Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is - Nothing bonds a group more tightly than a common enemy that is perceived as a mortal threat.
SEPTEMBER 4, 2020
..... in the minds of Trump’s supporters lingers the belief that a Biden presidency would usher in a reign of terror. Many of them simply have to believe that. Justifying their fealty to a man who is so obviously a moral wreck requires them to turn Joe Biden and the Democratic Party into an existential threat. The narrative is set; the actual identity of the nominee is almost incidental.
A powerful tribal identity bonds the president to his supporters. As Amy Chua, the author of Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, has argued, the tribal instinct is not just to belong, but also to exclude and to attack. “When groups feel threatened,” Chua writes, “they retreat into tribalism. They close ranks and become more insular, more defensive, more punitive, more us-versus-them.”
That works both ways. Fear strengthens tribalistic instincts, and tribalistic instincts amplify fear. Nothing bonds a group more tightly than a common enemy that is perceived as a mortal threat. In the presence of such an enemy, members of tribal groups look outward rather than inward, at others and never at themselves or their own kind.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...e-fear/616009/
************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ***********************
"THE WALL," "THE DEEP STATE," "DRAINING THE SWAMP," "Q ANON." "WITCH-HUNTS" - the one and only skill at which this President excels is providing his supporters with a endless supply of grievances and external threats, real and imagined, to foster tribal loyalties based on fear of outsiders and an "us-versus them" collective mindset!
By personalizing America's political differences as moral threats, Trump's "true believers" circle the wagons while viewing the rest of the world in apocalyptic terms - a 21st C version of the Crusades led by conservative Christians against the demonic hordes!
Last edited:
