I’m not going to lie to anyone, Donald Trump as President scares me. I don’t want to, nor do I need to, go on about the laundry list of things that worry me about Trump. In the divided electorate we have in our country it probably wouldn’t convince you one way or the other anyway. I want to talk about something else. Something that nobody else is talking about. Life after the 2016 election.
Let’s start out with the easy scenario. If Trump wins in 2016 I guess the United States had a good run. We were on the winning side of two world wars, we made some pretty cool cars, all’s well that ends okay in my book. Maybe China will do a better job at running the world for the next 50 to 100 years.
The next scenario though is what if Trump loses? Obviously Trump being President is a disaster waiting to happen, but it’s not like him losing is all that great either. No, it’s not because Hillary will be president, it’s his supporters. Where do all of these people go?
You see if Trump loses that’s it for him. He got the publicity he wanted, he can cash in on his campaign, make a few TV appearances here and there to say some more insane stuff, but you know who isn’t just going to disappear? The people who voted for him.
If anyone isn’t familiar with the term “Cult of Personality” let me learn you something. A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods to create an idealized, heroic, and at times worshipful image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.
We’ve uncovered the secret to Donald Trump’s success in this election and why his followers blindly listen to anything he says. Let’s be honest, the man has no real solutions to any real problems. All I ever hear from him is we are going to win, we’re going to make America great again, we’re going to ban Muslims, and we’re going to build a wall. He’s also stated we should kill terrorists’ families, and we should use torture even if it doesn’t work.
If you watched his god awful ego stroke of a speech at the Republican National Convention you can see the cult of personality oozing from the stage. His whole speech was about fear of the outsiders, the other, and only he could make it better. He is the savior to his supporters.
How did we get here? What drives people to vote for an authoritarian fascist like Donald Trump in a place like the United States who, on paper, is supposed to be the beacon of freedom and democracy?
To answer this question, we have to look deeply into who his supporters are. We know what Donald Trump believes, but what do his supporters believe?
In South Carolina a CBS exit poll found that 75% of Republican voters supported banning Muslims from entering the United States. A PPP poll found that a third of Trump voters support banning gays and lesbians from the country, and last, but certainly not least twenty percent said that Lincoln should have never freed the slaves. Yes, 1/5 of Trump supporters think black people should still be in chains right now in 2016.
The trend of people voting for Trump are scared of a dangerous world that doesn’t exist. Foreigners are out to get them, black people are roaming the streets causing havoc, and illegal immigrants are coming and killing everyone and taking their jobs.
What’s the psychological profile of these people? Why do they clamor to somebody like Trump? That answer in laymen’s terms they are authoritarians.
A PhD student at the University of Massachusetts by the name of Matthew MacWilliams studies authoritarianism, not dictators, but the psychological profile of individual voters that is characterized by a desire for order and a fear of outsiders, delved deep into the Trump phenomena.
People who score high in authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders and prevent the changes they fear. Naturally, he had to find out if authoritarianism correlated with support for Trump.
Shocker to hopefully nobody, but MacWilliams found that yes not only does authoritarianism correlate with support for Trump, it pretty much predicts it.
Let’s take this to the next level if you still don’t believe me. The cult of personality is so real that his supporters don’t even think he will fulfill his crazy promises, nor do they even care.
The Washington Post describes this thinking perfectly. Supporters were quoted saying that it’s a marketing plan, or he’s just setting a tone that Mexico and the United States need to be separate, it’s symbolic, or as Dennis Kerns put it, “I think if he strengthens the border, it will be like building a wall. So the wall’s there it’s just invisible. It might be 10 feet tall, it might be 20 feet tall, but it’s invisible. So the wall can be built without it having to be built.”
These are all just anecdotal stories at one specific rally in New Mexico, but we can look at polls for data. Only 66% of Trump supporters said they believe he would build a wall. Only half expect Trump to follow through on his promise to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, and only 58% he will ban most foreign Muslims from entering the country.
We have a group of people who follow a candidate that either cling to every word he says and believes him outright, or don’t believe him and don’t care they’re going to vote for him anyway.
That is why Trump losing is almost as scary as him winning. What are these supporters going to do if Donald Trump loses? These angry and fearful people who yell out racial slurs** at rallies, who are clinging for a savior to fix all of their perceived problems, where will they go and what will they do? Trump has already put it into his supporter’s heads that he’s afraid that if he loses it’s because the election was rigged delegitimizing a potential victory for Hillary Clinton before she’s even actually won.
Trump will come and go. His supporters on the other hand are here to stay. They’ve been given legitimacy and voice, and nobody knows what they are going to do if Trump loses the election, but believe you me, Donald Trump is not the last of this type of candidate we will see in any sort of election any time soon.
