Trump's Base Wants Revenge on Other Americans

Donald Trump is an anger-filled, self-absorbed malignant narcissist who some have even described as a sociopath.  Thus, it is little surprise that on the campaign trail and in courtrooms Trump is making threats and promising revenge on anyone or anything that has slighted in his mind his mentally ill ego - even when the slights comprise simply telling the truth about Trump or holding him accountable for misdeeds and crimes.  What is much more disturbing in some ways is the millions of MAGA cult members who likewise want revenge, if not actual physical violence against their fellow citizens for perceived insults - no matter how well deserved - or threats to their white privilege.   Much, if not a majority of the MAGA base, is comprised of far right religious extremists and/or white supremacists who bear hatred towards millions of other citizens and even their neighbors.  Never in my lifetime other perhaps during the civil rights struggle of the 1960's do I recall so many bearing so much ill will towards others.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the hatred being embraced by Trump's followers, many of whom are evangelicals who bear more resemblance to biblical Pharisees than those following Christ's gospel message.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee, and he has vowed revenge on his political enemies. His voters want revenge as well—on their fellow citizens.

he Republican base actively embraces Trump’s grievances; it emulates his pettiness; it supports his childlike inability to accept responsibility. These voters are not sighing in resignation and voting for the lesser of two or three or four evils. They are getting what they want—because they, too, are set on revenge.

These voters are not settling a political score. Rather, they want to get even with other Americans, their own neighbors, for a simmering (and likely unexpected) humiliation that many of them seem to have felt ever since swearing loyalty to Trump.

A lot of people, especially in the media, have a hard time accepting this simple truth. Millions of Americans, stung by the electoral rebukes of their fellow citizens, have become so resentful and detached from reality that they have plunged into a moral void, a vortex that disintegrates questions of politics or policies and replaces them with heroic fantasies of redeeming a supposedly fallen nation.

Poll numbers on this issue are dispiriting. A third of Republicans—and four in 10 voters who have a favorable view of Trump—agree with the statement that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” But violence against whom? We are not under foreign occupation. When people talk about “resorting to violence” they are, by default, talking about violence against their fellow citizens, some of whom have already been threatened merely for working in their communities as election volunteers.

In Iowa, 19 percent of 502 likely GOP caucus attendees said Trump’s statement that he might have “no choice” but to lock up his political opponents made them more inclined to vote for him. One out of five might not seem like a lot, but another 43 percent said they didn’t care one way or another. Trump’s ranting about “terminating” parts of the Constitution made only 14 percent more likely to vote for him, but again, 36 percent didn’t care. What a triumph: Only one in eight Iowa GOP caucus voters supports trashing the Constitution.

The words of actual Trump supporters are even more unnerving than looking at raw poll numbers. . . . Kris, “a 71-year-old retired nurse in orthopedic sneakers” who watches Trump rallies on Rumble or FrankSpeech (a platform launched by the MyPillow founder, Mike Lindell) and believes that the 2020 election was “most definitely” stolen. . . . . “I hope he’s guiding the military to be able to step in and do what they need to do. Because right now, I’d say government’s very tyrannical.” If the Democrats try to steal the election again in 2024, she told me, the Trump-sympathetic elements of the military might need to seize control.

What can turn an ordinary person—a father, the pleasant older lady who lives down the street—into the family powder keg, or even a deluded seditionist who hopes the U.S. military will seize control of the country?

The usual answer, when Trump ran the first time, was that these were “forgotten” voters, people “left behind” by globalization and a leftist political culture, who were hurling out a giant primal yawp of opposition. These were never empirically sustainable explanations, but empathetic reporters and deeply concerned politicians went on listening tours to diners and gas stations anyway. When ordinary Americans would say shocking, indecent, and un-American things, their flummoxed interlocutors remained steadfast in the belief that more listening and more empathetic nodding would put things right in a few years.

And yet, nothing worked. Trump and his right-wing media courtiers—who tend to the anger of the older, white middle class the way florists lovingly raise orchids—fed the GOP base a continual stream of rage, especially as Trump started to pile up electoral defeats. These voters now want to get even with their fellow citizens not for what’s been done to Trump but for what they feel has been done to them. They were certain that 2016 would finally bring them the recognition and respect they craved.

Much like Trump himself, these voters are unable to accept what’s happened over the past several years. Trump, in so many ways, quickly made fools of them; his various inanities, failures, and possible crimes sent them scrambling for ever more bizarre rationalizations, defenses of the indefensible that separated them from family and friends. If in 2016 they suspected, rightly or wrongly, that many Americans looked down on them for any number of reasons, they now know with certainty that millions of people look down on them—not for who they are but for what they’ve supported so vocally.

Strings of losses, including the 2018 Democratic-wave election, Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and the “red wave” that never happened in 2022, forced MAGA voters to construct an alternate reality in which the patriotic, hardworking majority has been repeatedly thwarted by schemes so complicated that SPECTRE would have struggled to execute them. Worse, a culture (especially in the media) that for a time was desperate to understand their views now either ignores them or treats them as dangerous curiosities.

The only good thing that came out of Iowa last night is that we are now spared further public performances from Vivek Ramaswamy. And it is a hopeful sign that nearly half of the caucus-goers chose someone besides Trump. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that the coming year will be just another peaceful competition between two political parties. Trump wants payback; so do millions of voters who have no one to blame for their sense of humiliation but themselves.