One of my core contradictions is that I profess to believe in empathy for all, and the importance of radical tolerance, but have a very difficult time putting this into practice. At one and the same time, I reject as dangerous the sentiment I so often see expressed by left wingers that all of T*ump’s voters must be comprehensively rejected, that friendships, romance, family connections and even tolerant coexistence are verboten; yet I am so righteously furious with all of them, that I ridicule them at every turn, disparage them as ignorant fools at best and slavering fascists at worst. I have not communicated in any form with my full MAGA aunt for years, and have little interest in ever communicating with her again, though we were never close in the first place. But my responses to her posts back when I was on Facebook likely severed that tie forever.

I struggle with this contradiction a great deal. Intellectually, I do not fault all of his voters for their support. I have long been an outspoken believer in the need to step outside of our superficial partisan divisions to find common ground from which we can work together on the major problems of our time. Climate change, to me, is the big example. We won’t be able to respond effectively if we don’t do it together, period. So far human beings are failing spectacularly in this regard, and if it continues as it has been, we will all suffer the worst of the potential consequences—and the poorest people will suffer first and most.

But, as LGBTQ people will often point out, you can’t compromise with people who want you dead. I find this to be a painfully convincing argument. Even though I have major disputes with the manner in which transgender activists have pressed their case in recent years, it is impossible to deny that theirs is an existential cause, or as close as makes no difference.

There is, however, a readily identifiable fallacy here, that I think can provide some guidance. Though our two-party system forces nearly all of us to join one of two sprawling, incoherently broad ideological camps, when we vote—unless we choose to throw our votes away on some impossible third-party candidacy or hapless protest—this bifurcation need not distort our understanding of the smaller groups within the parties.

The 2020 Nationscape survey was a massive poll—of nearly half a million American voters after the 2020 election—that resulted in a more nuanced understanding of the beliefs and values of the electorate than offered by the D/R binary. That survey resulted in six identifiable political subgroups along the left-right spectrum, three on the left and three on the right. It’s a fascinating survey, and the basis for this provocative opinion piece from the New York Times, detailing what proportional representation might look like in the United States and how we could achieve it. For the record, at this point, I don’t believe we will survive as a nation if we do not adopt this approach to our self-government.

In the spirit of that, but mostly to help me differentiate my approach toward different types of people, for the sake of my own sanity and my personal values, I present my views on the Four Types of T*ump Voters and How to Deal With Them.

Moving from left to right…

THE IGNORANT MIDDLE

Ignorant does not mean stupid, or evil, or weird. It means without knowledge. It is the normal state of human life. Here are a couple of quick facts:

Around 35% of American adults have Bachelor’s Degrees.

And according to a Fox News press release from December, the Fox News Channel “closed out December with its highest cable news share for the month in network history across all categories.” The statement—remember, they’re boasting here—goes on to explain: “Across primetime, FNC commanded 2.1 million viewers and 240,000 in the 25-54 demo accounting for 71% of the cable news audience and in total day the network secured 1.5 million viewers and 178,000 in the 25-54 demo, marking 68% of the cable news audience.”

The 2.1 million figure is the average viewership at night (“primetime”) for the month; the “total day” figure of 1.5 million viewers, as you might guess, is for the entire day, including primetime.

So, two things. One, if we take the rate of college attainment as a rough measure of “being educated,” nearly two-thirds of American adults are not educated. Two, as far as the notion that T*ump voters are “all just sitting around watching Fox News all day,” which is an oft-repeated explanation for right-wing ignorance, this is manifestly, comically false. While the Fox News Channel is not the only source for Fox News, the larger point is that voter’s media consumption patterns are much different from what we assume they are.

The voters of the “Ignorant Middle,” in fact, pay very little attention to news of any kind. They don’t read newspapers in print or online, they don’t watch TV news, and the “news” they see on the internet generally come to them via social media, bereft of context or any special authority, and which might be outright false or heavily biased, and may not come from a news organization or even a journalist, at all. Much of it is second or third hand, and then they have little time and less incentive to find out whether what they’ve seen is true in any sense. Algorithms have only one purpose in this context, which is to use whatever means available to keep people on the site, scrolling and seeing advertisements. It’s well understood that appealing to user’s emotions, particularly their outrage, is the most effective way to do this.

But why don’t they try harder to get the facts?

The group we are talking about does not have the time or the patience to sort through all of these complicated things. They are working and raising families, living paycheck to paycheck, running up huge credit bills to cover the gaps, highly vulnerable to the wild swings of the economy. High gas prices hurt their bottom line every day, as do high prices at the grocery store, usurious credit card and bank fees, and our rapacious and predatory healthcare system. In the latter category, I don’t just mean the obscene costs of healthcare, but the open-air conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies, the federal government and physicians to addict chronic pain patients to opioids (such as OxyContin and fentanyl), knowing that many of them would die. That may sound paranoid, but it’s now a matter of public record.

Also in this group are many people of color and non-white ethnicities, who have all of the above problems, as well as additional systemic burdens. It can be deadly to simply be Black in America. Immigrants, too, struggle in many ways that are often incomprehensible to native born Americans. And American Indians have the worst outcomes of any population by all measures.

Also in this group, are young people—students and newly-minted professionals—who got a degree, because they were assured it was a ticket to the middle class, who can’t find work in their field, or buy a house, or afford any of the finer things their parents had, or obtain credit. Many young people, even college graduates, are deeply ignorant when it comes to basic civics and simply have never learned how to distinguish between factual news reporting and propaganda, or even understand the traditional difference between news and opinion.

So how do we deal with this cohort of T*ump voters?

Empathy, compassion, patience, education and humility. We have failed them as educators and as highly-trained professionals, as public servants, as employers, as health care providers—in short, in every possible way. The price of eggs and gas matters. From their perspective, the government and the educated elite are useless to them unless they address the actual issues they face. And we emphatically do not.

These are basically good people. They do not vote for him because they want to hurt anyone. They vote for him because they are desperate for a change, anything that has a chance of helping them in their daily lives. This is perfectly rational, by the way. Ignorant, but rational.

THE SELFISH, CYNICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ELITES

The political and professional class of the Republican Party. These people are wealthy or on their way to being wealthy, and vote for one reason: to protect and enrich themselves and their own class. They are the Republicans of Congress, business executives, lawyers, Wall Street managers and many, many others—don’t get me started on Big Church. They loathe Trump as a person, but they see him as a highly useful idiot who will do everything he can to make them richer and prevent everybody else in society from attaining personal wealth or even a foothold in the middle class. They are the Tom-Wolfian “Masters of the Universe,” and they control our country. They are the tech billionaires, who have destroyed our public discourse, our mental health, our political consciousness, our unity, for their own gain. They run Big Pharma, Big Ag and Big Oil. They are deliberately and with malice aforethought destroying our environment so they can get rich.

T*ump himself is nominally one of this class. His own self-loathing is readily apparent in everything he says and does. He desperately wants to be accepted by this club and their failure to accept him is the greatest wound in his life. He’s taking it out, ironically, on everyone else.

How to deal with this cohort? This is an easy one.

Absolute, undistilled, unwavering contempt. Resistance, courage, protest, democracy and art. Solidarity and refusal. No quarter given. Ever.

MAGA

But wait, aren’t they all MAGA? No. MAGA is a cult with a charismatic leader who demands perfect loyalty and capitulation. It is an intricately but poorly assembled, ugly facade of pure stupidity and lies. To be MAGA, you can be from any of these other groups, including even being a former Democrat. MAGA is not politics. It’s a new religious ideology based on a hermetic false reality. It is a cesspool, through the looking glass. An Upside Down, stranger than anything. An Orwellian desert where poor, deluded fools stumble behind a shining orange pillar of burning feces. A MAGA hat doesn’t make you MAGA. You must first remove your brain.

Avoidance, contempt, pity.

LITERAL FASCISTS

T*ump may admire fascist dictators, but he lacks the discipline and ideological coherence to be one. He is merely a self-dealing, hypocritical, racist, predatory, lying sack of shit—and an accelerant for actual fascists. I’m talking about the pathetic little boys and girls, but mostly boys, in face masks and matching jackets and jackboots, who wield swastikas and torches, and speak openly of murdering, basically, anyone, but especially every conceivable group that is not them.

Now, I believe firmly in free speech and the right to assemble. Hate speech is free speech. That is what our Constitution requires, and I believe that is what liberal democracy requires, and I will defend even the most wretched, deranged fascist’s right to speak.

However. Unlike most people, I do not automatically repudiate political violence. After all, what would the United States be without political violence? We would still have a King. Right now. The solution to this is the only thing the fascists and I can agree on.

So how do we deal with them—the second they stop merely speaking?

Blunt objects. If that doesn’t work, sharp objects. If that doesn’t work, small, supersonic chunks of metal. We crush them, with extreme prejudice.

Hope this helps! Happy 2025!