She’s close. Trump isn’t the disease, though, he’s a symptom. The disease is Christian nationalism, and it’s been festering far longer than Trump has been on the national scene.

The disease lies in the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and a few other groups hell-bent on turning the US into a theocracy. They’ve been working on this for a very long time, and have been testing the fences for decades, like velociraptors, only making their move now they’ve found all the weaknesses they need to succeed.

It worries me how focussed people are on the threat trump poses, because even if he dropped dead today, it would only be a temporary inconvenience to these dominionists who have infiltrated nearly every facet of the US government. They will not stop if trump disappears, or if Harris is elected.

Please, watch The Family documentary. You’ll be amazed and likely sick at how deeply they’ve embedded themselves.

Trump is the vector, not the disease itself.

The disease is the curdling rage of the (mostly) working class that's massively failed to achieve the American Dream(TM) that was promised to them, which has been perfectly heightened misdirected and cultivated by decades of right wing radio talk show hosts, psuedo 'philosophers', outright racist and religious extremists, conservative 'think tanks' lending credibility to failed economic doctrines, 30+ years of conservative influence on our public education systems essentially ruining it to the point that now only around 10% of Americans are capable of comparing and contrasting news coverage critically... etc etc.

Trump was just the first presidential candidate to completely drop the pretense and show the country that its fine to go totally mask off with your inane bullshit falsehoods, that there is no real need for anything other than appeal via signifiers and cliches and dogwhistle.

Actual policy means nothing, only spin.

Actual hypocrisy means nothing, just sling more baseless shit at others.

Reality means nothing, everyone else is wrong, you know in your heart what I am telling you, no matter how contradictory or incomprehensible it is, is true...

... because it allows you to feel rightfully indignant.

This has always been the strong undercurrent amongst conservatives.

Trump was just the vector that metastisized it into basically mass psychosis.

People feel wronged and betrayed by the system, and like they need that reflected in who they vote for as their representative.

He is that person for those people (hence why they love the mugshot).

The Republican side of politics knows this is the emotional driver, so they direct most of their media to that kind of grievance politics, and claiming they'll "fix" these persecution issues in extraordinary ways.

People like Musk and Thiel fund these campaigns.

Trump thinks he can fix it all by breaking the system that he sees as persecuting him; the system of democracy and the rule of law.

So he wants all its powers. He wants to be a dictator. Then you'll see his politics and only his, and there'll be no more persecution, no more broken system. Just him.

That's how the right wingers feel. They're emotionally locked into this.

That's why they're still on board, for the political solution to their emotional disenfranchisement, for their own sense something's wrong with everyone but them to he proven out with power. Being onboard with Trump proves there's a broken system they've been wronged by, and someone powerful is in that boat with them.

It's a cult, just as much as neoliberal compromise with the Capitalist forces of self-sacrifice is a cult.

The Trumpist members of my family are proud to be recalcitrant about it all. It’s at least three parts: first there’s the gulf between us, and then the knowledge of the breadth of it, and lastly the pride of standing so far away from everyone. It’s not just that they’re way past the orbit of Pluto. It’s also the fact that they’re so proud to be so far out.

She’s absolutely correct. I lost my father to Trump about a year ago. It got so bad that I had to block all contact with him. No email, no text, no calls.

This is the underlying article written by Caroline Giuliani: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/caroline-giuliani-trump-kamala-harris

My father revealed that he had been bullshitting about every moral lesson he had ever tried to tell me when he went maga.

its not a fuckin disease.

You can catch a disease through no fault of your own.

These MAGA fucktards willfully disregard common sense, and truth, and decency, and their own christian moral values, because service to the party and the orange lord is paramount.

everything about MAGA is willful and intentional.

These are not poor innocent victims, These are rampant, fascist pieces of shit, that finally felt comfortable enough to let their swastikas fly when they thought they had their chance at seizing glory and crushing the opposition that would are make them face repercussions for their abhorrence.

People trying to desperately shift blame away from them, and turn them into victims, is bullshit, and nothing but evidence of how well all these right wing pieces of shit managed to stay under the radar and mask themselves until they thought the time was right.