The Dispensing of Existence: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
When a Trump insult is more than just an insult
In a familiar story now buttressed by legal documents, Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role as Vice President (VP) to deny Joe Biden certification of the 2020 presidential election. In private conversations with Trump leading up to January 6, 2021, Pence resisted and “told him many times” that he did not believe he had the power not to certify. During a January 4 rally in Dalton, Georgia, Trump had said “I hope Mike Pence comes through for us… He’s a great guy. Of course, if he doesn’t come through I won’t like him quite as much.” Trump pressured Pence on social media and in a January 6 outdoor speech on Washington D.C.’s Elipse. That afternoon, when Pence was rushed to a secure location after a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, a White House staffer “rushed to the dining room to inform [Trump] in hopes that [he] would take action to ensure Pence’s safety. Instead, after [staffer] delivered the news, [Trump] looked at him and said only, “So what?” After four-plus years as a loyal VP, to a MAGA mob and Trump himself, Mike Pence had seemingly lost the right to exist.
Pence survived the Capitol attack, and after January 6 was unwilling to support Trump in another election. Nearly four years later, a newspaper published comments that Trump’s new VP running mate, JD Vance, had made about Trump in direct messages he initiated with a Deloitte employee. Vance had said that Trump “thoroughly failed to deliver” his economic agenda and “will probably lose” the then-upcoming 2020 election. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. reacted to the media story calling the reporter a “scumbag,” doxing the employee by revealing his name on social media and putting him at risk of job loss, while threatening Deloitte with loss of government contracts.
Both Trump Sr. and Jr. can be seen as acting out Robert Jay Lifton’s final psychological theme of thought reform called the dispensing of existence:
The totalist environment draws a sharp line between those whose right to existence can be recognized, and those who possess no such right….
The dispensing of human existence is a flagrant expression of what the Greeks called hubris, of arrogant humans claiming to be God. Yet one underlying assumption makes this arrogance mandatory: the conviction that there is just one path to true existence, just one valid mode of being, and that all others are perforce invalid and false (Lifton, pp. 87, 88).
Elsewhere Lifton writes, “This principle is usually metaphorical” (in The Future of Immortality…). So, whether a movement tries to kill its non-supporters or tolerate their destruction, to threaten their lives or livelihoods, to dox them by revealing their identities, or to viciously insult them to signal their invalidity to movement loyalists, it can be said to be dispensing of existence.
The totalist environment draws a sharp line between those whose right to existence can be recognized, and those who possess no such right….
Donald Trump is MAGA’s dispenser-in-chief, ironically after becoming a nationally celebrity for terminating The Apprentice reality TV show contestants – famously saying “you’re fired” in his Queens accent. People who publicly oppose Trump as a political figure are likely to be verbally and publicly attacked by him, whether they are top generals; judges, prosecutors and witnesses in cases against him; or former staff. If people cross Trump, the message of his retaliatory insult seems to be, they don’t have a right to exist in his mind. In some cases, by merely alleging a person has wronged him, Trump has signalled strongly enough that someone is unworthy of existence, that supporters have threatened them:
Trump said General Mark Milley committed “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” (Trump’s all caps). Milley’s offense? As Chair of Trump’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, he had assured a Chinese general that the US wasn’t on the verge of attacking China.
When Trump’s Truth Social posts attacked New York Justices Juan Merchan and Arthur Engoron, who presided over Trump cases, supporters called for violence against the judges – including execution.
Trump has attacked prosecutors on social media including Fani Willis (Georgia election racketeering case against Trump) and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (New York hush money case), causing them and other judges to need additional security.
Trump has attacked witnesses in cases against him, including calling Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels “sleaze bags.”
Trump called impeachment prosecutor, Representative Adam Schiff “one of the most disgusting human beings,” and called January 6th Committee chair Liz Cheney, a Republican who had voted to support Trump’s positions 93% of the time while in the House of Representatives, a “Low IQ War Hawk” when she endorsed Kamala Harris.
Trump threatened people that would hypothetically cheat in the 2024 election with “long prison term sentences,” a chilling warning from one who has previously made false claims of being cheated.
Trump said that Presidential opponent Hilary Clinton and others should be locked up/jailed, as this video shows, even though he later gaslighted, denying saying it.
Trump Called his former Chief of Staff John Kelly a “lowlife with a very small brain and a very big mouth” for confirming press reports Trump disparaged US service members and veterans.
He said former White House communications director John Scaramucci was a “highly unstable ‘nut job.’”
Trump encourages primary challenges against Republican politicians like Rusty Bowers who fail to capitulate to him (see Loading the Language), in many cases ending their political careers.
Besides following the leader’s cues regarding who has a right to exist or not, how might this dynamic in MAGA affect individuals? Lifton writes that the dispensing of existence can influence their recruitment, making them “likely to be drawn into a conversion experience” (e.g, in this case, to join MAGA). It can also enforce conformity to the group: “The totalist environment – even when it does not resort to physical abuse – thus stimulates in everyone a fear of extinction or annihilation…” leading to “a sense of total merger with the ideological movement” (p. 89).
The dispensing of existence, taken together with Lifton’s other psychological themes of thought reform, impel us to summarize their potential impact on MAGA and the American political system.
Navigation within this article series:
Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA
The Cult of Confession: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10
References:
Lifton, Robert Jay (1987). The Future of Immortality and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age, The New Press.
Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cult, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.
Smith, Jack (October 2, 2024). Government’s motion for immunity determinations, United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, Defendant.