The Followers of Trump

Back in 2020 I wrote an article about whether Trump was a cult leader. I concluded that he was a leader of an open political cult. This time I want to analyse his followers and ask why people wanted to follow the compulsive lying, narcissistic-solipsistic, psychopath. There is a disconnect between his rambling diatribes and what people believe he is saying. They are not listening carefully, but pick what they want to hear. The many interviews that his supporters report on are mostly incoherent, make no sense, and are scattered with wishful thinking. They are laughable. I will give a very technical analysis to point us in the right direction, that we come closer to our intuitive assessment or reasonable conclusion. There are many suggestions as to why his followers follow him, and many of them may be right, but this response is designed to bring some clarity upon which we make our assumptions to the issue of why Trump's supporters follow him.

To begin with, I return to the earliest stages of the living kingdom of creatures noting that the formulation of the human brain has continued to evolve over thousands of years. It began about 400,000 years ago with the reptilian brain that survived with a flight or fight mentality. It was typical of all forms of reptiles. With the first signs of a civilizing mentality, the limbic brain emerged and functioned in conjunction with the reptilian brain. It introduced a socialising dimension to the brain. It was typical of the higher forms of the animal kingdom, and then as early humans appeared. It became stronger and the reptilian brain became less important. The limbic brain formed a basic level of society of both the animal kingdom and the earliest human society. In time the neocortex capacity of the brain developed. It was the peak of the human brain as we now know. It enabled intelligence, rational thought, intuition, and other extraordinary capacities that led us into the mysteries of the cyber world. It opened us to the trans-personal dimensions and ultimately enlightenment. Now the three are essential for functioning in our world, with prime emphasis on the limbic and neocortex worlds. The reptilian brain has diminished in importance but it is not non-operational. We need to instinctively flee a fire or somebody on a gun rampage. All three levels of the brain are necessary for the whole functioning of our being as we aspire to be whole people.

In parallel with the development of the stages of the brain as described above, we witnessed the progressive stages of society, from tribal, to regional and national realms, eventually leading to the formation of a global, universal and cosmic mentality. These correspond to the lifestyle that we are aware of today. In an era shaped by walking, we lived in tribes. The advent of the horse, train, and motor car developed regional living and eventually nations, and finally the aeroplane introduced us to global consciousness. The latter being the correlation of higher levels of the neocortex functioning. Space travel has awakened us to the universe and cosmic understanding. This story of development has been greatly developed and systemised through the life-changing arrival of the theory of evolution and the quantum world.

In summary, the primary reason for following Trump is the undeveloped and fragmented issue of personality. When the reptilian brain dominated in the early stages of history, it was a very fragmented society. The limbic brain with its socialising capacity closed the gap considerably. People lived in a partially integrated world. But it has not been until the emergence of the neocortex that with higher levels of intelligence we have begun to grasp a wholistic world. While this remains aspirational, the majority of people still live in a fragmented world, emphasising different and lesser aspects of human capacity. The challenge of living a wholistically integrated life is very rare, only for the most developed human beings at this stage, but this trend will surely develop further as life develops further.

Two aspects of deeper domains of the functioning of the brain bring complexity to a wholistic life arising firstly from Abraham Maslow and secondly from Ken Wilber. Maslow has drawn up a hierarchy of human needs, prioritising the most basic to the enlightened. For Maslow, he describes the hierarchy beginning with the most basic, such as physiological needs like food, sleep, sex, and shelter for safety and security. The need to belong and be loved like family and friendship eventually emerged as the survival needs. The next level turns to needs for growth such as esteem and other cognitive capacities. Next are the aesthetic needs. Finally, we reach the higher aspirational needs of actualisation, creativity and transcendence. Ken Wilber’s perspective has taken a different approach. He describes the development of the conscious mind over the long history of humanity, speaking of how we have passed through the primitive or archaic era, the magic and the mythic era, before progressing to the mental rational era lasting between the years of roughly 500 years before Christ until approximately AD/CE 1800. Most recently we have entered the integral era over the past two centuries. For Maslow, his model presents stages that people sadly only progress part way up the ladder of his model. The higher levels are more wholistic and integral. For Wilber, the various stages expand the social, cognitive, and intuitive mind. The mythic does not ground itself in reality, the mental rational is prone to divide and separate. It's not until we enter the integral era that we seek to integrate all knowledge and live wholistically as suggested by the Quantum world. The conclusion is that it is very common for people to still live with a mythic mentality – hence the unrealistic identification of Trump with Jesus. They live with a very early stage of social development and a very partial mental rational capacity which separates one issue from another.

Trump supporters are noted for their total lack of reasonable openness to enquiry. There is a total disconnect between what is reasonable and what Trump is saying, lying or not. They are drawn to espouse him as some ‘mythic’ figure. Even the Christ figure, Jesus come back for his second coming. If not this mythic figure his constant cry that he is the greatest president ever, the only one who can “fix it” is blindly believed. These beliefs are devoid of any intelligence whatsoever.

How can there be such an attraction to this worst kind of character? I believe that it appeals to the mentality of people stuck in the mythic and early stages of a mental rational form of thinking. People who are prone to a tribal or regional mentality often carry a deep emotional grievance and live with fragmented lives. This is confirmed by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. People who only reach part way up that scale live narrow lives and display a modicum of intelligence. Strangely, this can include so-called intelligent people who in some cases are protective of their pain and close their personality in a shroud of self-protection. Developmental psychology speaks of the developing stages of our life through the years. Once we arrive at the time of adolescence, we should develop to the early stages of adulthood, from which we slowly develop, hopefully to the final stage of the universal mind. But that is rarely achieved. Sadly, people reach an early stage of midlife and plateau out. Some continue into a relatively mature humanity with a conjunctive form of mind, i.e. the ability to hold apparently opposites together, but the opposite end, worst cases are people still caught with an adolescent mind set. They live throughout their entire life with this frame of mind.

What may surprise us is that a highly intelligent person can live with an adolescent or early adulthood character for the reasons I have tried to allude to in the above explanations of poor development. This is particularly pertinent for people who live with a fragmented and narrow-minded outlook. They are often allured to follow Trump, overlooking his very poor character – the compulsive lying, narcissistic-solipsist, psychopathic tendencies, by making light of these behaviours.

In summary, the second major concern is with the intellectually intelligent who follow Trump. To add to the first reasons for following him is the stalled development and fragmented, narrow-minded people.

One group stands out for the political line they hold. People who have joined the party and been elected to office, particularly in his Republican – MAGA world. Trump has displayed such a strong grip of power in the party that Senate-Congress members are not game to make a stand of protest against him for the reason that his assistant Elon Musk vows to pay for opposition to them at the next primary elections. They are held in the grip of his power. This is for them the great moral dilemma, to object or comply to what is right. It could be said to be the ultimate moral test. All but a few have decided to stand down and forfeit their seat in office. The others have sold their soul. When the world watched in horror to both the storming of the Capitol and his claim that it was a love festival, and his claim that Ukraine invaded Russia when it was the other way around, and his political supporters agreed, it is outrageous how they overlook his compulsive lying.

In summary again, the third group of people are the politicians. They are caught in the grip of Trump's power to add to the previously listed reasons.

I have outlined the evolution of the mind from the reptilian, the limbic, and the neocortex. The tribal, the regional, the global, the universal and cosmic mentality. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Wilber’s stages of consciousness, finally followed by developmental psychology. These all together speak to a state of mentality which is less developed, fragmented, and narrow-minded, which makes the person’s ability to reasonably assess very unlikely. This is the story of evolution, which speaks of the progressive development of humans. I have spoken of this from several perspectives. I have suggested that Trump's followers are undeveloped in various ways that fall well short of the integral mentality required in these days and make his followers prone to follow him.

A Pall of either blindness or resistance covers the Trump world both inside the boundaries of the US and across foreign countries. Blindness to the compulsive lying, narcissistic-solipsistic, psychopathic, reality by his supporters or resistance to the spell he has cast upon the more discerning population. Trump's supporter Steve Bannon was quoted in Julia Baird’s Sunday 9th articles of the AGE as Trump having a policy of flooding the market with policies, “bang, bang, bang” lie after lie to confuse and wear down the opposition.

This is the evolutionary story with broad brush strokes that show the developing story of evolution-history. It describes the progress that characterises the scattered progress of all individuals. We are all different in that progress. It’s just that some have become more undeveloped and therefore prone to fall into the grip of the prolific lying, authoritarian, narcissistic-solipsistic, psychopath.