My head hurts.

I just went back to the calendar, and I realize it has taken almost exactly thirteen weeks for me to be 100% finished arguing with Trump supporters.  The original mind-bending reality of The Donald’s reality show election has firmly given way to the undeniable and incomprehensible fact that a huge swath of our fellow Americans are 100% hunky-dory with what is happening.  Up is down, wrong is right, black is still black of course, but Mexicans are the enemy today.  Of all the surreal components in our nation’s rapid “deconstruction”: inexperienced and unqualified, unabashed racists and thieves guarding the henhouse; staffing of cabinet positions by folks who pleasure themselves while fantasizing about obliterating their respective departments; the vilification of any media source who dare disagree with the administration’s fanciful fairy tales and fish stories;  the most befuddling and exhausting part to understand, at least for me, is the popular support Trump & Co. are enjoying while it is all happening.  We and those like us drink coffee and energy drinks and live near to an outlet our charging cord has been plugged into for months, and we argue and try and try to make the Red Hats see the obvious truth:  that Trump and Bannon, etc. are hammering away at our democratic underpinnings, trying their best to loose them from their foundations so that Trump can mount the podium supreme and the rest of our government can go home.  Nothing.  No answer.

I’ve always found cults fascinating.  Creepy as hell, but fascinating.  Charles Manson, David Koresh, Jim Jones – all sick, driven men, obscenely talented at recruiting and manipulating less strong-minded folks into surrendering their own will and freedom.  The most interesting part, though, lies not as much with the evil bastards running the show – it’s easy enough to imagine how someone with megalomaniacal tendencies would find pleasure in being surrounded by a subservient rabble.  No, the truly fascinating and elusive element lies in the cult members themselves.  What sort of emptiness fills someone so completely that they will give themselves to a leader, an autocrat, so utterly?  Charles Manson convinced his followers to commit murder for him.  David Koresh led his “church” members in a two-hour gun battle with federal agents which eventually led to the death of 80 men, women and children in a horrible fire.  Jim Jones ordered his followers to kill Congressman Leo Ryan and then convinced more than 900 people to commit mass suicide.  900 people.  300 children among them.  Why?  What could possibly drive people to surrender their will and instinct for self-preservation to someone else so absolutely?  Why do so many folks need to enfold themselves into groups of indistinguishable others and prostrate themselves before their own demagogue?  Inevitably to their own detriment?

I don’t mean to oversimplify this phenomenon – I know there are whole libraries of books written on the subject of cults and other mass sociological disorders.  There are legions of experts who could speak better on this topic, but just for now – just for this conversation – I’d like to go out on a limb and say that the root cause behind the cult member’s need to be controlled lies with the same root of all human culture, and all of our pathologies:  fear.

It is fear that enables the cult leader or dictator to captivate and control people.   Fear of death or damnation, fear of the unknown, fear of the “other,”  fear of changing times and the loss of innocence.  The autocratic leader says, “Look!  Out there!  Destruction is at hand!  Here they come for us!  Don’t worry – come closer!  I’ll take care of you!  I have the answer!  Only I can fix it.  Everything’s going to be okay.”  And his (because the autocrat/dictator/cult leader is almost always male) siren song lures the fearful wayfarer toward the rocks of assimilation and it is over.  They are saved.  The trains run on time.

I’ve thrown out a very loose association between cults and dictatorships here, and I know it only holds water for a cursory examination.  Cults more often than not include a religious component, and frequently involve sexual exploitation of the members by the cult leader.  Dictatorships always include many many people who did not opt to follow the autocrats leadership willfully, but must suffer through his regime nonetheless.  I simply make the comparison to demonstrate that given the right circumstances, if some folks get scared enough, they hand the keys of reality over to someone they think will take care of them, and they go somewhere else.  I don’t know where.  I just hope I never go there.

Thus, as I am trying to convince a diehard Trumper that the president is a genuine threat to our democracy, I have to remind myself that he or she doesn’t care.  They know he’s working hard to move us toward fascism, and they’re cool with that.  The very folks who are convinced ISIS hates us for “our freedoms” are gleefully handing those “freedoms” over to an administration who could give exactly one flying fuck about any single working-class man, woman or family in this country.  “Everything’s going to be okay,” they hear.  “Whew.  Thank God,” they say.  The biggest chest-thumpers and flag-truck-drivers are afraid, and they need someone to take care of them.  Arguments are wasted.  They don’t think like us – we’re not on the same page.  We’re not even speaking the same language.  We need to take care of ourselves, and take care of each other.  Time spent wasting breath arguing is time that could be spent preparing for the worst.  Get ready.  We won’t talk our way out of this.