Cognitive Dissonance, John Bolton, the "Best People" Fallacy and the Cult of Donald Trump

“Very stable genius” Donald Trump famously vowed to hire only “the best people” yet by his own account, many, if not most of the people Trump picked for some of the most powerful positions in the country, if not the world, are incompetent, dim-witted, widely mocked and reviled losers he only gave a chance out of a Christ-like sense of compassion after they prostrated themselves before him and begged for a job. 

By Trump’s reasoning, his biggest problem is that his heart is just too damn big. He cares just too damn much, gosh darn it, He’s always not only willing, but eager, to grant a broken-down, pathetic loser a chance to maybe make something out of himself by giving him a job like Secretary of State or National Security Advisor. 

John Bolton is the latest prominent former Trump appointee to be not only publicly and lustily attacked by the President, on Twitter of course, but elsewhere as well, after he wrote a tell-all book with all manner of damning revelations involving his former boss. Bolton joins Omarosa, Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, Stephen Bannon and many more in falling violently out of Trump’s favor. 

Doesn’t Trump realize just how bad these deeply personal, vitriolic attacks on his former employees make him look? One of the most important aspects of any presidency is hiring the right people for the job. Abraham Lincoln famously had his “team of rivals.” Trump, in sharp contrast, has a preponderance of half-wits, a confederacy of dunces, a gaggle of half-wits all conspiring darkly against blameless, saintly Donald Trump for their own sinister purposes. Like scheming contestants on reality shows, these traitors are NEVER in it for the right reasons, the right reasons of course being to serve Trump’s ego and sense of himself as a Churchill-like statesman. 

By his own admission, much of Trump’s cabinet has historically been made up of pity hires the president only made because he felt sorry for the various losers and failures and haters he decided to give some of the most important and powerful jobs in government. 

To me the cognitive dissonance involved in Trump simultaneously bragging constantly about being the greatest president of all time while while portraying so many of the crucial figures in his administration as clueless dullards who owe their positions to Trump’s infinite kindness is so vast that it’s impossible to either ignore or reconcile. 

How could Trump be one of our greatest presidents if, by his own repeated admission, he completely fucked up one of the most important parts of the job: hiring the right people for the job, not losers, failures and bitter wannabes he couldn’t wait to verbally eviscerate the moment they leave Trump World?

Yet Trump followers seemingly have no problem buying the notion that Trump is a leader of historic greatness and a peerless manager who just so happens to repeatedly hire people for key cabinet slots he secretly or not so secretly thinks are idiots, cowards, back-stabbers and secret Democrats.

When Trump insists that Bolton is now the anti-Christ, his followers don’t ask why Trump hired him in the first place; instead they turn on him with great fury and anger, because their devotion to their Glorious Leader is always going to be greater than their lukewarm feelings about the bloodless bureaucrats of the mainstream Republican party. 

Within the context of politics, the blind devotion and willful ignorance of Trump supporters feels both perplexing and maddening. Within the context of cults, however, it makes all the sense in the world. 

And what is Trump if not the leader of a massive Cult of Personality? When someone leaves a cult or speaks against the cult or writes a book about their experiences with the cult, they instantly and invariably become an enemy of the cult who must be destroyed or discredited or sabotaged before they hurt the cult as a whole. 

It reminds me of an episode of the new Twilight Zone about a cynical political operative who gets an eleven year old Youtube star elected President. The operative assumes, naturally, that after getting elected the boy will serve as a charismatic figurehead while adults handle the serious, grown-up business of running the country

He’s shocked and horrified to discover that once the boy has been elected ostensibly responsible, mature adults begin treating him like the duly elected President of the United States instead of an obnoxious brat who became the Commander in Chief due to a cosmic fluke and the ignorance and stupidity of the American people. 

They do so out of self-preservation, primarily, so they will not be cast out of the circle of power by a petulant child but everything about them—their body language, facial expressions, their tone of voice—conveys that they have drunk the Kool-Aid and now regard their pre-pubescent boss as a legitimate ruler whose will must be respected, even if it’s the childish whims of a spoiled little kid. 

That’s Trump world in a nutshell: the boy emperor is always right and always wise, even when he appoints people he later derides publicly as fools and charlatans. The fact that he’s able to achieve so much in the eyes of his followers despite being undermined at every turn by saboteurs only makes him more impressive to myopic cultists for whom he can do no wrong and the angrily discarded Boltons of the world can do nothing right.  

Help ensure a future for The Happy Place by pledging over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace/merch

AND of course you can, and SHOULD buy my new book, The Weird Accordion to Al, over at https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Accordion-Al-Obsessively-Co-Author/dp/1658788478/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=weird+accordion+to+al&qid=1580402949&sr=8-1