As I write this, the still on-going 2020 US elections has shattered the mirage of safety that Americans, and the free world by extension, had built around themselves founded on the principles of democracy. People in their personal, official and social capacities interpreted current affairs in polarizing variability, not as Republicans and Democrats but as Trumpists and Never-Trumpers. As far as results were concerned, I was expecting this election to carry trumpism along the curve on a graph that plotted totalitarianism cast in 21st-century power dynamic that uses fear to divide a society. Regular folk around me – neighbors, friends and family – were polarized in their views about this election; some convinced of the legitimacy of Trump’s second term and others desiring to see him out of office. I was hoping saner votes tally up higher than the insaner ones. Insane? Is that the label to attach to somebody who would cast their vote for an erratic, lying, solipsistic, uncaring megalomaniac?
Millions of Americans have validated Trump’s claim, made very early in his tenure, of being able to shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose voters. Mocking mask-wearing, failing to support epidemiologists through the COVID-19 crisis causing avoidable deaths and himself contracting the disease; causing the deaths of at least six migrant children in custody and misery for many other families caught in his zero-tolerance response to porous Mexican borders; dismantling Obamacare and not replacing it with a healthcare plan that helps the needy; blatantly helping the rich via tax breaks while claiming the credit for a growing economy that was his predecessor’s legacy; getting impeached for illegal use of his office to influence foreign governments; dividing the country on racial lines with his lack of compassion to the public emotion expressed at George Floyd’s death and not even considering the movement to rid the country of confederate monuments; capitulating to Erdogan and pulling US troops out of northern Syria abandoning the Kurds to the wrath of Syrian retribution; and most importantly reducing the status of the US in the eyes of international diplomatic community from being a global superpower to one of being a brat that needs a nanny – these are few of the many bullets fired from Trump’s smoking gun in his four years in office. And yet, 71+ million votes were cast in his favor!
Neuroscientist Bobby Azarian Ph.D., in his article “A Complete Psychological Analysis of Trump’s Support”, presents a case of how a whole cluster of psychological traits and external influences account for the support that Donald Trump, or other such narcissistic autocrats, can command in parts of the world that have essentially been celebrating personal freedom and individual rights for centuries. These psychological attributes of the supporters are not of fundamentally flawed human beings nor are they indicative of any measure of education, intelligence, or knowledge. They do collaborate to form, for the individual, a worldview that is undeniably delusional based primarily on fear and also a misplaced ‘faith’ in varying degrees of falsehoods.
Of course, the major segment of the votes fall the way they do as a consequence of the partisanship that drives the US democracy. Republicans would rather vote for a rock before they bring themselves to vote for a Democratic candidate. This phenomenon was mitigated this time as was evident from the numerous ‘Republicans Voters Against Trump’ ads that cropped up on social media showcasing individual Republicans within whom Trump had succeeded in eroding this anti-Democrat sensitivity by the sheer volume of un-American, autocratic and narcissistic rhetoric and behavior.
But there are many millions of Trump supporters, whether voters, lounge debaters, or flag-bearing, banner heralders that are people who do not have the means to access or assimilate multiple sources of information to form a cogent response to the state society they are living in. As captive audience of their favorite news channel or peers, these are the voters who approach the ballot riddled with fearful insecurities and falsehood of their psyches and their times – as amplified by the propagandist of their choice – an echo-chamber whirlpool!
The most innocuous of these ‘fear-mongering’ baits is the economic one. The fear that a whole clique of devious politicians are eroding the nation’s economy and that only Trump has the ability to cut through the bullshit politics and work for the masses of this country.
A big looming insecurity that is scratching at the scab of a fairly old wound is the racial one that Trump’s callous and malevolent leadership managed to make bleed and fester. He has empowered and even radicalized the fringe to push his fairly simple agenda – acquiring power and stroking his ego. Escalated levels of insecurity and polarization of an otherwise inclusive demographic now becomes the new normal. ‘Dog whistles’ (code words that stoke these fears) enlivened dormant faculties within whole swathes of populations when he called Muslim immigrants ‘dangerous’, Mexicans crossing the borders ‘criminals’, peaceful protestors ‘mob’, excessive force ‘law and order’ and liberals ‘socialists’. Other exhortations encouraging the fringe right were dog whistles like ‘fine people on both sides’ of the African-American dialogue and ‘stand down and stand by’ for the radical right.
Religious bigotry is another key insecurity that Trump reinforced when he posed with a bible after gassing peaceful protestors at Lafayette Square. The ‘us vs them’ sentiment of this act worked to rally the religious zealots and the right-wing power corps that believed in subduing the nonbelievers to avoid an eventual takeover by non-christians of the power apparatus that the democrats cannot control.
This then is an atmosphere conducive to the growth of a personality trait that is charged by ‘authoritarianism’ – group and individual fear-mongering and struggle for dominance with ‘outsider’ groups in society – elites, immigrants, nonbelievers, liberals – and assigning negative connotations to them. Every vote in favor of Trump is a mind that fears that its status in society is being dismantled by the outsiders – jobs lost, religion corrupted, and way of life degraded. And a fearful mind grinds at the baser instincts of human beings encouraging conspiracy theorists and crackpots that suffer from cognitive biases that support and encourage their worldview to an almost self-destructive degree through its schizotypy, delusion and paranoia akin to people admiring mob bosses and mafia dons at the expense of their physical and financial autonomy. This happens because of the belief that being on the good side of a self-serving ‘power’ is better than trusting a weak co-operative system. Laws and structure in place for the ‘others’ can be ignored, bent, or broken while under the ‘protection’. Preemptive violence and justified escalation of violence then takes a real shape within the population.
The informed, secure, inclusive mind, on the other hand, is usually blind-sided by such support of irrationality because it relies on fact-based mutually beneficial methods of progress; and socially approved methods of conflict resolution which includes politeness, police, press, and process. This is the noble, democratic and enlightened vector that our civilization has settled upon to create maximum well-being. Donald Trump has revealed the cracks in the mechanisms we have in place to support the fruits of a democratic government.
If a single deviant character can commandeer government apparatus, rally support and shake the very foundations of our social progress, isn’t it time to scientifically study this risk and place safety valves and more fine-tuned guardrails that prevent such a happenstance and also limit damage this might cause?
My 2 cents 