US President Donald Trump tooured the Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention center in the Florida Everglades on Tuesday as his Republican allies in Congress advanced a sweeping spending bill that could ramp up deportations. The facility sits some 37 mi from Miami in a vast subtropical wetland teameming with alligators, crocodiles, and pythons. I looked outside and that's not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon. Something that people have been asking ever since Trump has started his second term actually because of his behavior and the behavior of his supporters and his enablers is what makes them so cruel. What makes MAGA so cruel? It's one thing to want to win politically. It's one thing to want to dominate. It's one thing maybe even to want to take over democracy and rule in an untroubled way. But cruelty, how can that be something that is almost enjoyed by these people? There seems to be evidence of that happening. And so people are asking that question. I don't know. It's just the kind of stupidity and cruelty. And there I do think the nativism that's so strong that we've seen so much in the reaction to that. That's something I underestimated. In this video, I'm going to explain why I think that is. You see, the first thing to notice is that, as I've talked about in previous videos, the kind of personality that is attracted to Trump, the kind of personality that does what Trump does, is an authoritarian personality. They tend to follow rules. They tend to um like to be led by leaders. They tend to like hierarchical and parameal structures where you have a leader at the top issuing all the orders and everybody falls into line behind them. more militaristic top- down hierarchical system. Now, the people who tend to favor that don't favor that all the time. You see, authoritarianism isn't a stable personality trait because nobody can live their whole lives like that, right? Everybody has to engage in some negotiation, some collaboration, some back and forth in order to live their lives. So, no authoritarian is authoritarian all the time. In other words, it's not a stable personality trait. It's actually a trait that can be activated at different times. And the thing that activates authoritarian personality traits is fear. If people feel a sense of fear, then that whole need for hierarchy, that need for order suddenly returns to the psyche and takes hold. The authoritarian takes hold as a result of fear kicking in. Now we can then ask ourselves the question, what is it that brings about this fear? What is it that brings about this fear that Maga and all of these followers of Trump have? Well, first of all, Trump is very expert at stoking it. You know, he started his campaign with the idea that Mexicans are rapists and they're murderers and they're pouring into this country and they're killing us all. You know, stoking fear has been his absolute signature tune. If you like, he's very good at doing that. this American carnage, if you remember in his first inauguration, he spoke about all of this depiction of a world to be fearful of which Fox News and all of the other channels engage in is a way of activating the fear which then activates this authoritarian personality trait within people. Now, what is it that MAGA supporters fear the most? Well, the thing they fear the most isn't actually poverty or even crime. You see, because surveys have shown, studies have shown now that MAGA supporters don't tend to be less well off than average people. They're not people who are very very disadvantaged. I mean, some are, but on average, they're not more disadvantaged than the general population. Actually, the thing that unites them is a sense of loss of status. This perceived status anxiety is a thing that drives their fear. You see, the core of MAGA, of course, is white males. Not that they're the only people and that that's been building but the core of magnets are white males and these guys used to have a dominant status within the social hierarchy. And as they see women becoming more empowered, as they see immigrants becoming more empowered, as they see them taking positions of leadership and authority, they start feeling that their automatic right to that superior social status is being threatened. So it's a social status anxiety that they experience. And that applies to white people in general, of course, you know, when they see Magnus coming up. I'm not saying that all white people feel that, but I'm saying that, you know, MAGA supporters tend to come from that base. And that's why, you know, what they're being driven by is a status anxiety. This fear that my status of automatic dominance is coming under threat. So, it's a kind of cultural dethronement that they are afraid of. And what they're looking for from Trump is the promise to make America great again. And what does that mean? What it means is the promise of returning you to your former status of dominance. That's what they mean by making America great again. What they mean is by making us great again, our subgroup great again, the dominant subgroup again. And you see, in order to do that, that doesn't require any of them to have a better quality of life. Doesn't require any of them to elevate themselves in their status and their economic power. It doesn't require any of that. What it requires is to push others down. If you push the other groups who you're afraid of overtaking you down, then that's just as good because it's all about relative strength. It's not about you actually getting a better cost of living, having higher disposable income, having more economic power, having more wealth, having more social power. No, it's not about any of those things. It's about you having that power in relation to the others who you fear are usurping you. So therefore their main preoccupation is pushing the others down. So whether it's migrants or women or any of the groups, gay people or any of the groups that they are afraid of being usered by, they revel in the notion of seeing them pushed down. And they revel in that because it removes something from them when it happens. Because that social status anxiety is essentially manifest within them as a form of resentment and they marinade in this resentment. this bile, this fury at being usered in this way, of being overtaken in their social hierarchy and status. It's not something that they can hold on to. It's something that burns them. It's like a piece of coal sitting in their hands and within their chest that they cannot tolerate. And that is a sense of resentment that they, as I say, they marinate in. And there was this recent tweet written by an ABC journalist who unfortunately was um uh reprimanded because of that. And the tweet was taken down. But what he said was exactly right. He talked about how Steven Miller isn't in his position because he's particularly strong intellectually, but he's in his position because he's particularly strong in terms of his bile. What he possesses is not more intellect than other people, but he possesses more bile than other people. And this chimes exactly with what other people testify about him. So, you know, former Republican operatives like Rick Wilson, for example, talked about how when he, you know, advised senators, everybody knew that there was this guy who worked for Jeff Sessions, another senator, who was basically filled with bile. He was like a real strong hater of immigrants. And he was known for that. That was his key overriding characteristic. And so in that sense, Steven Miller is sort of sympatico with the MAGA base because fundamentally what they're about is being marinated in this sense of resentment towards other social groups who seem to be overtaking them. And that sense of resentment is what overwhelms them. And the only thing, the only medicine they have for that, the only bomb they have to calm that down is to see those people pushed down. And that makes them feel good. And that is why they don't necessarily cheer policy, they cheer cruelty. So so many of Trump's executive actions, his executive orders are actually about demonstrative cruelty, showing off his cruelty towards other groups who they are threatened by. And of course also the same applies to when Trump is threatened. See, when Trump is threatened, for whatever misdemeanor he's engaged in, they feel threatened because they feel merged with him. In that sense they feel victimized and when Trump is you know perceived to be victimized then he becomes more one of them. They feel like they have been hard done by and so anything that makes them feel like Trump has been hard done by even if it's a legitimate you know series of um consequences and repercussions like a valid legal process that's led to his prosecution and conviction that doesn't matter for them. What matters is that it looks like he's being victimized so they can feel even more connected to him. This is why his support actually increased after he's convicted, after he became a fellow because it made them feel more connected with him as somebody like them in the trenches being shot at by all these other groups. And you see when they are connected in this way when they are so deeply linked hand in hand in this cause to avenge the groups who they think have overtake taken them then they can do almost anything with that and then they can bring other people into their fold. See there are other people who also feel even if they may be a minority that their social status is being threatened like men for example. So there was a huge spike in votes in Latino men and in black men for Trump in the 2024 election because they had a social status within their own communities often not in all cases but often which was one in which they were considered to be superior to women and they at least consider themselves to be that way and as women become more empowered as a woman god forbid actually gets herself to a position where she might become president well that was unacceptable. So that social status anxiety can exist in minorities as well and it can exist exist in women particularly white women as well. The majority of white women voted for Trump the first time around. So the thing that unites them all is this social status anxiety that is what evokes the fear which then kicks in this authoritarian gene if you like that they have then makes them march to the tune of Trump follow the pi piper to wherever he will take them. And if that pi piper's tune takes them to the dismantling of democracy then so be it. that's fine with them as long as they find their way back on top. And if finding their way back on top means giving other people less say, means taking people's rights away, means ceasing the whole experiment of democracy altogether, then that's absolutely fine. And this is what's really important to realize about this. It's not just Trump trying to grab power here. It's a whole section of America, a big chunk of America who is perfectly prepared, willing, and excited at the idea of dismantling democracy altogether. And that's what makes this such a big existential threat. Not just Trump, but the huge pool of people from which he has arisen and from which others will arise in future. So this isn't just a case of wishing Trump away one day. It's a case of a whole movement, a whole psychology that exists. And I've spoken in other videos about how we need to actually change the system itself, change the nature of the democracy itself in order to fight back against this. how how democracy has to deepen has to spread its roots into engaging everybody not just all of us once every four years but engaging everybody all the time in a deliberative process where we all participate in the decision-m process I've made many other videos about this and you'll see in the um channel trailer as well uh where I talk about that too but the point of this video is to show how there's a deep rooted psychology involved in the MAGA movement a psychology of fierce resentment based on the notion of being usurped. And it's only by understanding that, understanding where they're coming from, can we take the next steps to try to move towards a place of healing. Just writing people off as psychopaths or greedy or evil or narcissists isn't going to cut it. That's not how we get through this. It's deepening our layers of understanding. I hope this kind of thing helps us in this process. I hope you enjoyed the video. I hope that you might consider liking and also commenting in the video. We're creating a beautiful community here of people who are supporting each other through this deeply traumatic time in world history. Commenting on each other's comments and giving supportive responses to each other when we're sharing the difficulties that we're going through. This is a lovely supportive community we got here and I hope you can join us too by liking, making comments and subscribing to the channel as well. Also have a bookstore russlesbooks.com. I hope you might consider going there buying some of the books in which I describe some of the psychologies of the people around us and the world around us and also helping us gain awareness of our own inner worlds too in a way that will help us navigate this difficult time in world history. I hope you can also consider joining and becoming a member of the channel where you'll get these ebooks for free as part of that package as well. Finally, I also hope that you consider signing up to my e newswsletters whether you become a member or not. That's absolutely worth doing because that way we can always stay in touch. I'll always keep you updated every few weeks about my content so that you don't miss anything because let's face it, all of these platforms are currently owned by a very small number of oligarchs. At any point, they can just decide to shut down this channel like mine. 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