These are the folks who are truly exhibiting cult behavior. These are not normal, healthy, well-adjusted adults. Trump gave them a figurehead that encouraged the very worst aspects of their personalities, and they love him for it. And here’s why: instead of dismissing them as stupid, poor, or irrelevant, literally all he had to do was pretend he cared about them. It was that easy to convince them. These people are starving for someone with even a scrap of power to pay attention to them, and in the absence of a positive leader who speaks directly to them, they seized on the one they had, a “rich” man who is aspirational to them because he models the behavior they exhibit themselves, and they believe he must have gotten where he is in part because of that behavior. 

This is why they obediently parrot everything Trump says, no matter whether it contradicts something he said yesterday, whether it’s an easily disproven lie, whether it’s crass, cruel, or vulgar. It’s why, after Trump called Kamala Harris a “retard”⁶ at one of his events in the weeks before the election, social media exploded with Trump supporters suddenly screeching “retard” at people who they perceived to be “liberals”, even though that word has been beyond the pale for many years. They’re gleefully cruel, and revel in the kind of behavior in their President that would get an ordinary person fired from a Subway.

These are the ones that everyone thinks are beyond hope. They’re not. Nobody but Trump has ever made them believe that anyone with power cared about them. We can change that. Despite policies that have literally demonstrated that Democrats actually DO care about them, even if they don’t deign to speak to them, there was no real messaging campaign around that, and there never has been. Kamala was literally offering paid sick leave, paid family and medical leave, universal child care, universal pre-K, tax increases on corporations and the rich, expanding the child tax credit, helping you buy your first house, and more. And that message was not conveyed effectively enough to cut through the disinformation and blind loyalty.

Cognitive Dissonance is Really, REALLY Uncomfortable

Trump’s behavior and policies conflict with the values Republicans claim to hold, such as moral integrity, fiscal responsibility, and respect for our institutions, such as the military. Modern Republicans demonstrate absolutely none of those things. But because it’s difficult to hold onto conflicting ideas at the same time, these people rationalize and resolve Trump’s behavior as “necessary for the greater good”, or worse, they simply don’t believe him when he tells them who he is. For people who said “Trump tells it like it is,” they’ve certainly spent a lot of time claiming that “Trump didn’t mean that.” Many of them adopt his language, viewing any criticism of him or dismissing any negative information about him as “fake news” or a “witch hunt.”

This helps them justify their vote because it’s easy to believe a man who lied more than 30,000 times when he was in office the first time⁷ when he tells you something you WISH was true. Trump is a lot easier to swallow if you’re willing to believe that he’s a poor, poor victim, and the big bad government is out to get him, shame on them! That’s a lot easier pill to take than admitting that your candidate is a rapist⁸ or 34-time felon⁹, for example (and he is.) They believe him because they WANT to believe him. It’s not that he’s believable. He doesn’t have to be. When the alternative is admitting that you’re backing a deeply disgusting pig of a man, it becomes easy to see how a person could go the other way. Seriously, how many conversations have you had with Trump supports that went something like,

You: “How on earth can you support Trump when he did X?”

TS: “That’s not true, that’s a witch hunt.”

You: *Presents evidence of the claim*

TS: “Lalalalala I can’t hear you that’s a lie stop picking on Trump gahhhhhhhh! Cry harder, lib!”

(Note that the picture above has a sign saying that we should “indicate”, rather than indict, General Flynn. Trump was allowed to get away with saying that he “loves the poorly educated”¹⁰ because many of them didn’t understand it was not meant to be a compliment.)

Anecdotally, a real-life friend described last week being horrified that her 80+ year old mother voted for Trump. “Mother, YOU HAD AN ABORTION in 1967,” she said. Her mother replied “But I wasn’t a saved woman back then, I wouldn’t do it now.”

Well, you wouldn’t do it now because you’re 85 years old. That’s beside the point, but this is the level of cognitive dissonance we’re dealing with. A woman who appreciated and exercised her freedom of choice in her younger years, who wants to take it away from others now, because of some vague notion of being “Christian.” Never mind that we’re supposed to have a separation of church and state. She’s far from the only Republican woman who voted against her own rights. A particularly egregious example is Neveah Crain, the pro-life teenager from a pro-life family who undoubtedly voted against her right to choose, then preventably died because she couldn’t get miscarriage care in Texas¹¹, while her pro-life mother screamed for someone in the hospital to “do something.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is HEARTBREAKING. But it’s also 100% voting for leopards to eat people’s faces, while never believing they’ll eat yours. Abortion rights aren’t important, right? Until you need them or you’ll die. This familiar scenario plays out in hospitals all over the world every single day. Between 10-20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage.¹² About 50% of those require abortion care.¹³

Social Conditioning and False Narratives

This is more about how Trump – and Republican – messaging is simply more appealing than that of Democrats. While Democrats tend to calmly explain policy, Trump has framed his policies as battles against a “deep state”, a corrupt establishment, and painted himself as the hero who can successfully win all of those battles. It’s a compelling narrative for anyone who feels forgotten or alienated by these institutions.

Seriously, start paying attention. Republican messaging ALMOST ALWAYS paints Democratic policies as threats to American values or freedom (or both), positioning themselves as the “defenders of the nation.” This narrative creates the idea that voting Republican means protecting America, even if they themselves will inevitably suffer from draconian health care policies, losing benefits, environmental rollbacks, reduced social services, and more. “BuT I DoN’T UnDeRsTaNd, I ThOuGhT TrUmP WoULD SaVe AmErIcA!” I get why you believed him once, in 2016. I have NO idea, after seeing his first term, why you’d believe him a second or third time. (But I get it. This type of messaging is powerful, and deliberate.)

This is why you saw a rash of these garbage memes and literal trading cards from the Trump camp, painting him as a strong man or literal superhero. His entire persona hinges on people seeing him as a big-deal winner, even though he’s one of the weakest, whiniest men on the planet. They bought the narrative.

Seriously, how fucking ridiculous is this picture? Trump literally posted this on his Instagram. And sold the trading card of it so he could grift people’s money. And people bought it. Talk about cognitive dissonance!

Fearmongering and Manipulation

Put simply, they got you to voluntarily feed your face to the leopards because they managed to convince you that things would be so much worse if you didn’t. These were things like warnings about immigration, including a “flood” of immigrants that wasn’t actually happening¹⁴, and a claim that immigrants will eat your pets, which also wasn’t happening.¹⁵ J.D. Vance even admitted he made it up to draw attention to their fake issues¹⁶. It was things like lying about how much crime there is in Democrat-run cities. Things like the threat of “socialism” or “communism”, despite the fact that socialism is the reason you have the majority of the services you enjoy, and communism has NEVER been a serious ideology in this country.

People who are afraid are easy to control, is the bottom line. Telling them what to be afraid of, then telling them that you’re the only person who can fix it and make it so they have nothing to be afraid of, is INCREDIBLY effective messaging. It’s dishonest as hell, but Republicans have never let that stand in their way.

(I know someone is going to both-sides this and say that Democrats do the same thing, like warn everyone about Project 2025, for example. The difference is, Project 2025 is real and will be used to hurt you. Democrats warned you about stuff that’s actually happening. Republicans did nothing but lie.)

Do you know where fearmongering works best? In socially conservative, economically depressed areas. In short, red states. In red states, the fear of demographic and cultural changes plays on real anxieties that Republicans have capitalized on. They’ve invented things like Replacement Theory to give a name to these fears. The result is that voters are tricked into believing that voting Republican is essential to preserving their way of life, even if the policies enacted might harm them.

Desire for Consistency and Stability

This goes along with fearing change. Lots of people find comfort in the old familiar narratives of ‘Murica, patriotism, conservative values, and tradition. They are holding onto their idea of whatever these things were when they originally embraced them; they’re not seeing them for what they are right now, in this moment. Especially in times of economic uncertainty (or times people have made to believe are uncertain), sticking with a candidate – even a bad one – who promises to “make America great again” resonates deeply.

The desire for normalcy is reinforced by years of loyalty to the party, whether Trump or another candidate is actually a reaffirmation of these ideals or isn’t.

The Final Possibility

As a friend of mine pointed out on his social media, he’s stopped short of cutting off family members who voted for Trump, but he IS scolding them for their ignorance. “Either they’re ignorant, or they’re…just not a great person. Since it’s my family, I’m going with ignorance.”

He’s correct. As evidenced by “can I change my vote” trending on Google¹⁷, a LOT of people were ignorant of what they were voting for. All of the above scenarios are some form of ignorance, whether it’s purposeful and willful (and I’d argue that in many cases, it is), or whether it’s brainwashing (and in the case of the hardcore cult members, it’s that.) The ONLY other alternative to ignorance is that 1) You’re a wealthy person with something to gain materially by voting for Trump, or 2), you’re an actual bigot who is reveling in the fact that Trump is planning to legalize discrimination against racial minorities, LGBTQ people, and more.

Those are the choices. You’re either ignorant, rich, or evil. I’m willing to bet that it’s 99% the former, so we need to get to work actively combating harmful disinformation, promoting media literacy, reaching out appropriately to disenfranchised voters, and disengaging from the rhetoric. One of the mistakes I think the Harris/Walz campaign made was spending too much time giving all of the ridiculous nonsense Trump pulled ANY oxygen at all. I’d have simply pretended he didn’t exist at all as a person (only as a series of harmful policies), and hammered on what *I* planned to do for people.

I’ll get into the ‘how’ shortly. Until next time, stay rational.

E.T. Parker