In early 2019, 3 years ago today, I wrote Why People Who Loathe Trump Have Such a Difficult Time With His Supporters.
It is by far the most well received and popular piece I have written for this site with over 7000 people posting it to their Facebook pages (when they used to show that number). It was evident that what I wrote touched so many people because they had seen relationships with family and friends damaged or severed because of those persons support for Trump. I am sad to say that the situation has only gotten worse since I wrote that essay, which was written before the first impeachment, the pandemic, the election, the Capitol insurrection and attempted coup, and the second impeachment.
Despite all of these truly disqualifying events, Donald Trump still enjoys significant support throughout the country. It is very frightening to live in a society with so many of our fellow citizens are delusional, suffering from a form of psychosis, a mass psychosis to be more precise.
Donald Trump received about 47% of the popular vote in 2020 despite numerous scandals and his complete bungling of the pandemic. Prior to the election, most polls showed him losing by around 8 to 10 points, but he ultimately only lost by 4. Why is that? I believe it is because there were many “conservatives” (whatever that means) who held their nose to vote for him because of tribalism and short- term selfishness. These people make up a significant minority of the Republican vote, but not the majority.
Essentially, there are two types of Republican voters, the truly MAGA Trumpites who have drunk the Kool-Aid – I’d say they make up 2/3 of the Republican electorate or about 30% (30 percentage points) of the 47% of the vote Trump got. For the most part, these people are living in a cult and are afflicted with what I call “functional psychosis” – that is they can basically function in society but are out of their minds. These people will likely never be reached. They are usually very religious(evangelical/fundamentalist), racist, angry, embittered and often poorly educated. They hold white supremacist views or sympathies and are terrified of the changing demographics in this society, which is why they so hated Obama. A smart black man as President was more than they could bear. They live in a bubble of intolerance promoted in their communities, their churches, and from the Orwellian misinformation they consume from the right-wing media like Fox News and Alex Jones. Truth is relative to them. They believe what they want to believe, facts be damned.
Now I estimate about 15% (15 percentage points) of the 47% who supported Trump did so because of the Supreme Court and lower taxes and the misguided, ridiculous and ahistorical belief that Republican policies are better for the economy. They will make arguments like - though they can’t stand Trump, they will never vote for a Democrat because “they’re socialists.” These Republican voters are the most disappointing because they know better, yet choose to engage in the worst kinds of sophistry and gaslighting to justify supporting Trump. One wonders how badly Trump would have to act to for them to not vote for him (again). Well, sadly, it is clear that literally nothing he has said or done matters. So, it is evident that this portion of the Republican electorate is so entrenched in their tribalism, they are in their own way also brainwashed.
Amanda Marcotte, a first-rate writer about politics, wrote in Salon about a poll showing that most young Democrats would not date or would want to socialize with Trump supporters. Naturally, Republicans and ex-Republicans like Joe Scarborough took this to suggest that the left was intolerant. As Marcotte correctly points out, it is a completely sane position for young Democrats not to get into a relationship with people who support policies and a party that threatens their freedoms and their rights. As she noted, “the GOP-controlled Supreme Court made it clear they plan to strip basic bodily autonomy rights from everyone with a uterus. The Republican Party is rallying around violent and white supremacist rhetoric.”
This is not a debate about marginal tax rates or the defense budget or how much we should spend on various social programs. This about what kind of society we are going to live in. As this Associated Press article notes, the Republicans are engaged in a “Slow-Motion Insurrection” where they are trying to change the rules and rig the system so that they can win elections even if they do not receive the majority of the votes in a state. If a Trump supporter/Republican finds a way to justify these actions, then it says something about his or her character. It says that he or she does not believe in Democracy and that cheating is okay as long as their side wins. It reveals something ugly in that person’s damaged psyche, something that is dangerous and fascistic.
(And as Marcotte notes, saying that you are personally pro-choice or for gay rights does not absolve you if you vote for the party that wants to take those rights away.)
Trump supporters/Republicans’ primary rhetorical devices are twofold.
First are the various permutations of lying: blatant falsehoods, misleading statements, gaslighting, out of context statements, selectively edited videos and audio recordings, exaggeration of minor issues, repetition of falsehoods, etc. This is Fox News in a nutshell. This is Donald Trump in a nutshell. Think of Fox News as the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, and Donald Trump as Big Brother.
The second and frequent favorite is whataboutism, the technique of ignoring what is being talked about and describing a false equivalence that does not address the initial issue. The analogies are usually absurd and illogical, but they are readily and repeatedly used. One of the most galling is the comparison of some of the violence and property damage that took place at some of the Black Lives Matter protests -- to the insurrection and the attempted overthrow of the government on January 6, 2020. Certainly, the kind of behavior that took place at the various protests was wrong and criminal, and those people who committed crimes should be arrested and prosecuted. But they were not trying to stop the certification of the rightful winner of the election.
Some Trump voters are very upset that those people who find the former President so dangerous and vile cannot separate their feelings about him and about their friends and loved ones who voted for him. Well, in fact, we often have, but inevitably those relationships have changed. We may still have some love and affection for those people, but we cannot respect them in a way they would like or expect. We cannot take their ideas and thoughts seriously anymore, at least when it comes to politics. We think much less of them. They know this and it bothers them, yet they refuse to truly examine how radical and dangerous their support of Trump is. They feel entitled to maintain their ignorance and yet expect us to take their ideas and positions seriously, which are more often than not based on blatant lies and falsehoods.
So, in the three years since I wrote first essay on Trump supporters, the rift between Trump and anti-Trump voters has widened much further. Before it was about us just dealing with their continual gaslighting, whataboutism, racism, lies and delusions.
But now, after the attempted coup, the insurrection on January 6, and the attempt to rig the rules for the future, we have come to a tipping point. And sadly, Trump supporters are now endorsing the destruction of liberal democracy and in turn endorsing fascism - where we will live in a society where women’s and LGBTQ rights are repressed, dissent crushed, and essays like the one I’ve written here would get me thrown in jail.