Have you ever had that moment? You’re deep in conversation with someone, and while you might disagree on various points, something else entirely catches your attention. There’s this nagging feeling, an almost visceral sense that you’re dealing with a MAGA supporter, and suddenly everything clicks into place – including why the discussion feels so frustratingly circular.
Science tells us something fascinating about this phenomenon. Researchers studying political extremism have discovered striking patterns in brain imaging studies. The amygdala – our brain’s fear center – appears notably enlarged in individuals driven primarily by fear responses and showing reduced empathy. It’s like discovering that some adults are operating with emotional hardware that hasn’t been updated since elementary school.
This isn’t just a metaphor. When you find yourself in these increasingly common encounters, where facts seem to bounce off an invisible shield of denial, consider this: you might literally be dealing with an adult-sized child, neurologically speaking. Just as you wouldn’t argue complex political theory with a six-year-old on the playground, perhaps it’s time to recalibrate how we approach these interactions.
What if I told you that understanding this single insight could transform every difficult political conversation you’ll have from this point forward?
As for our collective commentary on MAGA supporters, yes, they very much are like little kids and the psychology absolutely syncs with our conclusion because at our core, if we’re not using our prefrontal cortex, we are operating from our primitive brains. And that’s what we’re seeing going on here. That looks like tribalism. That’s fueled by fear. When people are driven by fear, it’s easy for authoritarian figures to come in, manipulate them, be charismatic, and pander to those fears.
For example, Trump saying the immigrants are taking your jobs, or they’re eating your cats and your dogs, and people respond to that because they feel like their fears are being addressed so they feel safe. The authoritarianism mindset of these people, it makes sense because they want somebody to control the things that they believe are causing them these fears.
There’s also social dominance built into people naturally. There’s hierarchical thinking. For hundreds of years in this country the white male was top of that social dominance hierarchy and they fear that they’re going to be knocked off their pedestals because other people are given equal rights and that’s why they are so angry about minorities of any type getting the spotlights and being advocated for and advancing in society, whereas they never had to worry about that before because they had a monopoly on the social hierarchy and it was much more binary back then.
It’s more on a continuum at this point. The continuum is shifting in the favor of minorities and that’s very threatening to these types of people who don’t have critical thinking skills or education.
So that leads to prejudice, of course. And most of Trump’s supporters are coming from these areas that are called target zip codes. Target zip codes can be used to home in on any target market, however, trumps team uses target zip codes to hone in on people who have never left their little poor white towns. They haven’t talked to people who are different from themselves. They’ve been sheltered in this little bubble and they fear these things that are different from them because they haven’t had any experience outside of their little zip codes. So the intergroup contact is missing. They are mingling with people who are like themselves and then they have this sense of entitlement. They feel like they’re being deprived of something because they’re so entitled.
So again, we go back to the example of them thinking that they’re losing jobs to people from Mexico. They feel like they are entitled to those jobs by, by their birthright, by the color of their skin, by their sexual orientation, etc. They feel that they’re entitled to these things. So Trump panders to that and plays on their fears.
People who don’t use their prefrontal cortex properly, people who have not had inner group contact, they haven’t mingled with others, they haven’t had education, they haven’t been exposed to things outside of their little bubbles, they operate by fear because that’s all they know. They know that little basic world that they grew up in and anything else that they would be exposed to scares them. That’s even when they watch TV they freak out about how the gay agenda is being shoved in their face because as sexual minorities are actually being represented in the media, movies, and TV shows, they’re not used to that exposure. So even just watching that on TV, it threatens them. They’re afraid of that.
Trump is smart in this particular context. I’m sorry to say that but he’s smart and only this one area. In every other area he is an unstable childlike cult leader. As a cult leader, he knows exactly what features of people to play on. He knows his audience well. He is a master at manipulating individuals with the brain of a child occupying an adult body. He is charismatic to them. Charisma doesn’t have to look like somebody like JFK. Charisma is Hitler, charisma is Trump. Look at what those people are doing. They are invoking the basic brain, the reptile brain, the prime, the Id. They know exactly how to tap into that and exploit that, t pander to that. That’s the dark side of charisma.
So for these people who have lived these sheltered lives who are prejudiced and afraid of everything outside of their little bubble, yes, their cult leader knows what he’s doing. He’s pandering to that and they feel safe. People who are afraid, they want to feel safe and they feel safe because he’s telling them, hey, I understand how you’re feeling, I get it. Here’s the problem that’s causing you these fears. So he’s pointing to something outside of them, which then starts the root of cognitive dissonance where they can think, yeah, it’s somebody outside of me that’s the problem. It’s not my cognition or lack thereof.
Sadly, they don’t know that they’re wrong. When the rare time comes that they do realize they’re wrong, that’s when the cognitive dissonance triggers because they can’t admit that they’re wrong. If they admit that they’re wrong, that means that they have to put extra thought into analyzing why they were wrong and then admitting they were wrong. They’re not going to admit that they’re wrong because they’re afraid. It goes back to fear. They’re not going to admit that they’re wrong because they’re afraid of the judgment. They’re afraid of people making fun of them for espousing those beliefs. They have to fall back on cognitive dissonance and just keep going with the narrative even though something in them inside says, you know, I might be wrong, but I’m gonna stick with this because I don’t want egg on my face. Fear. It’s all fueled by fear. That’s the common denominator.
Children need a nurturing provider to look up to because they’re children, we call them parents. #MAGA needs an authoritarian king to think for them because they have the mental processes of a small child housed by an adult body. They call him king trump.
The parallel between MAGA adherents and underdeveloped minds isn’t just rhetoric – it’s a demonstrable psychological phenomenon. Like children who haven’t yet developed complex reasoning abilities, these adults operate purely on primitive emotional drivers: fear, pleasure-seeking, and pain avoidance. They desperately crave validation, attention, and the comfort of being told what to think. The crucial difference? Children have a legitimate developmental excuse. Adults choosing to remain in this stunted state do not.
The exploitation of these childlike minds follows a predictable pattern. Just as parents might invoke the boogeyman to keep children in line, their chosen authority figures weaponize imaginary threats – caravans of immigrants, deep state conspiracies, or the imminent collapse of society. The manipulation is identical to an elementary school teacher threatening to call parents or send a child to the principal. These grown adults, trapped in juvenile thinking patterns, snap to attention at the mere suggestion of consequences from their self-appointed authority figures.
What makes this phenomenon particularly disturbing is its scale. Millions of adults have willfully abandoned critical thinking in favor of blind obedience to authoritarianism. Some may be victims of early conditioning, their cognitive development forever arrested by childhood experiences. Others have simply chosen the path of least resistance – it’s easier to let someone else do your thinking than to wrestle with complex realities. This intellectual laziness, this willing regression to childhood-level cognition, represents a catastrophic failure of adult responsibility.
The tragedy extends beyond individual failings. While we expect most children to eventually develop into mentally capable adults, these individuals have chosen to remain perpetually stunted, their physical maturity masking a mind that never progressed beyond elementary school social dynamics. They wear their willful ignorance as a badge of honor, celebrating their submission to authority as if it were a virtue rather than a damning abdication of adult responsibility.
Think about education levels because there are studies that show that people who have gone through any type of higher education are less likely to be in this predicament. Not saying that college educated people are immune to that because there are a lot of stupid ones in that sector as well, but there are less of them. Tere are two factors that go into why those people are not as prolific in the maga movement. One is because when you go to college, you are close to all different kinds of people and viewpoints and you have to be exposed to those people unless you totally isolate yourself. And then there’s the education piece, right? When you go through higher education, you are forced to think for yourself. You have to be a critical thinker, and once you are a critical thinker, once you’re pushed into that mindset, you can’t retrace from that.
That makes you less susceptible to the tactics that cult leaders are employing bcause you see through that. You can understand what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and that’s not to say that higher educated people are better. It’s just that they are more exposed to people outside their bubble. They’re more exposed to different viewpoints. They’re more exposed to exercises in critical thinking. There are people in the population who haven’t finished high school who can still do that as well, but that’s gonna be more in the minority.
So again, it goes back to that social isolationism, the fear factor, when kids are isolated and they’re not exposed to things that help develop their critical thinking and then they have to conform to their authority, their parents, their teachers, to their King Trump, all the time. That’s part of being a child, unfortunately.
Another factor to consider is there are checks and balances happening in the brain in a healthy adults all the time that keeps us well balanced. Mentally unbalanced people don’t have those normal checks and balances happening in their brain. This is another problem that is also easily recognizable Within MAGA. It’s probably something akin to understanding recognizing your emotions and how they’re causing you to act and react, and by recognizing that, you can then determine the validity of those emotions and let your logical brain take over and put that check.
There’s very much checks and balances between our logical brain and our primitive brain, and recognizing what’s going on is so crucial. That’s part of mindfulness. I practice a lot of mindfulness. That’s just recognizing what emotions are passing through, why they’re passing through, whether to give them any weight, and determine them to be valid before acting or reacting or making any kind of decisions.
Overall, we went through most of our evolution with just our primitive brains. The prefrontal cortex is a rather new development in brain Physiology relative to our evolution as human beings. We’re still very much ruled by our primitive brain and we see that throughout. It’s frustrating, but it’s evolutionary biology at its finest. And those of us who can recognize what’s going on and recognize that we have two very distinct processing centers in our brain, we are going to be more equipped to engage with reality in a positive meaningful way. There’s much more to it than that. But in general, there are two very distinct processing centers in the brain. When one of them is correct and when one of them is overreaching, recognizing this is crucial. MAGA sadly does not have the self-awareness, much like a child.
That’s part of mindfulness . That fear that just hit me as an instinct to the situation, or, that anger as an instinct reacting to the situation is off balance because… And we can fill in the blank as to why that’s off balance, let our logic take over and provide a check and balance system to employ. I wish more psychiatrists and psychologists would talk about this to people so that more of us understand what’s going on.
There are some other psychological theories that can be intertwined. There’s one called the marshmallow test that was an experiment on kids. They were given the choice of one marshmallow, you can eat this marshmallow, but once you eat this marshmallow there’s no more. If you don’t eat the marshmallow, when we come back, we’ll give you a second marshmallow. It was an experiment in delayed gratification. The children ultimately deployed delayed gratification.
Overall the actual kids had that discipline.
Think back to COVID and when people were asked to take preventative measures in order to help other people. These MAGA people didn’t want to do that. You saw how they reacted. They couldn’t employ any self restraints or follow any of these scientifically valid reasons for telling people to do certain things to help other people. Delayed gratification is not in their skill sets. Thinking about the collective and how their actions can impact other people is not in their skill set. They are people of instant gratification. I need to be fulfilled now, now, now. And I don’t care about the other people.
When you are in a bubble all your life, you stick to your own group and your own little small town in your own close minded ideologies. Of course you’re not going to care about other people. They are acting from a place of entitlement, selfishness and no regard for other people because they just haven’t had the experience or the exposure to give them empathy.
If you could change one thing about the world to make it better, what would you change? A lot of well-balanced adults will choose empathy. It’s not the only answer of a well-balanced adult but it is a common one. People who have empathy can see the beauty that they create in this world, the love and tenderness, the kindness and support for their fellow human beings, no matter who that fellow human being is, what they look like, or who they love.
These maga people who grow up in these little bubbles, who are not exposed to other people, they don’t get outside of their towns, they don’t travel, they’re stuck in places where a religious ideology is forced down their throat, and they’re raised with a certain mindset, a closed mind. It’s crystallized once they’re adults. Because of how they were raised, it’s very hard to break out of that. These people don’t have empathy because they have not been exposed to other people. They don’t know other people’s suffering and therefore they are blind to it. They don’t have empathy and they’re OK supporting somebody or even advocating for actions that are anti empathetic, that harm other people because those people aren’t like themselves.
Again, it all goes back to fear. They advocate these things because those people are different from them. They fear these people because they are different from them. They don’t understand these people. They don’t understand their plights, so they’re afraid if they haven’t had that exposure. It’s all so intertwined and there’s so many other variables that can be explored that feed into this. Fear and lack of empathy are two of the critical factors at play here. They have the same roots.
The irony with people that I’m talking about, in these closed minded communities who don’t know anything outside of their own little worlds, especially the religious sects, they talk about the seven deadly sins and they preach about how you shouldn’t do any of those things or be mindful of doing those things. All the while they’re the group that is perpetuating the seven deadly sins the most. They don’t even realize it because out of this fear in this lack of empathy, they are then being greedy, they’re practicing avarice. They’re jealous of other people getting rights. They’re lazy sloth. They refuse to think outside of their tiny little paradigms. I could go on and on about each of the seven deadly sins, but they epitomize that. You could go on and on about this as well because you’ve seen it over and over again especially with the self-proclaimed Evangelical Christians who behave perpetually exactly the opposite of what Jesus teaches. We watch this cognitive disconnect within these people in such disbelief because it is unbelievable. And again, it’s so ironic because they’re the ones who preach the most about how thou shalt not…
Another little layer here is the Dunning Kruger effect. That means that they’re just completely oblivious that they are misinformed about something. And with that, it’s kind of a double edged sword because people who lack the actual expertise to be spouting their mouths off in whatever area of quote un quote knowledge that they’re espousing, they also have this cognitive bias that precludes them from realizing that they lack the expertise. Knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are the same qualities that somebody needs to realize that they’re not good at a task. So that extends to political judgments. You can’t talk to these people because they believe that they’re the ones who should be informing, guiding, leading, and reaching others. So there’s no reaching them. There’s just no reaching them at all. The bottom line with all of these factors is sadly you cannot reach them. The best thing you can do is pull more information out of them and get a glimpse into that psychology, that again, is crystallized. It is very rare for crystallized mindsets and thinking to be reversed. So all we can do is study them and inform our actions based on what we are observing. They’re all one big regressive biological observation.
However, unlike physical children, adult children are causing real harm throughout the world, not just in our own country. They are the ones who have real power at this moment in time and they are using it resulting in much greater destruction and death than prior.
The financial bribes are greater than before. The loss of human life is ticking up greater than before. The wealth inequality is growing more than before. Poverty is beginning to tick upwards greater than before. The erosion of the democratic process is speeding up. Law and order is fleeting.
The cognitive dissonance within the current power structures and maga are so much greater than before that everything is now a hypocrisy.
Another layer to the Maga brain is Stockholm syndrome. These devoted followers continue supporting Trump despite clear evidence that his policies have consistently favored the ultra-wealthy who funded his campaigns and administration.
The cognitive dissonance is striking—they’ve formed a cult attachment to someone who has repeatedly acted against their economic interests, yet they interpret these betrayals as victories.
This psychological phenomenon combines elements of cult devotion, where followers reframe negative actions as positive, and the Dunning-Kruger effect, where individuals lack the analytical framework to recognize their own misconceptions. The result is a self-perpetuating cycle of devotion that intensifies rather than diminishes in the face of contradictory evidence.
Maga says they believe in patriotism, but they support authoritarian leaders. They say protect the children while removing child labor laws that protect child exploitation. They say end the wars while supporting the stealing of various lands that do not belong to us. They say they are pro-life while supporting a literal ethnic cleansing and a genocide. They say they are Christians while actively pursuing every ideal Jesus directly preached against. They say they are against the corruption and the robber barons but they cult around Trump, who is taking endless bribes from the robber barons. The rest of us watch this extreme unprincipled psychotic behavior and we see a people who are beyond the pale of just a different opinion, but we see a cognitive pattern that is mentally unwell and unbalanced. We see a people in Maga that says, “I’m against war now let’s wage new wars”. “I’m pro-life now let’s support a genocide”. “I’m pro freedom and democracy now let’s tell minorities how to live and undo election results”. The examples of cognitive decline in Maga are endless because they are operating from a brain that stopped developing at a young age when they were still physically just children and there is a lot of science, including brain scans, that syncs with this conclusion.
So what’s the solution? We out number maga by about 4 to 1. The reasonable ones have left maga by now. The ones who still identify as part of maga, in my opinion, are not reachable because all that is left are the ones with the brain of a child and they have no interest in getting help or becoming better versions of themselves. The only solution I can see is for the 75% of us to show up in the primary season to nominated candidates who passionately reject all corporate money and represent us instead of the billionaires who bribe them.
Picture this: You’re standing in line on Election Day, staring at two names you don’t particularly like. Sound familiar? It’s not just you — it’s by design.
The truth about our democracy isn’t pretty. While we blame politicians for its failures, the real story starts with us — the people who inherited this remarkable system but forgot how to use it. We’ve created a vacuum, and corporate America hasn’t wasted a second filling it.
Here’s what most Americans don’t realize: The general election is just the final act in a play that’s already been cast. By the time November rolls around, corporations have already picked their performers. They’ve selected both leads — one wearing a red tie, one blue — but they’re reading from the same script. The real power lies in the primaries, where barely anyone shows up to audition new talent.
Think about it. When was the last time you voted in a primary? If you’re like most Americans, you might not even remember. That’s exactly what corporate interests are banking on.
The numbers tell a staggering story. Policies that 80% of Americans support — across party lines — can’t get passed because they conflict with corporate interests. Even more shocking? Ninety percent of Americans believe corporate campaign donations corrupt our political system. Yet here we are, watching the same play, cycle after cycle.
The media won’t tell you this. They can’t. They’re part of the same corporate ecosystem that profits from the status quo. Every “debate” you watch is theater if no one mentions who’s funding the actors. It’s like watching a sports match without knowing both teams are owned by the same person.
But here’s the part that should make you sit up straight: We outnumber the elites ten thousand to one. Ten thousand to one. Let that sink in.
We’re not just talking about abstract political theory. There’s already a drafted 28th Amendment that would criminalize private money in public elections. But you won’t hear about it in the news. Why? Because it would pass in a heartbeat if people knew about it.
Think about this absurdity: In any other profession — law, medicine, education — accepting bribes is a crime that could land you in prison. But in politics? It’s not just legal; it’s practically a job requirement. The better you are at accepting “campaign contributions” (let’s call them what they are: bribes), the higher you can climb.
The solution isn’t complicated, but it requires something from you — something more than just showing up in November. It requires showing up when it really counts: during primary season. This is where real change begins.
Imagine walking into a voting booth and feeling genuinely excited about your choices. Imagine candidates who refuse corporate money because they answer to you, not shareholders. This isn’t a fantasy — it’s what happens when we show up for primaries.
The corporations are betting you won’t read this far. They’re betting you’ll maybe feel angry and then forget about it by tomorrow. They’re betting that come primary season, you’ll be too busy, too tired, or too cynical to show up.
Prove them wrong.
Your primary vote is the most powerful political tool you have. It’s more powerful than any protest sign, social media post, or November ballot. It’s the one thing they can’t buy — if you use it.
The next primary season is coming. Mark it on your calendar. Set an alarm. Tell your friends. Because this isn’t just about politics — it’s about who controls our lives.
Remember: By the time the general election arrives, the real decisions have already been made. The choices have been pre-selected. The deals have been struck. Unless we show up in the primaries, we’re just picking between two corporate-approved options.
We have the numbers. We have the power. What we need now is the will to use it.
Are you ready to take back your democracy? It starts with a promise to yourself: “I will vote in the next primary election.” Share this message. Make it go viral. Force this conversation into the mainstream.
Because if we don’t show up for the primaries, we’re not just missing an election — we’re missing our chance to break corporate America’s grip on our democracy as well as our lives.
The choice is ours. But remember: They’re counting on our silence. They’re counting on our absence. They’re counting on business as usual.
Prove them wrong. Show up when it counts. Vote in your primary.
Perhaps it partially starts with commenting here and sharing this post and other posts like this one to levels of going crazy viral.
We can’t be ignored when it’s over ten thousand of us to every one of them, and 4 of us per every 1 of MAGA, unless we allow us to be ignored. Which we have, so far. Let’s draw a line in the proverbial sand and change that. Perhaps with a simple share and comment on posts like this we can force our collective voice into the mainstream. Social media has driven conversations that the media has had to reckon with before. We can do it again.
Let’s not give them our silence or our surrender to their chosen status quo.
Show up when it counts. Vote in your primary. This is how we beat both the ELITES and most of all MAGA, in one shot. MAGA needs to become irrelevant otherwise America will become unrecoverable at some point.
The greatest threat to the great idea of Equality and Justice for everyone is either MAGA, or it’s the rest of us who neglect showing up in the primary to defeat maga and render them permanently irrelevant.