The traditionalists are mostly apolitical. Politics corrupts communities, and that’s why the traditionalists have considered it to be taboo to get involved or give it much thought. Oddly, it’s the younger, more rebellious folks who are going in what we might consider a more conservative direction, which for them is more…global? At least less insular. As they become more connected to the outside world they’re finding their religious conservatism lines up more with republicans than democrats, and starting to believe us dems might threaten their way of life. It’s been a bizarre thing to experience. The raw milk thing from a few years back was absolutely a part of this awakening, since a fair number felt it threatened some of their income.
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The vulgar braggadocio of MAGA seems to be so antithetical to professed Amish values that I don’t really see how they can justify that.
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That’s unfortunate to hear. When I grew up, they were largely apolitical, but those were Reagan vs. Carter days, so they wouldn’t have had a huge stake–imagined or otherwise–in races like that.
It’s sad because they are probably as easy to exploit, if not moreso, than Trump’s usual marks. Their schools generally only go to 8th grade (because that’s all you need to be a farmer…and it makes it harder to leave), and they’re prone to some of the anti-gov talking points, like being anti-vax. (Growing up, every few years measles would come charging through their communities and kill a few of their kids. It wasn’t a worry for the rest of us, at least at the time, because we were all vaccinated.)
You’d hope they’d realize that any real theocratic movement would not be toward an Amish way of life, but then again, all the fundies that support Trump seem to be under the impression that if the US became officially theocratic, their variety would be the “winner.”
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Well, bear in mind that they are still a very patriarchal group (or at least moreso than the general population), so a lot of Trump’s misogyny, for example, wouldn’t necessarily bother them. As Suprise_Puma mentioned, they’ve been in a weird spot for a while, in terms of maintaining their orthodoxy while still living cheek-to-jowl with the English. Pennsylvania can be quite rural, but not “we can live on our farms and almost never see anyone else” rural.
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And @Doctor_Faustus
Yes, it really is a strange, Heller-esque situation. Warmongers, philanderers, and thieves are winning over a group of what has traditionally been a pretty harmless subgroup of religious fundamentalists. But I think the unifying factors are the misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, profit-motive, situational libertarianism, and similar strains of traditional conservative thought that has won a lot of the younger Amish folks in my area. They gloss over the evils we see because they’re afraid of being overrun by godless dems who might raise property costs and set limits on things like milk, wetland usage, etc.
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My niece is in vet school and has developed a strong dislike for the Amish in her area because “they treat their women like livestock, and their livestock like shit.” I can’t say I have any experience in this area, but she is pretty adamant about this.
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It’s obviously not universally true, though you know that of course. I just feel it has to be said anytime discussions of groups of people come up.
But yes, having lived near Amish my whole life, the general cultural attitude toward animals is different than what I was raised with. My anglicized indigenous gram absolutely taught us to treat our stock better than we did each other, and to kill anything we hunted quick and clean and be grateful for the sacrifice. Nothing got you the switch quite as fast as being mean to an animal. Our nearest neighbors on our back field side were an Amish community. We spent a lot of time with them. And they had a much more utilitarian and dominionist idea about their animals. They weren’t seen as living beings but as living tools, and were disposable once they were no longer useful. There are a lot of puppy mills in Amish country.
And the misogyny was deep and rationalized as being biblical. They saw their women and children as being only slightly more sentient than their animals, and treated both as being in need of a strong male hand. There is definitely an ugly streak in there that is consistent with a lot of other fundamentalist belief systems.
It also seems to be connected to the rejection of secularism, so ideas like equality and acceptance of other world views are as alien as insisting on pasteurizing milk or immunizing kids. That’s English thinking, and it is seen as a threat to a community that often feels threatened by outside forces. So…despite mango Mussolini being far from their moral ideal, he’s a strong, authoritarian, male presence and some folks are setting aside their apolitical and maybe even their pacifist traditions to support a strong arm dictator. Who somehow makes them feel safe. I do my part to push liberal farming views, talk about how we can SEE the effects of climate change in our crop cycles…how cool Willie Nelson is. But yeah. It’s an uphill battle and I’m a godless heathen who has been misled. 
ETA: sorry, I’ve contributed to a tangent here on how the Amish are being recruited to Trumpism. I’ve tried to keep tying it back into the topic of raw milk and I do believe it’s connected but if I’ve wandered too far into the fields here, any mod can feel free to delete or redirect.
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