Ever since Donald Trump became president, and increasingly over the last four years as he has proven to be the most malignant, contemptible man to hold that office, I have been stupefied by the ardor and number of his supporters.
This does not include everyone who voted for Trump in the last election. At least some of those were simply casting their ballots for someone they believed could be counted on to forward their political agenda, whether that was appointing conservative judges, lowering corporate taxes, or abolishing regulations. But even so, a great many people idolize the man. For every American who rampaged through the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday, an unknown number of others were there in spirit, rooting for the rioters and endorsing their criminality on the basis that it was righteous and justified. How can we explain this madness?
I’ve been on the hunt to understand Trump’s popularity since he was elected. I’ve read Joan C. Williams’s White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized, and countless articles and essays examining aspects of the Trump phenomenon. Explanations range from rage at a perceived loss of white hegemony, to despair resulting from economic inequity, to an intractable tribalism rooted in our DNA. But the events of last Wednesday have persuaded me that sociological, economic and political factors are no longer sufficient for understanding the devotion of Trump’s supporters. None of those explanations would have predicted rioters swarming through the Capitol chanting “Hang Pence!” It seems increasingly clear that what we’re seeing is a cult.
I don’t yet know what the implications of that are. Cult members persist in idolizing their leader in the face of all evidence and obstacles. “Deprogramming” them is a long and arduous process. If these cult members were fewer in number, or if they were relatively peaceful, they might be safely ignored, but neither is the case with the cult of Trump.
And if Trump’s devotees constitute a cult, what does that make people like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz? With their education and life experience, it’s inconceivable that they are true believers. Their agenda, then, can only be to eventually inherit leadership of the cult from Trump, which makes them not only cynical but truly dangerous. If either of them or any similarly motivated politician were successful, then even an ignominious end for Trump himself might not spell the end of the cult he spawned.
Our country could be in for a very rough ride.