How Trump Lost His Magic

Why America’s Outgrowing Trumpism

One of the questions history is going to ask about the early 2020s goes like this: how did Donald Trump….lose it? Consider how one of his own former advisors put it: “It’s not there. In this business, you can have it and have it so hot and it can go overnight and it’s gone and you can’t get it back. I think we’re just seeing it’s gone. The magic is gone.”

The magic is very much gone. You can see it, ironically, funnily enough, in Trump’s own response to this article, which basically talked about how his flame has dimmed to the point that his re-election bid’s become something of a running joke. Trump retorted: “The reporter was a shaky & unattractivewack job, known as ‘tough’ but dumb as a rock, who actually wrote a decent story about me a long time ago. Her name, Olivia Nuzzi. Anyway, the story was Fake News, her ‘anonymous sources’ don’t exist (true with many writers), and I’m happily fighting hard for our GREAT USA!”

Now, that’s the kind of response which — not so long ago — would have set his base on fire. They would have turned it into a veritable firestorm. But now? Crickets. Silence. A little laughter. Trump looks pathetic now, when he rages — not fearsome — precisely because, well, nobody much cares. Listens. Pays attention. Let alone follows his direction and instructions and is incited into a firestorm of rage and fury. Sure, there are the whack jobs for whom Trumpism is becoming a terrorist ideal — but that’s evidence that Trump’s mainstream appeal is circling the drain of history. The magic is gone.

So. Just how did that happen? Think about it in context. Just a short while ago — not decades, barely even years — this was a figure who led America to the brink of fascist collapse. He commanded the attention of millions upon millions, who seemed to worship him, and I don’t use that word lightly. Just look at some of the art or other cultural artifacts of this bizarre period, where Trump is idolized as everything from religious savior to revolutionary to Founding Father and beyond. How do you fall…this far…this fast? From veneration to humiliation?

It’s an interesting and subtle question. Because on one level, it’s about the currents of the collective unconscious. How societies choose their heroes, from pop stars to movie stars. And on another level, it’s about what happens when a society declines to the point that it needs a demagogue. And in that way, America’s teaching the world — and history — a masterclass in how fascism’s really defeated. That’s what the fall of Trump’s star really means.

Trumpism arose like every form of fascism does. A society — its middle and working class — was left bereft, impoverished, desperate, feeling neglected, abandoned, betrayed, and above all, humiliated. Such economic declines — American incomes had stagnated since the 1970s — produce the need for demagogues. Demagogues emerge as Omnipotent Father Figures, who form a kind of almost unbreakable psychic bond with their flock, who’ve adopted the mental posture of wounded, hurt children, seeking protection and salvation from the ordeal that everyday life’s become. Demagogues and their flock form a kind of traumatic attachment bond, between Omnipotent Parent and Wounded, Helpless Child.

Now. You could literally see this happening, because Trump had a preternatural gift for playing the role of Omnipotent Parent to America’s humiliated heartland. He’d go out there and say things like “I alone can save you!” He spoke to this group of people — ignored and derided by the DC establishment as mere “workers” — like people, again, sympathizing with their plight, bearing witness to the difficulties of their lives, saying out loud — for the first time — that “the swamp” had neglected and betrayed them.Even if he went on to scapegoat innocents for all this — as fascists do — the trauma bond was formed.

Millions of Americans began to see Trump as something like an Omnipotent Father Figure. More importantly, they began to have precisely those feelings for him — the feelings wounded children might have towards “good” parents. Feelings of warmth, affiliation, admiration, even love. Hence, when Trump directed them to be hateful, ignorant, foolish, bigoted, even violent — they seemingly obeyed. This is how demagoguery works, at a psychosocial level: the demagogue plays the Omnipotent Parent, and the flock adopts the posture of the Wounded, Helpless Child, whose role it is to obey the parent, because the parent is the Only One who truly loves them.Cherishes them. Will keep them safe. In the insecure, vicious hell that their lives have become.

That’s why this bizarre adoration towards Trump developed. It’s not exactly normal, is it? Nobody paints portraits of everyday political figures as…religious icons…guerrilla warriors…salvational revolutionaries…Founding Fathers of a new republic. That was a dead giveaway that Americans in certain groups were forming trauma bonds with Trump, seeing him, harboring feelings for him, as Omnipotent Parent. For whom they’d do…anything.

Or almost anything, as it turns out.

Hence, you couldn’t argue, reason, debate, anything, with a Trumpist. No form of evidence or reason or facts or reality seemed to matter. They’d just parrot back the Big Lie — the latest one, from Mexican babies are destroying America, to there’s an invasion, to the master race is the real victim, to the election was stolen, and on and on. How do you drive people to this? Well, people parrot Big Lies when they’re trying to preserve the bond between Wounded, Helpless Child and Omnipotent Parent. They’re effectively telling you: Daddy said so!! And Daddy’s all powerful!! I believe him, because he’s more powerful than you!! He’s going to save me!! All I have to do is believe in him. Here’s how much I believe in him. I’m going to put my traumatic attachment over reality — and maybe that way, with the sheer power of my belief in Omnipotent Father, I can alter reality.

Make sense, a little? Trumpists weren’t parroting the Big Lies for no reason. Indeed, they were doing so for a very, very particular reason: a profound psychological need to believe. In an Omnipotent Father who could save them. After all, without that…what did they have left? They didn’t have towns, communities, jobs, money, futures. The parroting of Big Lies was a way to display the social currency of belief in the Father — and a way to place this most cherished and treasured of relationships above everything, especially the mundane reality which had left them humiliated, scorned, and ashamed. After all, isn’t that what being poor and powerless feels like?

And then something happened. That something appears to be Jan 6th. On that fateful day, everything began to change for Trump. Before that day, his future as Omnipotent Father was secure. But afterwards? It was a slow, steady decline in belief, from his very own base — that turned into an avalanche. Why did Jan 6th prove to be the turning point of Trump’s very own collapse?

Probably for a reason like this. The average Trumpist saw themselves as a favored child of an Omnipotent Father. And while they might have even parroted the Big Lies, until Jan 6th, they hadn’t really seen what they’d lead to. The favored children of the Trumpist flock were the everyday folks of America’s heartland. But on Jan 6th, Trump himself revealed that his favored children were…fanatics…lunatics…Proud Boys and Oath Keepers…militants and paramilitaries…violent shock troops. There’s a very real distinction here.You see, even the average Trumpist in the heartland doesn’t really relate to fanatics and lunatics of that level. And seeing their Omnipotent Father favor their siblings — the most violent, brutal, and hateful ones — was a shock to them, too.

Think of it as a case of a kind of sibling rivalry. There you are, just some average guy or girl in the heartland, where Believing in Trump became not just fashionable, but a norm, because, well he was All-Powerful Father, and the entire community knew it, because a community, above all, is a family. But then came Jan 6th — and it was the Black Sheep of that family, not you, who Trump really believed in. Father himself didn’t really believe in you, when it came to it — he believed in your siblings, the Black Sheep, the ones who even the community, the family, thought were shameful. What did that mean for you? When your own Omnipotent Father reveals that he doesn’t believe in you — but in them?

Then the bond starts to break.

And then the hard work of the Jan 6th Committee began to be done. It revealed that Trump really did have a plot to overthrow democracy, violently, brutally, thwart the peaceful transfer of power, and effectively…become something like America’s first dictator. Isn’t that what Wounded, Helpless Children want, from and for their Omnipotent Father? Yes. But in this case, it turned out that Trump had lied to them, too. He’d lied about Jan 6th not being a mob incited by him, a planned coup, about fake slates of electors, about overturning the election. It’s one thing when you lie for Father. But what does it mean when Father lies to you?

Again, the bond starts to break.

The final blow came when Trump wasn’t successful. Jan 6th didn’t succeed, after all — even if only because of the brave actions of a handful of police officers. Even if it was just inches away from succeeding — it didn’t. Omnipotent Father, it turned out, wasn’t that All-Powerful at all. Even when he revealed he preferred your siblings, the Black Sheep, even after he lied to you about it all — even then, he didn’t come through. He Alone Was Going to Save You — but he didn’t.

This trifecta of events, I’d say, did something that rarely happens in history — the bond between demagogue and flock began to erode, and then shattered. Think about how rare that really is. Germans followed Hitler all the way to the bitter end. Today in Britain, the nation’s plunged into Victorian levels of poverty — kids dying because they can’t ambulances and antibiotics — because the nation’s basically ruled forever now by Brexit. Think of, I don’t know, Mao or Che or any number of revolutionary figures, or even someone like Stalin or Lenin. They’re still venerated today (maybe not by you and me, but by the true believers, certainly.) That’s how hard it is to break the bond between demagogue and flock.

Trump might have had a preternatural gift for demagoguery, but in the end, it turned out, he wasn’t even a very good demagogue — because it was his own actions that squandered the huge, huge gift of having millions upon millions of Americans, to the world’s bafflement, believe in him like an Omnipotent Father. That’s bond’s nearly unbreakable — but nearly doesn’t mean totally. Even a Wounded, Helpless Child will walk away if you lie to them, choose their siblings, and then prove that you can’t really save them.

Meanwhile — and this is the weirdest part — Biden was doing something shockingly smart. When I say shockingly, I mean it, because this, too, almost never happens.

How does fascism ignite? You need a humiliated, desperate, impoverished working and middle class, who feel abandoned and betrayed and all the rest of it, because they don’t have a future. Along came Biden and said: we’re going to reverse America’s economic decline. We’re going to make the stuff the world needs, from microchips to clean energy and manufacturing, which is going to reverse de-industrialization, and make us a net exporter again, which is what we were in the heyday of the American Dream.

While Trump was busy squandering his own demagogic bond with his flock, wasting it, Bidenomics set the stage for really undoing fascism at the deep level. Reversing the economic conditions which produce it, as sure as the sun rises tomorrow. Today, America feels different.Life is still desperate, brutal, difficult, hard, prices too high, earnings too low, people living off debt, barely able to make ends meet. But there seems to be order dawning.There seems to be a kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Even if the average person can’t say why, they feel it. They aren’t as angry and furious, maddened to the point of hate, as they were during the Trump years.

All that’s just as it should be. To revitalize a society in this way — the feelings of optimism and confidence take time, and then time again, to ignite, and then spread. But that process is beginning to happen in America. Make no mistake — I’m not saying the future will be easy or that the present is anything like easy. And yet, things are changing. Americans can feel it, even if they can’t see it. There seems to be some kind of order to the chaos now, at least a little, a plan, of some sorts, even if they don’t fully know it, a sense that this is how we are going to fix things.

That feeling matters. In just the same way as the demagogue preys on feelings of insecurity — and transforms them into hate and rage, in order to gain the power to scale the political mountain — so, too, the feeling of safety and calm matters when societies begin to revitalize.

Now, let me be clear. I’m not saying that those feeling are anything like predominant, or even strong, or overwhelming. I’m just saying that for the first time in a very long time, they’re there, in even small ways. Not 10 out of 10, but, say, just 1 out of 10, on an emotional scale. And yet even that tiny amount matters intensely, because, well, most Americans have never felt anything like that, in even those tiny amounts — the feeling that things will, might just, could, be OK. For them, for democracy, for prosperity. Without needing to resort to hate and violence and bigotry and authoritarianism.

I can’t emphasize enough how crucial that is. Revitalizing an economy from the bottom up is how you really defeat fascism. It happens beginning with feelings of rage and despair being replaced — just one tiny, tiny sentiment, day, chance, at a time — with feelings of, “Hey, maybe things will be OK.” Those feelings aren’t just random emotions — they’re foreshadowings, intimations, intuitive understandings that there is a plan, an agenda, a vision now, that’s transforming the economy, life, labour, prosperity, expanding and elevating possibilities for everyone. And as lives really begin to change, for the better, that feeling changes, too: it goes from belief in one’s self, and in society, to something more like mature, healthy confidence.

America’s a long, long way from that, still. But the important thing is that the turning point has been crossed. Trump’s star has dimmed for all those reasons — he played a foolish hand, and betrayed his very own flock, choosing the fanatics and militants, lying to them, not winning much of anything for them. But at the same time, America is really changing.Revitalizing an economy is fascism’s kryptonite, and even if people don’t know it, consciously, they certainly feel it, radiating with power and wisdom and truth. They can feel its warmth in the dark night, and sense its power from miles away.

Trumpism’s magic is gone. But that’s not really just about Trump. It’s about America, crossing a crucial turning point, into the future, leaving its demagogues behind, people fed up with Big Lies, weary of hate and rage, seeking better lives, through peace and wisdom and democracy again. And it’s about the world, too, which should learn from the masterclass in outgrowing fascism that America — surprisingly enough — is teaching it.

Umair
December 2022