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I ask you to consider the idea that the reason that you don't understand Trump when looking at him through the lens of a cult is that it's not a cult.

You're not going to find that many Trump supporters who don't disagree with him on something. A lot of Christian conservatives don't like his stance on abortion and think it's too permissive. A lot of libertarian conservatives dislike a lot of what he did and didn't do -- a lot of people think that he should have pardoned Assange and Snowden which was totally in his power. A lot of fiscal conservatives don't like just how much money he spends. A lot of people deeply criticized him for hiring John Bolton as well as many of his other appointments. Many of his supporters are disaffected liberals who think the Democrats are acting authoritarian. A lot of people don't like how he talks online. A lot of people criticizing how he's running this campaign. Some people even think that his decisions during covid including project warpspeed were bad. They don't directly blame him for the vaccines being dangerous, but he let them get their Trojan horse into the city. I see it on my feed all the time, people on the right reminding other conservatives about that fact as a warning not to get complacent and not to put Trump onto a pedestal of infallibility.

The guy has built a coalition of a bunch of different disparate groups, and none of them think that he is a perfect person or a perfect candidate. It's a misconception that you only support a politician when you pretend you would marry them, but that isn't something among his supporters. That's something that the left does. They say that you need to fall in love with a Democrat. People fell in love with obama, they fell in love with kennedy, they fell in love with clinton, but you don't need to fall in love with Trump to support him. All you need to think is that he's going to steer things in generally the right direction and he's going to do his best.

It's possible to think project warpspeed let a Trojan horse in the gates and it was a bad call but still think he's the better bet for running the country. When cults see their all powerful leader make mistakes it causes anguish and cognitive dissonance, but if you think the guy you support is a human and he makes a mistake frankly anyone could have made and their opposition is destroying cities for 6 months at a time, forcing people to take experimental drugs or lose their livelihoods, taking pot shots at political candidates, denying people food to homeless people based on race or other overtly evil things, it puts mistakes in context.

A lot of his current allies are people who previously spoke out against him, including his current vice presidential candidate. There are people who used to support him who now speak out against him. That isn't the actions of a cult of people, it's the actions of a fragile alliance built from political horse trading.

Given the reality of the situation before you, I would ask you to consider where all of your narratives come from. Are you the one who thought that Trump's following was a cult, or did someone tell you that, and you picked it up, but you're finding it kind of frustrating the fact that it doesn't really seem to fit the facts?

Keep in mind as you read that I'm not a Trump voter, and Gabriel isn't a Trump voter. We're both Canadians. We've got our own political system to worry about. My analysis is from a third party observer, not a participant.

What I'm seeing is that you seem frustrated that your mental model isn't matching the behavior you'd expect, and you think the only explanation is that it's a cult. Maybe there's some global cult where people all around the world are praising one asshole American, but I think your models might be fairly low resolution, and you assume people are stupid, when the reality is with a higher resolution model you'd come to understand that people's views are more nuanced.

In the Republican primaries the main contenders would be DeSantis and Hayley, both of whom were neolib/neocons so go ahead and vote for them if you want but that's not what the new right is about -- Neolibs and neocons are typically part of an establishment the new right calls "the uniparty", not friendly. DeSantis had some decent policies in Florida, but it seems like he sort of slipped into them by accident rather than by any magical wit, since on culture war stuff he overplayed his hand(such as taking the big win of going "no talking about sex to kindergarteners" and starting to turn it into exactly what his progressive enemies accused him of doing in the first place), and in the primaries he made some big mistakes (he handled the Trump conviction really poorly which hit him hard) suggesting he was just another establishment candidate. Vivek was a great candidate and I liked him but it was literally his first time in the political arena. I think he'll be a heavy hitter in the coming years as long as he doesn't screw anything up (and that's the key here, he needs to build trust with people because we've all had candidates come in and say the right things but no matter how beautiful the words Obama didn't close down gitmo and he didn't pull out of Afghanistan), but given that he still needs to build that trust I can understand why between the two people would choose Trump, even with the latter's mistakes.

And it's easy to say from a keyboard "oh, he's obviously too stupid to realize what happened", but reality is that the political machine is incredibly clever when it comes to lying baldfacedly to get you to support the thing they want to do. If I remember right, you yourself have railed against neoliberalism, but what is postmodern neoliberalism but a lie -- they claim they're shrinking the size of government while making it grow but taking social programs away from the people and selling the public goods to the highest bidder. Many entire political establishments around the world fall for the Machiavellian machinations of the establishment machine, I don't think there's a huge cognitive dissonance in assuming sometimes an imperfect political neophyte will fall for their tricks now and again.

It isn't like we can see anyone who's done any better, and it's obvious to Trump voters that he has at least part of the machine scared as hell given that they're putting everything they have into corrupt lawfare against him. And as I mentioned before, Trump voters who are the most concerned about the covid vaccines *do* routinely criticize him for what he did with the vaccines, which is again not in line with an infallible cult of personality. They see this as a tactical error on his part, and one of many -- many people who want to see a second Trump term will tell you straight-up that the first Trump presidency was really lacking in a lot of ways, he didn't succeed at a lot of the things he tried to do. The thing he has going for him is the fact that he appears to be the only one doing the things he's doing, which gives him a competitive advantage.

If we're gonna start talking untruths, perhaps we should.

You believe that a riot that happened after Trump said "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard" was caused by him, and he is responsible for that riot despite immediately telling his supporters "go home". By contrast, the other candidate in this election said after 6 months of violent riots that caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, killed dozens of people, and forced the president of the United States to hide in a bunker during a particularly violent night, "they're not gonna stop[...] And they should not" so do you hold them to the same standard?

Do you also believe the Russia Russia Russia hoax, confirmed misinformation generated by the Hillary Clinton campaign for which her campaign was charged a large fine?

Do you believe in the "very fine people" fraud which snopes has confirmed false?

Do you actually know what Trump was convicted of? No, not what you think he was convicted of, what he was actually convicted of. It was mislabeling a line item on an accounting document. He mislabeled a line item. So they convicted him of a felony. Because he was also running for president at the time. It wasn't even a felony if you weren't running for president. And that's not an accusation or a conspiracy theory, that's the legal theory officially presented in the case by the New York prosecutor. Mislabeling a line item is a misdemeanor when most people did it, it's a felony because Donald Trump did it while running for office. That's weird, isn't it? Most people don't realize that he mislabeled a line item on an accounting document, they think it was something far more salacious because it was presented as such. Hey, quick question: Are you sure every single line item on every accounting document you ever had created is correct? Are you sure?

Do you believe trump has refused to denounce neo Nazis and white supremacists, which he did explicitly in the very same video that debunks the "very fine people" fraud?

Even if you knew all of these things now, do you think that perhaps your view of someone might be skewed when certain elements of the media are 93% negative on Trump and 100% positive for Harris, as one Newsbusters analysis of ABC found? That's a lot of negativity and positivity to independently think through. There was a young lady from North Korea who came to the west, and she was shocked when she got out. She and everyone in NK "knew" the news was wrong and figured the most egregious stuff said about Kim Jong Un was wrong, but it wasn't until she left that she realized just how much of the news was totally false, particularly about the west.

Trump is doing better than any Republican presidential candidate in 50 years with black voters, cutting the previously expected 50 point lead held by democrats in half with Kamala Harris. He's doing very well with latino voters. He's doing better than any candidate since Reagan with union voters. Are all these people cultists who only like Trump because he's the head of a cult of personality? Maybe, but I think you'd do well to tread lightly and consider maybe these people just have a different viewpoint that you're not considering.

Finally, have you seen the "sharp as a tack" video about Joe Biden? It's showing all the TV commentators talking about how fit he was to run for president this election, every one saying he's "sharp as a tack", or "better than he's ever been". Gentle reminder that Joe Biden is not the candidate for president because it turns out he's a doddering old man and he was forced out in a palace coup after winning the democrat primaries. See? That's what a cult looks like. Or the least popular vice president ever being hailed as not just the great hope for the party, but the living personification of joy. Now that's pretty fuckin culty. I'm not making a "whataboutism" argument here, I'm contrasting what the supposed cult of Donald Trump looks like compared to something I think looks a lot more like a cult.

While looking at an actual cult, note that coalitions with internal disagreements are inherently different from cults where a single, unquestionable authority is held in reverence. unquestionable statements like "Joe Biden is sharp as a tack" kept getting repeated and like scientologists if you dared question the cult you would be destroyed as a person, crushed. And make no mistake, the cult is going to switch to new targets once it's done with Trump. I mean, just look at the mayor of NYC. Do you think he's getting charged because he did something wrong, or is he getting charged for making Biden look bad when a bunch of illegal migrants showed up in NYC?

Anyway, I'm not expecting to change your mind here, but maybe you might get a slightly higher resolution view of why people support who they do. Considering there's a good chance Trump wins the next election, understanding why anyone would vote for him, let alone about half the country that votes, is probably not a bad exercise whether you want to like him or not. The one good thing for everyone is that 4 years from now, he'll be done in office anyway.

And no, he's not going to seize control of the government, because his coalition would crucify him if he did, because it's not a cult. If you'd like evidence that his coalition won't allow it, just look to January 6th itself, which even if you took it at its least charitable and it was 100% a coup, nobody stood behind that. The Republicans liked it the least of all, and even many Republican voters were outspoken in their disdain for what had happened.