Validation of their feelings and a return to a mythologized past. Try having a reasoned political discussion with someone like this:

Well back in my day things were just better. America was the best and we didn’t have to apologize for that. And the blacks and mexicans and what not didn’t complain so damn much because folks were wired different back then and there wasn’t nothin to complain about. Chuck Berry. You know Chuck Berry? Greatest rock and roller of all time and he was colored. Didn’t nobody have anything to say about it, he was just damned good at guitar. Now the kids - black kids - listen to all sorts of damnable noise and them from the cities in gangs shooting each other up and corrupting good white kids in the small towns and suburbs getting them into drugs. We’ll be lucky if we dont end up like another Chicago. And they whine and complain about racism, but we had a black president and look how that turned out. Granted he was a muslim and not even a citizen, but try tellin them that. I mean hell look at what Hillary did to all them folks at Benghazi - just let them muslims kill all of em, probably wouldn’t have been politically correct to fight back. Dumb broad even wrote it all down - the emails. Had her dead to rights - she should’ve hanged but thats what you get when you have all those corrupt democrat senators in charge of the kangaroo court. And those democrat cities just keep letting illegals stay because they know they’ll vote democrat - they don’t care how many of them are raping and murdering women and kids long as they get their votes. Not even just the mexicans anymore, you got those communist gangs from venezuela taking over whole apartment complexes and the defunded police can’t do anything about it. You know something was wrong with that Biden election - not just illegals voting but I saw on Fox that they were sending out whole reams of mail-in ballots to blacks and college kids and what have you. And then they take all the conservative ballots and conveniently lose boxes of them. Maybe Elon’s going to fix it now since he knows all about those voting machines. Liberals voting for dead people too, but that’s been on the news since Bush - I don’t know why nobody does anything about that. Now you know what’s really racist is planned parenthood - nobody hates babies, especially black babies, as much as planned parenthood. They kill more black babies than anything and the demonrats just keep convincing folks that its OK. Makes me sick that we kill hundreds of thousands of babies every year and i dont care what color they are. You know another thing? We knew which bathroom to use - we figured out a genius method. I’ll tell you: drop your drawers and look down. Then you’ll know. And you’ll know if you should be on a mens or womens track team and if you should wear dresses. It’s probably because all the kids have autism from the vaccines these days - now I guess they’re mutants because of that COVID mRNA vaccine too - but not me. No sir. I’ll stick with the DNA god gave me. That’s probably why all the boys think they’re girls now. Or cats and try to piss in litterboxes at school. People knew who and what they were once. They knew their place, worked hard, and didn’t complain. Now if we can just get Trump in for a few more terms then he’ll set everything straight and get rid of all those regulations so I can afford eggs again.

That is roughly paraphrased from my parents, grandparents, other family, some senile guy at the grocery store who wouldn’t stop telling the cashier about Chuck Berry, etc. They don’t have rational political goals, usually. These folks are genuinely operating on an entirely separate set of facts and assumptions to us. Their brains are co-opted by decades of counterfactual propagandized conspiracy theories, which are too numerous and ingrained to easily disabuse them of. They are faced with an increasingly complex world and are constantly told versions of events that are terrifying or disgusting to them and spoonfed the solution: fascism, piece by piece, until you get MAGA.

They will 100% sacrifice their own happiness and rights if they know it’s hurting people who live their lives is ways they don’t like.

This isn’t an exaggeration.

I’ve wondered this exact question. How does any of this evil fascist shit benefit the average Trump voter.

Trade tariffs just make things like durable goods more expensive.

Deporting migrant workers is going to make food more expensive.

Killing all references to Trans people doesn’t do anything but hurt the Trans folks.

Killing all references to climate change is just going to eventually destroy the whole planet (well just our existence on it… the planet will be fine eventually).

Killing the Dept of Education is just going to make us all dumber.

DOGE is just a meme dept whose soul purpose seems to be to let Elon enact his revenge.

RFK2 gets in charge of all the countries medicine and vaccines and bans it all just in time for Pandemic 2, Electric Boogaloo.

So basically things get a lot more expensive, the rich get richer, lots of people die, and the world becomes a generally more shitty place. Yay!!! Let’s Go Brandon!!

Remember that they accurately believed the DNC were horrible. They stopped Hillary. They stopped Biden and Harris. Good for them? Kinda, not really though.

… We know Trump is worse. Far worse. But they saw a legitimate threat, a group of people who were not going to make their lives better, and they took some kind of action to stop them.

And then lots of bigotry. Can’t forget that.

if you ask a hundred of them…

you will get a hundred different answers.

they voted because it made them feel good and addressed their anger. not for any rational reasons. it’s why they are so surprised at what is going on.

they had NO IDEA what they were voting for or why they were voting.

They don’t all agree on anything. Logic and reason aren’t part of the requirements for MAGA.

Revenge. 🤷‍♂️

Check r/conservative and you get a fair idea.

I assume it’s “Sending all the foreigners back to where they came from” (even if they came from the US). Anyone who doesn’t look, think, act or speak like them have to go so they can live in the utopia they think it will be once they’ve all gone.

Hurting their perceived enemies.

“We made people we don’t like fucking miserable for a bit”

Ultimately the kind of person that goes all in on a cult like MAGA could lose everything to shitty policy or because their great leader started a war or smth – But they’ll still reason it was worth it because all those <Slur>s were put in their place.

“Look in his eyes, it’s all lies. The stars after v be stripes have been swiped, washed out and wiped and replaced with his own face”

It was written about W but I think it applies again

They want you to suffer. Their lives are miserable, and their media has taught them that it’s YOUR fault. So now they want you to suffer.

Hint: the reason it’s this way is that the elite control the media. If you’re fighting with your financial equals on the other side, then both sides aren’t getting together to fight the rich.

I personally think it’s like a short circuit in the brain’s reward circuit or something. If you can convince people that what they are doing is achieving a greater good, they will do an endless amount of evil in order to achieve it.

Those that wake up from this delusion often end up being horrified at their own actions.

It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway:

If you are anticipating being enriched by the suffering of others, you are not in the right.

There is no more consensus about anything between MAGA people than there is among the left. People are individuals and they have different values. Voting for a party/candidate doesn’t mean they agree on everything. There’s likely greater differences in views and values within the groups than between them.