More than any other question, people ask how so many people could overlook Donald Trump’s erratic, racist, cruel, and anti-democratic behavior and vote for him and excuse him.

In the middle of a wrenching pandemic that he has denied from the very beginning, thousands of people are dying without any real response or even mention on his part.

How does one overlook his embrace of white supremacy just because he’s appointed a lot of conservative judges and cut taxes of the wealthy?

I can’t get past that, but half the country can.

These are not minor and quirky issues of morality. They are important to me, and I hope I can never rationalize them in the way so many people are.

Why is his base so loyal?  I don’t know for sure, but I’m getting closer. Blessed are the people who explain rather than hate.

Trump’s popularity is not rational, or even really political. It can not be understood in conventional or even “normal” ways.

It is emotional, one part charisma, the other need.

I’m reading an extraordinary book – The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump by Dr. Bandy Lee.

In the book, 37 psychiatrists and mental health experts diagnose Donald Trump and show us why he’s dangerous.

The book contains a chapter on Trump, his leadership, and his connection to his followers by the country’s most prominent leadership expert, Dr. Jerrold M. Post.

Dr. Post is an author and behaviorist and is the founder of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior.

I am also reading his new book Dangerous Charisma: The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers.

The chapter from The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump is called The Charismatic Leader-Follower Relationship and Trump’s Base. It has helped me to begin to understand the unwavering connections between Trump and his followers.

First, a personal anecdote:

Debbie is a longtime fan of books and my blog. She is also a committed supporter of Donald Trump. She has often contributed to my work with the elderly, although not with the refugee children.

She sent me a heartfelt message recently, somewhat in anguish over what I have been writing about Mr. Trump and what it might say about her. She was understandably defensive, wounded by some of the things I wrote about the President.

What, she wondered, must I think of her? The letter was refreshing. Almost all the messages I get from Trump supporters are either enraged or insulting, most accusing me of belonging to the radical left or of being a part of “fake news.”

In her letter, Debbie explained to me that she was not a racist,  she was a good and well-educated person. Her letter was long but the gist of it was that she didn’t care for Donald Trump personally – she disliked his tweets and cruelty and she knew he lied frequently. 

She was aware of his faults and flaws.

But she liked his policies and did not trust Joseph Biden to lead the country. although she recognized Biden was a good and honest man. She feared he would fall under the control of the radical left, and it’s a fearsome demon and new far-right bogeywoman, 30-year-old freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Debbie asked me to respond to the letter. Her tone was civil and somewhat pleading – she seemed to want me to understand.

I wrote back. I said it was not for me to criticize or absolve her, she was entitled to her opinions, and she is welcome on my blog. I don’t argue with people online, or anywhere else about politics, but I did want to answer Debbie honestly and politely.

I can’t have this discussion with everybody, but dialogue is increasingly precious and rare in our country. One step at a time.

I said the bottom line was this: the difference between us was not in who we supported, but what each of us was willing to accept and overlook. People who disagree with me are not my enemies.

I found it odd, I said, that she trusted Donald Trump to lead our country, even though she knows he lies but doesn’t trust Joseph Biden to lead, even though she knows he tells the truth.

I said our difference was not a policy difference – that was not my business – but a moral and character difference, since she asked. I am not willing to overlook lying, cruelty, bombast,  corruption, nepotism, dictator ass-kissing, and overt racism, because I like someone’s policies. Those are his policies.

If Joe Biden lied every day, defended Nazi’s and white nationalists, made fun of handicapped people and Gold Star fathers, and appointed ignorant and corrupt people to important government positions, I would not support him even if I did like his policies.

That was about all I wanted to say, and I said I thought our moral views were simply not compatible. I appreciated her writing to me. We were very too far apart. But we didn’t need to be enemies. She didn’t reply.

I admit to belonging to the ranks of people who are bewildered and confused by the 70 million voters who are willing to overlook egregious moral and character problems of Donald Trump because they liked some of the things he does.

Truth and decency are important to me I won’t give up on them.

Dr. Post is helping to understand what I am seeing.

____

One of the most striking features of the Trump Era, Dr. Post writes, is the durability of his base.  One might think that the most extreme of his impulsive behaviors and extremist language would damage his popularity, yet polls from 2016 to now reflect steady 43-48 percent support.

Trump has experienced spectacular ups and downs, but his popularity doesn’t wither. Nor does it go up.

And even though Joe Biden won the popular vote by nearly five million votes, Trump’s base remained behind him, and more than 70 million people voted for him, despite his catastrophic handling of the pandemic and the disaster that was the first debate.

I get messages every day from people swearing that they will never accept Joe Biden as President because he stole the election. Donald Trump told them so.

Half the country is simply dumbfounded, and the other half is hypnotically devoted to him. One disenchanted conservative wrote that Trump’s supporters are enslaved, rather than led.

Post, who has spent much of his career writing about the political psychology of the ties between leaders and followers, says the grandiose omnipotence of a leader is especially appealing to needy followers.

Trump is, said Post, a charismatic leader, a familiar figure in cultures that are in distress or transformation.

America is in a monumental transformation, moving from a white majority country towards a diverse nation in which white people will soon be a minority. As the recent election showed us, this is an earthquake for the United States, two tectonic plates pressing more and more against one another.

I think we’ve just had a seismic experience, I heard the windows rattle.

Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and Winston Churchill were known as dynamic, charismatic, and inspirational leaders. So was Adolf Hitler. So is Donald Trump.

Their countries were all stressed when they came to power,  going through enormous social and cultural change.

All of them were worshipped in many ways. As some people get hopeless, they seek a savior. There are benign saviors and there are malignant ones.

Some charismatic leaders – Mandela, Gandhi, Dr. King –  are devoted to repairing society and healing its wounds. They are called “reparative charismatics.”

Some are called “destructive charismatics.” Their hallmarks are absolutism, polarizing rhetoric, and the ability to draw their followers together against the outside enemy, which is almost everyone but them.

That would be Donald Trump. His connection to his followers is not, in most cases, a matter of politics, but of anger and emotion.

Charismatic leaders are essentially very skilled communicators – individuals who are verbally eloquent, but also able to communicate to followers on a deep, emotional level.

They are able to articulate a compelling or captivating vision and to arouse very strong emotions in followers. In this election, Trump didn’t bother to even present policy plans for his next term. He is just Trump, that was enough.

Joe Biden is conventional, you might say “normal,” politician. He is not a charismatic leader. He does not lead through emotion or connect with followers that way. He is not nearly as gifted a communicator as Trump. Nothing about Donald Trump is conventional.

Dr. Post distinguishes the psychologically healthy followers of Trump rendered needy by societal stress from the hungry and disconnected followers who only feel whole when merged with the idealized other.

For them, it is a merger, of feelings, values, even love. Each understands the other in a way no one else does. Each makes the music that only the other can hear. Their love for one another is unconditional.

German sociologist Max Weber coined the term “charismatic leader” in the 1920s. Charismatic leadership, according to Weber, is found in a leader with extraordinary characteristics of individuality,  whose mission and vision inspire others.

As such, the charismatic leader is seen as the head of a social or political movement, sometimes seen as gifted with divine powers such as religious prophets and Gurus, and sometimes, demagogues.

“I’m the only one who can fix our problems,” Trump told his supporters at a rally in 2016. Sounds almost biblical. He is Moses to his people, he will lead them to safety.

Weber considered charismatic leadership as unstable and unpredictable as it is related to faith and belief; once these fade, the authority, and leadership tend to dissolve. Trump is insistent on clinging to power, but history tells us he would be better off to leave now and go quietly.

Charismatic leaders, like demagogues, have short life spans.

The charismatic leadership style relies on the charm and persuasiveness of the leader – think of Trump at his rallies.

Charismatic leaders are driven by their convictions and commitment to their cause, even when the cause is them, and also by the often fanatic devotion of their followers.

Trump, says Dr. Post, has what he calls a charismatic leader-follower relationship, one in which leaders and their followers become enmeshed, each one essentially following the other, but all of them centered around the leader.

The world turns on the leader, there is no other. They often prevail by their charisma rather than by their governance.

They aren’t supporters in the political sense, but partners and worshippers of one another in an almost religious sense.

When Weber first wrote about charismatic leaders in 1922, he found that the most important trait of leadership between the leader and his followers was the forcefulness of the leader’s personality.

His supporters are essentially choiceless in comparison and voiceless, they feel compelled to follow.

Dr. Post writes that the relationship between Trump and his hard-line followers – not all of Trump’s followers are the same – represents the classic leader-follower pattern.

Certain aspects of the leaders’ psychology unlock, like a key, aspects of his follower’s psychology.

In times of stress and conflict or economic deprivation, many people regress to a state of anger and hopelessness and seek a leader who will rescue them and take care of them and destroy their enemies.

The American heartland is mostly white and rural, and they have been suffering and ignored for decades. They were desperately looking for a leader.

Media, says Post, often equate charisma with popularity. As worshipped as he is, his opponent got five million more votes, a shattering rebuke to a leader who is so grandiose.

In her study of charismatic leaders The Spellbinders (1984), Ruth Ann Wilner defines charismatic authority as a personal authority deriving from “devotion to the specific sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him.”

She found that the definition of charismatic leadership is a relationship between a leader and a group of followers that has the following four characteristics in common.

1. The leader is perceived by the followers as somehow superhuman.

2. The followers blindly believe all of the follower’s statements.

3. The followers unconditionally comply with the leader’s directives.

4. The followers give their leader unqualified emotional support.

Bing, bing, bing, bing. There it is. On all counts.

In stressful times, when people are under pressure, say, – the civil rights movement, Gandhi’s liberation movement, Hitler’s takeover – researchers, individuals often become susceptible to the hypnotic attractions of charismatic leadership, especially if they have a fragmented or weak ego structure, or have been or feel ignored or beaten down or failed in part of their lives.

Convention politicians draw wary supporters, not worshippers. In a democracy, politicians often face hostile voters, who pepper them with complaints and questions.

No Trump supporters at any rally would dream of challenging Trump or questioning him. His rallies – the kind of rallies charismatic leaders conduct – are much closer to religious revivals than political gatherings, complete with cheers and chants.

Since he is superhuman, he can’t be wrong, and anyone who questions him or opposes him is by definition a heretic and an enemy.

The charismatic leader is all about protecting his followers, and they are all about protecting him, no matter what.

To understand the charismatic reader, you have to place a messiah on the stage, not a political figure. Many Trump followers – the evangelicals in particular – believe he was sent by God to protect their religious freedoms and appoint judges who will stop abortions.

That is very important to many people, it is reason enough for him to be President.

To be fair, charismatic leaders like Martin Luther King and Gandhi were also worshipped and seen as infused with the holy spirit. They both leaned heavily on their religious faith.

Whatever Donald Trump is or isn’t, he has turned out to be one of the most skilled marketers of our time, selling himself as a tough and fearless advocate of the common man, and the “only one” in the world who can get things done.

The idea he often raises at his rallies is a quasi-religious one, the idea of “the only one” is usually proclaimed not by politicians but by Gods and religious figures.

It is right out of liturgy, not politics. Trump is always right, always in his suit, always power dressed. Criticism of him is sacrilege and cannot be abided or forgiven, but always punished. He is larger than life, richer, more powerful, more potent than anyone in any audience he has.  Air Force One is usually parked right behind him, another prop in his preaching.

In his rallies, he literally towers among his people like Moses speaking from the mountain.

He never descends to their level or walks among them. Biden projects himself as one of the common people, Trump reminds us almost every day that he is not. That is part of his curious appeal.

Trump has sold himself as a superhuman holy man, a kind of God come to save his abused people and lead them out of their troubled lives.

If I made those claims, I’d be stoned or locked up. Joe Biden too. That’s what communication is all about.

Trump, says Dr. Post, has what he calls a “mirror-hungry” personality, which feeds on the adoration of his followers, it is s classic charismatic leader-follower relation that he has with his base.

This pattern results from the”injured self” – grievance – the grandiose facade feeds on his followers confirming and admiring him. Their mutual and hidden sense of worthlessness and lack of self-esteem binds them together.

To nourish the famished self, the leader feels the need to display himself constantly in order to draw the attention of others.

No matter how much positive attention charismatic leaders like Trump receive, they are never satisfied, constantly seeking new audiences from whom they can receive the attention and recognition they crave.

In Trump’s case, he never really ended his campaign, he held rallies all over the country for no purpose other than to be cheered and adored. And yet he lost.

This love was reciprocated, his base was uplifted, they shared his hopes and secrets and candor.

He only seemed happy when he was with them because the adoration was pure and complete. He was free to be himself in every possible way, although he always towered above them, he was never once one of them.

People on both sides said the only place both Trump and his supporters were truly happy was when they were with one another.

Trump and his rallies are a dance.

They are vital for supporters as well as the President.

There is a quality of mutual admiration and intoxication for both sides. The rallies are ritualistic. Trump reassures his followers that he will protect them and lift them up, they, in turn, assure him of his self-worth and greatness.

Subtly at first, then more openly, Trump tapped into the already existing rhetoric of the white supremacist alt-right. His comments denigrating foreigners, Latinos, Muslims, African Americans, women fit snugly into the existing rhetoric of a number of alt-right parties.

In 2016,  he was promptly and enthusiastically endorsed by high ranking KKK members, including former Imperial Wizard David Duke.

Then came Charlottesville, and still his followers stayed with him.

There is, says Dr. Post, a powerful, almost chemical attraction between the hungry-for-attention charismatic leader and the ideal-hungry follower.  Both see themselves as moral guardians, even others see them as moral ruin.

The hypnotic pull of the charismatic leader is almost irresistible for the follower. These individuals can experience themselves as worthwhile only so long as they can relate to leaders whom they can admire for their prestige, power, beauty intelligence, or supposed moral stature.

Since no one but the leader is truly moral, and all of his opponents are by definition immoral, the pull of the leader works.

“If Trump thrives on the adoring mirroring response of his followers,” says Dr. Post, ” he provides for them a sense of completeness. Incomplete themselves, they have an enduring need to attach themselves to the idealized other.”

They don’t need anyone else.