A Certain Sort of Mindset

Is it a cult? Perhaps it is more cult-like or cult-adjacent. Maybe it’s merely cultish or cult-light. How about cult-curious?

In any case, we long ago ran out of ways to politely describe, rationalize, or justify the unwavering support of Trump’s hardcore followers. About 20% of Americans will vote for Trump no matter how many felonies he gets convicted of, no matter how many women he assaults, no matter how much bigotry and hatred he provokes, and no matter how much he promises to become a dictator if he is re-elected.

This is beyond political identity or cognitive dissonance. It is far past the affection usually reserved for sports teams or nerd obsessions. It is even beyond the unconditional love one feels for family. This obsession is comparable only to religious mania, and the similarity is no coincidence.

Trump fans sincerely believe that “a man who has demanded the execution of people he dislikes is a better candidate for the presidency” than a woman who believes the federal government should create jobs, protect the environment, and promote health and education.

Even when confronted with the fact that Trump hates his own supporters, these true believers indulge in, at best, “skepticism, a momentary denouncement, then an eventual conclusion that Trump is still a man worth their vote.”

Their motivations range from psychological issues to deep-seated fear to bubbling fury to straight-up bigotry, with tangents for ignorance, delusion, and a thirst for vengeance. What’s intriguing about that last item is that they want revenge not just for their own misbegotten lives but on behalf of a pampered billionaire, who like them, “can’t accept what’s happened over the past several years” to an America that has had the audacity to change without their permission.

Even the conservatives who say they oppose Trump eventually fall into line. Recall that early in the campaign season, the other Republicans vying for the nomination accommodated Trump’s behavior “and made excuses for his criminality,” which pretty much gave the green light for “Republican voters to return to Trump, all but ensuring his rise.”

The result is that today, “the potential for political violence from his supporters if he isn’t elected in November” is sky-high. 

It is the behavior of cultists. And it cannot be reasoned with or wished away. This is what blind faith looks like, and it is terrifying.

Like an Infection

We live under the cultural delusion that for an idea or movement to catch on, it must be a good one. But examine the evidence. Do you really think daylight savings time is a good idea? Do you truly believe that Creed deserved to sell 27 million albums? Are you out there clamoring for more Transformers movies?

No, plenty of bad ideas become popular. That is perhaps no more evident (or alarming) than when we look at the Republican Party.

In previous decades, the GOP was a mishmash of smug libertarians, rich jerks, and uptight Christians. They were unpleasant but semi-reasonable. The psychotically fringe members of their party were tolerated but remained off-stage.

All that changed a few years ago when one bloviating billionaire demanded absolute loyalty and molded the party into a twisted reflection of his own black-hearted soul.

So today, we have neo-Nazis (as in literal, actual Nazis) openly mingling at a recent conservative gathering, shouting antisemitic conspiracy theories and offering “heil Hitler-style salutes in the lobby of the hotel where the conference took place [while] other members of the group reportedly used the N-word.” No, they were not asked to leave.

This Republican embrace of fascist ideology has cascaded into other corners of the GOP, so that today “conservatives have become more vocal in support of armed vigilante and militia groups that share their draconian and oftentimes illiberal view of criminal justice.” In many parts of the country, Republicans are creating armed militias that “operate as a de facto police force,” accelerating the conservative movement’s “troubling infatuation with vigilantes and other civilian forces that are even less accountable and subject to oversight than ordinary police.”

Meanwhile, when conservatives are not screaming in nationally televised speeches that all Democrats are pedophiles and pure evil, they are pledging undying allegiance to a man who sociopathy has contaminated the entire nation.

Republicans have made it quite clear that they are willing to destroy American democracy in “a misguided approach to trying to appease a dictator” who cannot be appeased. This is “a profound rejection” of the idea that “we all are created equal and have a right to a say in our government,” which are “principles so fundamental to human self-determination” that thousands of Americans “have given their lives for them.”

And they are doing this just to curry favor with a lunatic. At least people in traditionally autocratic regimes cower because of the threat of going to jail or getting shot. But for these spineless Republicans, “it is loss of office or reputations that are at stake,” which is “the saddest part” of this capitulation. 

Imagine selling your soul for so little.

A Whole New Ballgame

Yes, we could have done this months ago. And yes, Trump can still win.

But for the first time in this election cycle, Democrats are feeling a little jaunty, a little hopeful, and slightly less terrified.

We have no idea if Kamala Harris will defeat the third incarnation of Trumpian fury. However, it was clear that Biden wasn’t going to win. His supporters could never explain how a guy who had been trailing in the polls for months, coming off the worst debate performance in history, and getting older by the second, was going to suddenly surge to victory. Who the hell was he going to persuade at this point?

By stepping aside, however, Biden has become a revered figure, the courageous leader, even “the Democratic party’s Yoda, and no one ever complained about Yoda’s wrinkles, age, ponderous pauses, or bizarre speech patterns.”

The GOP knows this. Witness their idiotic threats to somehow force Biden to stay on the ballot. They are shitting themselves in fear because suddenly they are the ones saddled with an ancient, rambling, incoherent candidate who “looks older and more deranged” than any presidential nominee in history.

Biden “understood his limitations and, in an act of patriotism, selflessness, and party unity, decided to step away from power,” while Trump is a doddering lunatic “clinging to power, holding on desperately to the myth of a lost election, evoking the same predictable descriptions of carnage and disaster he served up eight years ago.”

Trump will no doubt rant about Harris and make up whacked-out lies about her. He will throw racist and misogynistic insults her way while his handlers insist for the 10,839^th time that he didn’t mean what he clearly said. He will threaten and prophesize and whine. He will babble nonstop in a jumbled cacophony of illogic and garbled syntax. 

And the rest of us will witness this sad display, and with hope, we will give it the only response that it warrants:

Just shut up already, old man.

Luck of the Damned

An inch to one side, and he is unscathed. A couple of inches to the other side, and he’s a dead man. A few inches lower, and he’s seriously injured and off the campaign trail for a while.

But no, that shot had to nick him so precisely, so exactly, that he could claim a war wound but still be back on the golf course the next day. 

He could wave his fist around, blood on his face, with the American flag fluttering in the background in an image guaranteed to sway a million voters who base their decisions on random feelings and gut reactions. 

He could escape injury while his followers get killed. 

He could claim that he took a bullet for America when all he really did was take a bullet from a white male Republican lunaticopening fire with a legally purchased AR-15. 

No one who gets shot at benefits from the experience, except this guy.

It is astronomical how that bullet had to nip his ear but not actually harm him. How the slug had to cause just enough blood to flow that he could use the incident to boost fundraising. We’re talking millimeters that could decide an election.

Of course, he’s always been lucky. He was born a millionaire, for starters. And who else goes bankrupt multiple times, displays the morals of an alley cat, and spews idiotic lies and pathetic excuses nonstop, only to become more popular with each deranged act or massive failure?

Who else violates several federal laws in a blatant mockery of our system of classified information, but then gets the case against him dismissed because of a motherfucking footnote?

This election was “already shaping up as a symbolic contest between an elderly and weakening liberalism too frail and uncertain to protect itself and an authoritarian, reactionary movement ready to burst every barrier and trash every institution.”

Now, it looks like it will be a referendum on just how vile, incompetent, and cataclysmic one man can be without any comeuppance or hint of karma. 

The only person who might be luckier is some politically inexperienced buffoon who parlayed his hillbilly upbringing into a brand, sold out his semi-moderate values to fall into line with right-wing insanity, and is poised to become president if a certain obese septuagenarian wins an election but then suffers a fatal heart attack or chokes on a cheeseburger in two years.

Yeah, these guys have used up all the good luck for the entire country.

Big Daddy Will Take Care of Us

Recently, I wrote about the business leaders who see Trump as a threat to the economy and, by extension, to their company’s bottom line (and isn’t that what really matters?).

However, other business execs are pretty chill about the possibility that a man who doesn’t understand basic financial principles and is prone to reckless, impulsive decisions might be in charge of the world’s largest economy.

At the Davos conference, where the richest of the rich gather to hobnob and cavort, many business leaders said the media has exaggerated “the threat of a Trump presidency,” insisted that the GOP nominee is “all bark and no bite’” and implied that “many of his policies were right.”

This shows how in touch these supposedly brilliant leaders are. If anything, the media has downplayed the potential catastrophe of a second Trump administration. An unrepentant authoritarian who instigated an insurrection is clearly not “all bark.” And Trump’s policies led to economic disaster.

But none of that has stopped billionaires from lining up to help the Republican Party. And really, if you can’t trust billionaires to do what’s right, who can you trust?

However, people “still operating under the impression that they will curry favor with a dictator are painfully unaware of how dictators actually operate.” If Trump comes back for round two, he “will use the power of the state to squeeze the wealthy as well as his political opponents, threatening them with investigations, audits, regulation—even criminal charges—unless they do as they are told.” 

It doesn’t matter if you donate a gajillion dollars to his campaign. A megalomanic focuses only on what you can do for him at that moment, and while demanding complete loyalty, he offers none in return. 

And when you have outlived your usefulness, or have been perceived as a threat, you will face the same fate as his enemies that you helped vaniquish.

And his followers have adopted this mindset. For example, let’s say that you are fervent Trump supporter living in a red state. You might think you are safe from MAGA rage. Unfortunately, all it takes is one misstep, such as acknowledging basic facts, to provoke your former allies into calling for your head.

Or perhaps you are a well-regarded conservative, someone whose GOP credentials cannot be denied. It doesn’t matter. If you say or do anything that The Leader doesn’t like, or that his flunkies find suspicious, you will be harassed, mocked, maligned, and threatened, with actual physical violence a real possibility.

Now, there is a reason why Trump’s most fervent admirers are white straight men. As the ultimate white straight guy with underserved power, Trump tells them that they are entitled to the disproportionate amount of influence they have in this country. They want to keep it that way, and they believe Trump will preserve their status. To some degree, they are correct. It’s not like Trump is going to promote the rights of black lesbians or Muslim immigrants.

But ultimately, if Trump fanatics of any color or gender think their authoritarian overlord will protect them, they are massively mistaken. He will protect himself, and beware anyone who gets in his way.

History shows that eventually, even cult members and party favorites make a mistake, and it doesn’t end well for them.

Sooner or later, the dictator comes for you.