Trump's love letters to MAGA: Campaign emails forge a cult bond

Trump's love letters to MAGA: Campaign emails forge a cult bond
Trump campaign emails have become quite phallic and psychosexual

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED MARCH 22, 2024 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) When I think about Donald Trump, I usually visualize Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes, Andy Griffith’s character in Elia Kazan’s 1957 film “A Face in the Crowd.” Rhodes is a master manipulator, the embodiment of the wrongness of mass media and consumerism, and a fake populist everyman.

But Donald Trump is also many other things. Like other fascist leaders, demagogues, and “great men of history” he is a symbol more than a human being. For his MAGA people and other followers, Trump is a messiah. He is a force for vengeance and destruction. And as I have explained before, he is also their teacher, preacher, father figure and a type of lover.

....(snip)....

In this recent fundraising email, which is quite phallic and psychosexual, Trump speaks about how he somehow felt the MAGA love grow “ten times stronger!”:



....(snip)....

Ultimately, Trump’s use of fake love is a way for him to manipulate his followers and their deep need for validation, meaning, affirmation, community, and belonging in a society where loneliness and social atomization are a public health emergency. As others have observed, Trump’s political rallies fulfill that function as a type of church tent revival, traveling roadshow carnival, and fascist family reunion and bacchanal. .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/03/22/love-letters-to-maga-campaign-emails-forge-a-bond/