Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV

The question has perplexed philosophers, scholars, pundits, strategists, and just plain dummies ever since Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower accompanied by his imported muse, Melania, in what now seems like the ancient times of 2015. What is up with these people? What lies behind…or beneath, as the case may be…their slavish devotion to this lying, thieving, felonious, nincompoop?

Theories abound. Hatred of the libs is a common one, racism another, resentment of “elites” yet another. All of that and more is visible at Trump rallies, where his fans bear their prejudices like flags of pride. Trump knows his applause lines, and he hits one after another—Biden crime family, retribution, terrorists and murderers coming across the border, deep state, Biden is waging a conspiracy to overthrow the United States. The crowds go wild.

Lately, he’s been pushing a new one, that Biden is turning “the USA into a crime-ridden, disease-ridden dumping ground,” as he refers again and again to crimes committed by migrants, speaking of the crimes for which he has been convicted as “persecution,” a word with religious overtones that are not lost on his hugely majority-white-Christian crowds.

Nearly all of Trump’s stump speech is a long-winded attachment of his victimization to theirs, matching his grievances to theirs, creating a gigantic society of the sisters of perpetual self-pity. Who wants to think of oneself as losing, which is what Trump tells his crowds they are doing again and again? Why do his crowds surrender their self-respect and dignity to this man?

One answer may be that so few of them have much of either, which may sound like an easy diagnosis, coming as it does from a liberal pundit all cozily ensconced atop a well-plumped cushion of self-regard. To which I plead guilty. I have a sense of self-worth, and in my seventh decade, I don’t cotton to looking upon the past with regret.

What happened to the MAGA crowd to allow themselves to be so dominated by the doom and gloom of propheteering of the likes of Donald Trump? Theories about their loss of status and standing in a changed America have been thrown around, to which I say, pffftt. Status is nothing if it isn’t based on self-respect. Standing has no meaning if it is gained only by, in the word Trump is so fond of, “winning.”

Authoritarians, of whom Trump is clearly one, are able to sell dominance politics only to people who are not participants in a world of mutual respect. It’s why Trump demands what he calls “loyalty” from his followers. It’s not loyalty. It is surrender. It is passive, not active. It is adherence to one and only one true path and answer to life’s questions. You don’t get to choose when belief is the only choice.

It is acceptance and not participation, belief and not reason. Listening to lies and deciding to believe them doesn’t take effort. All it takes is yielding oneself to the mob that believes the same lies.

To MAGA is to follow, unquestioningly and absolutely. Giving up your self-respect is not done to you by others. You do it to yourself, and it hurts you. It is why one of our two political parties has ceased being either political or a party, turning itself, openly and brazenly, into a cult.

We are in a dangerous moment in our nation’s history, and not only because our democracy is under threat. Tens of millions of our citizens are in danger. Many of them already lost their lives by believing lies during the pandemic.

The assault on women’s health has already killed and will many more. Deaths in infancy are up in red states across the country. More will die before this political moment is over. We won’t need a civil war. This time, the war is within.