Democracy isn't edible, but food is
Some wonder why it has taken Americans so long to see the threats of both authoritarianism and profound corruption in Trump and allied Republican Party leadership. Some of those who do see the threats wonder why far more people and most of the mainstream media still do not see it. Early on, researchers dissecting the 2024 election of Trump found three main sources of votes for him. They were immigration, inflation and woke/DEI, all three of which were expertly exaggerated and weaponized against Democrats and liberalism. If nothing else, MAGA demagoguery is superb. By contrast, Democratic messaging isn't.
More recent research indicates a different major source of support for Trump, namely identity fusion with attendant cult/social loyalty. Apparently most researchers now see identity fusion—a powerful, visceral sense of oneness with their leader—as among the top reasons people voted for Trump, with some arguing it is the single most important reason. People fused with Trump tend to be more likely to take extreme positions, which includes a tendency to abandon past values, e.g., support for democracy, when doing so supports the identity-fused leader.
When a voter fuses their identity with that of a politician like Trump, inexplicable reasoning and behavior become understandable. People will knowingly vote against their interests if doing so aligns with the needs of the fused identity. Attacks on and criticisms of Trump become personal attacks on and criticisms of the fused identity. For voters who exhibited strong identity fusion traits, Trump's policy positions were essentially irrelevant to their support for him.
So, when Trump is criticized for attacking democracy and the rule of law, and for demagoguing inflation as being 100% the fault of Biden and Democrats, voters supported Trump in defense of their own attacked and criticized identity. Inflation makes food too expensive, and you can't eat democracy. So in a sense, it was rational for fused minds to vote for Trump despite him (1) openly advancing authoritarianism and corruption at the expense of democracy, and (2) openly not caring about voters everyday concerns or their democracy. Fused minds simply did not, and could not, see their leader that way. Many or most of those minds still cannot see it.
The slow awakening continues
Early on, a few observers saw major threats of autocracy and kleptocracy in Trump. The warnings were dismissed out of hand as crackpottery, lies, idiocy, brainwashed Democrat stupidity, etc. A Russian reporter who chronicled the fall of Russian democracy to Putin's kleptocratic dictatorship, Masha Gessen, wrote this in Nov. of 2016:
“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”
That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said on Wednesday [in her concession speech to Trump].
These days, people like Gessen aren't criticized so harshly by so many people. There has been and continues to be a slow awakening to the authoritarian, kleptocratic MAGA threat to our inedible democracy, rule of law and civil liberties. Regarding Trump and his threats, unfused minds, just like enquiring minds, want to know about what's going on. Fused minds, not so much.
Over at the r/law subreddit, more evidence of the awakening has bubbled up in the cauldron of public opinion. The title reflects both the concern and the frustrating, irrational restraints that still poisons so many minds to unvarnished truth:
Early in Trump's term we asked, “Is it a constitutional crisis?” Yeah, it was. But it’s over. We lost. Trial Courts fought valiantly, but the Supreme Court keeps abdicating & giving Trump more power. They won’t save us. And for reasons I can’t fathom, they seem to want authoritarianism - LegalEagle
Yes, those minds see the constitutional crisis. No, those minds still cannot see the pure authoritarianism and corruption that drives Trump and MAGA elites. Specifically, USSC judges do not merely seem to want authoritarianism, they openly show they are authoritarian by deciding lawsuits as authoritarians. Project 2025, an American manifesto of authoritarianism is explicit about supporting a form of authoritarianism called the unitary executive.
At pages 19-20, Project 2025, MAGA elites explain why they believe, and the USSC has acted in accordance with, an all powerful unitary executive who is and must be above the law and all meaningful restraints:
Highlighting this need, former director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought writes in Chapter 2, “The modern conservative President’s task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people.” At the core of this goal is the work of the White House and the central personnel agencies. Article II of the Constitution vests all federal executive power in a President, made accountable to the citizenry through regular elections. Our Founders wrote, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Accordingly, Vought writes, “it is the President’s agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies,” not their own.
Therein lies the legal basis and reasoning that supports a president that now has almost unlimited power to subvert and weaponize federal agencies in support of the president's own agenda. The agenda and needs of the American people and the US Constitution are subordinate to what the unitary executive personally wants.
Discussion
Despite being explicit, core MAGA legal dogma, many or most fused minds cannot see significant authoritarianism in a corrupt dictator called the unitary executive or anything else. That is understandable in human psychology and social behavior. People simply do not or cannot see themselves as supporting corrupt dictator. So to them Trump is not a corrupt dictator, whether he is called a unitary executive or something else.
But why can't nearly all unfused minds clearly see the threat? Presumably most people working in the mainstream news media see the threat. But they rarely call it out in direct terms. The MSM almost always uses softening euphemisms like "conservative" and "libertarian" that normalize, justify and frame MAGA as being something it clearly is not.
Is that harsh assessment of the MSM's failure to inform fair and reasonable or not? Is the MSM engaged in a large-scale disinformation campaign, presumably driven mostly by corporate ownership and Trump's explicit threats (his personal agenda) to profits and revenues?
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