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This is (obviously) a rhetorical question. It's impossible to answer. And as long as bloggers and reporters and columnists and opinion writers continue to pitch and write pieces where they either don't know or pretend not to know why so many idiot Trump supporters still stand steadfast by their man, we will continue to read them. Which means they will continue to exist. Despite my frustration at this annoying new genre of MAGA fanfic, I admit to possessing a perverse fascination with these people, and I know I'm not alone.


Take "In Trump Country, Shock at Trump Budget Cuts, but Still Loyalty" for instance, where Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times interviews men and women who will be hurt and perhaps even killed by Trump's proposed budget cuts.

Gawk at the follow passage, and tell me how you can read it and not be completely spellbound by it.



Judy Banks, a 70-year-old struggling to get by, said she voted for Trump because “he was talking about getting rid of those illegals.” But Banks now finds herself shocked that he also has his sights on funds for the Labor Department’s Senior Community Service Employment Program, which is her lifeline. It pays senior citizens a minimum wage to hold public service jobs. “This program makes sense,” said Banks, who was placed by the program into a job as a receptionist for a senior nutrition program. Banks said she depends on the job to make ends meet, and for an excuse to get out of the house. "If I lose this job,” she said, “I’ll sit home and die.” Yet she said she might still vote for Trump in 2020

If Trump does what he says he's going to do, she knows she'll have nothing to live for and might even die. But she still would vote for him — even if that vote came from the fucking grave. Keeping "those illegals" out and retaining the value of Whiteness in America is so important to her that she'd choose that over her own life.


And perhaps quotes like that articulate the true value of these endless and mind-numbing profiles. It's not for us to be sympathetic to them, or to determine how to reach them, but for us to finally collectively realize that they just can't be reached. That we're operating with different currencies, and concepts like "logic" and "literally saving your own fucking ass" are valueless to them. That they'd rather see us gone or dead (or both) than themselves alive.

So yes, let's continue to read about and study them. Not to figure out how to sway them, but to squash any inkling or thought of feeling bad for them.