The Trump supporters on this thread have done a phenomenal job of perfectly illustrating as plain as day how and why a cult of personality can become so sinister and dangerous, and the manner in which Republicans have ceased to center around any particular conservative ideology at all in servitude to that cult of personality. These people don’t even have political ideologies anymore. Maybe they once did. But now their ideology is “whatever Trump says”- even if it directly contradicts the core foundational tenets upon which the entire conservative ideology is built.
The fundamental problem here is they treat politics like sports. There isn’t actually any critical thought behind any of their support, there is no longer any ideological basis behind their support, there is no longer any ideological defense of their support- they just cheer for their team. They’ve spent the last 10 years defending Trump’s every word, his every move, his every policy, even when – especially when – his words and policies directly contradict everything conservatism is supposed to adhere to.
They have made Donald Trump- not conservativism- *the* core piece of their personality. At this point, they literally can’t afford to be wrong about him. It would mean admitting that they spent the last decade of their lives being played, just like everyone (especially the libs!) was telling them the entire time. Most people do not have the strength, courage, or conviction to do so. Many of them don’t care, but some of them do- the two on this thread are a perfect example of the latter. That’s why you see them lashing out at people like me who did find the strength and the intellectual fortitude to say “enough is enough” and leave the Trump madness long ago and begin opposing it with every moral fiber of my being.
As I thought about my own political and ideological evolution over the last decade from my mid 20s into my mid 30s, which spans from initial Trump support to now outright opposition to everything about Trump, I realized that I’ve definitely become more “liberal” in my social views, which does lend itself to aligning with Democrats, but more than anything else it has been an evolution of my own conservatism that has most caused my disgust with Trumpism and those who enable and support it. I still believe in my fundamental classical conservative beliefs in free markets, strong and secure national borders, a powerful military, adherence to the constitution, following the law and being held strictly accountable when it is broken, and everyone paying their fair share. But I also believe now that unfettered and unrestrained capitalism does not work without employee and consumer protections, that you can have strong and secure national borders but also a fair, fast, and efficient system of immigration, that we can have the strongest and most powerful military in the world while simultaneously spending substantially proportionately less than we do on defense, that the constitution should be adhered to as written but that we should be open to amending and clarifying parts of it that were written 250 years ago and perhaps not necessarily applicable to modern day, that we should always harshly punish violent crime but should strive more for rehabilitation instead of retribution for non-violent offenders, and that taxes should be as low as possible but that there should be significantly fewer loopholes that enable the wealthiest among us to pay the least proportionately.
All of the above to say, Trumpism happened because so many of my fellow conservatives were willing to completely abandon conservatism altogether instead of abandoning a man who has never been conservative in the first place. I hope at some point the conservative movement in America is able to regain traction and reestablish itself as a legitimate ideological base – I strongly believe that a healthy and robust conservative movement is vital. But I think that as long as the cult leader remains, there is no hope for a healthy conservativism.
