Capitol Stormers, Supporters and Enablers

My personal belief is that Donald Trump is a sick man, mentally ill and based on his posture, his dwindling vocabulary and inability to form complex thoughts and sentences, could be suffering as well from dementia and cognitive decline. Behaviors that originate from his mental illnesses are so well known that many of his actions these last 4 years were entirely predictable, but were largely rationalized away by those who did not want to discuss his mental condition. He is incapable of remorse, or empathy. He can’t admit to any error.  He must be the best, be the smartest, know the most. He lives a parasitic lifestyle, seeking adoration, and must be constantly stimulated with risks. He is compelled to tell lies. These traits as well as others are not choices for him, they are part of who he is, embedded into and brought to the fore by his mental illnesses. There have been mental health professionals screaming warnings out for years now, but mostly it has been into the void.

Even though he holds a position of enormous power, and with no morality (another trait of a psychopath), is quite willing to abuse that power, he is still just one man. As any CEO knows, one person can’t accomplish much, especially in a large organization. You must have a team of people, followers, who are aligned with your vision, enabled to perform, willing to work hard, and it helps tremendously if they are talented and capable. The lack of talent in many of those immediately surrounding Donald, may be one reason why this time we are able to keep our Republic. Next time we may not be so lucky. Bandy X. Lee, a noted forensic psychiatrist in Scientific American describes what is happening with Donald’s followers as a ““Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.”

Donald’s followers are often talked about as being in a cult, but one definition of who they are and why they are doing what they do may be too simplistic and paints with too broad of a brush. If we want to do some profiling of the followers, what might a categorization schema look like? Who are they, and importantly how do you get them to break free from the behaviors that are causing so much damage to our country?

Without too much difficulty is it possible to create some specific profiling categories of his followers including:

• Faustian bargainers. I am willing to overlook anything you do, if I get my lower taxes, conservative judges, or my other one-issue I care about, such as eliminating abortion rights, unlimited access to guns, or support of a specific cause or country. (Pandering to a group, reading an audience are other traits of a psychopath who can be charismatic and persuasive).  
• Theocrats, “with god on our side”. These are people of “faith”, who see him as an avenue to some biblical fulfillment, whether it be the “end-of-days” or the return to illiberal policy and practice. After all, they want you to be free to worship anyway you want as long it conforms to their beliefs. These will be some of the most difficult people to break out of the cult.
• Power hunger. Desire for power, proximity to power and the desire to have influence – some people have personalities that cause them to seek out power and influence. This is one of the markers of psychopathy, but not everyone with a desire for power and influence is a psychopath.
• Financial opportunists. Along with power there are those who see the rampant corruption, the cronyism, the nepotism as simply an opportunity for financial gain and to line their pockets. They don’t believe in much, just money. For them laws only matter if they get caught.
• Desire for authoritarian leadership. After WW2 there was an enormous undertaking to understand how ordinary German citizens could have been complicit in the horrors. One approach to this work was the creation of the F-scale or Fascism scale which showed that approximately 30-40% of the population look for authoritarian leaders, someone who will take care of their problems for them. The authoritarian leader often proclaims, “only I can fix this”. Dr. Lee describes this relationship as “Narcissistic symbiosis… The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.”
• Psychopath attraction. One recent study showed that psychopaths tend to be attracted to other psychopaths. When the leader in the White House is a psychopath you have to assume that other psychopaths (estimated at about 5% of the population) are attracted to him. 
• Economic populism. These are folks who have suffered as job disappear, wages stagnate and they feel trapped in an economic dead end. They often feel humiliated and that they have nothing to lose. They have been told, repeatedly that in America all you have to do is try hard and you will succeed based on merit. And while you can point to a person here and there as a shining example of that, for the majority, if you are economically disadvantaged, rising above that in our current meritocracy is just about impossible. What we have is not a true meritocracy as opportunity is not uniformly available. Rather people are born into certain situations and their “lot-in-life” rather than true merit leads to their success or not. The populist is a con, convincing people that they, and only they, can restore their dignity, providing higher paying jobs even in dying industries, returning jobs that have been moved off-shore or creating other non-existent opportunities.
• Racists, xenophobes, misogynists, anti-Semites. These bigots are people who see a kindred spirit in the WH. He is their guy.  
• Social status losers. These are people who feel that are not treated with the respect they deserve by their “lessors”, people who have all sorts of grievances and blame it on the “other”. They may not be successful from a financial perspective, but at least they are of a higher social status than you. They demand to be higher on the social status ladder than those they deem as less and that is the promise the leader offers.
• Neophobics. Afraid of new things, research has shown that these people tend to be Republicans (but not all Republicans are neophobic). They hate change, want to “circle-the-societal-wagons” and take things back to an imaginary past. Neophilics tend to embrace change and are more often Democrats. This is not a binomial trait but rather a continuous variable.
• Locus of control issues. These people tend to see their success as coming from their internal abilities and their failure as coming from the environment. They tend to see your success as coming from unfair opportunities given and your failures as your internal flaws. This is a psychological concept that applies to all people, but in most it does not rise to a pathological level. People who are not succeeding in life are open to brainwashing. This goes along with people who join cults. The cult is fulfilling psychological needs they have which they are not getting elsewhere such as being valued, being treated with respect, a sense of belonging, etc.
• Reflexive Republicans – these are folks who have not come to the realization that the Republican party that they have supported, that their parents supported, no longer exists and has morphed into a vile cult. They may be putting up with the “crap” because someone has to save the party. They don’t realize that they are enabling the degradations that have been occurring.
• The fearful. These are people who worry about what Donald could do to them if they cross him or his supporters. Some may fear for their very lives, others may fear a primary challenge or the release of compromising material.

These categories are not mutually exclusive and a follower can certainly fall into more than one category. There are likely more categories and more nuances within these categories as well. Some of the categories I believe, such as those in it just for the money, are more likely to be enablers and not very likely to put their lives on the line storming the Capitol. Other categories, such as the social status losers, the racists, xenophobes, misogynists, anti-Semites are more likely to be the source of the Capitol stormers. But certainly, there are no hard and fast rules here. Remember how many were killed by the true believers and people of faith in the crusades, who were sure they were right for after all, god was on their side.

There are a couple of methods that may have value in breaking the thrall that his followers are in:

• Presentation of evidence. In the impeachment trial, it would be beneficial to have witness after witness provide “the emperor has no clothes” moments.
• One method used to deprogram cult followers is to show that the leaders do not conform to their own statements. Donald stated that he would walk down Pennsylvania Avenue with the insurrectionists, he did not. He stated in his speech before the riots that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness”, from the man with bone spur deferments from military service. Donald will never put his life on the line for a cause, he will never die for you, but he is very willing to allow you to die for him. That needs to be clearly shown.
• Drying up the fountain of corruption and influence. Those in it for the money, the power, the influence, as soon as those things are no longer available, they will abandon him.
• Removing the echo chambers that kept repeating the “big lie” that they election was rigged. That seems to be underway but certainly more can be done. Taking followers away from the constant reinforcement of the “big lie” will help.
• Accountability. Donald needs to be held accountable for his actions but so do the people who stormed the Capitol, as well as those who planned and aided the insurrection. Appeasement being pushed as a way to heal and unify the country did not work for Chamberlin; it will not work here. Those who take actions based on their racist, or bigoted beliefs must face severe consequences for any hate crimes. They may never change, but they need to be forced back under the rock that Donald allowed them to crawl out from.
• Those suffering from lack of economic opportunity need to be addressed as well. Their pain is real, and the solutions here are longer term. Just as FDR created a new deal to reinvigorate opportunity, we must make equal opportunity available to those who feel like they have nothing to lose. And until that opportunity can be created a safety net must be put under them.  

There is much more than can and needs to be done to correct the situation in which we find ourselves. Donald did not create all of these problems, but he certainly amplified them. We are not done with this man or his ilk. There will be more violence, there will be more lashing out. But I have tremendous hope and confidence that facts/truth, data and science will once again be at the forefront and that along with a good dose of the best of humanity will see us to a better place.