Trump and his cult of cognitive dissonance

Things are looking bleak for former President Donald Trump's future freedom. He is in trouble. Thirty-seven criminal charges of trouble. Though his present indictment woes were amply evident when it was unsealed, with a very strong, evidenced case weighing against him, Trump is still facing an array of cases going forward.

The classified documents case is extremely strong. Remember the case against Hilary Clinton concerning her emails? Trump was President, and the evidence to be brought into play, and the charges' seriousness, are orders of magnitude greater than Clinton's.

But what will be most interesting to watch is not Trump and his eminently predictable reaction—a performance of bravado and flat denial written in capitals—but his followers. From Rep. Jim Jordan down to the grassroots MAGA base, there will be an air of desperation as well a sense of entrenchment. We can easily imagine a scenario where few of them will fall by the wayside.

After all, we know as well as anyone how difficult it can be to give up on God.

The tales of deconversion that many writers and readers have experienced here at OnlySky and at any number of repositories for skeptical and secular folk are chock full of psychological and sociological anguish. For those MAGA fans, that potential anguish is far less desirable than fighting like an injured bear backed into a corner.

We should expect some serious guttural roaring and flailing of paws.

The problem is, those paws can flail and do some damage. Let us hop that there is no violence that comes from such an indictment in the way we observed on Jan 6th. They've got form.

As I have said before, Christian theologians and apologists have one job: to maintain the primacy—the moral perfection—of both God and the Bible. Everything they do is to maintain both at the apex of reality. Such believers hold to a presupposition of the goodness of God and his awesome revelation.

Whether it be in dealing with slavery or rape in the Bible, or understanding suffering and evil in the world, one "truth" must be held: the Bible and God are untouchably awesome and simply cannot be at fault. Theology is then created to muddy the waters, claim that atheists have no right to make moral judgments, blame humans for God's design and creation faults, and ultimately get God off the hook.

Because God cannot be anything but morally perfect.

Trump is a divine member of the MAGA pantheon, positioned just above Yahweh, and just below...no other entitity in human conception. When Trump is so obviously in trouble because he has so obviously broken a list of rules longer than one of his golf courses, then his followers have to engage in mental gymnastics just as theologians do to explain ebola in light of their supposedly all-loving God.

This is cognitive dissonance reduction. Cognitive dissonance is the disharmony we experience in our minds when we hold a core belief and are then confronted with evidence against that belief. Our brains do not like disharmony and so go through a number of mental processes in an attempt to harmonize the contradiction.

The overarching lesson to be learned here is that people will go to extraordinary lengths to maintain a core belief. This might mean experiencing one of the following:

1. Adapting the core belief marginally.
2. Ignoring the contrary data—burying one's head in the sand.
3. Compartmentalizing the contrary data and core belief.
4. Adapting the contrary data.
5. Denying the contrary data.
6. Delegitimizing the source of the new data.
7. Reducing the importance or value of either the contrary data or the core belief.
8. Whataboutism.
9. Attacking the messenger of the contrary data.

The recent indictment won't touch the die-hard believers, data bouncing off the impenetrable Trumpian rock of core belief like morality trying to enter the mind of their leader. There are stark similarities between Trump and God, or more accurately, between the die-hard defenders of Donald J. Trump and defenders of the concept of the Christian God.

Trump is their god and cannot be budged from the zenith of political worship. For the Trump apologist, conspiracy theories muddy the waters, whataboutery obfuscates by pointing at faults in others, blame is apportioned to Clinton, Obama, Biden, and, well, anybody else other than Trump and... (continue with the list above). Because Trump, to them at least, cannot be anything but morally perfect.

This is no better witnessed than at Trump rallies—political megachurches, if you will—where he whips his supporters into a political fervor. And just as the poor attendees of megachurches so often overlook the obscene wealth of their church leaders, and overlook their often multitudinous moral shortcomings, so too do Trump cultists.

The next few months, especially if further court cases begin to gain traction, will be a mighty test for the cognitive dissonance reduction abilities of so many in the GOP, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Matt Gaetz, and from your neighbor to your work colleague. Humans are strange things, and the likelihood is that Trump's overtly criminal behavior (that they wouldn't, for a second, have stood for had it been committed by a Democrat politician) will most probably be excused by so many of his followers.

Perhaps a Trump 2.0 will turn up and allow those cast adrift on the rotten ship Trump, drifting on the currents of borrowed time, to escape to a new vessel.

Yet the USS DeSantis sunk before it could even leave port.

Even if Trump sinks, all of those aboard will have no option but to jump ship. But they can all swim. And when they finally get ashore, they'll be angry as hell.

Then what?