You have to hand it to the GOP primary voters who helped Donald Trump secure the nomination. Sure, they let themselves be seduced, but at least they made the guy work for it. His wooing and winning of these voters, which I wrote about in March, was a masterstroke.
For his next act, I assumed he’d have to, you know, do something. Pivot. Sound more presidential. Or less bonkers, at least.
But without even a come-hither glance, without even crooking one little finger, he got virtually every Republican candidate for House, Senate or governor to hop into bed. Who knew they were so easy?
But even as some Republicans are finally waking up to the fact that Trump is fatally flawed, won’t change, and could do irretrievable damage to the party, they are still stuck.
“I know it’s awful, but it’s too late,” they say, with a sad shrug. Yes. It’s late. But shouldn’t we be urgently examining every conceivable option?
I think I understand the lack of resolve. I’ve spent the past few weeks immersed in the thinking of Trump supporters across the spectrum. I’ve had conversations with friends who plan to vote for him, but reluctantly. I’ve read columns and blog posts, listened to podcasts, spent hours on Twitter. I’ve visited online forums where Trump’s most ardent supporters gather. (Yeah, I know. It’s not Fallujah, but still: You’re welcome.)
All across the spectrum, I see symptoms of seduction. And I don’t mean just among the truly besotted—even the “Never Hillary” crowd is afflicted.
It’s important to understand this: You don’t have to like Trump for your thoughts to be manipulated by him, and the disordered thinking is blocking our exit.
One issue, as others have pointed out, is that he’s been “normalized.” Republicans are the frog dropped in cold water. The burner was turned on, but it’s heating up too slowly. “Oh, it’s not that bad,” they say as the water begins to boil.
But it’s not just normalization. His stunning and unexpected victory in the primary infected everyone’s thinking. That’s a helpful way to look at it, in fact: like an infection. A cancer, even.
I’ve deconstructed pro-Trump arguments and sorted them into five general categories:
- The Superman Delusion
- Etch-a-Sketch Thinking
- The Rosa Parks Problem
- Pareidolia (or: The Virgin Mary in the Slice of Toast)
- He’s Never Going to Leave Her
It’s my experience that infected thinking can be treated and done so quite simply: People merely need to see the flaws in their perspectives.
Of course, this requires the right touch, meeting people where they are, not browbeating, as each side is currently doing to the other. (Here’s an easy guideline: Approach people just as you would on Twitter, except exactly the opposite.)
Following are descriptions of the types of seduced thinking. Go forth! Where you spot it, treat it. Then maybe we can finally move on.
The Superman Delusion
This is a belief in Trump’s ability to defy the normal laws of political gravity. People come by this delusion honestly, since he defied the normal laws of political gravity. The delusion lies in the belief (often unconscious) that it will continue indefinitely. The Superman Delusion is a meta-symptom that runs through other types of seduced thinking.
One antidote to this delusion is to demystify Trump’s victory in the primaries. It’s no longer magic if you know how he did the trick. Most people are not aware of the very calculated manner in which Trump approached the GOP primary voters. See my earlier essay for the whole sorry tale, but in very brief summary:
Rick Santorum’s 2014 book Blue Collar Conservatives pointed Trump to a segment of the electorate that was ripe for seduction. Trump studied the book and even had the author to Trump Tower to discuss it.
Trump then went after them, using his genius for seductive rhetoric. I don’t know if it’s a native talent or whether he studied it (his ex-wife did say he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed) but at this one thing, at least, he’s brilliant. As Dilbert creator Scott Adams has chronicled at length on his blog, Trump knows what other politicians do not: Persuasion is not about changing minds but about changing feelings.
His speeches at rallies were like arrows to blue collar conservatives’ hearts. What sounded like nonsense to the rest of us—”We’re going to make American great again,” “the old fashioned way,” “We’re going to beat China, Japan, beat Mexico at trade,” “We are going to build a wall…it’s not even a difficult thing to do”—were honeyed words to the objects of his seduction.
Even the calls to violence—”Knock the crap out of them, would you?” —were seductive. As Robert Greene, author of The Art of Seduction, says, people crave getting in touch with their dark side. Seducers should “stir up the transgressive and taboo.”
It really was amazing. Diabolical, of course, but amazing.
But how did he get politicians to fall in line? They weren’t blue collar conservatives. Why did they cave so easily?
Easy. He seduced them by winning. What is more seductive to a politician than someone who defies all the odds?
Their quick endorsements were deemed rank opportunism, but that only proves the deluded thinking. They thought it was obvious: getting behind Trump would be the popular move.
Besides, some Republican elected officials seem downright infatuated. Some of the most enchanted are former opponents who had front row seats to his high-flying act. Chris Christie. Ben Carson. Rick Perry. (Even Marco Rubio said he’d be “honored” to speak at the convention? Honored?)
Of course, while it can be helpful to see behind the curtain, the best antidote to the delusion that he’ll keep defying gravity is, well, gravity.
Trump seems to have entered the normal political gravitational field. The media has suddenly “learned how to cover” him. (What an astonishing coincidence, their figuring it out just as he locked up the nomination?) And as far as anyone can tell, while he might have cleverly calculated how to woo the primary voters, he seems to have skipped a step: planning for the general election.
But while gravity will send more people toward the Never Trump camp, we should not underestimate Hillary Clinton’s power to send them right back out again. It’s important, therefore, to be able to spot and treat the other infected thinking.
Etch-a-Sketch Thinking
The other day I ran into a friend who is a very reluctant Trump supporter.
“Oh, my god, did you see that ad?” she said, her eyes wide with horror.
My friend was referring to this pro-Clinton super PAC video, featuring the parents of a girl with spina bifida talking about how they felt when they saw Trump mock a disabled New York Times reporter.
“Yes, it’s devastating,” I replied politely, meanwhile thinking, what the hell did you think was going to happen?
Of course it was going to be an ad. But Trump gets through one speech without sounding insane, and his supporters breathe a sigh of relief. It’s like they think we’re living in a giant Etch-a-Sketch, and one good day shakes it, erasing all that went before.
Ordinarily politicians face questions about everything. Tax returns. Nanny payments. Was Candidate X mean to someone in college? What was Candidate Y’s thesis topic thirty years ago? In 2010, we had several news cycles consumed with Rand Paul’s college “Aqua Buddha” incident. It’s all fair game.
Trump had a relatively free pass, but it’s over. Every single thing he’s said, every word, every gesture, is fair game for political ads. And not just against him, but against every Republican who endorsed him.
And the other side has this very important thing called money. They will make lots and lots of ads and buy lots and lots of airtime.
It’s called gravity. Coming soon to a screen near you.
The Rosa Parks Problem
“He’s standing up to political correctness! He doesn’t back down!”
This is a key to Trump’s popularity. Democrats might be tempted to write these voters off as racist, especially as Trump’s campaign has smoked out the ugliest white nativist element in the country.
But many well-meaning people are tired of the excesses of political correctness and are deeply concerned about identity politics. They despise the words “racist” and “sexist” being used as weapons, often unfairly. They are troubled by what they have seen on college campuses—students shouting down debate, respectable speakers disinvited, and calls for safe spaces so students don’t have to hear unpalatable ideas.
This article in the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf’s “Dialogue with a 22-Year Old Donald Trump Supporter” is a good example. The young man doesn’t sound racist to me. But he does sound seduced.
Put it this way: Even if you can convince yourself there’s nothing to the charge that Trump is trying to divide people by race. Even if you can explain why his comments about the Mexican judge, just to use one example, are not racist but merely an extension of political correct nonsense. Even if you know the way he talks is not ideal, but you’re just glad someone’s pushing back and isn’t caving for once, you still have a problem.
Ask yourself this: As Trump reenters the normal political gravitational field, is he then: a) The best person to fight political correctness; or b) The worst person on the planet to fight political correctness?
It’s b) for the win, folks!
In the wake of Trump’s comments about Judge Curiel, I’ve observed Trump supporters railing against the liberal media, the Never Trump camp and political correctness. It’s like railing against gravity when you fall down. They won’t admit it, but they had been seduced into thinking his free pass would last.
Here’s another way of looking at it: Why did civil rights leaders select Rosa Parks as their standard-bearer? They were fighting a blatant injustice. They should not have had to pick someone of unimpeachable character. But they understood the laws of gravity under which they operated, unfair and unjust though they were. To achieve their aims, they needed to pick the right person.
If you want to fight against identity politics and political correctness, you must account for gravity. You need more Rosa Parks, less Donald Trump.
Because even if you somehow don’t see him as a racist, you must agree he’s doing an amazing imitation.
Pareidolia (or The Virgin Mary in the Slice of Toast)
According to Wikipedia, pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon “wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists.” Like seeing Ronald Reagan in a cinnamon bun, or Donald Trump in your bathroom tile.
Many people are suffering from this disorder, reading far too much into Trump’s nomination, and it accounts for some of the hesitation in moving on. Trump picked up on something in the electorate, sure, but to some extent it’s the Virgin Mary in the slice of toast.
People seem ready to abandon everything and sign on to Trumpism. “I think there’s a mini-revolution going on in our country,” said Maine Governor Paul LePage. Peggy Noonan bemoaned that the GOP had become, “a party that stood for platitudes regular people no longer found even vaguely pertinent.” In an article urging Republicans to get behind Trump, Republican strategist John Feehery said if elected, he would be “the face of the new conservatism … based more on the aspirations of middle class voters, who want more economic and personal security from their government and are less eager to embrace globalists who care more about their expansive economic theories than … the cost of bread at Walmart.”
The Republican Party has problems, no doubt. It’s not for nothing that Trump chose to run as a Republican when, let’s face it, he could have gone either way.
But it’s a stretch to suggest that Trump’s platform (to the extent it can be discerned) is the inevitable direction of the party, that his success in the primary means we are obviously going to go in a more nationalist, populist, isolationist and authoritarian direction, or that leaders should abandon talk of lower taxes, smaller government and the other principles it has espoused for so long.
I’ve found that the best treatment for this type of thinking is a thought experiment. It’s actually really fun.
Pretend there is no Donald Trump. (See? I told you it was fun!) Suppose he didn’t hijack the party with billions of dollars in free media and the diabolical use of manipulative rhetoric. What would things have looked like?
Ugly? Maybe, though a different species of ugly. One candidate would have emerged after a great fight. But presumably it would have been a relatively fair fight. Some would be licking their wounds right now, but slowly coming around.
Maybe it would have been another 2012. Maybe the “blue collar conservatives” would have stayed home again. Or maybe they’d be on board but some other group would be alienated. In a two-party system, both parties are coalitions. No one is ever perfectly satisfied. But Republicans would be running against an unpopular Democrat who just had her own bruising primary battle. We certainly would have had a shot.
The candidate who emerged from the primary would be defining the party. Maybe with some of what Trump stood for. Who knows?
The point is, Trumpism is not our inevitable destination. It’s safe to get off the train.
He’s Never Going to Leave Her
Remember the movie When Harry Met Sally? Carrie Fisher’s character Marie is dating Arthur, a married man. In scene after scene, she frets that Arthur will never leave his wife.
“Of course he’s not going to leave her,” her long-suffering friends repeat.
“You’re right, you’re right,” Marie agrees, but a couple scenes later, she’s at it again.
It’s the same thing with Donald Trump. I keep hearing people say, “Oh my God, he really isn’t going to change, is he?”
“No. He’s not going to change.”
“You’re right, you’re right.”
Then he has one good day—wait, scratch that—one not horrible day, and they’re back to the old delusion.
The thinking takes many forms, including:
- He’ll learn
- He’ll pivot in the general
- He’ll respect the gravity of the office
- At least he’ll be more conservative than Hillary.
As any human resources executive will tell you, the best predictor of future behavior is past performance. And here’s an even handier truism from human behavior expert Alan Robert Neal: “You can never change a person who sees his bad behavior as an asset.”
The belief that he’ll be what we want him to be infects most of the reluctant Trump supporters: wishful thinking, projection, and amnesia, all rolled into one.
People say he’ll respect the office because they respect the office. They say, he’ll take instruction when he’s elected, even though he’s never taken instruction. “You might as well get on board, so you can influence what he does,” they say, even though he’s proven again and again that he treats his supporters with contempt. “He’ll learn, really he will,” they say, when he’s shown not the smallest interest in learning anything relevant to this job. (Just how will he do these great “deals,” if he knows absolutely nothing?)
For many, it comes down to the fact that he’s at least nominally a Republican. It’s like people are diving into the dumpster that is Trump’s campaign (which is really just an extension of his brain). They dig around hopefully, then a hand shoots up, clutching a list of judges.
“Look! It’s awesome!”
Never mind that someone had probably just handed it to him and told him to read it. (It was teleprompter Donald announcing potential Supreme Court nominees, mind you, not the real Donald). Never mind that he so loathes taking instruction, he backed off from it almost immediately.
The idea among some Republicans seems to be that “he’s an idiot, but at least he’s our idiot.”
But he’s not an idiot, and he’s not ours. Most likely, we’re his.
Here’s why: Dive into the dumpster all you want. But even if you manage to find something you like, you’re now covered with rotten egg, a dirty diaper, rancid leftovers.
You can shower, but you’ll always wear his stink.
Virginia Hume is a writer, editor and former Republican spokeswoman.
