The Impossibility of Answering "Why?"
Past Remembering, Past Forgetting

ELIZABETH GEORGE
Feb 26, 2026

Although the numbers are dwindling, there are still people in America who support Donald Trump, finding it impossible to turn away from him, as if he were a male Gorgon and they the result of having looked into his eyes.

I understand why the GOP Senators and Representatives slavishly demonstrate their devotion to him, jumping to their feet at the State of the Union, each one of them desperate to be the first to applaud him. They have come to believe that he represents not only their future but also their entire existence. They have come to believe that, without him, they are nothing. They have seen others fall who have stood in his way. They have heard his contemptuous remarks about them; they have cringed at the humiliating nicknames with which he has anointed them. They know that only their cheers and applause—indeed, their untiring sycophancy—can keep them safe. They have decided that they have no life that is not in some way approved by him. He has become their god who promises an afterlife of complete obscurity if they do not serve him in the way he demands.

What I have difficulty understanding is the ordinary people—in no way connected to an elected office—who continue to believe what he claimed years ago when he decided to run for President: “Only I can fix it.” The truth is right before their eyes. Donald Trump has fixed nothing. He can certainly put on a good show of fixing by allowing masked and armed “agents” of the government to drag people from cars, to imprison them in foreign countries, to force them out of restaurants, hospitals, shopping malls, parking lots, schools, and bus stops, all in the name of “getting rid of illegals.” He can certainly put on a good show of fixing by taking into his Cabinet people who talk a good game—just as he does—but improve nothing. He can certainly put on a good show of fixing by threatening the invasion of other countries, by alienating longtime allies, by withholding money from disaster areas, by turning a blind eye to wartime suffering. He can certainly put on a good show of fixing by declaring that tariffs are making the country rich-rich-rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams while all along Americans are paying for them. Indeed, he was a showman before he was anything else, playing the role of a billionaire businessman when he’d failed with every business venture he’d attempted.

I think I finally understand the blind devotion of at least some of these individuals toward Donald Trump, however. I think their devotion to him gives them a purpose. In the words of R. F. Kuang, “…it had always been so easy. She never had to think. He raged and she followed, blind and unquestioning, because marveling at his purpose was simpler than coming up with one of her own.” If people cling to the neon god that is Donald Trump, that in itself becomes their purpose. Indeed, they don’t have to do a single thing because people without a real purpose in their lives are essentially empty vessels and Donald Trump is there to fill them up.

They’re transfixed by him. They are inundated daily by what he says, what he does, what he thinks, whom he insults, whom he attacks. And when they are not giving him the last full measure of their attention, they are giving it to his acolytes on television, YouTube, and in podcasts. This makes them part of a community and, as we are social animals, this acceptance into a fold of fellow believers reassures them that they need not fear anything because anything that they might with good reason fear has been declared a hoax and anything they might not understand is something that can be easily explained if they watch the correct news programs on television or online.

There exist among us people who don’t want to know the truth because in the words of Jack Nicholson, they “can’t handle the truth.” When the truth is revealed and the fact are laid bare in front of these people, they look away because if they look directly at either the truth or the facts, their silence and inaction marks them as adherents to whatever evil might be done by the monstrous individual they worship.

These people do not want to acknowledge that the man to whom they’ve given their lives, their souls, and their purpose is a sexual predator, a rapist, and a pedophile. They can’t look at the myriad ways he’s cheated, swindled, and extorted people in order to force them to do his bidding. They do not allow themselves to see his greed, to acknowledge the rank absurdity of his claims to greatness, to consider how puerile are his demands for and acceptance of awards manufactured solely to give him a sense of achievement when he has actually achieved nothing save destruction, harm, and chaos.

Donald Trump’s most stalwart supporters will—let us face it squarely—never turn their eyes away from him because they cannot turn their eyes away from him. He has become not only their male Gorgon but also their everything. That they have thrown away their lives to worship at the altar of someone who looks upon them without the slightest regard for their welfare is not only their tragedy, however. The longer they continue down this path, the greater is the risk that their tragedy becomes ours.

© 2026 Elizabeth George
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104