It's more than a cult doing this. It's a lot of complicity making more of a movement. People don't like Trump but vote for him make their excuses, many. Business, racism, misogyny, generational loyalty to the party, resentment, ignorance, vulnerability to the fear mongering...
The comments on tv women saying he was the New Jesus ! Spine tingly! The male Pastors eschew hate for anyone not like them - the mega church grifters. It is a CULT!!! They are a sick cancerous group of uneducated MAGARATS !! They hate those who have succeeded in business and are educated ! They expect Trump to take care of them so they could be successful too
Damn. It's like being on a train heading for a cliff. Most of us know it but the others refuse to listen. I keep asking how can they not see it? Why won't they join us to stop this train?
"Most of us know it but the others refuse to listen".
Apparently. according to polls, if they are correct, MOST don't know this. Not enough know this.
And then there is the system we have that circumvents the majority of people when they vote if so. The majority seems, according to polls, slim. The media, Fox the worst and popular, pushes lies. The others in the so called responsible media are "sanewashing". The rest of us, the leaders, public figures, are not strong or loud enough.Many are too busy to pay attention. That is why the train is not stopping. Democracy and freedom is not served on a platter, nor to be relied upon without engagement.
I wish President Biden would take advantage of the Supreme Court's immunity for presidential actions and put these dweebs in jail. He can also command the military to lock up his political enemies. Wouldn't that be lovely
My parents were both born in Germany (1920 and 1925), and came to the US as immigrants with their parents in 1929. They left Germany for mainly economic reasons - Germany had undergone a deep depression and hyperinflation in the years after WW1. I remember one of my grandfathers telling me that, when they left Germany, he and his friends and relatives considered Hitler to be a kind of “fringe” politician, a kook really, who would never amount to much. How differently things would turn out! Today’s fringe politician or kook can become tomorrow’s dictator, cult leader, and start a world war. George Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, a German philosopher and theologian of the 18th/19th century once wrote in his work, Philosophy of History: “ But what experience and history teach is this – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it". Essentially, this is saying that what we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. How true.
I think we just learned how by listening to this recording from HCR.
Essayist Michel de Montaigne had a close friend in France in the 1500s, Étienne de la Boétie, who wrote an essay titled "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude," published posthumously, I believe, in 1576. The theme of the essay was that a certain percentage of the population will always follow the bad man. Seems like it was about one-third of a given population. And they will stay absolutely loyal till the very end, even when they personally suffer from his rule. I heard Mary Trump address this once on the Lincoln Project a few years ago (not Boétie but the syndrome, which she referred to as, I believe, 'authoritarian personality disorder'). The word authoritarian refers to the people who 'suffer' from the syndrome, not to the authoritarian. I would love to hear what Heather has to say about that.
Many of us do learn from history. I certainly have, and you have, too, apparently. But too many do not bother to learn history. And others in power (school boards and politicians that direct them) dismantle or hijack social studies and history programs in public schools so students do not grow up to be a "problem for the party." In that case, studying history is actually studying propaganda. I believe that's already happening in a number of red states. Just study the Alamo, for one example.
Right on about the cult nature of the MAGA movement, their inability to see or admit theyve been brainwashed and their low-intellect fealty to a wanna-be fascist.
Thats an oxymoron: the nature of the cult section of the movement requires this inability, ignorance.
The movement is not all cult. Many understand but rationalize their support. This makes it the big movement.. very ugly when you understand what is making this.
We live in a social system, and we have precisely two options. Option 1 is to maintain a superior image of oneself and one’s ingroup. Option 2 is to assume that, in terms of being superior, eight billion human beings are tied for first place. Trump supporters chose Option 1.
It’s easy to know if you’re interacting with someone who maintains a superior image of an exclusive ingroup that excludes you. Likewise, it’s easy to know if you’re interacting with someone who maintains a superior image of an inclusive group that includes you. The question is, how will an individual respond to being excluded?
Initially, we all respond the same way. We get angry, but an emotionally mature individual uses their anger to do something positive. Kamala Harris is, and Trump supporters are not, emotionally mature.
Each time a child’s influence on the world expands, which it tends to do in a stepwise fashion, the child is temporarily emotionally immature because the child’s influence just expanded beyond the child’s exclusive ingroup. As a child, Harris’ mother made sure that it wasn’t just young Kamala’s influence that was expanding. Mom also made sure that the expansion of her daughter’s inclusive ingroup was keeping pace.
From Birmingham City Jail, MLK wrote, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” My interpretation: We are all inescapably in one social system, so if you want Trump supporters to stop choosing Option 1, then don’t start choosing Option 1.
Another long story short: Trump supporters are responding to a conflict within the social system, which is a within-system dilemma, but they are perceiving it as an extra-system conflict, which the mind impulsively perceives as a threat. Our brains evolved to impulsively detect within-system dilemmas, but then resolve them via conscious deliberation when the needed cognitive resources are available. Our brains also evolved to impulsively neutralize extra-system threats, and doing so shuts down the deliberative thought process.
The only reason our Paleolithic ancestors had descendants is because they didn’t engage in a deliberative thought process when deciding how to respond to an imminent threat from a sabretooth tiger. Likewise, Trump supporters are not thinking. They are reacting impulsively. There is a way to stop it that involves choosing Option 2.
I love your statement that, in terms of being superior, 8 billion human beings are tied for first place. I look at all of us as wondrous creatures, made from molecules from the stars, all having equal value.
Trump is a problem obviously, as are all the other bullies, liars, thieves, dictators, nazis, etc. But #45 and all his supporters are also a symptom of a deeper problem. And if we don't figure out what that deeper problem is and address it the next clever, self-centered, sociopathic, politician will simply pick up where-ever the current pack of manipulating sociopathic dictators-in-waiting leave off. Because nearly half of us voted for #45 eight years ago. Can somebody please figure out why totalitarianism appeals to so many people?
Is it fear of an uncertain future? Is it feeling like they've been left behind because wealth distribution is so uneven. Is it very effective propaganda, manipulation, and uncontrolled money flooding into a system that's slow to respond? Is it hopelessness that's so powerful that breaking the system to grab something valuable out of the terrible chaos that occurs when big systems (that aren't paying attention to you) fail seems like the only choice left?
The tech advances which we should be concentrating on in order to have a positive effect on human evolution apparently are showing people's fear. That's a productive environment for a potential leader who is very well intentioned in his convictions.
However .....could they perhaps discuss campaign finance, pacs and all thos smart lobbyists please?😂
It is difficult, for me at least to try and listen to the Maga cult. I don't know anyone in my circle that support trump. And that may be my problem. Regardless of having any close friends or associates that support trump, i have avoided voting or supporting my views and actions concerning their so-called policies. I recognized this con, Trump was playing from his days on the apprentice, after watching one episode. Trump is a tightly scripted; controlled from the beginning but once he grasps the levers of power, we must remind ourselves that we should have been more careful what we wished for. My hope now is that after listening to his views on our country, is he must go, and if we don'i excise this cancer we will forever be on life support.
The people I know who support Trump will not accept any criticism of him. They believe everything Trump and FOX news says, lacking all curiosity and critical thinking skills and appear to take any criticism of trump as criticism against themselves personally. I've also noticed that they share an underlying feeling of anger fueled by a preception of victimhood.
We should lean into "the enemy within"... it's Trump and MAGA and MAGA supporters plus the silent who know better. Thank you for Dorothy Thomson..unsung today, should be known.
I must read Sinclair Lewis book. "It Can't Happen Here"..
For the first time since Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, she is trailing. What the hell? Trump is becoming more and more unhinged, yet gaining in the polls. Granted, this is to all be taken with a grain of salt and it is still far from exact, but with two weeks to go, this is baffling.
I absolutely agree. At this point four years ago, I bracing for what seemed an inevitable Trump election victory. In 2016, like everyone else, I was certain Hillary Clinton was going to win comfortably.
While enlightening and very interesting, these are actually making me feel worse. I cannot believe the race is tied! We should prepare for a very dark place if he prevails.
I saw a Trump flag in my neighborhood yesterday it didn't say the typical "Make America Great Again" verbage...instead it said, Take America Back ". This verbage alarms me more than the prior I've come to associate with MAGA. Has anyone else seen a Trump flag like this recently?
Today is Oct.24. I’m not always able to listen to your podcasts each day so binge listen. You may be addressing The NY Times audio of the John Kelly interview & the Atlantic articles in the next two days but I had to respond to this one directly given what we were told in those articles. Trump isn’t a smart man and certainly knows little history, but someone has been teaching him well over the past 9 years. They found their useful idiot and he’s following the playbook perfectly.
My husband is not political & has, over these past 9 years told me I was over reacting. Not anymore. Today he told me his bigger fear is that Trump won’t live through his 4 year term & then we have president Vance, who is much smarter and far more evil.
Donald Dump clearly admires dictators, and would like to be one himself. The dictatorial style often works in business, which is where The Dumpster learned his. His personal story is almost antithetical to Hitler's, but the dictatorial personality-type can come from any background. But the historical context in which the two men have appeared is vastly different. Germany had lost a world war, had suffered humiliating peace-terms and devastating depression and inflation. The U.S. in the 1930's had conditions closer to those in which Hitler took power than exist today - namely depression and a significant minority calling for revolution: many labor-leaders and intellectuals were Communists or fellow-travelers (Oppenheimer was one). Our current troubles - mild inflation, an influx of immigrants, loss of manufacturing jobs, wealth disparity, endemic racism - are not negligible, but can't compare to Germany's in the 1930's, where there were wars in the streets between Communist and Nazi militias. So, if Donald Chump were to win, which he may do, he would TRY to exert dictatorial control over the government, and would undoubtedly have some success, BUT he'll fail, because the straits we are in are far less dire than they were in Germany, where the establishment, including President Hindenburg, saw Hitler as the lesser of two evils, and thought Hitler was an ignoramus who could be controlled by the wealthy and powerful, to get rid of the Communists, and then disappear. Some of our billionaires - like Elon Musk - perhaps think the same thing about Donny Dump, and they may prove wrong, too. But the Dumpster won't bring our republic down - he'll just be a precedent for future would-be dictators to learn from and build upon. And that's bad enough!
What really resonates is the cult aspects of the Nazi regime. How can the Magas not see this? It is both frustrating and terrifying all at once.
The MAGAS Are also a CULT
It's more than a cult doing this. It's a lot of complicity making more of a movement. People don't like Trump but vote for him make their excuses, many. Business, racism, misogyny, generational loyalty to the party, resentment, ignorance, vulnerability to the fear mongering...
The comments on tv women saying he was the New Jesus ! Spine tingly! The male Pastors eschew hate for anyone not like them - the mega church grifters. It is a CULT!!! They are a sick cancerous group of uneducated MAGARATS !! They hate those who have succeeded in business and are educated ! They expect Trump to take care of them so they could be successful too
Damn. It's like being on a train heading for a cliff. Most of us know it but the others refuse to listen. I keep asking how can they not see it? Why won't they join us to stop this train?
"Most of us know it but the others refuse to listen".
Apparently. according to polls, if they are correct, MOST don't know this. Not enough know this.
And then there is the system we have that circumvents the majority of people when they vote if so. The majority seems, according to polls, slim. The media, Fox the worst and popular, pushes lies. The others in the so called responsible media are "sanewashing". The rest of us, the leaders, public figures, are not strong or loud enough.Many are too busy to pay attention. That is why the train is not stopping. Democracy and freedom is not served on a platter, nor to be relied upon without engagement.
But it’s not easy
I wish President Biden would take advantage of the Supreme Court's immunity for presidential actions and put these dweebs in jail. He can also command the military to lock up his political enemies. Wouldn't that be lovely
My parents were both born in Germany (1920 and 1925), and came to the US as immigrants with their parents in 1929. They left Germany for mainly economic reasons - Germany had undergone a deep depression and hyperinflation in the years after WW1. I remember one of my grandfathers telling me that, when they left Germany, he and his friends and relatives considered Hitler to be a kind of “fringe” politician, a kook really, who would never amount to much. How differently things would turn out! Today’s fringe politician or kook can become tomorrow’s dictator, cult leader, and start a world war. George Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, a German philosopher and theologian of the 18th/19th century once wrote in his work, Philosophy of History: “ But what experience and history teach is this – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it". Essentially, this is saying that what we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. How true.
History repeats itself.
Well said and true, how can the race still be close ?
I think we just learned how by listening to this recording from HCR.
Essayist Michel de Montaigne had a close friend in France in the 1500s, Étienne de la Boétie, who wrote an essay titled "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude," published posthumously, I believe, in 1576. The theme of the essay was that a certain percentage of the population will always follow the bad man. Seems like it was about one-third of a given population. And they will stay absolutely loyal till the very end, even when they personally suffer from his rule. I heard Mary Trump address this once on the Lincoln Project a few years ago (not Boétie but the syndrome, which she referred to as, I believe, 'authoritarian personality disorder'). The word authoritarian refers to the people who 'suffer' from the syndrome, not to the authoritarian. I would love to hear what Heather has to say about that.
Interesting
Many of us do learn from history. I certainly have, and you have, too, apparently. But too many do not bother to learn history. And others in power (school boards and politicians that direct them) dismantle or hijack social studies and history programs in public schools so students do not grow up to be a "problem for the party." In that case, studying history is actually studying propaganda. I believe that's already happening in a number of red states. Just study the Alamo, for one example.
Right on about the cult nature of the MAGA movement, their inability to see or admit theyve been brainwashed and their low-intellect fealty to a wanna-be fascist.
Thats an oxymoron: the nature of the cult section of the movement requires this inability, ignorance.
The movement is not all cult. Many understand but rationalize their support. This makes it the big movement.. very ugly when you understand what is making this.
We live in a social system, and we have precisely two options. Option 1 is to maintain a superior image of oneself and one’s ingroup. Option 2 is to assume that, in terms of being superior, eight billion human beings are tied for first place. Trump supporters chose Option 1.
It’s easy to know if you’re interacting with someone who maintains a superior image of an exclusive ingroup that excludes you. Likewise, it’s easy to know if you’re interacting with someone who maintains a superior image of an inclusive group that includes you. The question is, how will an individual respond to being excluded?
Initially, we all respond the same way. We get angry, but an emotionally mature individual uses their anger to do something positive. Kamala Harris is, and Trump supporters are not, emotionally mature.
Each time a child’s influence on the world expands, which it tends to do in a stepwise fashion, the child is temporarily emotionally immature because the child’s influence just expanded beyond the child’s exclusive ingroup. As a child, Harris’ mother made sure that it wasn’t just young Kamala’s influence that was expanding. Mom also made sure that the expansion of her daughter’s inclusive ingroup was keeping pace.
From Birmingham City Jail, MLK wrote, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” My interpretation: We are all inescapably in one social system, so if you want Trump supporters to stop choosing Option 1, then don’t start choosing Option 1.
Another long story short: Trump supporters are responding to a conflict within the social system, which is a within-system dilemma, but they are perceiving it as an extra-system conflict, which the mind impulsively perceives as a threat. Our brains evolved to impulsively detect within-system dilemmas, but then resolve them via conscious deliberation when the needed cognitive resources are available. Our brains also evolved to impulsively neutralize extra-system threats, and doing so shuts down the deliberative thought process.
The only reason our Paleolithic ancestors had descendants is because they didn’t engage in a deliberative thought process when deciding how to respond to an imminent threat from a sabretooth tiger. Likewise, Trump supporters are not thinking. They are reacting impulsively. There is a way to stop it that involves choosing Option 2.
Ref: www.wisdomtheo.com
I love your statement that, in terms of being superior, 8 billion human beings are tied for first place. I look at all of us as wondrous creatures, made from molecules from the stars, all having equal value.
Trump is a problem obviously, as are all the other bullies, liars, thieves, dictators, nazis, etc. But #45 and all his supporters are also a symptom of a deeper problem. And if we don't figure out what that deeper problem is and address it the next clever, self-centered, sociopathic, politician will simply pick up where-ever the current pack of manipulating sociopathic dictators-in-waiting leave off. Because nearly half of us voted for #45 eight years ago. Can somebody please figure out why totalitarianism appeals to so many people?
Is it fear of an uncertain future? Is it feeling like they've been left behind because wealth distribution is so uneven. Is it very effective propaganda, manipulation, and uncontrolled money flooding into a system that's slow to respond? Is it hopelessness that's so powerful that breaking the system to grab something valuable out of the terrible chaos that occurs when big systems (that aren't paying attention to you) fail seems like the only choice left?
I dont know. But we better figure it out fast.
The tech advances which we should be concentrating on in order to have a positive effect on human evolution apparently are showing people's fear. That's a productive environment for a potential leader who is very well intentioned in his convictions.
However .....could they perhaps discuss campaign finance, pacs and all thos smart lobbyists please?😂
It is difficult, for me at least to try and listen to the Maga cult. I don't know anyone in my circle that support trump. And that may be my problem. Regardless of having any close friends or associates that support trump, i have avoided voting or supporting my views and actions concerning their so-called policies. I recognized this con, Trump was playing from his days on the apprentice, after watching one episode. Trump is a tightly scripted; controlled from the beginning but once he grasps the levers of power, we must remind ourselves that we should have been more careful what we wished for. My hope now is that after listening to his views on our country, is he must go, and if we don'i excise this cancer we will forever be on life support.
The people I know who support Trump will not accept any criticism of him. They believe everything Trump and FOX news says, lacking all curiosity and critical thinking skills and appear to take any criticism of trump as criticism against themselves personally. I've also noticed that they share an underlying feeling of anger fueled by a preception of victimhood.
We should lean into "the enemy within"... it's Trump and MAGA and MAGA supporters plus the silent who know better. Thank you for Dorothy Thomson..unsung today, should be known.
I must read Sinclair Lewis book. "It Can't Happen Here"..
📚💞
For the first time since Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, she is trailing. What the hell? Trump is becoming more and more unhinged, yet gaining in the polls. Granted, this is to all be taken with a grain of salt and it is still far from exact, but with two weeks to go, this is baffling.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/
I don’t know if it is necssarily true; we should go full force as though it is.
I absolutely agree. At this point four years ago, I bracing for what seemed an inevitable Trump election victory. In 2016, like everyone else, I was certain Hillary Clinton was going to win comfortably.
Moral of this story: Anything can happen.
I don't believe that and I ignore all the polls.
What has always stood out to me is how comfortable one feels in his own skin.
While enlightening and very interesting, these are actually making me feel worse. I cannot believe the race is tied! We should prepare for a very dark place if he prevails.
Thanks Heather for reading us the recipe.
I saw a Trump flag in my neighborhood yesterday it didn't say the typical "Make America Great Again" verbage...instead it said, Take America Back ". This verbage alarms me more than the prior I've come to associate with MAGA. Has anyone else seen a Trump flag like this recently?
Unfortunately Americans suffer from short attention span defecit disorder
Today is Oct.24. I’m not always able to listen to your podcasts each day so binge listen. You may be addressing The NY Times audio of the John Kelly interview & the Atlantic articles in the next two days but I had to respond to this one directly given what we were told in those articles. Trump isn’t a smart man and certainly knows little history, but someone has been teaching him well over the past 9 years. They found their useful idiot and he’s following the playbook perfectly.
My husband is not political & has, over these past 9 years told me I was over reacting. Not anymore. Today he told me his bigger fear is that Trump won’t live through his 4 year term & then we have president Vance, who is much smarter and far more evil.
God save us all & our country
Donald Dump clearly admires dictators, and would like to be one himself. The dictatorial style often works in business, which is where The Dumpster learned his. His personal story is almost antithetical to Hitler's, but the dictatorial personality-type can come from any background. But the historical context in which the two men have appeared is vastly different. Germany had lost a world war, had suffered humiliating peace-terms and devastating depression and inflation. The U.S. in the 1930's had conditions closer to those in which Hitler took power than exist today - namely depression and a significant minority calling for revolution: many labor-leaders and intellectuals were Communists or fellow-travelers (Oppenheimer was one). Our current troubles - mild inflation, an influx of immigrants, loss of manufacturing jobs, wealth disparity, endemic racism - are not negligible, but can't compare to Germany's in the 1930's, where there were wars in the streets between Communist and Nazi militias. So, if Donald Chump were to win, which he may do, he would TRY to exert dictatorial control over the government, and would undoubtedly have some success, BUT he'll fail, because the straits we are in are far less dire than they were in Germany, where the establishment, including President Hindenburg, saw Hitler as the lesser of two evils, and thought Hitler was an ignoramus who could be controlled by the wealthy and powerful, to get rid of the Communists, and then disappear. Some of our billionaires - like Elon Musk - perhaps think the same thing about Donny Dump, and they may prove wrong, too. But the Dumpster won't bring our republic down - he'll just be a precedent for future would-be dictators to learn from and build upon. And that's bad enough!