Originally Posted by
Coughdrop addict
Here's what I think is going to happen to Trumpism, in 4 steps:
1. Losses.
The death of a cult of personality begins with losses. Anyone who has been paying attention at all will know it's been one loss after another with these groups ever since Trump won:
First, they lost on The Wall. They tried to frame this loss as anything but what it was, but the truth was obvious to anyone looking: Trump supporters lost a lot. They were scammed out of their money by Bannon and other con artists, outed as xenophobes who irrationally hated and feared people with dark skin. The result was Trump supporters doubling down and claiming a win when they didn't actually have one.
If the wall was a defeat, BLM was a punch in the gut. We saw hand-wringing and arguments that it was overturning the natural order and was the end of days. Predictions of white male genocide were thrown about with abandon. None of that has proven true and this, again, has Trumpism doubling down and getting even crazier in pursuit of ideological purity, arguing that BLM is a communist plot, when everyone familiar knows the reason is a brutal police culture that sees deadly violence as the first and often only tactic when dealing with Black suspects.
Covid-19 is the third time they've gotten exposed. They parroted everything Trump said: that it was a hoax, nothing more than a cold, was going to miraculously go away, that whatever he was pushing this week would cure it, ect. They deflected to Obama, blamed everyone but Trump for how bad things have gotten, anything to distract from Trump's abysmal handling of the pandemic. Then Woodward's book revealed Trump had lied through his teeth, knew it was serious, and simply couldn't care less how many Americans died. The result has been, again, more doubling down, this time to the point where they've chased away too many moderates and begun an unstoppable slide into extremism.
2.Circular Firing Squads
Once the dust settles from the election, Trumpists will be looking, desperately, for someone to scapegoat for the loss. It will start with blaming the usual suspects - women, minorities, LGBT people, and of course zillions of illegal votes - but that will soon lose effect because the victory will clearly involve white men in addition to other groups and will be such a massive landslide that even they will realize it couldn't have been all illegal votes. So they will have to cast a wider and wider net. It just has to be someone else's fault!
Why won't they admit that their ideology led to the loss? Because Trumpism sees the world in black and white. You're either with them or you are the enemy, and being with them means complete capitulation to the party line as embodied by the leader. But when the party line leads to loss after loss, it gets harder to justify, especially when that party line begins with delusional thinking such as believing half the country are communists.
When the dust settles, and the group is forced to confront the realization that their own ideology led to the loss, they will react differently depending on who is involved. Rank and file members will head for greener pastures or suggest changing the party line. The true believers have no choice, as we've seen, but to double down. They feel like giving even an inch of ground is surrendering the moral righteousness of their cause. This will inevitably lead to fracturing as the rank and file point out the obvious, which is that they're losing. The leadership will crack down hard on such talk, but this only causes more of it, and soon nothing can silence the sheer volume of dissent.
It's critical to note that unlike most stable movements, Trumpism is extremely reliant on force of personality to keep all of the various groups working together. Trump is practically worshiped, as is anyone he supports. This central focus tends to result in very powerful leaders, but also acts as an Achilles' heel. If one of the leaders is discredited it forces them to circle the wagons and waste resources and time defending someone who would have been cut loose anywhere else (Flynn for instance), sacrificing their credibility in the process. If one of the leaders is discredited to the point that even Trump supporters can no longer defend them (such as Bannon), it can shake the group to it's core. If two leaders come into conflict - even just through skirmishing of their clique - it can lead to an outright schism.
In addition, Trumpist's default state is a delusional belief that they are being oppressed by a society that doesn't appreciate their greatness. Any time something doesn't go their way, their mind interprets the setback as a deliberate act of oppression by someone out to get them.
Which brings us to what will happen next. As they circle and desperately look for anything to blame for the loss, the inevitable will happen: the various groups of Trump supporters will begin to make war with one another, blaming everyone but themselves for the loss, and the alliance they so carefully built-up over the last few years will crumble. It will be Republicans verses white supremacists verses incels verses trolls verses alt-right verses Qanon verses fundamentalists verses Alex Jones followers verses Limbaugh listeners verses Hannity viewers verses the dozens of other little sub-cultures united only by their adoration of Trump and malicious impulses to harm others. As the infighting starts their greatest strength, the unified voting block, is lost.
3. A House Divided
This starts when Biden is sworn in, and is the beginning of the end for Trumpism. We've already started to see a bit of it, with groups openly advocating violence and civil war and accusing everyone but Trump of anything and everything. They'll echo chamber hard, marinating in their own bitterness and self-righteousness and growing ever more extreme and hateful in their rhetoric. This leads to a constant climate of fear, outrage, and siege mentality, resulting in an endless cycle of internal purges and witch hunts. Eventually even mildly critical voices will be chased out, leading to even more extreme rhetoric and behavior. This will do nothing for their public image, which will continue to deteriorate as the faithful act more and more crazy. Many will be arrested for plotting mass shootings and other terrorist attacks.
At this point if he hasn't already Trump will flee the country. The smarter Republicans in the government will see the writing on the wall, grab all the money they can, and get out before things get even worse. While this is happening the wars between the Trumpist groups will intensify and soon they'll constantly be at one anothers throats, abandoning whatever they originally purported to care about in favor of attacking other Trumpist groups, believing that if they can rid themselves of infidels and heretics, they'll be vindicated. They'll blame one another, they'll accuse one another of being pedophiles and communists, and in some cases, they'll shoot one another.
Finally, the worst part comes: Without Trump to hold things together or any ability to provide a unified voting block, their biggest asset has been lost, and at this point Putin and the other billionaires who fund them will abandon them - just like they did with the Tea Party once it was no longer useful. This spells certain death and leads to the last step.
4. The Collapse
Trumpism in its final phase dies with a whimper, ultimately being reduced to nothing more than a joke, same as the Christian Coalition and Tea Party before it, and for the exact same reasons. Whether it was the Christian Coalition's members getting caught soliciting gay sex or paying for a mistress' abortion, to the Tea Party becoming synonymous with Birtherism and Orly Taitz, this step marks the end of anyone being able to take them seriously or caring what they have to say.
By this point the money has dried up, they've been abandoned by the establishment and left to wither away, and the bulk of their leadership has gone off in search of a new host organism or become so crazy that they're indistinguishable from David Icke.
They will not be missed.