Though reductionist mindsets overlap, President Rampaging Gut still outrages millions of ‘24 backers voicing extreme buyers’ remorse
Though typically attributed to religion and value systems, fundamentalist thinking pervades politics, racial bias, and the rejection of science, expertise, experimentation and intellectual challenge. In their hallowed gut, fundamentalists know better than everyone else, presuming command over the most important truths—closed to debate or alteration. A fundamentalist mentality assumes 1) its inner, faith-based ideology is ordained truth, absolute and universal across time and space; 2) true believers, with their monopoly on truth, are thus awarded superiority as the “elect,” thus justifying national leadership; and 3) because absolute truths rebuke challenge, non-believers and dissenters become enemies (infidels) to the true faith, justifying even cruel, corrective punishments. Opposite to fundamentalism stand reason, inquiry, skepticism, openness, secularism, doubt, tolerance, science, and the mandate to change views when improved knowledge advances what truth means. There are no “absolutist” intellectual sacred cows.
No need to detail Trump’s career addiction to gut instinct reductionism every which way. His fixations smack of fundamentalism with racial animus to (“enemy”) minority citizens and non-white immigrants, stunning delusions on tariff manipulation (against “enemy” foreigners, thus taxing all U.S. consumers), DOGE as sane “government reform,” corrupt DOJ weaponization against “enemies,” crazed threats against once-friendly allies (treated as “enemies”), lawless murder of (“enemy”) Venezuelan boaters, and the astonishingly reckless war boomerang that is Iran. Yes, fundamentalists feast on finding enemies everywhere.
Need I add dumb fictions that MAGA must destroy government “in order to save it,” thus decimating military morale, health-imperiling vaccine ignorance, lawless ICE as legitimate immigration solutions, closure of the (woke!) Kennedy Center, if not idiotic WH ballroom and “slush fund” madness? Trumpism, forever exposing itself, now equates with disastrous (if calculated) fundamentalist glorification of surface appearances for PR aims.
Linked to myths of racial supremacy or distortions about ethnicity or geography, fundamentalism elevates uniform group think driven by literalist biases, namely that only its belief system is true and that special “sacred texts” justify holy wars—or whatever shamans say texts “approve.” How facile that one group’s addictions or god outpoints all others, a triumph of righteous insularity over ambiguity (always present in any communication or moral judgments). Thus fundamentalist absolutism depends on rigid conformity and a knee-jerk rejection of any dissenting viewpoints. Fundamentalism withers under independent, meticulous testing, as with science, that corrects innate cognitive bias or faith-alone confidence in inherited authority.
An irreligious fundamentalist suckers equally unconscious fundamentalists
MAGA (and ‘24 Trump voters) were/are vulnerable targets by sharing fundamentalist fixations that 1) surface, sound bite reality, plus pronouncements from the “perfect” cult leader, are instantly true because declared “enemies” hate them; 2) that a charismatic real estate operator must understand business and economics (two very different enterprises); and 3) because the “elitist systems are rigged,” whether campaigns, elections, legislation, higher education, employment favoritism, a phony maverick pledging to “drain the swamp” outranks the same old political hacks. The religion of Trumpism depends on reducing complex reality to simplistic, understandable sound bites for the less informed, convincing voters they know all they need to know and who can “fix and redeem” America’s mythic golden age, all first term evidence to the contrary.
Thus, Constitutional misreadings aside, fundamentalist gun owners delude themselves that home arsenals will save them from intruders (with a wild west shootout?), or starving looters (after America implodes) or secure a fortress after the next civil war. In fact, per google AI, “public health research consistently shows that having a gun in the home does not make people safer; instead, it significantly increases the risk of homicide, suicide, and accidental death for household members.” The same delusions posit that domestic guns will save them from violent civic disturbances, even door-crashing, jackbooted police (like ICE). Hunting use aside, only the fearful, the literal-minded and the paranoid buy into the correlation between home gun-racks and personal safety. Against ICE, for example, skin color protects more than arms.
Similarly, disregarding the invasion of bedroom privacy, anti-abortion bans posit that high restrictions against medical interventions will “protect the unborn”—despite 1) the pregnant rich simply go out of state; and 2) the pregnant poor seek dangerous alternatives that put the mother in jeopardy, if not desperate ER runs (with high costs to the public). Abortion bans shame pregnancy and exiles “sinners” thus reducing learning all options, even prudent prenatal care. Only religious fundamentalists believe that sweeping abortion bans protect “unborn” gifts from God; they certainly threaten poor, pregnant mothers (even from rape or incest), increasing childbirth mortality and subsequent, forced, unwanted “orphans” ending up in expensive public care.
Banning medical research kills people, sick and not
Finally, only fundamentalist reductionism (and Trumpist manias for endless PR theatrics) justify willy-nilly destruction of legal, critical public entities and programs, especially medical research on cancer, vaccines, and drugs, but also weather, pollution, and endangered wildlife spaces. The DOGE fiasco was like ordering a huge earth-mover to plow a family farm or use explosives on fragile anthropological digs. Corrupting the Kennedy Center, let alone unilaterally razing the WH without replacement plans, dramatizes the chaos when irrationality demands constant PR “wins.” Thus do fundamentalist obsessions (hatred of government) run roughshod over complex human dynamics that demand high expertise to address all key variables and consequences. If nothing else, the last 16 months prove that when know-nothings empower other know-nothings. all hell breaks loose, facilitating corruption and unspeakable messes for others to clean up.
Thus a demagogic con man with fundamentalist, fascist yearnings corralled unhappy marks with similar mindsets. What made Trump attractive to folks with very different life-styles and bank accounts wasn’t genuine kinship, but the sharing of deep grievances, a collective sense of what Milton calls “injured merit.” Trump, irate because richer movers and shakers scorned his grifter ways, deceptively convinced MAGA voters he could help them overcome victimization—and yet now are pummeled by the very corporate elitists who own the false messiah. Thus did blue collar and middle-class “field workers” (heavily white, under-educated, older, male, rural/small-town) embrace a rich, cut-throat, insatiable plantation owner who pandered to their equally reductionist prejudices. Their “savior” morphed into what he already had been: the ultimate, crooked, predatory billionaire.
The last months have painfully dramatized to all what damage accrues from believing fundamentalist fictions that 1) Trump is any sort of deal-maker (just a clumsy, ignorant, blundering bully); 2) or knows anything beyond sound bites about economics, tariffs, trade, legality or mandates; or 3) has a clue how to use militarism, diplomacy, alliances or strategic global planning. Because this loudmouth fraud “sounded different,” like any coarse racist, too many MAGA voters went hook, line and sinker for a marriage made in hell, judging by how badly they have been “ripped off” by their presidential choice. No Democrats, and few corporate tycoons, compete with the inestimable damage, corruption and greed (so far!). That’s why disgruntled ‘24 voters endure the brokenness of the marriage made in hell – with now everyone’s life but the rich far more aggrieved than a year and a half ago, two years ago, or four years ago. Bravo, Donnie, with years to go before we can sleep well again! Make America Sleep Well Again?
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