What, one wonders, would it actually require for the faithful to falter?
In January of 2016, at a rally in New York City, Donald Trump boasted that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not lose voters. It was received not as a confession of contempt, but as a punchline, laughed at, applauded, internalized. It was not merely bravado; it was a diagnostic. He was measuring the elasticity of devotion. The tape measure, it turns out, had no end.
Since then, the ledger has grown grotesque and concrete. Numerous women have accused him of sexual assault. A civil jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the case brought by E. Jean Carroll. In 2024, he was convicted on 34 felony counts in a New York criminal trial related to falsifying business records. These are not fevered rumors whispered in partisan corners; they are verdicts rendered in courtrooms under oath.
His misogyny has never been subterranean; it has strutted in daylight. The “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he bragged about grabbing women without consent, was dismissed by supporters as locker-room banter. He publicly belittled women’s appearances, mocked a disabled reporter, and habitually reduced accomplished professionals to their looks, their age, or their supposed hysteria. Women who accused him were branded liars, opportunists, or worse. The pattern is not incidental, it is foundational.
Nor has racism been an accidental byproduct. It predates his presidency. The Trump Organization was sued in the 1970s by the Justice Department for alleged racial discrimination in housing. As a candidate and president, he launched his political ascent by promoting the birther lie about Barack Obama, a conspiracy theory steeped in racial resentment. He referred to certain nations as “shithole countries,” told four congresswomen of color to “go back” to where they came from though three were born in the United States and equivocated after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, insisting there were “very fine people on both sides.” One does not stumble into such language; one cultivates it.
Consider, too, the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. After losing both the popular vote and the Electoral College, he pressured state officials to “find” votes, advanced baseless fraud claims rejected by dozens of courts, and summoned supporters to Washington on January 6, 2021, the day Congress met to certify the results. The resulting attack on the Capitol was not an abstraction. It was a violent rupture in the peaceful transfer of power, a principle older than the republic’s current factions and more sacred than any single officeholder.
Add to this the documented falsehoods, thousands catalogued during his presidency, his retention of classified documents after leaving office, and the open admiration expressed for authoritarian figures abroad, including Vladimir Putin. Each episode, in a previous era, might have ended a political career. Here, they function as loyalty tests.
What is striking is not merely the accumulation of scandal, but the inversion of moral gravity. Legal accountability becomes persecution. Documented speech becomes “taken out of context.” Racist rhetoric becomes “telling it like it is.” Misogyny becomes masculine candor. An attack on constitutional process becomes patriotic fervor. The more transgressive the act, the more fervent the defense. Vice is not excused; it is aestheticized.
One is tempted to ask whether there exists any conceivable revelation that would puncture this armor. But the more unsettling question is whether the armor is the point. When confronted with court judgments, recorded statements, and sworn testimony, the response is not doubt but defiance. Evidence is pre-labeled fabrication. Institutions are pre-condemned as corrupt. Even hypothetical horrors are pre-dismissed as deepfakes, conspiracies, or plots. The epistemology has been fortified against reality itself.
This is no longer solely about the conduct of Donald Trump. It is about the psychology of belonging. To concede that the champion is unfit would require admitting complicity in his ascent. It would mean acknowledging that grievance was mistaken for governance, spectacle for strength, cruelty for courage.
What would it take? Another economic collapse? Another global health catastrophe? A constitutional crisis from which the system does not recover? Movements rooted in identity rather than principle rarely dissolve under contradiction; they calcify. The leader’s transgressions become sacramental. To doubt him is to betray the tribe.
The tragedy is civic before it is partisan. A republic depends upon shared facts and a baseline of moral revulsion—against corruption, against cruelty, against racism, against lawlessness. When those reflexes are numbed, democracy becomes less a system of accountability and more a theater of endurance.
And so the question lingers, not as satire but as sorrow: is there a line? Or has it been erased so often, redrawn so conveniently, that it no longer exists?
Then let us dispense with the last polite fiction. If there is no line, if fraud, cruelty, racism, misogyny, criminal conviction, and contempt for constitutional order cannot sever the bond—then we are no longer discussing politics but devotion. And devotion, when stripped of scrutiny, has a curious habit of sanctifying whatever it embraces.
For centuries, human beings have been instructed to revere a supernatural sovereign who, according to certain literal readings of sacred texts, drowned the world save for a chosen remnant, sanctioned slavery, endorsed the subordination of women, and threatened eternal torment for dissent. These passages are defended as metaphor, as mystery, as justice beyond mortal comprehension. The atrocities are reframed as righteousness; the cruelty becomes cosmic necessity. The believer is trained, from youth, to harmonize moral revulsion with unquestioning praise.
Is it any wonder, then, that the psychological machinery transfers so easily to politics? Replace the celestial throne with a gilded escalator. Replace divine decree with executive order. Replace heresy with “fake news.” The structure is the same: the leader is infallible, the critics are corrupt, the punishments are deserved, and loyalty is the highest virtue. When confronted with contradictions, the faithful do not revise their belief; they revise reality.
The comparison is not theological but psychological. When worship becomes the template for citizenship, democracy withers. A republic requires skepticism, evidence, fallibility. Worship requires submission, absolution, and the surrender of doubt. One asks for accountability; the other demands obedience.
And so the spectacle unfolds: a would-be strongman forgiven in advance for every transgression because the faithful have already rehearsed the logic. If the sovereign floods the earth, it is justice. If the leader tramples norms, it is strength. If the authority threatens punishment, it is order. The moral inversion is complete.
The hard truth is this: you cannot claim to cherish liberty while practicing reverence. You cannot defend constitutional limits while excusing limitless conduct. You cannot drape yourself in the flag while kneeling to a personality. A free society is not sustained by chants, nor by hats, nor by the ritual denunciation of designated enemies. It is sustained by citizens who are willing especially when it is painful, to say “no” to their own side.
History is pitiless with cults of personality. It records them not as golden ages but as cautionary tales. The strongman always promises restoration and delivers corrosion. He feeds on grievance and leaves behind institutions hollowed out by loyalty tests. And when the edifice finally cracks, as all such edifices do, the rubble does not sort itself by party registration.
The final indignity is this: the very voters who believed themselves empowered discover that they have merely been enlisted. Their outrage was harvested, their devotion monetized, their skepticism anesthetized. The idol demanded applause; it did not offer accountability.
History does not tremble before idols. It topples them. The only question is whether the devotees will awaken before the statue falls or whether, standing amid the dust and debris, they will still insist that the collapse was a conspiracy against their god.
Why It Matters
Democracy does not collapse in a single dramatic moment. It erodes when citizens normalize what once shocked them. When criminal convictions are reframed as persecution, when racist or misogynistic rhetoric is excused as authenticity, and when constitutional violations are aestheticized as strength, the guardrails weaken.
Your post is not just about one political figure. It’s about the psychological shift from citizenship to devotion. That shift, when loyalty overrides evidence is how republics rot from within.
Key Takeaways
- Devotion over democracy: When allegiance to a personality supersedes allegiance to law, institutions hollow out.
- Moral inversion: Conduct that once disqualified leaders is recast as proof of authenticity or strength.
- Epistemic collapse: Evidence is pre-labeled conspiracy; institutions are pre-condemned as corrupt.
- Civic danger: A republic requires skepticism, shared facts, and moral boundaries. Without them, accountability becomes theater.
- The cult dynamic: Political movements rooted in identity calcify under contradiction rather than reform.
Further Reading (Bookshop.org placeholders)
- On Tyranny — Timothy Snyder. A concise guide to recognizing and resisting authoritarian drift in democratic societies. https://civilheresy.com/on tyranny
- How Democracies Die — Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt. A data-driven analysis of how elected leaders dismantle democratic systems from within. https://civilheresy.com/how democracies die
- Strongmen — Ruth Ben-Ghiat. A historical exploration of modern authoritarian leaders and the myths that sustain them. https://civilheresy.com/strongmen
If democracy means anything, it means accountability—especially when it’s uncomfortable. Read. Question. Share. Refuse devotion in place of citizenship.
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