Thank you for the Time Capsule series. I think a lot of the commentary from all over on Trump is missing the main question, however. The fundamental question is seldom what people do; the fundamental question is why they do it.

Any “rational” analysis of Trump will fail. (“Rational” in both the “logical utility” and in the “sane” sense.) He is not presenting a logical way for attaining real benefits, nor is he presenting himself as sane.

What he is selling is fear and anger. It is those two emotions, and just the emotions, that his supporters want. They want to be deathly afraid of the world, and they want to use that fear to justify an all-consuming anger. They are not looking for justification for those emotions; they just want the emotions themselves.

If you see his supporters as masses of the frustrated and disenfranchised who are seeking a voice at the table of power, then it makes no sense. Anybody like that would not want to be lied to. They have been lied to too many times by the powerful. Trump is an obvious liar, and he is never going to do what he says is is going to do. Anyone who simply feels betrayed by the political process isn’t about to set themselves up to be betrayed again. Those types will simply stay home on election day like they always do.

There is no point going into who said it, but it was said that “people would rather believe a big lie than a small one.” Once you lie, and once you lie very very big, then you are in constant fear of being found out. The only possible face-saving response is to use the energy of that fear to violently insist that you are right.

Once you stand up in public and say you believe that the Earth is flat, then you simply can’t back down. The fear of ridicule is so great that the only way forward is to be angry at all attackers. That anger then becomes its own validity. It is an addiction, pure and simple. It is an addiction to strong empty feelings. No one believes that the Earth is flat because of any logical argument. They believe that the Earth is flat because the panic that is caused by believing that lie sustains their desired anger. And their anger is all they have and all they want. Believing the lie is a deliberate and calculated act to drum up an overriding state of blind emotion.

Trump’s big lies are the whole point of his appeal.

Hillary’s fault is that she makes small lies (about the e-mails and a lot else). Small lies can be proven to be false, and the small liar shown to be a fool. You can say that you believed her about the e-mails, and then be shown that that small lie was wrong, and then say that she is a scoundrel for fooling you like that.

But if you swallow a big lie, you can’t back down. Any backdown would be such a loss of face, that your identity won’t allow it. You get trapped in a world of fear of discovery and anger at your critics and you can’t get out.

Most importantly, however, most people don’t want to get out. Most importantly, most people get in that position on purpose. That is why they support Trump. They live off the anger that believing a big lie produces in them.

I hate to always be bringing this up, but every year 250,000 Americans die from medical mistakes. That is over 600 a day, every day, all year long. That is more than a fully loaded 747 crashing every day due to preventable errors.

And the Wall Street Journal reports that immigrants have a lower crime and incarceration rate than natural-born Americans.

Where were the teary-eyed speakers at the RNC talking about their loved ones killed by medical mistakes or by native-born American criminals? There are only a couple hundred thousand more of those to be found than the ones they trotted out. But that is only if you believe in the weight of evidence.

There is no either sane or utilitarian reason to put the fear of immigrant criminals or Islamic terrorists anywhere within the top 100 things to worry about in life. But that is not the point. The point isn’t in believing in the truth what that does for you. The whole point is in believing the lie and what that does for you.

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Trump is giving his followers what they want and what they insist on: a big lie that will feed their anger. They want to be lied to so that they can be angry at those who call them liars. That is all they want in life, and Trump is delivering the goods. Trump isn’t doing this because he has some carefully calculated path to power on backs of his supporters. He is doing it because he is an idiot and can’t do anything else. He is just a meaningless tool of the times. The more he lies the more his supporters feed off the anger those lies cause and it goes on and on.

The “Vichy Republicans” are just along for the ride, knowing full well that all they want is power and that they will get it and find a way to cover themselves no matter what happens. As you know, in politics, losing is often the best choice, because then you get all of the talk and none of the responsibility.

It is all up to democracy. If most of the people want to be lied to so that they can be angry, then goodbye the good old U.S.A. If Hillary isn’t up to bringing out the vote, then that’s the end.

But Trump isn’t stopped by showing him to be a liar. That just feeds the beast. You don’t convince someone that the Earth isn’t flat by telling them that they are stupid. They want you to say that, so that they can get angry at you for saying that, and that anger is all they really wanted from the beginning. If you are angry enough you don't have to deal with anything else in the world. It is the cheapest and most powerful drug in the world. And once you are addicted, it is hard to stop. Once you are addicted you simply don't know how to do anything else. And you want more and more of it.

You narrow his support by giving his supporters a way out. I think the best way to stop him, as has been pointed out by others, is to simply insult him. That way he will wind it so far out that even his supporters will see the humor in it. Get him to trash talk more about the U.S. and start bringing in UFOs and it will all turn into stand-up comedy even to his supporters. A good laugh puts you in charge, and gets you out.

Either that, or he starts insulting pockets of his own supporters, and then they start wondering who is next. Get some surrogates to insult him in public, and trust he handles it badly. Not call him a liar, but actually insult him. He’s afraid of the very thing he does to others. That’s why he does it. Reagan would have put on that famous smile and say “there you go again.” Trump will probably loose it.

That and when the Trump U case comes up, he’ll be shown to be a small liar.