealing. Commenting in the discussion Donald Trump\u2019s campaign has changed me, a user writes, \u201cI see [Trump] as our last hope, standing up to degeneracy,\u201d and posted a video that plays a depraved pop-song parody, \u201cLike A Degenerate,\u201d alleging liberal responsibility for cultural decadence. \u201cYou want to lay me? Get in line \/ Abort my baby, spend my time getting high,\u201d a voice sings, as video images of women activists marching and public dancing flash onscreen. Later: \u201cYou\u2019ve got this culture cowed \/ Be gay, get AIDS, be proud.\u201d
\nThe imperative of the strong to dominate the weak is the moral structure hiding in plain site on MYGA. \u201cThere are such things as shills, weak people, and losers,\u201d one post reads, Life Tips I\u2019ve Learned from Watching Donald Trump. \u201cWeak people get in the strong people\u2019s way. If you\u2019re weak, work to be strong, don\u2019t bring them down.\u201d The male connection is not far removed here; Cantwell referred me to an essay, How Strength Training Saved Me From Being a Cucked Leftfag, a rambling synthesis of male self-loathing whose main conclusion, apparently, is that leftism is anathema to weight training. \u201cIt was right and proper that the weak feel shame if their weakness is of their own making,\u201d the author writes of his time in the weight room. \u201cIt\u2019s a small but important part of becoming the man that you are meant to be, not only physically, but in every other way as well.\u201d<\/p>\n