As you know, Trump is a criminal who thinks he has the powers and invulnerability of an old style absolute monarch. (How about Charles I? Louis XVI? Nicholas II? May, Queen of Scots?) Trump is also increasingly senile and clearly unfit for office. His supporters don’t care at all about his flaws. They are deeply flawed people and wouldn’t be supporting him otherwise. They see themselves in him.
Yesterday, Hannah Knowles and Meryl Kornfield reported that his support “is not just broad but remarkably intense… Supporters dismiss video evidence of his inconsistencies and echo his grievances and falsehoods. Competitors have long written off as much as a third of the GOP electorate as set on Trump and utterly unpersuadable. A majority of Republicans believe Trump’s disproven claims that he actually beat Joe Biden in 2020, and in interviews, some Trump supporters appeared unwilling to accept a loss in 2024. In Trump, many see a movement leader giving voice to their struggles and settling scores on their behalf.” Yes, it’s a cult with a charismatic, authoritarian leader, espousing unconventional beliefs in an echo chamber and the whole mess is characterized by manipulative tactics used by Trump to control the thoughts, behavior and emotions of followers, many of who, show the kind of unquestioning loyalty fostered in an us-vs-them environment.
“That fealty to Trump,” wrote Knowles and Kornfield, “has alarmed some in the GOP and beyond. Researchers at the University of Chicago have found that, amid sinking trust in democratic institutions, millions of Americans believe ‘the use of force’ is justified to prevent Trump’s prosecution and to return him to the White House. Such ‘radical’ support for Trump is on the rise, said political science professor Robert Pape, who directs the group behind the surveys. Many people who study political violence are worried about a 2024 repeat of the kind of chaos that unfolded on Jan 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in outrage over Trump’s loss. ‘What we have and what we can measure is the raw kindling that is combustible,’ Pape said. ‘What we can’t predict are the matches that political leaders can throw on that kindling.’”
[T]he devotion of Trump’s core supporters stands out. No other candidate inspires quasi-religious statements of devotion like “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “I stand for the flag and kneel for the cross— TRUMP 2024”— two slogans on T-shirts regularly sold outside Trump rallies.
“Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it,” Trump recently told Iowans bracing for the cold on caucus day, drawing laughs.
…Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020 and strongly believe despite the lack of evidence that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him are notably more likely to believe that civil war is coming, according to one recent study.
That same group was “much more supportive of the use of violence to effect social change,” said one of the researchers, Garen Wintemute of UC Davis. Wintemute agreed with another analyst’s assessment that Jan. 6 was “the beginning of something” rather than the “end of something.”
This is their guy— the one they see themselves in, the one they worship and trust and want to impose on the rest of us… even at the barrel of a gun: “Donald J. Trump plumbed new depths of degradation in his savage takedown of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a yearlong campaign of emasculation and humiliation that helped force one of the party’s rising stars out of the presidential race after just one contest and left him to pick up the pieces of his political future. In front of enormous rally audiences, Trump painted DeSantis as a submissive sniveler, insisting that he had cried and begged ‘on his knees’ for an endorsement in the 2018 Florida governor’s race. In a series of sexually charged attacks, Trump suggested— without a shred of proof— that DeSantis wore high heels, that he might be gay and that perhaps he was a pedophile. Now he is both defeated and debased.
The mean IQ is, by design 100. Much below that makes it impossible for someone to think abstractly. I wonder how much lower than 100 MAGAts are. I suspect it would be considerably lower. It's not a topic academics seem eager to discuss. Most talk about propensities towards authoritarianism and gullibility (which is not related to intelligence but is related to education). Meanwhile, I doubt if this is accurate:
"As you know, Trump is a criminal who thinks he has the powers and invulnerability of an old style absolute monarch. " If Trump believes the President is immune to prosecution even if he kills a political opponent, as his lawyers have argued in court, why does he think Biden has chosen to persecute him via the courts rather than having him shot? On the other hand, the idea that Trump is running again solely to gain immunity is also weak. He could easily trade his endorsement to Haley for a pardon.
the trump nazi cult *IS* america at present. Is it dangerous to itself? Likely. As was the german nazi movement to the german republic, then the dictatorship. However, you need to remember what it took to remove the dictatorship. 70 million human lives and immeasurable destruction.
The yan: Don't ever ask WHY america became a nazi society. Because you won't want to admit to the truth... YOU are why the nazis became america.
From the time of the first presidential treason (nixon) through all the rest of the presidential treasons; from the beginning of the poisoning of the public debate (gingrich? prolly before that); from the first public written description of the nazi goal of suppressing votes (powell memo); fro…