Fan Club and the Cowboy Code

As a young boy in the 40s and 50s, I remember joining the Gene Autry Fan Club. Just mail in a few cereal box tops and ten cents to get an official fan club membership card and pin. It is human nature to want to join and become part of something important. The psychological “need to belong” is rooted in evolutionary history. Group cohesion was necessary for survival. Belonging to a community or belief system became an innate biological imperative.

This sense of “joining” a fan club from my youth came to mind as I considered why and how there are still 30+% of Americans willing to overlook and thereby condone the behavior of their MAGA leader. His core group never seems to drop any lower than the thirty-something percentage point. While it is easy to understand the motivation of the uber-wealthy supporting this like-minded person who looks out for them, why the poorer among us still regularly cling to this man’s leadership when he has no desire to look out for them escapes me.

The MAGA movement is based on a symbolic community of shared cultural grievances and identity. This satisfaction with the leader of the movement, even when he frequently contradicts their personal morals or is deficient in improving their condition with material needs, is more about a sense of collective power. He is their battering ram against the political and cultural establishment they despise. For that, they are willing to compartmentalize his many faults.

To say that Donald Trump is morally deficient is like saying that Jeffrey Dahmer had an eating disorder. I rarely see people openly defending his moral depravity and personal greed, but I do see them twist observable reality as an excuse for their support. Status is elevated within the group when tribal loyalty is placed above political or moral accountability. Even a worsening of their current economic situation is justified with a narrative of achieving some other poking of the progressive elites.

So, while I understand the “need to belong,” I find it hypocritical to push aside your core beliefs in search of some retribution of perceived aggravations. If your religion supports the Ten Commandments or some viable alternative, I suggest you reread the meaning behind that set of rules. For others I will leave you with a summary of Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code of ten ethical and moral principles that he laid out for his young fans in the 1940s.

• 1–4: The cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage; he must keep his word, tell the truth, and be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.

• 5–7: He must be tolerant, help those in distress, and be a good worker.

• 8–10: He must maintain high personal standards of cleanliness and conduct, respect authority and women, and be a patriot.

The included graphic has the complete list of the Cowboy Code.