The MAGA Cult Is Giant Conspiracy Theory

The MAGA movement is just one giant conspiracy theory.There is a psychological reason for that.Fake news. Witch hunt. Deep state. Stolen election. These are not political positions. These are conspiracy theories. Every single one of them. And MAGA supporters believe all of them at the same time.Trump supporters also believe in at least one other insane conspiracy theory outside of MAGA. Anti-vax. QAnon. False flags. Flat earth. It is never just one. Because the kind of brain that accepts one conspiracy theory without evidence will swallow them all.Something happened to these people. They were traumatized by something that shook them to their core. They lost their house. They lost their job. They lost their marriage. Whatever stability they thought they had got ripped away from them. And it broke them.Normal people would ask for help, try to rebuild, and try to figure out what went wrong. These people couldn’t. Their egos would not let them take the blame for what happened in their own lives. So they went looking for something else to blame. Something that would tell them it was not their fault.Conspiracy theories do exactly that. Conspiracy theories handed these broken people a complete story. A simple story with clear villains, clear heroes, and a reason for everything. No loose ends. No uncertainty. No thinking required. Just a finished narrative that explains every bad thing that ever happened to them and none of it is their fault.MAGA is the biggest conspiracy theory ever built that is currently running.Psychologist Arie Kruglanski at the University of Maryland studied why certain people are drawn to simple answers even when those answers are dead wrong. He found that people who have been through major personal destruction have zero tolerance for uncertainty. They will grab onto any complete story that kills the pain no matter how insane it sounds. And once they lock it in, they stop thinking entirely.Kruglanski called this the need for cognitive closure.Why did you lose your house? Because of immigrants. Why did you lose your job? The Democrats. Why is your life a mess? The deep state. Why does every expert on earth disagree with you? They are all in on it.Every failure has a scapegoat. Every bad decision has an excuse. And none of it is ever their fault.These people did not lose their homes because of immigrants. They lost their homes because they made garbage decisions with money they did not have. But admitting that means sitting alone in a room with the truth. And these people are too broken to do that. So they found a cult that hands them a complete story every single day that says the problem is everyone else.Trump is not their president. Trump is their cope cult leader. And he is just like them. He cannot accept responsibility for anything either. He is the reason they never have to take responsibility for a single thing that went wrong in their pathetic lives. And they will defend him forever because without him they have nothing.No excuse. No scapegoat. No story. Just a mirror and a life they ruined all by themselves.And they would rather go off the cliff with Trump and the MAGA movement than ever take accountability for their own actions.SourcesKruglanski, A. W. (2004). The Psychology of Closed Mindedness. Psychology Press.Kruglanski, A. W. & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated Closing of the Mind: “Seizing” and “Freezing.” Psychological Review, 103(2), 263-283. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lucasbean.substack.com/subscribe