I need to know, or at least think I know, why people do what they do. I study religion. I'm used to people believing all kinds of ridiculous things. They say things they know aren't true, couldn't be true. But that doesn't matter. Mouthing words, professing memes, saying nonsense because it makes them feel good, without the slightest need to think about what they believe, without the least ability to consider seriously or critically what they are saying or doing, this is the norm.
I understand how important it is for so many to be in the group, accepted by the tribe, to feel like they belong and are in good standing. You want to believe that facts or events that get some traction in this slippery world, or even arguments made kindly and rationally might work if only you could present the case, the truth. None of this matters much when it comes to understanding a cult, its needs, and its addictions.
I used to ask too: What’s it going to take? When will Republican leaders and millions of Trump voters finally get it. I used to this was about politics, a certain kind of reality that is not quite the same as religion, particularly cult religion. The appeal as also moral: How can they support such venality? But this fails the same way religions that profess love make cruelty or abuse into part of the sale.
Now the generals have spoken, including John Kelly, albeit in interviews taped to promote book sales. They all could have spoken clearly and loudly in public. Their code is beyond me because I could not have done what they did: swear an oath to a country that has elected the likes of Trump and the rest. But at this point, I think it doesn't matter enough to make a difference: their voices aren't changing votes.
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, first a critic now another toady (once a toady means you were always a toady, it's the coward's truth) said on CNN, “With a guy like [Trump], it’s kinda baked into the vote.”
It's wasn't in the least ridiculous to believe that at some point even Trump voters would get it. But I was wrong. I didn't consider how MAGA functions like religious cult with all of its needs, addictions, and pathologies.
This latest revelation of generals declaring Trump a fascist and Harris agreeing on CNN is making us uncomfortable because we know it's true. When MAGA hears the Trump would like Hitler's generals they can at once dismiss it (it's just him, after all) and they know how outrageous that makes us feel, how scared and threatened people feel. That's what they want.
Our discomfort is what Trump voters want, what they like, so the more loudly, plainly, and convincingly we make our points, the more they dig in and dig what they hear.
We've been hoping for nine years that as Trump reveals himself as such an obvious, existential threat to the republic that even the most partisan R voters would get the message and come out of their darkness.
The reason this has always been mistaken is almost too simple to accept. Every day that Trump desecrates, horrifies, threatens, or violates is not an offense to MAGA voters but a reassurance. Trump being more awful every day is a need, it's like a drug and the fix is vengeance and vindication.
You see, we will be so sickened if he wins and appalled by their behavior that they will revel in our response. They want the hurt, the cruelty, the infliction we bring upon ourselves because it makes them feel good. Any Trump "policy" about taxes or prices is not enough. They prefer the violent threats to immigrants and political opponents, which would include any of us who are their neighbors.
What they want is social revenge. It's not any particular Harris proposal taken seriously to which they object---that is the province of their tech bro billionaires who pay to feed them the red meat on the propaganda channels.
The only thing left to ask is why half of America is apparently so sick and so happy with their toxcity. Anger is an addiction, it works like an opiate---it doesn't remove the pain, it masks the deeper malady that cannot be cured. Social resentment, a sense of lost entitlement, the projection of their own losses and failures on others, lets MAGA believe that we the liberals look down on them while the undeserving get all their benefits. This means that whatever punishes us and those other to them---especially if they aren't white---feeds their beast. Seeing us miserable levels their field because their misery is our fault. Who's the one to make this happen? Why it's that guy. The lies don't matter, the grift is no big deal, what they like is the cruelty. It's their mana.
Rage is an addiction easy to feed because it doesn't need facts or focus. All it needs is a conservative media that every day stokes and repeats endlessly the memes that fuel their need.
We should expect Trump not to temper any comments in these last two weeks---that would be precisely what does not serve his supporters. The toned down Trump is either boring or betraying, it's not enough of the drug. Addicts don't admit they have a problem, this is not a denial of the truth problem for MAGA.
Their nihilism is real and the way most cannot express why they support Trump except in the vaguest Fox memes provides just enough excuse to get their next hit of cruelty and depravity. Remember that what the like about that is what it does to us and what it will do to those undeserving others who will likely face violent reprisal after a Trump victory.
What does this mean? Well, there are a lot of white people in seven States, many of them rural, under educated, older, and poor. Harris could lose not because she didn't work for their votes or fight hard enough with the truth. She should persist, more policy, more interviews, more reach out to every group including stupit [sic] white men. But she could lose because there are just enough of these people in four or five states who don't care about any of those facts.
When you hear the mindless tropes that Democrats are communists or Marxists or some other term they don’t understand, it's just repeating Fox and they know it makes us rage. We respond, we rebutt, we react by describing their depravity, ignorance, and unfitness for modernity and democracy. But the drug they take fuels a deep, incurable insecurity, humiliation, fear, and anger. Their trauma involves losing in 2020 (which is why they deny it). They cannot admit for the shame and humility it would require that Trump lost or that the coming election is rigged if they lose.
When their heroes like Tucker, Rudy, Bannon, and the rest go to jail or are made to pay, they become projections of their own fear that we are out to get them next. Nothing can undo this disease.
So rather than any reckoning with their own mistakes or the mistake of voting for a criminal buffoon who has not one care in the world for them, actually despises them, they have instead decided that their recourse, their only recourse, is to put Trump in power because of what it would do to us and all those they want to hurt. Trump is their vindication and their vengeance.
Our situation is not hopeless since Democrats may appear in large enough number to prevent the first wave outcome. If we survive election night with what looks like a victory, expect denial, litigation, and what cannot be achieved with corruption wil be turned into violence.
I give VP Harris kudos for both seriousness and savvy. She has done brilliantly. It's Democrats who worry me: not by handwringing because that is justified. Not by a failure to knock on doors by the committed. Rather, there is a righteous indolence among those who refuse to see the peril or who use their refusal to get on board to fuel their own need for social revenge and self-justification. It's a feel vindicated drug too to piss off the rest of us who know we must hold together with compromises.
I don't think there are enough swing voters who will swing against Trump to make a difference. Do the generals get to suburban Republicans who value money over democracy? Surely it's better that Kelly calls him the fascist he is than Harris who makes no impact. If we expect conscience to sail into their hearts as kind of intervention on the way to voting, I think that ship has long sailed.
J. D. Vance called Trump “cultural heroin.” This gets right to the point. The rush MAGA gets from racism, hatred, and revenge is their vindication. The only way to stop this is to show up to vote and hope enough of this impossibly complex, unreliable coalition does too.
(Thanks to Tom Nichols and other pundits for their work, which warrants citation.)
