An Even Bigger Lie: MAGA’s Unraveling Is a Dangerous Opportunity
Donald Trump is in a state of narcissistic collapse. His followers are vulnerable to the truth, and to darker lies.
On November 18, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan, an NBC news crew, and a group of 16 defectors from the authoritarian cult People’s Temple in Guyana, were ambushed on an airstrip by armed cult members sent by Jim Jones. At the same time, Jones initiated the mass murder-suicide of over 900 at his Jonestown compound.
The precipitating factor in this tragedy was the fact that Jones’s personal disintegration and false promises were causing doubts in his followers. When the hermetically sealed bubble Jones had created at his compound was burst by Ryan’s visit, it caused a cascade. Rather than face his own followers, he exerted a final act of control to prove his power over them.
The massacre at Jonestown is the extreme version of what happens when an authoritarian cult leader starts to lose his grip on power. Other examples of this pattern include Heaven’s Gate, a UFO cult who committed mass suicide after the cult leader’s promises that they would be beamed up by aliens on Comet Hale-Bopp failed to materialize, and the behavior of Donald Trump and MAGA-QAnon after he lost the 2020 election.
The “Big Lie” Donald Trump told that led to the January 6th insurrection, that the “deep state” had conspired to steal the election, was underpinned by an even bigger lie—a lie which led many of them to violence.
At the doorway where Ashli Babbitt would be killed minutes later, a QAnon believer stared down the barrel of a gun and declared in all sincerity that she was there “fighting for my son and my grandchildren, yours too.”
This was, in a more literal sense than most realize, American ISIS.
“There ain’t enough pay in this world to take down your children unless you want to have pedophiles in this fucking Congress. You one of them too? Fucking pedophiles.”
Trump’s grip on power is psychological. He is a cult leader, not a politician. And like all cult leaders he relies on trauma and a tightly controlled information sphere to keep his followers in control. The trauma that was used to create the irrational devotion to him was largely about the sexual predation of children, including Jeffrey Epstein’s.
So, the recent decision by DOJ and FBI to close the door on the Epstein case is a ten-year old lie unraveling. It goes as deep into the psyche of MAGA as it gets.
Trump’s reaction? One of the most jaw dropping acts of political self-destruction I’ve ever seen. Trump coined the term “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax” which went viral, but not the way he hoped. In his enormous “Truth,” Trump rejects anyone who won’t fall in line with his Orwellian lunacy, referring to them as his “PAST supporters” and “weaklings who bought into “bullshit.”
After launching his morning cry for help, Trump made an appearance with Bahrain’s leader in the Oval Office and took a question about Epstein, and somehow managed to make it much worse.
“No, no, it's -- I call it the Epstein Hoax. It takes a lot of time and effort. Instead of talking about the great achievements, we've had a great gentleman yesterday, as you know, one on CNBC, and he made the statement that Trump may go down as the greatest president of all in the United States. And instead of talking about the things we've achieved, we've had tremendous achievement. They're wasting their time with a guy who obviously had some very serious problems, who died three, four years ago. I'd rather talk about the success we have with the economy, the best we've ever had, and all of the things we've done, including the Middle East. I mean, you see it. Instead, they want to talk about the Epstein Hoax. And the sad part is it's people that are really doing the Democrats' work. They're stupid people.”
Needless to say, no rational political actor would refer to his own followers as “stupid people.”
Trump is experiencing a rapidly accelerating narcissistic collapse. His paranoia, grandiosity, and dementia are piling up as his avenues for escaping this trap of his own making are closed down to him.
To make things even more challenging for Trump, as I’ve been reporting, the Russians and their proxies have gone all in against him. A large coalition of Russia-aligned propagandists, politicians and operatives are trying to co-opt MAGA and create a revolt from inside the White House.
For example, here’s one such space on the former Twitter, with over 3,000 real-time listeners and special guest Congressman Thomas Massie, who is introducing a bill to force the DOJ to release additional information. Massie asserted that Israeli intelligence was involved with Epstein, and says that if anyone votes against his bill “they’re probably on the list.”
In psychological terms, decompensating refers to a breakdown in psychological functioning that occurs when a person can no longer cope with stress, conflict, or internal emotional turmoil using their usual psychological defenses or coping mechanisms. Trump’s usual psychological defense is just to lie about things. And his coping mechanism is hearing praise for himself.
At the moment, his lie about Epstein is not working, and praise for him is in increasingly short supply, so he’s drowning in his own fear, paranoia and confusion. For his followers, and the rest of us, this is a massive opportunity, and also a moment of peril.
Most of the people in Jonestown still committed suicide “voluntarily”—despite the obvious decompensating of their leader. Most of Donald Trump’s cult came back to him despite his obvious criminality after he lost in 2020 and tried to kill Mike Pence. And it is almost certain that most of Trump’s cult will go back to him again despite this betrayal of their most basic values. However, not all of them will.
Trump will lose a significant part of his base from this. Some of them will see it as a reason to double down on a different more extreme movement, but some will be looking for a way back home. That’s where we all can come in.
There are millions of people who, despite Trump’s best efforts, are for the first time getting a taste of his betrayal and deviance. This creates cognitive dissonance, which can be debilitating.
Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced when a person holds two or more contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes simultaneously.
The contradictory beliefs here are simple:
Trump is going after the deep state cabal of pedophiles
Trump is protecting the deep state cabal of pedophiles
The drive of his followers to resolve these contradictory beliefs in order to relieve themselves of cognitive dissonance is the dangerous opportunity we all have.
The vultures are circling around the cult, and it’s up to us to wave them off and help our people home.
For those who may interested in a more active type of participation, or more detailed information on the psychological elements of this scenario, here are two documents generated from ChatGPT about this moment and how to take advantage of it. The first is from a strategic psycho-political perspective, and the second seen as a psychological warfare objective.
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Great Jim. Thank you for this. Your ChatGPT addendums are great. I wish the DNC could use some inventiveness like this in their messaging because this is the way forward.
This is exactly what’s needed right now. Thank you for this information, Jim.