If Trump Supporters Turn on Him, It Won't Be Empathy, It Will Be Selfishness

I was on Zoom earlier this week with some of my Substack subscribers.

We were processing our own miniature State of the Union, which at the time we deemed somewhere between sky-is-falling and and armageddon. (This was before Trump and JD Vance humiliated themselves by going full Russian-asset/Putin-apologist, while publicly berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.)

The conversation (which as you can imagine was decidedly nihilistic), turned toward the suggested bright spot found in the prospect of some of Trump supporters finally being roused from the ten-year stupor of their cultic adoration enough to see with lucid assessment that they have tethered themselves to a monster.

Some suggested with tentative optimism, that after a confounding, infuriating decade they might put aside their fierce tribalism and join the rest of the reasonable people in opposing this rapidly-unfolding coup.

At first, I co-signed such possibility as a sign of hope, but quickly realized that was misplaced optimism. That’s probably not what we’re going to see at all.

The fact of the matter is, with very few exceptions, people who voted for Trump in November (many for the third time) and who do begin to come around enough to move them to action, will not have had their humanity awakened watching his and his Administration’s illegal weaponizing of I.C.E. against immigrants, both documented and undocumented.

They will not have tapped into heretofore-unaccessed reservoirs of compassion for LGBTQ people facing unlawful and unprovoked legislative and personal attacks by his surrogates in Congress, school board meetings, and the streets.

They will not have had some kind of miraculous Road to Emmaus spiritual awakening, realizing how many ways Trump has already violated the poor, withheld food from the hungry, visited injury on already suffering people, or urinated on the teachings of Jesus.

They will not be overtaken by some newfound responsibility as global citizens and feel a sudden rush of affinity for the persecuted people of Ukraine or Gaza.

No, the only thing that will turn out to bring any kind of oppositional response to Trump by Trump supporters—is when the pain becomes personal.

As they abruptly lose their jobs, see their companies move overseas, watch their 401ks evaporate, reckon with the skyrocketing groceries prices, find their own voices silenced, see their healthcare options dissolve—then, and only then, will they become the resistance.

But it will not be born out of true contrition for their damaging alliances, or genuine regret for being complicit in empowering a fascist, or a sincere desire to partner with the disparate human beings already united in saving our Republic because we realize our interdependence.

No, when MAGA Americans finally realize that they too are victims of the criminality and predation they initially hoped would only be for those despised others (the immigrant, the gay, the brown, the black, the woke, the blue staters), then it will be a bridge too far. When their feet are put to the fire they dreamed for so many others, suddenly immorality and overreach will be objectionable.

The moment they are jarred awake by the sobering truth that their whiteness and their party affiliation and their church attendance and their red hats won’t save them from this disaster they have helped create, then and only then will they care in the slightest bit.

I’d like to be wrong but sadly, I don’t believe I will be.

And though it will still be a small consolation to see a larger swath of this nation find out that this president’s sociopathy will spare no one, it would have been nice if they’d been internally transformed by love for their fellow human beings instead of just for themselves.

The real victory would have been if they’d been moved by self-examination and not just self-preservation.

I could have celebrated their empathy but I can’t celebrate their selfishness.