Sadopolitics: Why MAGA clings tighter to Trump the more his policies hurt them

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Sadopolitics: Why MAGA clings tighter to Trump the more his policies hurt them
Psychology helps to explain why Trump’s followers will not abandon him

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published March 27, 2025 6:57AM (EDT)


(Salon) Donald Trump’s budget cuts and the larger war on federal employees and government are not laser-targeted on Democrats, liberals, progressives or the other people and communities that he has deemed to be “the vermin” and “poison in the blood” of the nation who should be purged. Trump’s approach is broad, the political equivalent of carpet-bombing, and the casualties include Trump’s own MAGA people and red state parts of the country.

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Much of this news coverage and commentary, and the reactions to these stories online and elsewhere, is colored by liberal schadenfreude. The Trump supporters are mocked as getting their just rewards because they voted for a president who then fires them or otherwise causes them great harm. There is often shock and surprise that these same voters do not immediately turn against Trump, the MAGA movement or the Republican Party, even after they have been hurt by their Dear Leader.

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Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders and influentials command a vast propaganda and experience machine that consists of traditional news media such as TV, radio and print, websites, social media, podcasts, publishers, movies, sports, film, television, comedy, right-wing Christian churches, schools and “education,” interest groups, think tanks and other civil society organizations. For at least the last nine years (and decades before with the rise of Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber) this propaganda and experience machine has created an alternate reality that has emotionally trained and conditioned its public to be loyal to Trump, MAGA, and the larger right-wing “conservative” movement and to reject any outside information or influences (their much-hated “reality-based community”).

The American public is highly polarized politically (and socially). Politics is not “just” limited to voting and elections and other explicitly political matters such as support for a given public policy, law, candidate or party. Politics now encompasses many, if not most, aspects of American culture, from food to entertainment, dating, marriage, friendship networks, where one lives, religion and church attendance, and other aspects of day-to-day life. What political scientists describe as affective/negative polarization describes how political disagreements are increasingly existential value judgments where “the other side” is not just wrong but evil. In such an environment, changing one’s mind, by, for example, deciding to no longer support Trump’s policies, becomes less likely. ......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/27/sadopolitics-why-maga-clings-more-to-the-more-his-policies-hurt-them/