The Weakest People in America Voted Trump

The weakest people in America all voted for the same man.There is a psychological reason for that.In 1996 psychologist Steven Hayes at the University of Nevada published research on what happens when people build their entire lives around avoiding uncomfortable emotions. He found that a wide range of destructive behavior can be traced back to a single pattern. The refusal to feel what you need to feel. The willingness to do anything, believe anything, destroy anything, as long as you never have to sit with the discomfort of being wrong.Hayes called this experiential avoidance.Experiential avoidance is the refusal to remain in contact with painful emotions, thoughts, memories, or experiences. Instead of processing them, people who are experientially avoidant take steps to escape them. They run. They numb. They distract. They attack. They do whatever it takes to avoid feeling what they need to feel.And that is the entire MAGA movement in one psychological concept.These people have spent ten years defending Trump. Ten years of arguments with family. Ten years of lost friendships. Ten years of ruined Thanksgivings. Ten years of posting things they cannot take back. Ten years of defending a man who does not know their name and does not care whether they live or die.Ten years is a massive investment. And they do not want to admit they were wrong about any of it.So they keep running. They keep escalating the commitment to Trump. Because if they keep running, maybe there is a chance they might be right in the future. That delusional dream is all they have to protect them from the reality that they were wrong the entire time.So they keep running rather than accept accountability.Because if they stopped, they would have to face ten years of being wrong. Ten years of hurting people. Ten years of defending a fraud. Ten years of being the exact problem they accused everyone else of being.These are people who have never once in their lives sat with an uncomfortable emotion. They have never taken accountability. They have never admitted fault. They have always played the victim. It is always someone else’s fault. The Democrats. The media. The deep state. The immigrants. Anyone but themselves.Hayes found that experiential avoidance makes everything worse. The more you run from the feeling, the bigger it gets. The longer you avoid it, the more terrifying it becomes. The pain does not go away because you refuse to look at it. The pain grows because you refuse to look at it.These people have been running from accountability their entire lives. And Trump gave them permission to keep running. He told them they were right. He told them everyone else was lying. He told them they never had to feel bad about anything they said or did because the other side was worse.That is not leadership. That is enabling avoidance on a national scale.They do not think long term. They do not have a plan for their future. They do not even have a plan for Friday night. They are not moving forward because they believe in something. They are moving forward because if they stop, they have to turn around and look at what they have done.And they are more afraid of that than anything else in the world.Hayes found in his research that experientially avoidant people will endure extraordinary suffering to avoid emotional discomfort. They will destroy relationships. They will lose jobs. They will sacrifice their health. They will make choices that objectively make their lives worse in every measurable way, all to avoid sitting with a feeling they do not want to feel.Avoidant people are more scared of being uncomfortable with their emotions than they are of death.That is why they will follow Trump off a cliff.The cliff is less scary than the sunk cost of shame they would have to endure if they stopped and faced reality.They will always choose the cliff over reality. Every single time. Because reality requires the one thing these people have never been willing to do.Feel something real. Take accountability. And admit they were wrong.They would rather die than do that. And the research says that is not an exaggeration. It is a clinical finding.SourcesHayes, S. C., Wilson, K. G., Gifford, E. V., Follette, V. M., & Strosahl, K. (1996). Experiential Avoidance and Behavioral Disorders: A Functional Dimensional Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(6), 1152-1168.Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change. Guilford Press. 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