Shortly after the 2024 presidential election, I dreamed a dream. I was on a sidewalk in what appeared to be a seedy part of town. Weeds were pushing through sidewalk cracks. Volunteer bushes were brushing up against the gigantic wall next to me. I was standing beside a tall building, and it looked as if someone had spray painted the entire façade, windows and door facings included, the same drab green color.
The door was unlocked, so I walked in. Jungle cats prowled the halls (dreams are weird) but since they paid me no mind, I kept walking. Eventually, I found myself in the center of a large banquet room. White-uniformed workers were pulling sheets from blackjack tables, roulette wheels and all manner of casino paraphernalia.
Alan Bean
“This place was crammed to the gills back in the day,” one of the workers informed me, “but we closed down when the owner was indicted for prostitution and racketeering. Then, just last week, all the charges were dropped and we’re back in business!”
That’s when I woke up.
Voting for Trump is an audacious act
Given Donald Trump’s investments in an unholy host of Atlantic City casinos between 1995 and 2014, the association between MAGA politics and a gambling enterprise is hardly surprising. Trump’s casinos all went belly up in the end, but he walked away with a handsome profit. It was his investors who lost their shirts. Gamblers always do.
“The 77,302,169 Americans who returned Trump to the White House are investing in a failed enterprise.”
The 77,302,169 Americans who returned Trump to the White House are investing in a failed enterprise. They are risking everything on the word of a seasoned grifter.
A vote for the Lord of Mar-a-Lago is an audacious act.
It involves forgetting about, or misremembering, January 6.
It means forgetting about, or embracing, election denialism.
It involves forgetting about, or misconstruing, all those criminal convictions and all those outstanding indictments.
It requires that one forget about, or simply deny, Trump’s criminal mishandling of the COVID epidemic.
It means stopping your ears when veterans of Trump’s first administration refused to back his 2024 campaign.
It involves ignoring the verdict in Trump’s sexual assault case, the two dozen women who have accused him of sexual misconduct since 2016, and the comical sleaze of his public persona.
Casting a vote for Trump is a particularly brazen act for white evangelical Christians.
When the guardians of our national morality embrace a creature this vile, an explanation is called for. Post-election studies indicate 88% of self-identified white evangelicals who are regular worship attenders cast ballots for Trump in 2024.
The fear of being wrong
In Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon, Charlie, a young man with an IQ of 68, is injected with a new wonder drug that triples his intelligence. After a few weeks of university study, Charlie makes a startling discovery: “One of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true.”
“White evangelical Christians live in fear that all the things they have ever believed aren’t true.”
White evangelical Christians live in fear that all the things they have ever believed aren’t true. That’s why they placed all their chips on Trump and rolled the dice.
We must dig deeper
2024 was a rough year for political incumbents across the globe. People are still reeling from the COVID epidemic. Traumatized by high gas and grocery prices, they fear the country is moving in the wrong direction. While true, these conventional explanations never scratch below the surface.
Women voted pretty much in 2024 the way they voted in the previous election. Suburban college-educated voters substantially increased their support for Democrats. The strong Trumpward shift in the electorate was a nationwide phenomenon, but it was largely confined to working-class white and Hispanic males without a college degree, especially those in small-town and rural America.
The most significant divide in American politics is between Black Protestants, who cast 86% of their votes for Kamala Harris, and white evangelicals, 85% of whom sided with Trump.
Black Protestants have been every bit as traumatized by inflation and the COVID epidemic as any other demographic, but they didn’t blame the Biden-Harris administration for their woes. If we want to understand what drives white Trump voters, we must dig deeper.
The way it was
When I was born in 1953, 8.3% of men and 5.8% of women were college graduates. By 2022, 36.2% of men and 39% of women held at least one degree. The theory that people attend college to “learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true,” might be a bit overstated, but students are forced to reconsider basic assumptions. Even if you reject much of what you are taught, you gain a respect for facts and evidence.
When I was born in 1953, the expectation was that men were the primary breadwinners and most women stayed home until the children were in school.
In high school history classes, the emphasis was placed on the glorious expansion of the American project. Issues like chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation and the tragic fate of America’s indigenous peoples were either ignored or mentioned in passing with a brief sigh of regret.
With few exceptions, the LGBTQ population was closeted and gay marriage was fodder for locker room humor.
In the year of my birth, inter-racial marriage was too scandalous for polite conversation.
Most Americans attended church, and religious skeptics kept their curious opinions to themselves.
“A little cultural diversity was fine, so long as everyone knew who was in charge.”
In 1953, the economy was exploding and consumer capitalism was hailed as the primary driver of progress. The sky was the limit.
In 1953, 89.5% of Americans were white. A little cultural diversity was fine, so long as everyone knew who was in charge.
Everything has changed
That world is gone. Beliefs that once seemed radical, even scandalous, are now regarded as uncontested truth, especially in elite communities where almost everyone has at least one college degree.
Gay marriage is established law, and those who wish it weren’t so are derided as bigots. Life continues to be difficult for LGBTQ persons in rural communities, but in most urban settings (especially among the young) same-sex relationships have been normalized.
More women than men are graduating from college, and this applies in particular to the Black and Hispanic slices of the demographic pie.
In 2023, 29% of wives earned more than their husbands, a trend that should grow in coming years.
Within the halls of academe, America’s racial history is lamented as an unmitigated tragedy. In mainstream venues, those who oppose this new consensus must self-censor.
The American population is now just 58% white, and it is estimated that fewer than 50% of American citizens will be white in 2045.
A strong consensus within the scientific community associates rapid industrialization, and the bounties of consumer capitalism, with an unsustainable rise in global temperature.
The buzz of being at the table
If you are a white, evangelical, working-class male with a high school education, every aspect of this emerging consensus likely scares you to death. If elite opinion is right, then, as Charlie put it in Flowers for Algernon, “the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true.” Almost everyone in your social world lives in the grip of this fear.
Now, suppose a politician arrives on the scene who assures you that everything you ever believed is true. Suppose he heaps contempt on anyone who says differently and appears to revel in the backlash. Would your community subject this man’s opinions to careful scrutiny?
“Suppose a politician arrives on the scene who assures you that everything you ever believed is true.”
J. Gordon Liddy, the mastermind behind the Watergate burglary of 1972, used to impress subordinates by holding his hand over a flame. When someone asked, “What’s the trick?” Liddy would respond, “The trick is not minding.”
Donald Trump doesn’t mind if the cognoscenti write him off as an imbecile. In fact, “not minding” is part of his game. “Look,” he tells his rapt followers, “those morons hate me as much as they hate you, so I must be right!”
People invested in Trump’s ill-fated casinos in Atlantic City because he promised to make them rich. Now the president-elect is telling people vulnerable people everything they ever believed is big-league true. “Stick with me,” he says, “and you’ll get tired of being right all the time.”
Trump always wins; his backers always lose.
For the gambling addict, the payoff isn’t winning; it’s the buzz you get from being at the table. Trump’s marks understand they are probably being lied to. That’s OK because the buzz comes from being at the table.
Even when everything comes crashing down — as it inevitably will — Trump’s people will be careful to give him all the glory and the praise, world without end, amen.
Alan Bean leads Friends of Justice based in Fort Worth, Texas, where he is a member of Broadway Baptist Church.
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