I’m noodling a theory about why the Epstein thing seems to have landed differently with the Cult. However, be aware that I am doing so on July 17, when I actually posted this, and not on August 4, when it is published. My assumption is that things will have changed by then, though in what way I dare not predict.
Anyway, here is my theory as of July 17.
One of the defining psychological features of the Cult is a capacity for empathy that extends solely to the Self and those perceived as an extension of the Self. All other human suffering is non-existent, contemptible, funny, and/or guilt-manipulation.
This pattern has been constant for years:
Trump’s rape of Carroll? Non-existent. The bitch lied. As do all those gold-digging broads who make up this Witch Hunt.
Our enemies *dare* to complain about the destruction of USAID? WELL, WHAT ABOUT ABORTION YOU CONTEMPTIBLE VERMIN? THE UNBORN ARE EXTENSIONS OF MY EGO THAT COST ME NOTHING TO CARE ABOUT! BUT (says Matt Walsh) WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT MILLIONS OF AIDS VICTIMS FAR AWAY OR HELP THEM WITH A FEW PENNIES?
Woke libs upset by 4 year old citizens with brain cancer being deported? Hilarious! Cry more! I love watching you guys and your phony performative empathy!
Feeling compassion for suffering refugees? That’s the Sin of Empathy. You are trying to guilt-manipulate me into worrying about invaders when we should really care about homeless vets. And don’t get me started with the guilt-manipulation by those who care about homeless vets. That’s just guilt-manipulation for the Welfare State. Those vets should get a job. And don’t get me started on help for the unemployed. That’s just guilt-manipulation by communists and socialists. Etc. ad nauseam.
The key is to understand who the Cult sees as an extension of the Self.
MAGA propaganda has relentlessly taught the Cult to keep the Circle of Empathy as small as possible. Typically, the immediate family.
So “I need my arsenal of guns to protect me and my family! Anybody trying to stop maniacs from shooting up schools is part of an assault on me and my family!”
Or “Trump is protecting my family from the brown invaders and whatever he has to do protect my family and give us cheaper eggs? Well, the ends justify the means! Alligator Alcatraz is awesome!”
This strategy of keeping the Circle of Empathy limited to the immediate family has done this so well that most MAGA cultists do not even extend it to other MAGA cultists. This is why, when Trump stabs some portion of the Cult in the back, the rest of the Cult does not care.
“If you are going to live in a flood zone, you should expect flooding” says the rest of the Cult while Trump leaves MAGA victims in Texas to drown.
“You voted for MAGA and your wife got deported? Well, you should have thought of that before marrying an invader. Sucks to be you. Not my problem.”
Again and again, the Cult has been blinded to any empathic connections that might interfere with their tight personal identification with the Orange Messiah.
But in one deeply primal way, there has been an exception to this. Trump himself, in his cynical, lying propaganda, taught the Cult for years and years that the girls exploited by Epstein *were* extensions of every faithful Cult member’s ego. He taught them that they were the Heroic Defenders of childhood’s innocence lost and he was their Retribution. He taught them to hate the Democrat monsters, the Pedophiles, the Pizzagaters, the Satanic Cabal that had inflicted horrors on these little defenseless girls. These girls became, in the hearts, minds, souls, and guts of the Cult, quasi-sacred figures. Children for whom the Cult saw themselves as Saviors. Children they liked to think they would bravely die–or kill–to save. It became a deeply primal thing for the Cult.
And now, suddenly, Trump is covering up his obvious guilt and equally obvious ties with Epstein, not only with transparent lies, but with insults for his base as “stupid weaklings” taken in by “bullshit”. For the first time, he is viscerally attacking them at a level that is deeply core to their identity and heart. He is telling them that *their* suffering (experienced vicariously through their fantasy of being the Saviors of Epstein’s Victims) is non-existent, contemptible, and funny.
I think that’s why this is all landing different with the Cult. For the first time in 10 years, he is hurting them in a way that they *recognize* as hurt and in a way that does not hurt those they hate worse than it hurts them.
How they will respond over the long haul is anyone’s guess. Stockholm Syndrome may prevail as it has done so many times before. They may succumb to bread and circuses. Trump may offer some performative cruelty against those they hate that is so extravagant that they forget Epstein as he flings them the manflesh of some fresh victims.
But I think that the reason this moment has been different is that Trump has hurt real extensions of their egos that he himself taught to see as extensions of their egos. You guys in the Future will know better than me whether the Cult acquiesced or if Trump could not put the toothpaste back in the tube.
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9 Responses
Well, Mark, I’m reading this on August 4th; and things have, indeed, changed. Ghislaine Maxwell (after a two-day conversation with Trump’s personal attorney) is currently in a relatively cushy minimum security prison in Texas. Moving her was Trump’s way of “testing the fences.” Since the story got minimal coverage, odds are, in two years she’ll be at large on the French Riviera.
How refreshing to hear a Catholic voice speak out against this Trump/MAGA madness. It’s so sad to see the hold he has over so many Catholic conservatives.
I don’t think this Epstein brouhaha will hurt Trump much, because the MAGA cult has too much invested in him. Trump gave a bunch of ignorant nobodies the opportunity that they were smart somebodies. Thus their slavish devotion. Trump calls them stupid because they are stupid. The truth hurts.
There are people who voted for Trump as the classic “lesser of two evils.” I don’t agree, but understand. There are those however, who actually believe Trump is some sort of junior varsity messiah. They are in fact stupid.
My nearly 90-y.o. mother slammed her brakes on in the church parking lot when I dared say “well maybe it’s true”. She was raging about the evil liberals, and their “lies” about Trump. We were on our way to daily mass. For a second there I really thought she was going to say “get out of my car!” She was absolutely enraged and accused me of watching CNN. I told her I don’t.
I generally keep my mouth shut because she could ruin my life if she wants to, but I dared to ask, “how do you know what the truth is Mom?”
She replied, “I just know.” I thought of the Mormons and how they equate the truth with “a burning in the bosom”.
Totally brainwashed. I have no doubt she (mostly) blames the girls/women who have been victimized. She will say things like: “she looks like she’s been around the block.” It’s a known reality in the family that she doesn’t care too much for her granddaughters, and dotes on the grandsons. Women serve, and men carry out their weighty conversations. Men are allowed their peccadillos and women who don’t look like a version of Grace Kelly are suspected to be “tramps”.
If you are reading this, please say a quick prayer for her! She has a bunch of friends that think exactly the same way. You can’t tell them anything. The only thing I can get away with is saying, “all of this anger about politics is not good for your body or your soul.”
It’s curious that old people have such reverence for that con man. I am 74 and when you are old and cynical, your bullish*t detector becomes quite sharp. Trump is such an obvious charlatan, and a nasty character at that, you wonder why old people are taken in by his schtick? Do they really believe the MAGA excrement? It’s amazing to me that people have such reverence for him.
I don’t know. It’s a vacuum for meaning. The antichrist fills their faith hope and want receptors with a counterfeit. So sad. Evil never looks like a Hollywood movie.
Exactly, Mark, spot-on analysis.
To hark back two posts earlier, you can see this “MAGA empathy” in complaints like Charlie Kirk’s about how COVID restrictions caused people’s grandmothers to die alone, because they were not allowed visitors.
Now, I agree completely that someone dying alone, prevented from being with family, is a bad thing and all else being equal should be prevented. But in 2020, all else was NOT equal. There was a high risk that your 15 or 30 minutes with a dying grandparent, while valuable to your family, could lead to the death of someone else’s grandparent – who might otherwise have lived.
But no, the fact it was MY grandparent completely blots that out. Not even considered.
That’s someone else’s family. Screw them.
Which is why Trump voters getting so worked up about Laken Riley or P’nut the Squirrel is… well, it’s not quite crocodile tears, it’s not fake, but it’s extremely egotistic. It weights suffering almost entirely by the proximity of the sufferer to you, or how much sympathy you have for them, rather than assessing them equally.
And then when their “empathy” leads them to justify acts of extreme cruelty, it’s messed up. Taken to extremes, it becomes “Don’t you even care that a fine young man like Horst Wessel got murdered by acolytes of Stalin? Do you believe he deserved to be killed? No? Then he must be avenged!”