How to peel MAGA folks away from Donald Trump

Thoughtful people have been struggling to understand why Americans–the MAGA faithful–started believing in Donald Trump the moment he descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, when he declared Mexican immigrants rapists, along with other sordid comments, as he threw his hat in the ring for president. The Trump congregation now includes assorted conspiracy theorists, racists, white supremacists, and an estimated thirty percent (30%) of people who identify themselves as Evangelical Christians. Trump’s thirty percent slice of the American electorate has remained surprisingly consistent since he took that first escalator ride. Among the staunchest supporters for the blatantly irreligious Trump are televangelists, like Franklin Graham (son of Billy), Jerry Falwell, Jr.(son of Jerry), and Paula White (mother of the prosperity gospel), plus many a local, conservative, evangelical pastor. And that support has intensified since 2015. Praise for Trump has metastasized from, “He tells it like it is” and “He’s a Godly man who’ll get our country back from the gays and the immigrants,” to high profile preachers now telling their followers Trump is the new King Cyrus (a Persian king credited in the Old Testament with freeing Hebrew people from captivity in Babylon). Some even claim he’s the new Messiah, sent by Jesus himself to rescue good, evangelical Christians from degenerate liberals, gays, minorities, immigrants, etc.

Many non-MAGA people find Trump’s “deification” surprising, given the steady exposure of his sins (or crimes), both large and small, sexual and financial, committed before, during, and after his time in the White House. They ask , “How can good evangelical Christians, or just good, old, moral Americans stay loyal to Trump in the face of such degeneracy?”

I can answer that question in two words: cognitive dissonance. Social scientist Leon Festinger introduced cognitive dissonance to Americans in the 1950s, after he managed to infiltrate and observe a UFO doomsday cult. (He shared his observations and conclusions in a very readable book: When Prophecy Fails.) The cult in question was run by a woman named Mrs. Keech, who claimed special knowledge (presumably from aliens) that the earth was about to be destroyed, and only the members of the cult would be carried to safety when the alien spacecraft arrived. Of course, Mrs. Keech was wrong. From his vantage point inside the cult, Festinger predicted that, when faced with the fact that the prophecy was false, cult members would simply drift away. To his surprise, the opposite happened. The members revised their understanding of the prophecy, now choosing to believe that what the aliens meant to say, through Mrs. Keech, in the first place was that they would rescue the whole Earth, not just members of the cult. Festinger used the term cognitive dissonance to describe our basic human tendency to reduce or eliminate psychological discomfort by changing what we think, our attitudes. He concluded that to rationalize, or change beliefs and attitudes, was an easier route to resolve the stress associated with cognitive dissonance than a complete dismissal of the original prophecy. (See: “Cognitive Dissonance Theory” at Communication Research.net)

So, that’s why the most cogent, sincere, well-reasoned, truthful, impassioned arguments fail to lure the true MAGA believers away from their faith in this false god, Trump, even though he has been shown to be a liar, a rapist, and a crook. It’s easier for Trump cult members to inflate their already high opinion of Trump and harden their negative attitudes toward those trying to expose him (calling them things like “fake news”), than to admit they were wrong, like Mrs. Keech and the doomsday cultists. What can we do to help these people (we all have them in our families, I think) escape the clutches of a malignant, narcissistic, would-be dictator? My suggestion is: MAGA-ites fell down the Trump hole because they had concerns about social and political changes in our country and Trump said he could undo all of those things and “Make America Great Again.” He said it over and over and over, and he’s still saying it (only now he often adopts the messiah mantle placed on him by Graham, Falwell, and White). Cognitive research tells us that people who are told the same lie over and over, even if they know it’s a lie up front, eventually tire of the cognitive dissonance the lie creates in their heads, and begin to drop their guard and think it’s true. That’s Trump’s trick and he’s been using it since he rode that escalator into public life. If it worked for him, why can’t it work for those of us trying to combat his corrupt, mendacious presence? The best thing we can do (maybe the only thing) to free the MAGA faithful (including some of the rosy-cheeked, now slightly wrinkled kids I went to school with) is to tell them the truth about Trump and what’s happening in this country over and over and over again, and hope cognitive dissonance begins to break down their resistance to it, fed by Trump’s lies, and let the truth in. I don’t think we have any choice but to try. Keep the faith.

Pace.