Inside Trump's Zombie Army
Ever wondered how your family and friends became fascists?
Washington DC 10 Aug 2022
General Cirsten Weldon was a leader in the zombie army. Her death on the battlefield ensured she would enter the pantheon of martyrs. With more soldiers than the American, Russian and Chinese armies combined, the zombie army has invaded and occupied the US and is responsible for at least a million deaths. It is an embittered force, with the kind of tenacity that would impress both sides of the siege of Stalingrad. Not once has it ever ceded an inch of territory. Its political commissars ensure strict adherence to the army’s sacred lore. Any hesitation within the ranks is evidence of treachery for which there is only one solution: execution.
As General Weldon fell in glorious battle, her troops threatened death to the medics rushing to save her. Scott “Patriot Streetfighter” McKay proposed the field hospital staff be sentenced to death, or be murdered in vigilante violence. “If it’s not done in a military tribunal then it’s going to be done in the street,” McKay wrote. “That’s my greatest fear. But if it’s necessary, it’s going to be necessary.”
General Weldon was killed by a weapon of mass destruction wielded by Donald Trump, who will go down in history as the Butcher of Mar-a-largo.
A cartoon on Facebook was all it took to convince Cirsten and hundreds of thousands of others to surrender their lives to the dark solitude of a choking death. They were convinced that the entire global scientific establishment had no clue what they were taking about. Instead, a cartoon had all the answers. Cartoons, or memes, are weapons of mass destruction. They have killed several times more people than nuclear weapons. For a comparison, they have been involved in the deaths of over a million Americans (and who knows how many others around the world), compared to the 355,000 deaths resulting from the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The cartoon told the Zombie army that wearing a piece of fabric in crowded enclosed spaces was an outrageous violation of their political freedoms guaranteed by the US constitution. Members of Congress amplified the cartoon message and warned the public that participation in simple public health measures was the equivalent of being sent to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
So when Cirsten went to hospital she refused treatment because the cartoons told her modern medicine was a political plot to kill her. She died. She chose death because she trusted the cartoons and warnings from political leaders over medical science. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” (Orwell). This week polio returned to the United States.
If you wondered how on earth such brainwashing could exist and what that means for the end of democracy in America, read on.
Zombies everywhere
Zombies are not limited to anti-vaccine groups. They take many and varied forms all linked to support of Donald Trump. The first recorded modern zombie was Edgar Maddison Welch who traveled across the country to machine gun a pizza restaurant because a ‘senior figure in the FBI’1 had confirmed to him that the leader of a national political party was in the basement raping children and guzzling their blood. To this day - millions of people still believe Hillary Clinton was getting ‘energy’ from children’s blood - like a gatoraid at Friday night football . Let that sink in. Millions could not find anything the slightest bit ridiculous about this proposition. MILLIONS. OF. PEOPLE.
In the year after Trump lost the election, all sorts of people were predicting he would be restored to power (not re-elected, restored). The most popular of these seers knew the date: 13th of August, 2021. Not only was that 13th a Friday, gloriously, it was also national Kool Aid day. The irony was completely lost on believers. When Friday the 13th failed to deliver the messiah, the pillow prophet simply issued a new date and then another and another. Currently the date is the 20th of August. Not August 2021. 20 August 2022. August is an auspicious month in the pillow calendar. The most amazing thing about this story is the pillow prophet’s every utterance continues to be covered by national news organizations like he is a spokesman for a foreign state at war with the US. Which of course, in a certain sense, he is. Mike Lindell, the Baghdad Bob of Mar-a-largo. For normies, he is an idiot and hilarious. For believers, he is a high priest. The problem is giving him a platform helps spread the Zombie contagion more than shaming him helps bring its defeat.
The failure of the resurrection prophecies as these dates uneventfully pass by should discourage believers, right? Wrong! In fact, the opposite is the case. They explain it away as the powers of satan undermining god’s will. If believers double down on their commitment, if they donate just a few dollars more, they will be rewarded next time. Then they avidly wait to see what happens on the next episode of the ‘resurrection show’.
Birds are not real
Case in point - America’s avian spying crisis. A movement sprang up warning America that birds are not real. Leaders of the group had access to leaked plans and operations of a highly classified CIA program that killed every single bird in America (Canadian and Mexican birds were successfully stopped at the borders) and replaced them with CIA birdie drones that spy on everyone (except at night where the birds go somewhere to sleep - but we don’t know where - adding to mass panic). This powerful social movement was created by students fed up with mass stupidity. The problem was some people completely failed to see the irony and actually believed the deliberately over the top fake conspiracy theory. The students then had to explain to the real believers that birds are in fact real and that their conspiracy theory was a hoax! When parody becomes reality you have a really big problem on your hands. Welcome to America. It is so awash in propaganda it cant tell fake fake-news from actual fake-news.
The same blind fervor is evident in the automatic, immediate, and total overreaction by the entire right wing of American politics to the authorized legal search of Mar-a-largo. As predicted by Civil War II in August 2021, without a moments hesitation, without any facts, the party of law and order and “back the blue” did a 180 and attacked the FBI, labeling it the gestapo, America a gulag, and called for civil war. Within hours an attack was mounted against an FBI office, and the US Capitol - symbols of everything the zombie army hates - the rule of law and democracy. Republican senators, members of Congress and a former Speaker of the House, all called for, or supported, violence. Nothing like this has ever happened in America, except for the last civil war.
Satirist Bill Maher likened conservative Americas reaction to the Trump search warrant to Karachi going up in flames if someone in Europe draws a cartoon of the Prophet (peace be upon him). It is a very telling insight. Civil Wars II was a strategist in the US DOD and a war college professor. For years his liberal and conservative students would laugh at the grip wild conspiracy theories had in the societies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). There was a deep cultural superiority in this smug guffawing. However, the last laugh is on us. It would appear that after twenty years of cultural immersion in the region (war), America failed to deliver Jeffersonian democracy to the silly, easily manipulated, rumor-prone people of MENA; while Americans brought home a deep seated passion for conspiracy theories that are tearing America apart. There is more than a little resemblance between Islamist extremism and Christianist nationalism.2
Conspiracyland
Conspiracy theories, cranks, and fringe groups are not new. What is new, is these ideas have become mainstream. The Republican Party is run by conspiracy theories.
These are the zombies, the true believers, who are blinded to anything but a single minded conviction in their faith. They cannot be dissuaded. Facts, alternative hypotheses, analysis, logic, mean absolutely nothing to them. Like General Weldon, they would literally die before they accepted a different world view. Their passion is unmatched. They are literally excited beyond reason for the expected “sudden and spectacular change in their conditions of life” that their faith says will occur when “the storm” arrives (Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951, p.3).3 Violence and death attends this sort of passion because as TE Lawrence warned us, “an opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot.” Fatal dedication to the delusion is the foundational element that make such people extremely dangerous.
In the United States the central delusion is the QAnon conspiracy. In any Venn diagram of conspiracy theories that promote violent anti-democratic ideas, people and agendas, QAnon sits in the center. Its ‘ideology’ has infected virtually the entire republican party as well as 54% of the general population.
More than 172 million Americans believe that “Trump will vanquish a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile elites who secretly run the country”.
The ‘secret elites’ have been 'exposed' by QAnon. These include Hollywood figures, members of the deep state, business tycoons, medical experts and the entire membership of the democratic party. Basically, anyone opposed to Trump.4 How convenient. He pretends he knows nothing about QAnon despite Mike Flynn being a major advocate and Q iconography being displayed at his rallies for years.
Whenever someone close to him does something wrong he has sudden amnesia or a case of the sergeant Shultz's: he knows "nothing, NOTHIN-K!"
"It has been getting worse," says Kathryn Olmsted, a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the author of the book, Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. "Conspiracy theories have become more dangerous and more widespread, just even in the last 10 years.” There has been a concentrated and concerted effort by foreign and domestic interests to amplify and spread delusional thinking that has met highly conducive settings arising out of a combination of international crises, changes in technology, the rise of authoritarianism, and the psychology of leaders and the led. The mainstreaming of mass delusional thinking is a critical watershed in US history with grave implications for domestic and international security.
"Folie à millions"
It is impossible to explain Cirsten Weldon’s self destructive behaviors through political, economic or sociological analysis. A discussion of psychology is essential to understand what is happening to America.5 A "folie à millions" (madness by the millions) or "shared psychosis”, are concepts in psychology that explain how specific populations can exhibit similar, and indeed connected, symptoms. It is not as simple as any national crisis automatically creating a mass psychotic break. Ian Hughes contends that "folie à millions" is a unique event that requires a set of 3 interrelated conditions to occur simultaneously. Their interaction might result in a "shared psychosis” within vulnerable elements of populations.
For a "folie à millions" to have a chance of emerging, each element of Ian Hughes’ “toxic triangle” has to be present. There has to be a ‘conducive environment' - a moment or period of national crisis. The US has had plenty of those in the past 20 years. But these, in and of themselves, are insufficient to trigger a psychosis in the population. There also has to be a large population of ‘susceptible followers’, people who for whatever reason are vulnerable to the impact of stress. Many people cope just fine with stress. However, some do not. Some people face multiple and prolonged stressors. They may cope for years but eventually crack under the strain. An individual sufferer does not a mass movement make. Finally, a 'destructive leader’ is essential to interact with the stressed population in order to lead it in unhealthy directions.
In the past, the US has experienced many overlapping ‘conducive environments', or times of national crisis. Large segments of the population have been ‘susceptible’ to the strain that these crises have wrought. But because a ‘destructive leader’ was missing America dodged the kind of "shared psychosis” that brought other counties into existential panic, collapse, and war.
Fortunately in American history, more often than not, constructive leaders have emerged at moments of crisis. FDR strengthened the resolve of vulnerable or weakened populations. His positive outlook, his example, his oratory, lifted the population up and filled their reservoirs of doubt and fear with strength and resolve. His leadership was not just a matter of grand oratory. While FDR said ‘the only thing to fear was fear itself’, he also backed that sentiment with actions to help restore the frayed social fabric of America. In so doing, he challenged some powerful bases of economic and political power. FDR survived an assassination attempt, and an attempted a coup. While Russia, Italy and Germany were succumbing to the forces of revisionism and reaction, FDR’s America narrowly escaped the same fate. His leadership slowly but steadily enabled America to build its way towards stability and prosperity. The centripetal forces unleashed by "folie à millions" in Europe collapsed in on themselves resulting in war. Try as it might, America could not resist being dragged down into that sucking black hole of industrialized warfare and genocide.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man
The United States has had more than its fair share of bad luck from the very start of the 21st century to the current moment. The power of incompetence is increasingly evident in observable outcomes related to US policy decisions throughout that time. From the 9/11 attacks, to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, to the 2008 economic crash, to the deindustrialization of the economy, the loss of life-long well paid jobs, to the decisive loss of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the US has suffered one wrenching crisis after another in quick accelerating succession. None have been fully mitigated, let alone well managed. Indeed, their effects are compounding and apply unequally across society. As crisis followed crisis, stressing particularly the working class who fought the wars while they lost their peacetimes jobs and homes, America did not succumb to "folie à millions". This is not to say Presidents GW Bush and Barack Obama were both FDR-level leaders. But they were not destructive leaders as required by the toxic triangle. The destructive leader was missing.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
After everything America had been through in the past 20 years, after all the stress carried on the backs of the working class, Trump was the missing leg of the toxic triangle. Unfortunately for the world, his extreme toxicity was masked by his buffoonery. His arrival on the scene and his persona were so bizarre that no one took him seriously. He was just a joke. The loud orange small-fingered vulgarian with the strange hair. The public knew Trump as a game show host. They never thought he would win power. He never thought he would win power. For him it was just a marketing exercise - with billions in free advertising. For them, he was going to be the bogie man to shake at the system to send a message.
Trump’s political debut was pure comedy gold. Everyone loved it. His shtick was hugely entertaining. No one was safe from his comic-attack-dog trolling. He was an equal opportunity abuser. He mauled the Bush family for their martial incompetence and “low energy”, as much as he ridiculed his old golfing and party buddies, the Clintons. The ratings were ‘yuge’. There was no better reality tv show in history. The CEO of CBS declared “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”.
Trump was great for Twitter too. Millions flocked to open accounts. An entire nation would wake up every morning and reach for their phone, all thinking the exact same thought: “what has he got up to today?” It was common to hear voters say that they disliked the vulgar candidate and wished he did not say the things he said, but their delight when he tore the system to shreds was self evident.
Trump’s campaign was the ultimate “fuck-you” to establishmentarian politics. Trump personified the ‘protest vote’ for people on both sides. For a country that went to the trouble of a revolution to rid itself of royalty, having yet again to choose between the royal Houses of Bush or Clinton was the final straw.
Trump Blindness
As he gained in popularity few could see the danger. The elites laughed and mocked the obviously ludicrous buffoon. They knew this opening statement calling Mexicans rapists had cancelled any real chance he might have had to win office. His campaign was dead on arrival. That much was obvious! They were wrong. Dead wrong. As he promised he would, he just kept winning. No one really knew why. He defied predictions all the way into the Oval Office.
This is Trump-blindness: the incapacity to see past the comic distractions to the lurking, angry, menacing, threat. To insiders in capitalism, politics and the media, Trump had been a joke his whole life. He was the ultimate outsider.
He knew he was an outsider but he didn’t understand why. He had all the money, why wouldn’t they let them into their club? It deeply hurt him. It humiliated him. He did not know what to do about it other than to double down under the credo that any publicity as better than none. Publicity was all he really knew.
During his rise in New York in the 1980s and 90s, the culture was changing. The stoicism of the greatest generation was giving way to the celebration of failure among the Gen Xers and Millennials. Morton Downey Jr, Jerry Springer, Maury, Rikki Lake and the Queen herself, Oprah, would put you on national television and make you a “celebrity” so long as you debased yourself telling taboo-breaking stories about your broken family, drug abuse, cheating, incest, or having as many babies of dubious paternity as possible - all the excitements of the modern coliseum. This proto-’reality tv’ era was the period where a trailer-park kingpin would vastly more ratings than a veteran of Omaha beach. Trump understood this lumpen proletariat culture instinctively. It was his culture (discussed below). His publicist, John Barron (Trump himself), saw to it that the tabloids could never get enough of his sexual needs, his cheating, avarice, partying, and divorces. His trailer-park might have been a vertical one covered in fake gold in Manhattan, but it was still a trailer-park.6
Trump was about as unpresidential as anyone you could find. That would have been instantly disqualifying in the past, but it had become a towering strength on the campaign trail in 2016. The real laughs were on the political establishment. He lit up the cosy self-serving political class on the right and left. A majority of members of congress are millionaires. Trump exposed them for what they were - detached from the reality of the working class. The fact he was a “billionaire” gave him credibility in the eyes of his working class supporters (the proletariat). Trump was the class traitor attacking the rich and privileged in order to protect the little guy. He was just like “them”.
Class and Humiliation
The general public believe America is an egalitarian society, where everyone is treated equally. This, of course, is an abject fantasy. But it is a useful one. Even in the law, where the hope of equality in treatment is highest, the system falls down.7 Americas are terrified of the idea of class. It smacks of communism or aristocracy. They cannot accept that America is riddled with class tensions. A blindness to Trump is a form of class blindness. If class is defined as “a set or category of things having some property or attribute in common and differentiated from others by kind, type, or quality”, its explanatory power overcomes ideological hesitancy. If people in America are not all the same, how can the differences be explained? Class is a useful analytical tool.
One thing most Americans can agree on is they are differentiated from each other by money. Many Americans would accept that there are different strata in society based on wealth. After all, America is an avowedly materialistic culture. The proletariat are taught by consumerism to worship money. In their world, class is quantifiable. The amount of money possessed by an individual directly correlates to their value as a human being. More is more. More money equates to more intelligence, abilities, good looks, sex appeal and status.8
However, this is not how the the ultimate capitalist blue bloods see the world.9 In fact, for them the opposite it true. Because quantifiable differences are functionally irrelevant (everyone is filthy rich), they focus on qualitative differences among them to determine who is on top. They live by a different code: discretion, understatement, subtlety, and equanimity. They never discuss money. They have so much money it is a source of genuine embarrassment to them. To talk about it would be déclassé - the only truly unforgivable social sin. They avoid any hint of ostentation or showmanship designed to attract attention. In this rarefied world being intelligent, well read and witty are important differentiators. Educational attainment, social sophistication, knowledge of the unwritten rules: knowing the right thing to wear, what to drive, where and how to live; all of these things are important and signify high status. Not money.
Trump is the polar opposite of all of these values of the capitalist elite. Yet he is viewed by the television watching public as a member of the elite simply because he has money. But nothing could be further from the truth. The actual elite see him very differently. They see him as an ignorant, stupid, boorish, and arrogant. He is a loudmouthed, crass, carnival-barking, side show carny, social climber. To the blue bloods, Trump was forever tarnished by the fact that his grandfather managed a whorehouse and his father was a bigoted nouveau riche hustler from Queens who built mass cheap condos for whites only. Trump’s vile exhibitionism was confirmation of his inability to rise above the legacy of his forebears. Trump was the personification of the third generation rule: his grandfather was a pimp, his father a slum lord, and Donald became a media whore.
Poor little Donnie never understood why he was blackballed. How could he? His family did not run in those circles. Trump simply thought if he could get rich enough, really rich, he would automatically gain entry to “in” crowd. This is why he constantly pumped his net worth to Fortune magazine. He honestly thought that once he reached a magical number the doors to the winners circle would glide open and the Rockefeller’s would be waiting for him with welcome arms. His whole life is a journey of frustrating discovery that no matter how much money he had, his proletarian background and values would forever bar him from the inner circle.
And he so desperately wanted to be a country club WASP, who vacationed in the Hamptons, and sent his kids to the best prep-schools in Connecticut. There is only one way to legitimately enter this world. You have to be nominated by members in good standing, considered, voted on, and only then, invited. He wanted to be part of New York Yacht Club so he could mingle with the descendants and friends of the great names at the apex American capitalism: Morgan, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Du Point and Carnegie. Trump naturally assumed that the name he plastered all over buildings in the city was the next great capitalist bloodline. He believed the name Trump would one day command entrance into the world of Bellevue Ave summer homes and mega yachts.
He did score a few wins on the qualitative scale. Chief among these was Trump scammed his way into and through Wharton (BA not MBA). Plenty of people inherit a lot of money, get into the ivy’s, and remain outside the exclusive inner circles of American power. Those are upper middle class achievements, they are not what makes someone a blue blood. Despite his every effort to gain entry to the American upper class, the Trump’s were, and will forever remain, grasping nobodies.
Eventually Trump realized that he could not buy his way into the capitalist elite. In a furious “I’ll show you” response, Trump created his own country club world. But it was, like him and his family, low rent, filled with fellow social climbers, cosplaying the Vanderbilts. It was decidedly third tier. A world of chain-store luxury. The Applebees of country club life in gated communities for strivers. The difference between Trump and the Vanderbilts is you will not find a the ex wife of a Vanderbilt buried at the first tee at Augusta.
Vengeance
Nelson Mandela once observed, “There is nobody more dangerous than one who has been humiliated.” Once he realized there was more to the ultimate American inner circle than having lots of money, and that in consequence he was banned for life, Trump went rogue. He thought that if he became president he would force them to grovel before him. He would finally reverse his long history of humiliation and turn the tables on the people who would not let him into their clubs and board rooms.
Humiliation also marked Trump’s final decision to run. 12 hours before Obama killed Osama, he was slaying the audience at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. Having patiently endured Trump’s birther nonsense for way too long, Obama could not resist predicating the next day’s news with Trump’s crass casual racism.
“Donald Trump is here tonight!” Just saying the words brought laughter and applause. “No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter—like, did we fake the moon landing. We all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example—no, seriously, just recently in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil Jon or Meat Loaf. You fired Gary Busey.”
As the entire American political elite laughed in his face, Trump decided then and there to run. The entire premise of Jerry Springer et al, is make the lumpen proletariat feel superior to someone. This is of course the same impulse that drives racism. If you have been humiliated by the people you have looked up to your whole life, like the Newport yachting crowd, that is one thing. But being publicly ridiculed by a black man of humble origins who you think effortlessly swanned his way into the highest office in the land by sheer force of his intelligence and ability? No. That would not stand. His father taught him how to deal with uppity blacks. Trump decided to prove to the “Kenyan” the superiority of the white man.
Money does not buy you class. But Trump was about to discover that under the conditions of a toxic triangle, classlessness can buy you an election. But thats not all! The GOP would throw in an entire political party! No one quite realized it at the time, but the base of the Republican Party was filled with zombies awaiting activation. It has been a shock for American ‘normies’ to discover that they have been surrounded by fascists all this time and never knew it. For the toxic triangle to fully activate it took the key of the destructive leader to enter the lock of the republican base, to release a "folie à millions" for our time.
Dark Stirrings
Like the candidate himself, Trump’s game was hard to take seriously at first and dismissed as amateurish excess in a campaign built on outrageousness and spectacle. At his announcement, the game show host declared immigrants an enemy because they were all rapists and drug dealers. As would become obligatory to anything he said that was norm destroying, he added a back door saying that “some” of these people, he “assumed”, were good people.10 Few perceived the full import of the comment at the time except the ruling elites and the fringe. The elites celebrated, they knew it was the end of Trump. The fringe celebrated because one of their own had finally arrived. To the vast majority of people, the comment felt really off, an exaggeration that went too far, but they were enjoying the show too much to dwell on “a gaff”. They were Trump-blind.
Yet something in that moment broke America. A pandoras box was opened and a long-repressed, dark, seething, furious, Id sprang out in all directions. Permission had been granted to openly hate - the more publicly, vociferously, and aggressively, the better. It was the moment when governance died. In its place a failure-centric, grievance-driven, blame-others culture war became politics. In the unending torrent of twitter attacks that followed, the dark edge was becoming harder and harder to ignore. Trump’s hatred was really starting to show. Beyond the protest vote for the obviously unpresidential clown, something else was stirring among sections of his audience. They were starting to transition from members of a political party to becoming fully committed zombies.
The Destructive Leader
According to psychologist Robert Sternberg, hatred is not a single emotion but a toxic mix of anger towards others, fear of others, and revulsion towards them, all cemented together by the stories we tell about them that make them alien, threatening, and deserving of the injustices we wish to visit upon them. In all of these respects, Trump is a master hatemonger. Trump’s admiration of “strong men” and desperation for superficial displays of respect shows his deep fear of humiliation. This explains why he is the master of wielding humiliation.
When he attacks public figures, he gives voice to his followers who feel powerless against symbols of authority, be it government, corporations, or the media. Their attachment goes way beyond admiration. They adore him. They see Trump as their personal savior. He becomes fundamental to, and entwined, with their identities. This is why they cannot accept any criticism of their savior because it would be accepting criticism of themselves.
Trump’s grievances, victimhood and corresponding rage is highly relatable, indeed admirable, to vulnerable populations. Trump’s power to condemn and humiliate is aspirational to the downtrodden who have been actually mistreated by the system, in some cases, for generations. They live in grievance and dream of lashing out violently against those who have wronged them. As they see it, he is a fellow sufferer of injustice who had the wherewithal and gumption to resist. Against the odds, he clawed his way to power to become their protector - like a father or a saint.
Facts, policies, logic, the reality based world - they do not stand a chance against emotion. When a persons thought processes are dominated by emotion - they see only what they want to see and believe only what they want to believe, so long as it supports their idea of themselves. It is the basis of faith - which by definition does not require proof. In fact, if faith is challenged by proof it only hardens the emotional self’s beliefs no matter how kooky they might be (QAnon). It can be a very hard spiral to break. This is why appeals to logic supported by evidence do not work.
The creation of identity is not a conscious, logical, thought process. Emotion plays an important role in identity and a key driver is a desire to belong. Rebecca Solnit put it this way
“distinctions between believable and unbelievable, true and false, are not relevant for people who have found that taking up outrageous and disprovable ideas is instead an admission ticket to a community or an identity.”
Former CIA psychologist, Jerrold Post, explains the phenomenon in Dangerous Charisma: The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers, Pegasus, 2019. His explanation recalls the toxic triangle.
At moments of societal crisis, otherwise mature and psychologically healthy individuals may temporarily come to feel overwhelmed and in need of a strong and self-assured leader… For isolated individuals with damaged self-esteem and weak ego boundaries, the sense of "we" creates and imparts a coherent sense of identity. For such individuals, the self and the "we" are fused so that the self is experienced as the relationship. This leads to a tendency to merge themselves with the group. This helps explain the startling degree to which individuals can suspend their own standards and judgment and participate in the most violent of actions when under the sway of the psychology of the group, if persuaded that the cause of the group is served by their actions. Even that most basic of human needs-the drive for self-preservation can be suspended in the service of the group.
Vail Cirsten Weldon and the millions of Maga zombies who have been aroused to war.
For healthy functional people this is particularly hard to understand because its so illogical. That’s the point - emotion driven identity formation (and maintenance) negates logic - that’s why it is so powerful and potentially dangerous in a mass political setting.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. ― (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism)
The merging of faith based personal identity, divorced from reason, contingent upon a destructive leader, represents the ultimate political danger in any society.
The Psychological Assessment
Dr Bandi Lee and literally scores of the country’s top mental health professionals have written several books on Trump’s mental incapacity for office. Even his supporters would not deny he is unusual. That’s the source of their admiration. The following collection of insights are drawn from a detailed psychological assessment that was made based on over a thousand pages of evidence presented by those close to the subject including family members, family physicians, staff and close associates.11 The picture that is painted will be familiar to anyone who has observed the subject in the media.
Earlier in his career the world had watched him with amusement. Many people refused to take him seriously. As one action after another met with amazing success and the measure of the man became more obvious, this amusement was transformed into incredulousness.
[The psychologists note] his insatiable greed for power, his ruthlessness, cruelty and utter lack-of feeling, his contempt for established institutions and his lack of moral restraints. His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
[His method involved a] great deal of name-calling, shouting, abusing and threatening. [He used projection constantly. Projection] is a technique by which the ego of an individual defends itself against unpleasant impulses, tendencies or characteristics by denying their existence in himself while he attributes them to others.
[A close associate observed ] “his faith in his own genius, in his instinct, or as one might say, in his star, is boundless. Those who surround him are the first to admit that he now thinks himself infallible and invincible. That explains why he can no longer bear either criticism or contradiction. To contradict him is in his eyes a crime of 'lese majeste'; opposition to his plans, from whatever side it may come, is a definite sacrilege, to which the only reply is an immediate and striking display of his omnipotence."
[He is not a good public speaker and yet] even in the early days he was a showman with a great sense of the dramatic. He understood that "there is only so much room in a brain, so much wall space, as it were, and if you furnish it with your slogans, the opposition has no place to put up any pictures later on”.
He flattered [his listeners] and cajoled them. He hurled accusations at them one moment and amused them the next by building up straw men which he promptly knocked down. His tongue was like a lash which whipped up the emotions of his audience. And somehow he always managed to say what the majority of the audience were already secretly thinking but could not verbalize. He completely numbed the critical faculties of his listeners to the point where they were willing to believe almost anything he said.
[He is presented as] courageous, [the only one] who dared to speak the truth and defy the national authorities as well as the international oppressors. [His accomplishments were always exaggerated]. The face of [the nation] was being lifted at an incredible speed. He was keeping his promises; he was accomplishing the impossible. As time goes on, it becomes more and more certain that he believes that he is really the "Chosen One" and that in his thinking [and those of his followers] he conceives of himself as a second Christ who has been sent to institute in the world a new system of values.
[On the issue of the character and conduct of those close to him, he said] "The only criterion for membership in [my movement] was that the applicant be 'Unconditionally obedient and faithfully devoted to me'. When someone asked if that applied to thieves and criminals, he said, 'Their private lives don't concern me.’"
[On a personal level his associated observed] “he seems to lack any real sense of humor. He can never take a joke on himself”.
[Psychologically,] a reciprocal relationship exists between him and the people. The madness of the one stimulates and flows into the other and vice versa. [The profile predicts that] the great danger is that if he feels that he cannot achieve immortality as the Great Redeemer he may seek it as the Great Destroyer who will live on in the minds of the people for years to come. “We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us--a world in flames,” he cautioned his inner circle.
Few would disagree that this short excerpt of an extensive psychological analysis perfectly captures Donald Trump.
The Catch
However, it was not written about Trump. This is a summary of a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler completed in 1943 by US intelligence.12 The similarities between the two leaders is unnerving. Reading the full report is like going down a checklist of Trump’s personality - the grievance and hatreds, narcissism, paranoia, coarseness, vulgarity, racism, resentment toward women (except his favored daughter for whom he publicly admits he harbors sexual desire), a complete inability to empathize with anyone, even those suffering extreme trauma like natural disasters or victims of mass shootings. His response to the suffering of others by turning it into self aggrandizement is legendary. Staff, advisers, political allies and family members exist solely to further his ego which he propagates primarily through fear via intimidatory inducement and coercion.
One does not have to be a psychologist to see Trumps inner demons on public display. His life appears completely loveless, friendless and isolated. Trump famously has no sense of humor and no true friends. He is in a sham marriage with a wife who has been filmed on multiple occasions unable to tolerate her husband’s demands for public displays of affection at official functions.
As always, it was business with the Trumps, for that was their common purpose, the bond between them. In recent years, they never seemed to touch each other or exchange intimate remarks in public. They had become less like man and wife and more like two ambassadors from different countries, each with a separate agenda.
The above quote describes Donald and the late Ivanna Trump hosting a function at Mar-a-largo in the 1980s. What is so striking about it is how applicable it could be to any of his marriages.
His children fear him. He has no genuine friends. He has never had a pet. Even Hitler had Blondi. This is more concerning in light of the fact that in his world all relationships are transactional. ’When asked if she would have married her husband had he not been rich, Melania shot back: “If I weren’t beautiful, do you think he’d be with me”‘. This also explains the troubling character of his descendants, who are every bit as sycophantic and desperate to be acknowledged as are republican party officials and his fawning public.
Trump taught his children to “trust no one”. This was not a one-off statement. This was a mantra. He would “test” the children, asking if they trust him. Naturally they said yes and got admonished for ‘not learning the lesson’. It is well known he had little to do with their upbringing or much real interest in their lives. Trump even expressed concern that he should not name his first born after himself “in case he was a loser”. It was a prescient fear. At a moment of national crisis on Jan 6, Don Jr’s only way of contacting his father was to text the Chief of Staff. The implication being his father refused to give his son his direct number! The President was not busy in important meetings trying to defend the country from attack - he was in his lounge “gleefully” watching tv as his supporters attacked the Capitol. (After all, he sent them).
He has no inner life. Despite vast wealth and time, he has not explored the world. He has not been to any of the great art galleries, museums, opera houses, or theaters in New York or Washington DC, let alone Paris or Rome. His only enjoyments seem to be those of the trailer-park: deep fried food, inappropriate touching, watching tv, golf and being enraged.
He is not a reader. The only book in which he is reported to have had any lasting interest is My New Order: A Collection of Speeches by Adolph Hitler. During their divorce Ivana told friends he kept it in his nightstand. She had an obvious motive to undermine him, but why alight on Hitler as the best line of attack unless she knew he had a particular weakness to the charge? Recent information has come to light to support the veracity of her claim and suggests it was more than mere divorce slander. At the time the comment was reported by keen eyed-Vanity Fair author Marie Brenner, who wrote a major feature on the couples break-up published in 1990. In hindsight, it is a stunning piece of work brimming with psychological hints.
Is Ivana trying to convince her friends and lawyer that Trump is a crypto-Nazi? Trump is no reader or history buff. Perhaps his possession of Hitler's speeches merely indicates an interest in Hitler's genius at propaganda. The Führer often described his defeats at Stalingrad and in North Africa as great victories.
Of all the things that might come up involving the character and conduct of a typical NY businessman in 1990, few might expect repeated references to Adolph Hitler. Brenner gives valuable column inches to expand on the Hitler theme. She notes that John Walter, Tump’s cousin, used to “click his heels and say, "Heil Hitler," possibly as a family joke” when visiting Trump in his office. She asks Trump about his interest in Hitler’s the book. He vehemently denied any interest in the Nazi leader, knowing it would be bad for publicity. She writes that she called Trump out for attempting to conceal his German ancestry. The Art of the Deal, claims incorrectly that his family is from Sweden. He appears shocked by the accusation and denies it. Then he tried to bullshit his way out of it saying his family came “from Sweden and many places”. Yet the record is quite clear. Having German ancestry is not controversial. Which begs the question, why lie and later make such a big deal about it? Following publication of the article, Trump was so angry at Brenner’s revelations he publicly assaulted her at a party.
We now know that My World Order had a lasting impact on Trump. He was famous for his obsession with “my generals”. The very use of that term implies an expectation of heel-clicking obedience to orders. As with every other aspect of the professional civil service, he quickly grew annoyed when his ‘orders’ as Commander in Chief were not reflectively obeyed. Trump could not accept that military leaders are civil servants who swear allegiance to the constitution. Because of this they see a bigger picture other than what the leader alone wants. It was recently revealed that during one of his daily outbursts directed at then Chief of Staff, retired Marine 4 star General John Kelly, Trump complained
“You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
“Which generals?” Kelly asked.
“The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.
“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off ?” Kelly said. But, of course, Trump did not know that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military.
When on a trip to Europe Kelly felt obliged to explain the causes of WWII “and all of Hitler’s atrocities” Trump dismissed this assessment and countered that Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’.
In Germany, making a Nazi salute is illegal. Yet German magazine Stern felt strongly enough about the Nazi rally at Charlottesville, Virginia, that it put Trump on the cover next to the headline “Sein Kampf” — “his struggle” a reference to Adolf Hitler’s manifesto throwing a Nazi salute.
Army 4 star General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, understood Jan 6 as Trump’s “Reichstag moment” - a pretext for seizing power and turning America into a dictatorship. He called Trump’s supporters “Brownshirts” and said “These are the same people we fought in [the second world war].”
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accused President of the United States of America of being a fascist and a threat to national security. General Milley ultimately decided to stay and fight Trump from the inside, but his unsent draft resignation letter is the most extraordinary indictment of an American leader in post-war history.
Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships. That generation.. fought against fascism, Nazism, [and] extremism. It’s now obvious to me that .. you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order… causing significant damage to our country overseas, [and] doing great and irreparable harm to my country. I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.
The domineering father and emotionally absent mother are typical contexts within which the defenseless child can first experience humiliation. This familial arrangement was true for both Hitler and Trump. Both men have serious sexual problems. As the OSS study shows in some detail, Hitler had a sexual relationship with his niece, Geli Raubal, that centered on coprophilia. A few years into the sexual relationship she committed suicide. Hitler’s other main relationship, Eva Braun, also resulted in her untimely death due solely to her association with Hitler. He was also credibly rumored to have engaged in homosexual acts as reported by the OSS. Ernst Röhm, head of the Sturmabteilung (literally “Storm Divison” or SA - note QAnon uses similar nomclamenture) was assassinated with his leadership group on the “night of the long knives” ostensibly for plotting a coup. Many books have assessed the reasons behind the purge. One explanation relates to the homosexuality of Röhm and others in the SA. The third reich was not exactly LGBQT+ friendly. Thus all sorts of dilemmas, intrigues and stresses resulted from these activities for all concerned. It is plausible that an attempted cover up of homosexuality may have been a factor. Both Nazi and antifascist propaganda cited homosexuality as a cause for the purge. It is notable that the systematic persecution of gays only occurred after the purge.
Trump’s sexual problems have been on public display. Their disclosure are the product of his boasting. He and his second wife were interviewed not long after Tiffany was born. He was asked who the infant most resembled. People often refer to a likeness a child’s face might have to a parent. Trump assessed the infant as he might a contestant at one of his pageants. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate breasts—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.” Incapable of a normal answer, he evaluated an infant’s legs and breasts in relationship to his favorite physical attributes of a sexual partner.
Washington Post reporter Richard Cohen reported Trump had asked the following question when Ivanka was 13 "is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?" When Ivanka was 16 he said “Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?”. When she was 20 Trump told Howard Stern it was OK to describe her as “a piece of ass”, and that, “I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her." In a joint interview when they were asked what they most had in common with one another Ivanka replied “real estate and golf”. Trump blurted out a one word confession - “sex”.
If these were things he was willing to say on national television to female interviewers in the presence of Ivanka, one can only imagine what was happening in private.13
His world is strictly hierarchical where power and fear dominate. Trump is driven by an infantile hate/love reflex. In global affairs, his basis for offering trust is the same as a 5 year olds: “I like him: he likes me”. His cavernous need for affirmation is palpable. “I get along with everybody,” Trump told Anderson Cooper (a Vanderbilt) on CNN. “People love me, and you know what? I’ve been very successful, everybody loves me.” This is deeply cringe worthy to normies but it is central to understanding his psychology based as it is on a combination of pathological narcissism and dependent personality disorder.
On first meeting new people he compliments them. This is not because he likes them but because he wants so desperately to receive an automatic reciprocal reply. If his compliments are not returned, he simply compliments himself. He is the "greatest of all presidents” and "so great looking and smart, [I am] a true stable genius!" All he cares about is praise. He continually praises others in the hope the words are reciprocated. It is never about them, it is always about him.
Accordingly, his praise of the worlds autocrats in the hope of reciprocity extends past fawning to groveling. His Russian foreign policy was childlike: "If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.” He often sounded like a love struck teenager: “I’d have a very good relationship with President Putin if we spend time together.” If this was your best friend telling you about their crush you would feel sorry for them and obliged to point out that “he’s just not that into you”.
The desperate attempts to be recognized by the Russian dictator did not stop when Trump lost the 2020 election. Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine was judged by Trump to be evidence of Putins “savvy” geopolitical “genius”. As civilians were massacred and the war crimes mounted, Trump was asked if he had a message to Putin. The former leader of the free world responded: “I have no message”.
What did Trump get in return for all this debasement of both himself and the United States? The record of Putin’s praise of Trump is pretty thin. In the absence of praise from Putin in the 2016 election, Trump simply made it up, telling a TV show “When people call you 'brilliant' it's always good, especially when the person heads up Russia". Putin’s highest praise appears to be this 2019 gem "I do not accept many of his methods when it comes to addressing problems. But do you know what I think?” he added as an after thought, “I think that he is a talented person.”14
Self loathing and the hierarchy of failure
The formation of a community of hatred is a powerful binding force between leader and followers. It relates back to Jerrold Post’s lock and key “fit” between the charismatic leader and the vulnerable population (the Zombies). In Trump’s case, he is their savior and in return, they give him the approval that he was denied his whole life by America's elites.
There is an additional twist that makes this sick relationship all the more fascinating and dangerous. While he craves their adoration, paradoxically, he hates them for loving him. They are disgusting and not good enough. He prizes wealth above all things. Therefore, from his perspective, his supporters are losers.
Ironically, he views his supporters the way the elites view him. It is a hierarchy of failure. Trump needs the zombies to be at the bottom for him to experience any self worth. Yet at the same time he feels an enormous sense of failure and self disgust that he must depend upon them for his power. In his mind, it is humiliating that after all his achievements, the best kind of person he can attract are the poor and uneducated. “We won with poorly educated” he said ungrammatically, perhaps trying to appeal to them by using their vernacular. “I love the poorly educated". This sense of social failure extends to the quality of person he attracts within professional circles. The “never Trump” movement within the Republican Party ensured that a tremendous amount of talent was denied to the Trump Administration from the very start.15
Three days after the insurrection the following observation was reported in his favorite venue - the tabloids. Part of the allure of papers like the Daily Mail is their gossipy biting social commentary can sometimes be painfully accurate.
Trump was ‘apoplectic’ in embarrassment because the ‘white trash’ mob on screen made him look bad. ‘He was angry, not at the appalling crimes they were committing, but because he felt embarrassed,’ said the source. ‘When they first stormed the Capitol he was enjoying it. These were “his people”. ‘But when he saw pictures of the half-naked guy in the fur hat he started complaining they looked “cheap and poor”.
He also hates the zombies on a more prosaic level. Olivia Troye a national security aide reported that Trump complained about shaking hands “with these disgusting people”. A skeptical interviewer pressed Troye that this comment might relate more to Trump’s famous germaphobia. Troye insisted his disgust with them went much deeper, “he wanted nothing to do with them.”
Appropriately, it is the man who interviews female guests as they ride a Sybian sex toy to orgasm, Howard Stern, who had the most salient observation of the love/hate complex Trump has with his followers
“The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most. The people who are voting for Trump for the most part . . . he wouldn’t even let them in a fucking hotel. He’d be disgusted by them. Go to Mar-a-Lago, see if there’s any people who look like you. I’m talking to you in the audience. The Trump voter who idolizes the guy. He despises you.”
In the late 1980s Ivanna once told the writer Dominick Dunne "in fifty years Donald and I will be considered old money like the Vanderbilts”. Just thirty years later that failed aspiration is buried beside the first tee of a suburban golf club by the turnpike. He is repulsed by his followers because they remind him of the very reason he was excluded by old money. He hates the fact that he could never escape his white trash background. Worse, his rise was contingent on his ability to rabidly engage in self-debasement for the entertainment of the very people he despises. He knew no other pathway to success. He is repulsed by his zombies because they hold a mirror to his own failings. Yet it was these same weaknesses in intellect and character that he shared with the zombies that fueled his tabloid-powered rise.
Live by the tabloids, die by the tabloids.
The Damage is Done
It is hard to measure the emotional damage the internal tension of the love/hate complex causes Trump. His self loathing coping mechanism is to deflect his hatred onto others. None of this really mattered when he was a businessman. It self-evidentially impacted the development of his offspring, but that was the extent of the contagion. Having accidentally fallen into a position of tremendous national influence, the impact radius of his psychoses are national in scope. The stakes have become the highest imaginable. The resilience of democracy itself is in the balance.
The conditions for a "folie à millions” exists because the missing piece of the toxic triangle fell into place with the emergence of Trump on the national stage. Like any society, America has long had ‘conducive environments’ and ‘susceptible followers’. The emergence of Trump, with all of his shortcomings and psychoses, has delivered a potent 'destructive leader’ capstone to lock the toxic triangle into place. Modern communication has intensified the grip of the toxic leader on American society. Social media conveys the illusion of intensely personal two-way interaction. Users are made to feel like they are directly communicating with a president and in return, he is speaking directly to them. Thus, Trump’s personality disorders have been amplified, accelerated, and imposed upon vulnerable populations experiencing prolonged and unmitigated strain. There could not be a more perfectly situated platform to spread unhealthy psychoses.
The responsiveness of susceptible followers to the influence and directions of the toxic leader prove that the conditions for a "folie à millions” have been met. Cirsten Weldon is exhibit A in the case. She made an active choice to die. Her behavior cannot be explained any other way. Nor was she alone. Cirsten was just one of hundreds of thousands of suicide zombies sacrificing themselves for no discernible reason and for every discernible emotion-driven psychoses. Exhibit B is the extraordinary reaction of the party of law and order to a legal search warrant executed at Mar-a-largo. Instant attack - figuratively and literally - on law and order. Exhibit C is the total imperviousness of zombies to facts or logic outside of what they are told to think by the toxic leader. 'What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening’. Any hint of reality is automatically dismissed without any investigation whatsoever as a ‘hoax’ or ‘fake news’. Exhibit D is the complete collapse of resistance to the toxic leader within the GOP. Fear of mob violence rules the party. This explains the 147 republicans who stood in the broken glass and voted for the insurrection.
Deposed Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers is stunned by his excommunication for not going along with Rudy Giuliani’s fact free perversion of law and the constitution.
Bowers says the Republican Party 'doesn't have any thought. It's all emotional, it's all revenge. It's all anger.'
Rebecca Solnit, a modern Arendt, with incisive powers of social observation said it well:
“Authoritarians don’t just want to control the government, the economy and the military. They want to control the truth. Truth has its own authority, an authority a strongman must defeat at least in the minds of his followers, convincing them to abandon fact, the standards of verification, critical thinking and all the rest. Such people become a standing army awaiting their next command.”
Isolation and Totalitarianism
Historians and social scientists agree that isolation is the most fertile soil for the development of individual and/or societal abnormalities. It is rare for any literature on a subject to agree on anything much, but there is a remarkable correlation across academic disciplines and through time that the foundational element enabling radicalization is isolation. Wilfred Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, 1916; Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1958; and Jerrold Post, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, 2019; all agree that isolation is the original gateway through which all related mass psychological abnormalities pass.
The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships. Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result. Its hallmark is impotence insofar as power always comes from men acting together, "acting in concert" (Burke); isolated men are powerless by definition. Isolation and impotence, that is the fundamental inability to act at all, have always been characteristic of tyrannies. (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1958, p.316-7)
Trump and the zombies were isolated and impotent before they found one another. Their anger and resentments had been stifled by social change. America had achieved a measure of empathy and tolerance. Social evolution had liberated a variety of classes of marginalized people. Trump and the zombies could not accept that their natural inclinations had come to define anti-social behavior. They were outcasts from a society that now rejected the open expression of bigotry.
By definition, the ‘freedom to be’ is a threat to bigots who chauvinistically believe in their inherent superiority to other classes of people. They see society in zero-sum terms. To the bigot, the newly freed were people who gained at their expense. Consequently, the bigots erroneously felt resentful for being “silenced”. Typically they proclaim this silencing on the floor of the House of Representatives and in the mass media. Fundamentally unable to accept the right of others to coexist on an equal footing (despite that right being enshrined in all of America’s foundational ideas), the bigots experienced the most terrifying fear of their lives. Their “culture” of bigotry, hatred and violence, had been marginalized. Now they were the oppressed minority because their right to openly hate and attack the marginalized had been ‘taken’ from them. The fact that demography had yet to catch up to ideology encouraged them to think they still had time to reverse the course of history by stealing elections before America became a minority-majority country. This is why they are revolting. They do not understand that a belief in the ideals of America transcend race and will not be reversed if they impose apartheid.
Trump was their liberator from the confines of marginalization. He personified their hate and bigotry. In this sense he truly was “just like them”. He gave license to the most extreme words and deeds. His attacks on the elites was not just dark political comedy. It represented the salvation of the newly marginalized from oppression. Trump was the vehicle to “take back the country”. To make bigotry great again. In exchange, his followers would submit completely to Trump. They would become zombies. "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible" he stammers in disbelief. The "folie à millions” was complete.
Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals. Compared with all other parties and movements, their most conspicuous external characteristic is their demand for total, unrestricted, unconditional, and unalterable loyalty of the individual member. Such loyalty can be expected only from the completely isolated human being who derives his sense of having a place in the world only from his belonging to a movement. (Arendt p.475)
Maga has surpassed this standard. The zombie conviction to the cause proves this beyond doubt. The remaining question is what are they going to do with all this new found passion for power?
Fascism
The American right has splintered into two unequal pieces. The minority GOP and the vast majority - Maga - who are outright fascists. The traditional Republican Party values free markets and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with an emphasis on limited government, economic freedom, political freedom, personal responsibility, and support for democracy everywhere. These values are the antithesis of American fascism. To a fascist such beliefs are no different from the beliefs of the democratic party. Anyone clinging these notions automatically qualifies as a traitor. We all know how they want to treat traitors.
“Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by immigrants, leftists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, women, in the face of what the fascist leader says is a takeover of the country's media, cultural institutions, schools by these forces”. Maga fascism is driven by QAnon conspiracy theories and dedicated to violence as the solution to any challenge to its authority - which it views as absolute. There can be no dialogue with “opponents”.
In a democracy, the people are sovereign. In American fascism, Trump is the sovereign. The party is so totally subservient to Trump that it de-platformed itself, removing all of its principles and program of action. Policy was now whatever the leader dictated. Anyone who questions Trump, even right wing figures like Cheney or DeSantis, is an enemy of the state. American fascists use religious language and symbology to paint any alternative thought as the work of evil that must be extinguished. Evil justifies violence. An eye for an eye and mob rule replace politics which, until now, was a process of dialogue between constitutional equals to resolve differences peacefully, by consent and compromise. That is all gone. The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of order governed by a philosophy of might makes right. This is a fear and violence based system that seeks to transform culture war into civil war for regime survival.
Future zombie political and paramilitary operations
Trump needs to be restored to power to regain executive privilege protections against conviction and imprisonment. Once he retakes the White House he will suborn the “deep state”, what’s left of the independence of the judiciary, and the legislative branches of government. Soon after, non-fascist state governments will be over powered. No resistance will be allowed to remain. There will be elections but they will be Potemkin affairs where fascist candidates will receive stunning endorsements of their great works with 90% or more of the votes. The media will be compliant.
Trump’s zombies are divided into two categories - paramilitary forces and a political wing. He will use both to achieve his objective. If the zombie political wing fails to deliver, or needs a distraction, or events demand a more forceful response, then the zombie army will go to war. Already the political wing is extending every effort to seed political zombies throughout the electoral apparatus from the ground up. They will be activated to deny legitimate election results in cases where they do not like the outcome. Where they win they will say the election was perfect. Where they lose, the election was rigged. This will be all the excuse they will need to intervene to impose the ‘correct’ outcome. Maga zombie candidates in AZ have told their followers this is the plan. That is a microcosm of what is happening across the country. Once they take power, America will continue to have elections but they will resemble what happens in other dictatorships, like Iran.
The zombie army is a grave threat to US national security. Zombie soldiers are dispersed in every town and city in every state. They are on your left and right as you walk down the street. There is no simple way to separate red and blue populations because of this deep commingling. Secession of one or more states does not help - in fact it would make the problem much worse.16
The zombie army is heavily armed and standing-by for orders from their leader. This is an army that has been activated to combat once before on J6. While narrowly unsuccessful, that experience was an incredibly valuable dummy run (or run of dummies). The recent search of the leaders compound has resulted in a new round of ‘stand-by’ activation orders being issued by the leader that mirror the pre-J6 preparation for war. A phony war now exists in the period between the search and inevitable arrest. The zombie army is mostly quietly engaged in detailed preparation for the next go order.
America will no doubt yet again be surprised when they do, in fact, go.
The once trusted, now despised, FBI. Oh how quickly the winds of change blow!
There is an important distinction between Islam (a religion) and Islamism (a chauvinist social movement that manipulates the language and iconography of a religion for unrelated political ends). Thus christian nationalism really should be referred to as Christianism. It is the backbone of MAGA. Both forms of extremism depend on a belief system based in faith at the expense of logic. Literalism is also usually a feature. Islamists will kill co-religionists This is why adherents in the US are often casually referred to as the American Taliban.
The storm is a key narrative in QAnon. Funny how a book published in the 1950s remains so on point. In fact, a number of books from this period help explain what is happening now. These will be referenced in this article.
QAnon completely dehumanizes all enemies as pure evil that can only be “vanquished” by execution. The coming “storm” is a final day of judgement where Trump will be the arbiter of life and death. All non-believers will be executed. Hanging seems to be the mode of choice, but one gets the impression that given a chance, they would be delighted to bring back crucification. The threat posed by democrats et al, is so insidious, immanent and real that democracy should be suspended in order to restore Trump to power to carry out the important work of executing every single one of his enemies. This is not an idle threat. Fully one third of all Americans and 56% of Republicans agree violence is justified “to arrest the decline of the traditional American way of life”. QAnon propagandists working shoulder to shoulder with Trump organizers promoted Jan 6 as the day of judgment - the day “the storm” would be unleashed at the seat of power in Washington DC where all the democrats can be found. The zip ties and scaffold were not for show.
The data in the above paragraph is dated. The most recent data is as follows: Half of the country believes there will be civil war “in the next few years”. A slightly lower number, 40% believe that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy”. YouGov poll released last month had a majority of both Democrats and Republicans agreeing that America would one day “cease to be a democracy.” For details see the Civil War II report below
Psychology is the only way to understand the completely emotional and illogical hold Trump has on supporters. Civil War II makes no claim to academic or clinical expertise in the field, but like anyone else, he can read a literature and assess its applicability to understanding phenomena that can not otherwise be explained. Civil Wars II has a PhD in History and other degrees in politics and strategic studies. He has not taken a single course in psychology. In the course of writing Civil War II he continued to be stunned by the phenomena cited in this article and could not explain them by familiar means. Discussions with a psychologist colleague opened the door to a new understanding of a fascinating world. Psychologists get stuck in long fruitless debates about the Goldwater rule. The best response this author has seen is Dr Bandi Lee’s comment that psychologists are not diagnosing Trump but evaluating his competence or capacity which can be done by observation of public acts.
Mental capacity refers to the mental soundness that is necessary to fulfill a task and is a fundamental and necessary component of fitness for duty. It is a functional, not a diagnostic, assessment, focused less on the President’s personal mental health than on his capacity to fulfill the duties of his office as observed by co-workers and close associates.
It is an understatement to note that it is awkward for an historian to utilize insights from psychology when its own clinical professionals are uncomfortable with using their knowledge for the public good. The value in using psychology to explain why Cirsten Weldon chose death and the incredible insight that offered to explain the zombie-like blind worship of Trump, outweighed the nuance of professional debate in psychological circles.
The bottomline is psychology explains an important phenomena. It is of high utility. As an historian I am sure I may have made mistakes in using this tool but excluding it would leave the heart of the problem we face as a democracy unexplored. That would have been irresponsible.
A trailer park filled with Russian spies.
It is ironic that America sees itself as anti communist (or used to anyway) and yet its aspiration for ‘equality for all’ is a baseline principle of theoretical communism. In fact, the only real difference between the two systems in the American experience is who owns the means to make money (a mercantile elite instead of the state).
This is especially a New York view. In Washington power is an aphrodisiac (Kissinger).
Here we are talking about the old Robber-barron money, not the nouveau riche of Silicon Valley. There is a reason why Trump named himself and his son Barron.
Rhetorically walking both sides of the street was a great trick. It allowed him to say whatever he wanted and never be held accountable. Challenged on column A, he could cite his comment in column B, and thereby dismiss any criticism.
It has been modified in places for brevity and clarity.
Walter C Longer, et al, A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend, Office of Strategic Services, Washington DC. This is a brilliant accomplishment that successfully predicted Hitler’s behavior for the rest of the war. Psychological profiles of political leaders are now a commonplace inside the world of intelligence. In the west, they can trace their origins to this OSS study. Readers are urged to explore the compete original and compare its insights on Hitler to Trump. This will help to understand the threat that the United States currently faces and what can be done to avert an otherwise inevitable slide into violence. This report is an excellent counterpoint to the Goldwater rule. It shows what can be done without interviewing the subject.
Trump and Jeffrey Epstein went back decades. He was around Trump’s children from a young age. Civil War II fears that one day the public will find out that Ivanka has been the victim of terrible crimes.
Normies naturally assume there must be a pee-tape. That no one would debase themselves before Putin in such a shameless display of self hatred and genuflection without a metaphorical gun held to their head. This is to miss the essence of the man. his cavernous need for approval.
He was left to select from nobodies like George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. This was only exacerbated as those D list officials who started work at the White House soon fled in droves having witnessed the chaos. His current legal strife is underlined by the fact that the only lawyers who have agreed to work for him include one whose career highlight was being general counsel for a parking garage. Their legal work appears to concentrate on media appearances not court rooms.
One scenario is all the pacific and northeastern states secede forming a new US. The remaining states would be Magaland. Then red and blue minorities in the the US and Magaland would be forced to move to the newly formed country where their color is the majority. There is a model for this. The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. That event resulted in 20 million displaced, 2 million dead, and a state of war (mostly cold but often hot) ever since. But wait, there’s more. Like the US scenario above, Pakistan was divided into two geographically separated parts. That was not sustainable. They eventually split into Pakistan and Bangladesh. So now there would be three countries in the area formerly known as CONUS. In the US scenario, who would get the nuclear weapons? Ukraine should be a lesson never to give them up. The Indian-Pakisan nuclear balance is the least stable in the world and the most likely to trigger catastrophe. It would be the same or worse here. Indeed, the endless grievance and provocations of the annoying side in the Indo-Pakistan conflict would be mirrored in the US context. This anchor on freedom, economic liberty, innovation and all the rest would diminish all parties. The global security consequences would be extreme. There would be no counter weight to the axis of evil (Russia, China, Iran and DPRK) This is why Putin has done everything in his power to promote and sustain Trump.
Flying monkeys
You must admit:
Q Anons, like Flat Earthers, or John Birch Society: are punk rock af.
Theyre -interesting-.
The way, you know, a necrophiliac gecko is fascinating.
As for garden variety political movements: LAME.
I wanna hear about chemtrails and black helicopters.
You can keep your bullshit, Capitol Hill Roberts Rules of Order horseshit to yourself.