A recent report interviewed President Donald Trump supporters who know his economic policies are hurting them — but will still vote Republican in the upcoming midterm elections.
“Dan Lloyd, who voted for Trump, lamented the president’s leadership as the 63-year-old carpenter paid $4.39 a gallon to fill up his pickup truck in Mesa, Arizona,” reported Fortune’s Steve Peoples, Jesse Bedayn and Jonathan J. Cooper, along with The Associated Press, on Sunday. “”He hurt himself stepping into this,’ Lloyd said of Trump. ‘Where’s all this oil from Venezuela? I thought we were flush with gas and everything, but no. The American people eat it every time, whether it’s interest rates, food, gasoline.'”
He added, “Still, he expects to vote Republican in the midterms. ‘I think the Democratic Party has lost its way,’ Lloyd said. ‘I just feel like the whole system’s on the verge of collapse.'”
Five-two-year-old Kristin Jimenez, who lives in Edinburg, Texas, expressed a similarly cavalier attitude.
“We’ve paid the same price under Republican presidents, we’ve paid this price under Democrat presidents,” Jimenez said, adding that she will vote Republican because they are the “lesser of two evils.”
She added, “We don’t mind paying $8 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but we have a problem paying four bucks at the pump? Make it make sense.”
Speaking to AlterNet in August, cult expert Dr. Steve Hassan deconstructed the cult-like dynamics behind support for Trump, in particular by so demonizing his opponents that Trump supporters will back him even if doing so is personally harmful to them.
“I emphasize how these destructive groups, like the Trump movement, are lying all the time,” Hassan told AlterNet. “And part of the appeal is really about using emotionally leading rhetoric to scare people, to create ‘the other,’ to demonize. I’ll quote Eric Hoffer’s 1951 book, ‘The True Believer.’ He said, ‘The strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.’ We know that, evolutionarily, we’re going to overreact to anything that’s a perceived danger or threat to us. So ‘owning the libs’ means that they are a danger, and he’s going to save people from them.”
Speaking specifically about Trump supporters who engage in trollish behavior, University of Bristol cognitive scientist Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky told AlterNet in August that a “dark triad” of psychological forces fuel their actions.
“The dark triad — that’s what it’s called,” Lewandowsky told AlterNet. “So we know that trolls take pleasure in trolling, which means getting other people upset. And I think that’s what we’re observing here — this is basically trolling behavior. So would these people score high on the dark triad? I would think yes, but I don’t know of any data that’s done a personality profile specifically of MAGA voters. We do have it for trolls, though — I have data on that. People have published research on it, and the similarities are just overwhelming. So I’d be very surprised if these were well-adjusted, nice people.”
In June, conservative commentator Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark analyzed an ethnographic study of Trump voters that explained the rationalizations they use to justify supporting policies that harm themselves.
Saying that Trump supporters “very explicitly do not want majority rule. They want minority rule,” Last pointed out that Trump supporters tend to back him because they oppose Democratic advocacy of racial diversity, women’s rights, LGBTQ equality and secularism. Additionally, they are alarmed by young people turning away from intolerance toward racial minorities, women, LGBTQ people and non-Christians.
“I’m not sure how Democrats win over a voter who’s motivated not by unemployment, or the Iranian nuclear program, or the price of eggs—but is rather lashing out because they’re angry that their children rejected their political views,” Last said.
He continued, “We are firmly out of the realm of policy here. Or reality, even. So long as there is a trans activist in San Francisco posting on BlueSky, these people will be aggrieved. Even if their preferred political party holds the presidency, controls Congress, and has an openly corrupt majority in the Supreme Court. Domination of the political system is not enough; they want the people who disgust them to disappear.”