A Conversation with My Mom: Understanding the Cult of Trump

It was an easy answer that had been coming up more frequently, especially with the Trump indictments by a corrupt legal system run by a crime boss in Joe Biden, who was only in power because of a stolen election. And the thugs were showing that they were in charge, but they were mystified as to why so many people still supported Trump. They had not thought that to be the case. Instead, they expected submission, groveling, and fear from the Trump supporters. Even as they distributed a mugshot of a former president to show their power over him and much of his former staff. We saw a coup by Marxist insurgents, just like Lenin, Mao, or Castro in Cuba. This happened in the United States, and they thought they had it all figured out. Yet, instead, they didn’t understand why Trump was getting more popular, and nobody seemed able to explain it, even the Trump supporters. But the issue became very clear as I visited my elderly mom in the hospital. We were having one of those life-flashing-before-her-eyes discussions as if checking the validity of everything’s worth. From issues when she was a little girl that were coming back to her very fluidly. To things that happened just yesterday. And in her condition, she had been telling all the nurses who were tending to her about some of my very violent past because it was on her mind, and we were talking about it in a way we never had before. Life moved quickly, and there hadn’t been time to catch up, at least for me. She felt she had done something wrong, producing a person like me who was so angry that many people outright hated. She came from the Happy Days generation, where people measured success by how many people liked them. Not me. She didn’t understand why I needed to carry a gun everywhere. She said to me, “Maybe if you just did what you were told, so many people wouldn’t be after you,” she said.

We reflected on many stories, but the one she had told the nurses was one where I was involved in a large fight where many people were killed in the process.  As we reflected, only a few were still alive out of all the people involved.  She was upset that I was so proud of that incident.  She felt guilt about it while I took great pride in it, and that was the core of the problem and why we hadn’t talked about it over all these years.  But that wasn’t the only issue.  I reminded her of the first grade when I poked the school bully in the eye with my scissors.  He was picking on somebody. I had stepped in to stop it, and a fight ensued in class.  He was a really big kid, and everyone was terrified of him.  So, knowing he was dangerous, I fought him that way and stabbed him in the eye with my scissors.  I got into a lot of trouble.  Another time, I was on the school bus.  I always rode in the back, as far away from the figures of authority as possible.  But that was always where the kids who did terrible things sat, and I witnessed many bad things.  One day, they were doing drugs, sharing apparent stimulant pills, and they tried to force me to take one.  I threw it out the window, as I have never taken any drugs, ever in my life.  And I felt very strongly about it even back then.  A huge fight ensued, many of them against me, and many people got hurt, some of them badly.  I got into a lot of trouble.  A lot of trouble.

I don’t sit around thinking about it, but I had dozens and dozens of those kinds of stories, and as my mom reflected on them like older adults do as they are trying to work things out about their own lives, I just let her talk.  But up to that point, I am not a sit-down-and-talk-about-it person.  I keep the throttle down pretty hard, and I like things to go fast.  Not that I’m trying to outrun my past.  I don’t like getting stuck thinking about it because I see it as a waste of time.  But visiting her in that condition it was on her mind, and she felt like she had done something wrong to have such a socially ostracized kid, and she was being hard on herself for all the death and mayhem that was in the wake of it all.  Then, telling her how proud I was of my life was too much.  Yet she had said something that explained the current situation with Trump and the Marxists, who were essentially trying to take over the American government, and why there was such a lack of understanding about the whole issue.  The theme of my life was pretty easy to sum up: resisting anybody who wanted to control my life in some way. I have had the unique circumstance of never being beaten into any submission.  But from my mom’s point of view, she felt that I would have had a much easier life if I had just done what people told me to do.  But I didn’t want an easy life.  I enjoyed the violence.  I enjoyed the heartbreak.  I liked the pain.  Because I wanted more than anything to be free, free as a person to think what I wanted when I wanted to.  So, to me, all those horrible things were good, and I was proud to now reflect on them, knowing what I had to do to arrive at this moment.  On the other hand, she valued safety as the primary criterion of goodness, and because of that, she felt like she had failed. 

Not all Americans had my experience.  Many, at some point in their lives, had taken that pill to keep from being beaten up.  Or they avoided stabbing a bully in the eye because they were afraid to hurt the other person, so they ended up getting beaten up themselves.  And they said yes to the pushing and shoving against them, where a long history of dead bodies didn’t populate their past.  It costs a lot to resist the bullies in life, and there are many of them, and most people do not feel as strongly as I do about it.  But their inner rebel does come out when it comes to Trump.  And secretly, they support that he has been so strong as their representative, and where the Marxist insurgents expected to bully people and have them fold up like cheap lawn chairs, people have continued to support Trump, and that support has increased with each new indictment.  As I answered my mom, appeasing the bad guys does not improve life.  I’d instead carry a gun like I do now everywhere, knowing that lots of people would love to kill me.  That was her fear: if you, just for once in your life, would appease all those bad people, maybe they’d leave you alone.  But no, they never leave you alone.  All they understand is force, and in my way, I have fought very hard with lots of casualties along the way to maintain my freedom.  And now, I was watching the nation of America waking up to that same sentiment.  And I think it’s good, and about time.  Better late than never, but I can certainly say that I understand it fully.  And what’s to come quite well. 

Rich Hoffman