The people supporting trump are not willing to face the facts. While reading Adam’s piece I thought of 3 people I wish would read this—people I love! But I know from experience they will.not.read.it. They choose to keep their belief systems by remaining ignorant. 😢
I have a mother and two adult daughters who are not affected, yet, so they believe everything is fine. They don’t talk to me because I tell them the truth trying to get them to stop drinking the Kool-aid.
i know someone who won't care. she knows she will be dead by 2032, and her attitude is that as long as it doesn't happen to her she doesn't care. nevermind that it will happen to her three daughters.
I’m seeing this a lot too, and I’m baffled. I know I could be dead by then myself, but I always loved the saying “Sometimes we must plant a tree whose shade we will never enjoy.” We should care what happens beyond our own lifespan. Sadly, many don’t.
SOMEONE I AM CLOSE TO WORSHIPS TRUMP AND IS SIMPLY - UNWILLING - TO COUNTENACE ANY NEWS OR INFORMATION THAT IS CONTRARY TO HIM.
AND YET, I DO BELIEVE THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND IS BLOWING, AND DO NOT LIKE IT.
ALSO,IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE TORRENT OF BAD NEWS FOR TRUMP, COUPLED WITH HIS ARROGANT, IDIOTIC STATEMENTS - "I LOVE THE INFLATION" - HAS TO TAKE A TOLL THAT WILL BE FELT IN THE MIDTERMS.
IF I WERE A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS PERSON IN A SWING STATE I WOULD BE LOOKING FOR A SMALL FARM TO BUY.
I don't believe there are any sane and decent tRump supporters. They are lured in by his essential cruelty and kept there by the constant drumbeats of fear spoken to them by State Television. They are plain and simply enculted!
I used to be reluctant to call this a cult, but the more and more I see I really think it is. It is so weird to have friends that have normal jobs (one with a defense contractor with a security clearance), will go the extra mile to be kind to my cat or help me with something for my house but spew the most vile messages against Dumocrats and subscribe to election fraud conspiracy theories.
I agree with your description entirely. I now use this as a moral compass: if a person supports Trump, then there is something evil about them, whether it be their racism, anger, homophobia, or something else, it means to me that I should be highly cautious around them and probably go the other direction. I didn’t use to think that way about the “old style” Republicans. They were not of my political beliefs, but they weren’t evil either. Those were the good old days.
I don't understand why anyone would support Trump, but there are people in my family whom I love who do. I see them as ignorant (often willfully so.) But I'm surprised that you would brand people you've never met as "evil." I'm a lifelong Democrat and progressive. But honestly, that kind of self-righteousness on the left is part of what helped Trump take power in the first place.
Deborah, I understand that when the people supporting Trump are those you love, it makes it that much harder to see what I’m talking about, but I stand by my statement.
While writing my original comment, I stopped before writing the word evil and truly thought. I didn’t write it casually; I thought about how I could describe the person who is an acolyte, a follower, of someone who is a pathological liar, a thief, a warmonger, a misogynist, a hater of other religions, and who is tearing down our nation and the things that made it good.
During his first administration, I could have excused those followers by acknowledging that Trump, although obviously suffering from a serious personality disorder, could seduce a large number of people.
They saw and heard what he was-he never hid his sickness from the people, I’ll give him that. He announced a Muslim ban: the people cheered; he said Mexicans were mostly rapists and thieves: the crowds cheered; he mocked a disabled man: the crowds laughed uproariously. It went on but I still thought the people would wake up; they didn’t, they doubled down.
Then came the 2020 election. I already believed he wasn’t giving up the White House and then Jan 6th happened. He poked that crowd of angry white people and told them to overthrow our government, and people still listened.
In 2016 Turkey suffered an attempted coup on July 15. If you want to see what an attempted coup can look like, look up what happened on the Bosporus Bridge the night of July 15. January 6 could have wound up like that and he would have been just fine with it77. But, still, after Jan 6, people followed Trump.
And now I will tell you why I really believe that those who voted for and follow someone like Donald Trump are evil. The second time they knew everything there was to know about him. They now watch as he bombs the water reservoirs in Iran while at the same time claiming to wish to “liberate” and help the Iranians. He is planning on cutting entitlement programs like my social security and Medicare while creating a 1.7 Billion dollar slush fund for all the Jan 6 rioters to gain compensation from. He makes ugly, ugly deals with the IRS so that he and his crooked family will never have to answer to the IRS again. He puts unintelligent yes-men in charge of vital institutions like the Pentagon where a man almost as sick as Trump now fires generals who won’t pledge loyalty to him rather than the constitution.
He is as crooked and corrupt as they come and now has a list of media that he’s aiming at shutting down, which he can do because his billionaire friends are buying up all the major news outlets, but that’s not enough: he’s going after Substacks and YouTube as well because he’s going to control the news. He will try to put ANYONE who crosses him in prison and who knows, maybe worse.
If someone, even Aunt Helen, supports this-they’ve got a wide streak of evil running through them.
I wish the Democrats and Progressives had realized that long before the second administration came down. Maybe we would have fought tougher; I think we were still playing too nice, too “fair.” It doesn’t work when you’re fighting against evil. 😈
I think in some cases supporting the trump regime is simple denial. In some other case’s its ignorance. Then there certainly are cases of regime supporters who really do want to hurt and destroy. In my mind destroying or damaging Creation is evil.
Of course I'm aware of Trump's abuses and corruption. I don't agree that proves that all his voters have "a wide streak of evil running through them." I assume you intend to model compassion and righteousness, but it sure sounds like you're calling for splitting up families. Many of our parents are vulnerable seniors who struggle with health issues, rely on social security and medicare as you do, but fall for the misinformation that's fed to them. To abandon them would be truly evil.
No Deborah, I don’t intend to model compassion and righteousness. I’m too flawed a person to do that, and at 68 years old, I know myself too well to ever think I could pull off being a model for anything. I don’t advocate splitting up families either, or abandoning senior citizens (of whom I am one) who are ill (I also have cancer myself) and who only have social security to live on.
I think I clarified my feelings in what I wrote: first time voters I count as simply beings suckers for something about Trump that we don’t see. My own father who is now 97 voted for Trump the first time. I thought he was blind in some way, but heck, my best friend of many years voted for him too, as did my uncle, who was a doctor, and in my mind, should have been able to see that Trump had the morals of a pimp-but didn’t. That was the first show. By the time the election in 2024 came around, there was enough solid evidence of the man’s massive personality disorder, and complete lack of compassion and righteousness as you say, that I wasn’t as forgiving.
At this juncture in his term, I don’t see any question but that he is an evil man, and if you support evil, even if all you want is a subsidy for your farm, or to make sure Trans people can’t use certain bathrooms, then you-as a human being-are demonstrating evil as well. By the way, if someone is a senior citizen living on social security, and they voted Republican, they’ve basically voted to gut the few dollars they get down to almost nothing, because that’s what Trump wants to do to us; he wants to take away 17% of our income and cut the heck out of Medicare, all the while telling the Pentagon to accept the bid of a company owned by Don Junior, and pouring billions of dollars into the war machine, and cutting taxes for the richest of us.
One last thing, this is all simply my opinion. It will have no effect on your life, or anyone else’s life. I’m not sure how you got me from thinking people have a streak of evil in them to doing all these dreadful things like breaking up families, tossing seniors out of the house, or abandoning low income and sick parents. Quite a jump.
The people supporting this lunatic are just as psychotic, vengeful, hateful, foolish, imbecilic, self-serving as this pseudo-authoritarian racist rapist.
You are right, but I will say it like this, there is no free will, no one chose who they are, I don’t think anyone is inherently good or bad, they just are. A person that is hateful and vengeful and racist, are still performing those things. But I know it’s their environment that made them like that. At the same time it is what it is.
How do you describe someone that enjoys race based violence, or truly hates women? Take any negative behavior and how do you deal with that individual.
Read my work to understand the behavior and neuroscience behind what I’m saying.
Yes, I agree that there is something very wrong with people who enjoy racism or justify rape. But I have neighbors and family members who apparently don't see that kind of criminality from Trump or other MAGA figures. These are people who are for the most part helpful and decent They would not stand for that behavior if they saw it in their own lives. But they somehow write it off as just part of politics, or a product of the "fake news" or revert to whataboutism. I don't know how to respond, and honestly, I don't even like to discuss it with them. But I don't disown them over their misguided political views.
What you’re describing is one of the more genuinely painful features of this political moment, and I think you’re handling it with grace.
The dissonance you’re observing isn’t hypocrisy in the ordinary sense. It’s compartmentalization operating at scale. These are people who have built their moral intuitions around proximate relationships. Abstract or mediated harm—-things filtered through screens, partisan framing, and institutional noise, doesn’t trigger the same moral circuitry. It literally doesn’t feel real in the same way.
The fake news defense and whataboutism aren’t just deflection tactics. For many people, they’re genuine epistemic shields. If you can’t trust the source, you don’t have to sit with the discomfort of what’s being reported. It’s cognitively cheaper than updating a worldview built over decades.
I don’t think you have to disown them either. There’s a version of not-discussing-it that is actually kind of protective of the relationship, of your own sanity. And there’s a version that slowly normalizes the gap between who they are in person and what they’re willing to tolerate in public life.
The question I keep coming back to: is there a smaller, more personal frame, not “Trump is racist” but “would you accept this from your son’s coach, your daughter’s employer?” that bypasses the political armor and speaks to the moral intuitions you know are actually there?
That’s not guaranteed to work. But it’s more honest than silence, and less likely to end in a shouting match than a frontal argument.
Although, I have tried many tactics and most people I know are just full of excuses and rationalize their behavior.
That's an interesting way of viewing it. They truly don't see broader, societal level violence or discrimination as relevant to their own lives and morals. And yes, I sometimes try to point out that they wouldn't tolerate that if someone behaved that way towards them directly, or toward one of their friends, children or parents. Often, they just seem to short circuit. They get it, but don't get it!
I have been thinking of a response something like "most of us have voted in an election and our candidate hasn't won, and we may not like the policies, but we move on. We don't normally have to fear that our society and culture will unravel before our eyes.
I love that quote, so I just looked it up and it says that it’s typically attributed to Mark Twain but there’s no evidence to back this up, so it remains apocryphal. Anyway, it sounds like something Mark Twain, or Will Rogers would have said, and it definitely applies to this strange phenomenon of these sycophants who bizarrely follow Trump no matter the cost to the country. Who said “May you live in interesting times?”
As marco rubio said today, the main interest of a lot of people in this country is seeing stuff like the UFC atrocity happening Sunday. They don't read about the actual issues. he pretty much said they don't care about them.
"It's the price we have to pay for freedom" when he costs us money. When he spitefully cut off the water project in Colorado farm country not long ago, those farmers still loved him. Asked about it, one said, "Well, if he did it, I'm sure he had a reason." No matter the corruption and incompetence, He's still God.
I have a relative now saying we all need to suffer for our country. You know they are getting to the point where they can't even defend it anymore when they use suffer or "God works in mysterious ways" types of comments.
How did this guy ever reach this kind of adoration? You know your relative; can you give us some insight to who they are and how they think (these kind of supporters.) I’m serious by the way; I really would love to know what you think.
I have a hard time understanding but the best I can come up with is that Trump appeals to or fulfills some inner need and it is so powerful that the person overlooks or rationalizes the things they know are wrong Kind of like people in an unhealthy or abusive relationship and still keep sticking with it no matter how bad it gets
Thank you for answering my question. I think Trump appeals to some powerful need as well, and I wish I knew what it was. My best guess is fear. The fear that they’re going to lose something.
Maybe they have a fear of people who are different. I myself am the one who is different (a Muslim) and I can’t understand what there is to fear from Muslims, Sikhs, Africans, Mexicans, or people from India or Somalia. We aren’t scary people and we’re all here living and wanting the same thing they do: safety, having a family, friends, work, pleasure. We’re not the Boogeyman that they fear.
It seems that Trump used that fear and then, as you said, they simply ignored the evil he perpetrated. I was just writing to another person saying that I believe those who still follow Trump are evil themselves, but fear is a mighty and powerful force and when it’s stirred by a sociopath (which he is) it can become like heroin. People can’t let go of it and do terrible things to hold on to it.
Fear can stoke hatred, which then gets Trump the votes he needs to keep spreading his corruption and worse, killing people in another country (Iran) while cashing in on weapons manufacturing for his equally corrupt sons.
I have relatives too who supported Trump’s first administration. I’ll never look at them the same way.
Reading the last couple posts about the boos at the Knicks game and the inflation quip, I don't see how the current state of affairs can be framed as anything other than a failing, delusional narcissist being enabled by sycophantic handlers while he leads a fanatical cult. Regarding the handlers, let's go back and look at all the criticisms of people around Biden who hid his aging, and take a page out of that book for the people covering up Trump's obvious declines. Regarding the MAGA cult, it now seems foolish to apply reason or rationality to analyze/understand their duality and complicity. Instead, we should be viewing it through the lens of high-control groups who demand fealty to the leader, plain and simple. Boos = cheers? Okay! I will end inflation -> I love inflation? Sign me up! The lying is the point; it is how cult membership is defined.
Jayson - He had the perfect opportunity to blame the self inflicted inflation on Biden and it surprised me that he didn’t go to his fallback knee jerk ridiculous response. But his followers still try to blame the previous administration regardless of what the facts say. Maybe the bruising on his hands is because he refuses to use the autopen? So much hand signatures instead of handshakes? I’m sure the handlers will come up with something new to explain it all. While they use the autopen behind his back. Ending inflation and not starting new wars are not the only lies he told and it’s a shame that some people believed him.
i couldn't agree more! i subscribe to a few other substacks that i feel are vitally important, but i had to pull back for my health's sake, and, therefore, adam's is the only substack i never miss.
OK, Adam. Question. When will something be done to remove this human being from office? How long does an administration wait, until we're all blown to bits, emotionally, physically, and spiritually? What does it take, for us to hear day after day after day this insanity, with no one taking the lead? What's wrong with this picture? Has the human race just plain given up? I haven't. People in this group haven't. What can we do?
Trump wasn't able to create this harm against ordinary Americans alone. The Republicans in all branches of government are equally responsible for this cruelty by supporting Trump in the past, present and I believe will continue to do so in the future.
I started taking SS at 62. I would have waited until 70, but had a feeling that all the threats about cutting it by a third, etc would come to pass. Someone please tell Speaker Johnson that it's not an entitlement. We all have paid into it. Would have been so much better to have let us put it into an investment fund.
I totally agree with you! I wish these people would stop saying they are an entitlement! We’ve paid into that for the 50+ years we’ve worked. I hope one day karma comes to bite them all in the ass.
Reaganomics is coming home to roost. That skewed philosophy that “entitlements “ like social security, making sure the poorest among us in the richest country in the world are fed, and healthcare is available to our elderly and poor are the problem. Tax cuts for the “job creators” and trickle down economics are celebrated . What we have now is a mutant, bloated, cartoonish version of this philosophy. The Republicans who followed nothing but their portfolio balance, rationalized that they are “fiscally conservative”, even while funding nothing wrong with gay marriage or reproductive freedom (and choosing to vote Republican because…you know…fiscal conservatism..) are a big problem. They didn’t pay attention, were assuaged by the nice things they owned…and blindly followed their party down a really dark path.
Laura - It always was the party that was against payments to the people who they thought didn’t deserve it and called it handouts. Yet, this is the same party that was perfectly fine with letting T collect our money through a back room deal and then hand it to insurrectionists.
No party is perfect but since at least Reagan the republicans scream about spending money if they aren’t in power and spend freely when they are. It seems to me that they leave nothing behind to make sure that if a democrat wins they don’t have anything left to implement the promises they made. Democrats have to spend their time trying to balance the budget and deal with the deficit. When they are voted out the cycle continues. And you are right because they base their wealth, and the current state of affairs, on the stock market while the rest of us don’t.
Cutting social security and Medicare will cause a crisis in this country. I for one live on social security and my insurance is Medicare with a supplement. I spent my entire working life paying these programs. They are angering a base of voters that will not stand for these cuts. We must vote every one of them out.
i've been 100% disabled since i was 40, and that's a long time ago. as a career federal employee i retired with 40% of my top three salaries. i had to pay a lot for health insurance. i was impoverished until i met and married my husband. medicare is still a lifeline for me, and my future now looks rather bleak because my pension combined with a reduced medicare and a reduced amount of what i receive from my husband's social security will send me backwards if my husband predeceases me. and yet i will always be so much better off than my contemporaries who have no federal pension to go with social security and medicare. THE ANSWER LIES IN RAISING THE SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE DEDUCTIONS FOR THE MOST WELL OFF! republicans are allergic to that.
Just watching him, it's clear the man is insane. He lives in La-La Land. He wishes something to be true and "Presto" it is true. 15 minutes later he wishes the opposite to be true, and it's true too. He lies so effortlessly and with such conviction because in his demented mind he isn't lying.
It's not hard to believe that in a nation of 340 million people there is someone as nuts as Trump. What boggles the mind is that so many people will slavishly follow the ravings of a lunatic.
I'm waiting for the opposing candidates who are gutsy enough to piece together his promises and lies; for ex.,
(Aug. 9, 2024) "Starting on Day One, we will end inflation and make America affordable again." vs. (June 10, 2026) “You know what I really love? I love the inflation."
and (Nov. 6, 2024) "I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” vs. (Mar. 7, 2026) "We're winning the war by a lot. We've decimated their whole evil empire." And when asked how long the war will last, (Mar. 11 and 13, 2026) ". . . any time I want it to end, it will end. . . . It'll be as long as it's necessary."
This idiot just writes his opponents' ads for them.
How in the world can any sane, decent person still support this raving idiot?
The people supporting trump are not willing to face the facts. While reading Adam’s piece I thought of 3 people I wish would read this—people I love! But I know from experience they will.not.read.it. They choose to keep their belief systems by remaining ignorant. 😢
This is so painful. How do you deal with people you love who are part of the cult?
We simply don’t talk politics.
Same in my family as well, Margaret.
Exactly!
I have a mother and two adult daughters who are not affected, yet, so they believe everything is fine. They don’t talk to me because I tell them the truth trying to get them to stop drinking the Kool-aid.
i know someone who won't care. she knows she will be dead by 2032, and her attitude is that as long as it doesn't happen to her she doesn't care. nevermind that it will happen to her three daughters.
I’m seeing this a lot too, and I’m baffled. I know I could be dead by then myself, but I always loved the saying “Sometimes we must plant a tree whose shade we will never enjoy.” We should care what happens beyond our own lifespan. Sadly, many don’t.
i have never heard that saying, but i absolutely love it! i'm writing it down and will remember it and use it. a million thanks!
Agreed. And they are immersed in their own media bubbles of unconstrained and amplified ignorance.
YOU ARE SO RIGHT.
SOMEONE I AM CLOSE TO WORSHIPS TRUMP AND IS SIMPLY - UNWILLING - TO COUNTENACE ANY NEWS OR INFORMATION THAT IS CONTRARY TO HIM.
AND YET, I DO BELIEVE THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND IS BLOWING, AND DO NOT LIKE IT.
ALSO,IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE TORRENT OF BAD NEWS FOR TRUMP, COUPLED WITH HIS ARROGANT, IDIOTIC STATEMENTS - "I LOVE THE INFLATION" - HAS TO TAKE A TOLL THAT WILL BE FELT IN THE MIDTERMS.
IF I WERE A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS PERSON IN A SWING STATE I WOULD BE LOOKING FOR A SMALL FARM TO BUY.
Ditto!!
I don't believe there are any sane and decent tRump supporters. They are lured in by his essential cruelty and kept there by the constant drumbeats of fear spoken to them by State Television. They are plain and simply enculted!
I used to be reluctant to call this a cult, but the more and more I see I really think it is. It is so weird to have friends that have normal jobs (one with a defense contractor with a security clearance), will go the extra mile to be kind to my cat or help me with something for my house but spew the most vile messages against Dumocrats and subscribe to election fraud conspiracy theories.
Two of my five siblings who would do anything for me but believe in Trump??? Of course, when their only source of news is FOX go figure :(
I agree with your description entirely. I now use this as a moral compass: if a person supports Trump, then there is something evil about them, whether it be their racism, anger, homophobia, or something else, it means to me that I should be highly cautious around them and probably go the other direction. I didn’t use to think that way about the “old style” Republicans. They were not of my political beliefs, but they weren’t evil either. Those were the good old days.
I don't understand why anyone would support Trump, but there are people in my family whom I love who do. I see them as ignorant (often willfully so.) But I'm surprised that you would brand people you've never met as "evil." I'm a lifelong Democrat and progressive. But honestly, that kind of self-righteousness on the left is part of what helped Trump take power in the first place.
Deborah, I understand that when the people supporting Trump are those you love, it makes it that much harder to see what I’m talking about, but I stand by my statement.
While writing my original comment, I stopped before writing the word evil and truly thought. I didn’t write it casually; I thought about how I could describe the person who is an acolyte, a follower, of someone who is a pathological liar, a thief, a warmonger, a misogynist, a hater of other religions, and who is tearing down our nation and the things that made it good.
During his first administration, I could have excused those followers by acknowledging that Trump, although obviously suffering from a serious personality disorder, could seduce a large number of people.
They saw and heard what he was-he never hid his sickness from the people, I’ll give him that. He announced a Muslim ban: the people cheered; he said Mexicans were mostly rapists and thieves: the crowds cheered; he mocked a disabled man: the crowds laughed uproariously. It went on but I still thought the people would wake up; they didn’t, they doubled down.
Then came the 2020 election. I already believed he wasn’t giving up the White House and then Jan 6th happened. He poked that crowd of angry white people and told them to overthrow our government, and people still listened.
In 2016 Turkey suffered an attempted coup on July 15. If you want to see what an attempted coup can look like, look up what happened on the Bosporus Bridge the night of July 15. January 6 could have wound up like that and he would have been just fine with it77. But, still, after Jan 6, people followed Trump.
And now I will tell you why I really believe that those who voted for and follow someone like Donald Trump are evil. The second time they knew everything there was to know about him. They now watch as he bombs the water reservoirs in Iran while at the same time claiming to wish to “liberate” and help the Iranians. He is planning on cutting entitlement programs like my social security and Medicare while creating a 1.7 Billion dollar slush fund for all the Jan 6 rioters to gain compensation from. He makes ugly, ugly deals with the IRS so that he and his crooked family will never have to answer to the IRS again. He puts unintelligent yes-men in charge of vital institutions like the Pentagon where a man almost as sick as Trump now fires generals who won’t pledge loyalty to him rather than the constitution.
He is as crooked and corrupt as they come and now has a list of media that he’s aiming at shutting down, which he can do because his billionaire friends are buying up all the major news outlets, but that’s not enough: he’s going after Substacks and YouTube as well because he’s going to control the news. He will try to put ANYONE who crosses him in prison and who knows, maybe worse.
If someone, even Aunt Helen, supports this-they’ve got a wide streak of evil running through them.
I wish the Democrats and Progressives had realized that long before the second administration came down. Maybe we would have fought tougher; I think we were still playing too nice, too “fair.” It doesn’t work when you’re fighting against evil. 😈
I think in some cases supporting the trump regime is simple denial. In some other case’s its ignorance. Then there certainly are cases of regime supporters who really do want to hurt and destroy. In my mind destroying or damaging Creation is evil.
Of course I'm aware of Trump's abuses and corruption. I don't agree that proves that all his voters have "a wide streak of evil running through them." I assume you intend to model compassion and righteousness, but it sure sounds like you're calling for splitting up families. Many of our parents are vulnerable seniors who struggle with health issues, rely on social security and medicare as you do, but fall for the misinformation that's fed to them. To abandon them would be truly evil.
No Deborah, I don’t intend to model compassion and righteousness. I’m too flawed a person to do that, and at 68 years old, I know myself too well to ever think I could pull off being a model for anything. I don’t advocate splitting up families either, or abandoning senior citizens (of whom I am one) who are ill (I also have cancer myself) and who only have social security to live on.
I think I clarified my feelings in what I wrote: first time voters I count as simply beings suckers for something about Trump that we don’t see. My own father who is now 97 voted for Trump the first time. I thought he was blind in some way, but heck, my best friend of many years voted for him too, as did my uncle, who was a doctor, and in my mind, should have been able to see that Trump had the morals of a pimp-but didn’t. That was the first show. By the time the election in 2024 came around, there was enough solid evidence of the man’s massive personality disorder, and complete lack of compassion and righteousness as you say, that I wasn’t as forgiving.
At this juncture in his term, I don’t see any question but that he is an evil man, and if you support evil, even if all you want is a subsidy for your farm, or to make sure Trans people can’t use certain bathrooms, then you-as a human being-are demonstrating evil as well. By the way, if someone is a senior citizen living on social security, and they voted Republican, they’ve basically voted to gut the few dollars they get down to almost nothing, because that’s what Trump wants to do to us; he wants to take away 17% of our income and cut the heck out of Medicare, all the while telling the Pentagon to accept the bid of a company owned by Don Junior, and pouring billions of dollars into the war machine, and cutting taxes for the richest of us.
One last thing, this is all simply my opinion. It will have no effect on your life, or anyone else’s life. I’m not sure how you got me from thinking people have a streak of evil in them to doing all these dreadful things like breaking up families, tossing seniors out of the house, or abandoning low income and sick parents. Quite a jump.
The people supporting this lunatic are just as psychotic, vengeful, hateful, foolish, imbecilic, self-serving as this pseudo-authoritarian racist rapist.
You're feeding them the same hatred and vengeance that they're absorbing from Trump.
You are right, but I will say it like this, there is no free will, no one chose who they are, I don’t think anyone is inherently good or bad, they just are. A person that is hateful and vengeful and racist, are still performing those things. But I know it’s their environment that made them like that. At the same time it is what it is.
How do you describe someone that enjoys race based violence, or truly hates women? Take any negative behavior and how do you deal with that individual.
Read my work to understand the behavior and neuroscience behind what I’m saying.
Thank you
Yes, I agree that there is something very wrong with people who enjoy racism or justify rape. But I have neighbors and family members who apparently don't see that kind of criminality from Trump or other MAGA figures. These are people who are for the most part helpful and decent They would not stand for that behavior if they saw it in their own lives. But they somehow write it off as just part of politics, or a product of the "fake news" or revert to whataboutism. I don't know how to respond, and honestly, I don't even like to discuss it with them. But I don't disown them over their misguided political views.
What you’re describing is one of the more genuinely painful features of this political moment, and I think you’re handling it with grace.
The dissonance you’re observing isn’t hypocrisy in the ordinary sense. It’s compartmentalization operating at scale. These are people who have built their moral intuitions around proximate relationships. Abstract or mediated harm—-things filtered through screens, partisan framing, and institutional noise, doesn’t trigger the same moral circuitry. It literally doesn’t feel real in the same way.
The fake news defense and whataboutism aren’t just deflection tactics. For many people, they’re genuine epistemic shields. If you can’t trust the source, you don’t have to sit with the discomfort of what’s being reported. It’s cognitively cheaper than updating a worldview built over decades.
I don’t think you have to disown them either. There’s a version of not-discussing-it that is actually kind of protective of the relationship, of your own sanity. And there’s a version that slowly normalizes the gap between who they are in person and what they’re willing to tolerate in public life.
The question I keep coming back to: is there a smaller, more personal frame, not “Trump is racist” but “would you accept this from your son’s coach, your daughter’s employer?” that bypasses the political armor and speaks to the moral intuitions you know are actually there?
That’s not guaranteed to work. But it’s more honest than silence, and less likely to end in a shouting match than a frontal argument.
Although, I have tried many tactics and most people I know are just full of excuses and rationalize their behavior.
Thank you for the thoughts.
That's an interesting way of viewing it. They truly don't see broader, societal level violence or discrimination as relevant to their own lives and morals. And yes, I sometimes try to point out that they wouldn't tolerate that if someone behaved that way towards them directly, or toward one of their friends, children or parents. Often, they just seem to short circuit. They get it, but don't get it!
I have been thinking of a response something like "most of us have voted in an election and our candidate hasn't won, and we may not like the policies, but we move on. We don't normally have to fear that our society and culture will unravel before our eyes.
Because he's their culture warrior who has vowed to destroy their cultural enemy. Easy.
Any of them. Republicans have been talking about SS and Medicare cuts since Newt Gingrich was speaker, yet we keep electing them…
That is something I will never understand. And yet here we are.
Not sure who said it buy maybe: It's easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled.
I love that quote, so I just looked it up and it says that it’s typically attributed to Mark Twain but there’s no evidence to back this up, so it remains apocryphal. Anyway, it sounds like something Mark Twain, or Will Rogers would have said, and it definitely applies to this strange phenomenon of these sycophants who bizarrely follow Trump no matter the cost to the country. Who said “May you live in interesting times?”
As marco rubio said today, the main interest of a lot of people in this country is seeing stuff like the UFC atrocity happening Sunday. They don't read about the actual issues. he pretty much said they don't care about them.
It's beyond me, too, Cindy!
MAGA cult will forgive him. They will now love inflation too!
"It's the price we have to pay for freedom" when he costs us money. When he spitefully cut off the water project in Colorado farm country not long ago, those farmers still loved him. Asked about it, one said, "Well, if he did it, I'm sure he had a reason." No matter the corruption and incompetence, He's still God.
We’re not going to make it, are we?
I think that sometimes, but ya gotta have hope, and do what you can.
You're probably right.
It's like "Take one for the Team"
I have a relative now saying we all need to suffer for our country. You know they are getting to the point where they can't even defend it anymore when they use suffer or "God works in mysterious ways" types of comments.
How did this guy ever reach this kind of adoration? You know your relative; can you give us some insight to who they are and how they think (these kind of supporters.) I’m serious by the way; I really would love to know what you think.
I have a hard time understanding but the best I can come up with is that Trump appeals to or fulfills some inner need and it is so powerful that the person overlooks or rationalizes the things they know are wrong Kind of like people in an unhealthy or abusive relationship and still keep sticking with it no matter how bad it gets
Thank you for answering my question. I think Trump appeals to some powerful need as well, and I wish I knew what it was. My best guess is fear. The fear that they’re going to lose something.
Maybe they have a fear of people who are different. I myself am the one who is different (a Muslim) and I can’t understand what there is to fear from Muslims, Sikhs, Africans, Mexicans, or people from India or Somalia. We aren’t scary people and we’re all here living and wanting the same thing they do: safety, having a family, friends, work, pleasure. We’re not the Boogeyman that they fear.
It seems that Trump used that fear and then, as you said, they simply ignored the evil he perpetrated. I was just writing to another person saying that I believe those who still follow Trump are evil themselves, but fear is a mighty and powerful force and when it’s stirred by a sociopath (which he is) it can become like heroin. People can’t let go of it and do terrible things to hold on to it.
Fear can stoke hatred, which then gets Trump the votes he needs to keep spreading his corruption and worse, killing people in another country (Iran) while cashing in on weapons manufacturing for his equally corrupt sons.
I have relatives too who supported Trump’s first administration. I’ll never look at them the same way.
I had to turn him off. He was calling Platner every name that could be applied to himself. Can't stand to look at him or hear his voice anymore.
Every accusation is a confession.
I think that same thing every time he opens his vile mouth.
He's a master projectionist.
same
I am sooooo tired of seeing his face plastered all over the place and cannot bear the sound of his voice at all. Hoping he'll stroke out.
Reading the last couple posts about the boos at the Knicks game and the inflation quip, I don't see how the current state of affairs can be framed as anything other than a failing, delusional narcissist being enabled by sycophantic handlers while he leads a fanatical cult. Regarding the handlers, let's go back and look at all the criticisms of people around Biden who hid his aging, and take a page out of that book for the people covering up Trump's obvious declines. Regarding the MAGA cult, it now seems foolish to apply reason or rationality to analyze/understand their duality and complicity. Instead, we should be viewing it through the lens of high-control groups who demand fealty to the leader, plain and simple. Boos = cheers? Okay! I will end inflation -> I love inflation? Sign me up! The lying is the point; it is how cult membership is defined.
Jayson - He had the perfect opportunity to blame the self inflicted inflation on Biden and it surprised me that he didn’t go to his fallback knee jerk ridiculous response. But his followers still try to blame the previous administration regardless of what the facts say. Maybe the bruising on his hands is because he refuses to use the autopen? So much hand signatures instead of handshakes? I’m sure the handlers will come up with something new to explain it all. While they use the autopen behind his back. Ending inflation and not starting new wars are not the only lies he told and it’s a shame that some people believed him.
I appreciate you Adam. You are honest.
i couldn't agree more! i subscribe to a few other substacks that i feel are vitally important, but i had to pull back for my health's sake, and, therefore, adam's is the only substack i never miss.
OK, Adam. Question. When will something be done to remove this human being from office? How long does an administration wait, until we're all blown to bits, emotionally, physically, and spiritually? What does it take, for us to hear day after day after day this insanity, with no one taking the lead? What's wrong with this picture? Has the human race just plain given up? I haven't. People in this group haven't. What can we do?
Exactly my question, too!
He loves inflation because it angers people: chaos and rage fuel his authoritarianism
He also makes money from it.
Robot Bender - Yep…and all his donors/bribers. The only other “people” (according to the SC definition) that love him are the corporations.
BINGO
Same as Farage. Promote Brexit, stir up rage, and then blame it all on immigrants
Trump wasn't able to create this harm against ordinary Americans alone. The Republicans in all branches of government are equally responsible for this cruelty by supporting Trump in the past, present and I believe will continue to do so in the future.
I started taking SS at 62. I would have waited until 70, but had a feeling that all the threats about cutting it by a third, etc would come to pass. Someone please tell Speaker Johnson that it's not an entitlement. We all have paid into it. Would have been so much better to have let us put it into an investment fund.
I totally agree with you! I wish these people would stop saying they are an entitlement! We’ve paid into that for the 50+ years we’ve worked. I hope one day karma comes to bite them all in the ass.
Reaganomics is coming home to roost. That skewed philosophy that “entitlements “ like social security, making sure the poorest among us in the richest country in the world are fed, and healthcare is available to our elderly and poor are the problem. Tax cuts for the “job creators” and trickle down economics are celebrated . What we have now is a mutant, bloated, cartoonish version of this philosophy. The Republicans who followed nothing but their portfolio balance, rationalized that they are “fiscally conservative”, even while funding nothing wrong with gay marriage or reproductive freedom (and choosing to vote Republican because…you know…fiscal conservatism..) are a big problem. They didn’t pay attention, were assuaged by the nice things they owned…and blindly followed their party down a really dark path.
Laura - It always was the party that was against payments to the people who they thought didn’t deserve it and called it handouts. Yet, this is the same party that was perfectly fine with letting T collect our money through a back room deal and then hand it to insurrectionists.
No party is perfect but since at least Reagan the republicans scream about spending money if they aren’t in power and spend freely when they are. It seems to me that they leave nothing behind to make sure that if a democrat wins they don’t have anything left to implement the promises they made. Democrats have to spend their time trying to balance the budget and deal with the deficit. When they are voted out the cycle continues. And you are right because they base their wealth, and the current state of affairs, on the stock market while the rest of us don’t.
Well said! I totally agree.
Exactly.
Cutting social security and Medicare will cause a crisis in this country. I for one live on social security and my insurance is Medicare with a supplement. I spent my entire working life paying these programs. They are angering a base of voters that will not stand for these cuts. We must vote every one of them out.
i've been 100% disabled since i was 40, and that's a long time ago. as a career federal employee i retired with 40% of my top three salaries. i had to pay a lot for health insurance. i was impoverished until i met and married my husband. medicare is still a lifeline for me, and my future now looks rather bleak because my pension combined with a reduced medicare and a reduced amount of what i receive from my husband's social security will send me backwards if my husband predeceases me. and yet i will always be so much better off than my contemporaries who have no federal pension to go with social security and medicare. THE ANSWER LIES IN RAISING THE SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE DEDUCTIONS FOR THE MOST WELL OFF! republicans are allergic to that.
Just watching him, it's clear the man is insane. He lives in La-La Land. He wishes something to be true and "Presto" it is true. 15 minutes later he wishes the opposite to be true, and it's true too. He lies so effortlessly and with such conviction because in his demented mind he isn't lying.
It's not hard to believe that in a nation of 340 million people there is someone as nuts as Trump. What boggles the mind is that so many people will slavishly follow the ravings of a lunatic.
I still can't believe that back in 2024 that people really believed the pitches at his rallies. They always seemed so fake to me.
the whole promises to lower prices and also end the war on ukraine on day one were always so ridiculous.
I know. It was always on Day 1, Lower prices on Day 1, End the War on Day 1 and even be a dictator on Day 1.
You are kinder than me. I say FAFO to those who voted for him.
Outrageous! He just doesn't get it and never will.
I'm waiting for the opposing candidates who are gutsy enough to piece together his promises and lies; for ex.,
(Aug. 9, 2024) "Starting on Day One, we will end inflation and make America affordable again." vs. (June 10, 2026) “You know what I really love? I love the inflation."
and (Nov. 6, 2024) "I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” vs. (Mar. 7, 2026) "We're winning the war by a lot. We've decimated their whole evil empire." And when asked how long the war will last, (Mar. 11 and 13, 2026) ". . . any time I want it to end, it will end. . . . It'll be as long as it's necessary."
This idiot just writes his opponents' ads for them.