By Jessie Seigel/ January 21, 2024
"I can believe a MILLION impossible things before breakfast--And I'm proud of it!"
("Hmm. Must be hot air keeping him aloft...")
The narcissism of Donald Trump has been analyzed ad nauseum. And the former president’s tactics are so obvious that not even a ten-year-old should still fall for them. Yet Trump supporters in the 2024 presidential race are still buying what he is selling them. They either openly embrace the despotic horrors that he promises to bring to this nation in a second term or, in self-delusion, follow his lead in projecting those malicious intentions onto his opponent.
At this point, no-one can claim lack of prior exposure to Trump’s con-job as an excuse. So, are Trump supporters the rats being led away by a fascistic pied piper? Or the straight-backed Iowa suckers being conned by a perverted version of The Music Man’s Professor Harold Hill?
A number of psychologists have referred to his followers’ behavior as mass psychosis and have been trying to understand and define what has caused those followers to become such blindly die-hard supporters of Trump.
Social psychologist Thomas Pettigrew flags numerous characteristic traits Trump’s followers tend to have: deference to authority, lack of intergroup contact, aggression towards outgroups, a rigidly hierarchical view of the world, resistance to new experience, prejudice, and relative deprivation (i.e., a distorted conception that others who one feels are equal or inferior have unfairly gained greater success than you).
These traits, Pettigrew suggests, “make people vulnerable to an intense sense of threat” which authoritarian leaders know they can exploit by magnifying that perception and providing simplistic solutions.
In a 2021 Scientific American interview, forensic psychiatrist and president of the World Mental Health Coalition, Bandy X Lee, stated that though reasons for the attraction to Trump vary, there are “two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis.”
Lee defined narcissistic symbiosis as:
developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure.
She added that “when a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds… inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals.”
Lee concluded that: “if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.”
According to Lee, “The treatment is removal of exposure.” She maintained that what Trump is able to do after his presidency depends on us. Thus, she advocated for accountability, including prosecution, adding, “…we need to place constraints from the outside when he cannot place them from within.” After that, the process of helping his followers to heal could begin.
As we are seeing now, such removal, let alone accountability and constraint, is more easily prescribed than accomplished. And the nation is running out of time. The innumerable indictments and court cases that could end the nation’s exposure to Trump are moving at a turtle’s pace in a race against the coming 2024 election. If Trump gains the presidency once again, he will instruct the Department of Justice to drop those proceedings.
Furthermore, officials—prosecutors, judges, etc.—remain decorously silent while Trump lies about their court proceedings and presents himself as a Christ-like martyr to his supporters. Judges appear afraid to even hold him to account for his repeated contempt of court, incitement of violence against court officials (including the judges), and intimidation of witnesses.
So much for “constraint from the outside.”
With the 2024 election bearing down on us, too much time and energy have been lost on trying to understand the Trump/Trump supporter psychosis, and none on an effective way to counter it.
Perhaps we should stop analyzing what makes Trump and his followers tick and focus on those who are supposed to enforce the rule of law. What are they afraid of?
Do they fear further incensing Trump’s followers, leading to even greater threats and violence? That is not a legal consideration and should not determine their actions.
Is the concern possible reversal by a higher court? Or making a legal misstep that could scuttle the Trump cases altogether? These are legitimate concerns that those who follow the law must consider. Of course, this always leaves they who would adhere to and enforce the rule of law at a disadvantage because the Trumps of the world have no rules and follow no laws.
Furthermore, even when pointing out the dangers of Trump, Democratic leaders continue to remain overly placid, trying to appeal solely to the reason and logic that Trump supporters reject. Nor do they respond audibly to Trump's political surrogates at all. Louder voices are needed. Unless such voices arise--and quickly--to follow societal rules but simultaneously fight fire with fire, neither the rule of law nor democracy will survive.
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