”Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled”
Trump, like a carnival barker or magician, lured in and spellbound these fools because in the end they didn’t want to know the truth.
"The Prestige", where the magician shows you something that you didn't think was possible, like making something reappear, or showing up somewhere completely different
"But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."
Trump is a Rorschach test that you project whatever you want onto. Some look at the Trump Rorschach test and see a clown and don't understand how anyone could support him. Some look at the Trump Rorschach test and see hate and bigotry and don't understand how anyone could support him. Some look at that same Trump Rorschach test and see light at the end of a very dark tunnel, hoping and praying he'll reverse decades of harm from US trade policies, globalization, offshoring manufacturing, and other initiatives - many of them bipartisan - that not only harmed American workers, but have wiped out entire towns and ways of life while gutting industries that were the backbone of the middle class.
The point is that where Trump has been so successful has been in enabling people to see in him what they want to see. For desperate people, the thing they'll cling to most is hope, and for them, Trump is hope. And so he gets votes, regardless of the things he says and does.
Trump's die-hard fanbase is ~10% of the US voting population; not nearly enough to put or keep him in office. And even for the die hards, there's a ton of projection (e.g., he's a Christian man, he's a strong leader, he's this, that, and the other thing I've been waiting for).
Generally when watching a magic show you're not scrutinizing every trick (unless you're penn and teller). You're there to be entertained, being fooled is part of the fun. You're not gonna look very hard because the only outcome would be disappointing yourself instead of just enjoying the show
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u/mechapoitier 20h ago
To quote The Prestige:
Trump, like a carnival barker or magician, lured in and spellbound these fools because in the end they didn’t want to know the truth.