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Describing the enthusiasm for Trump as a personality cult I think misses why he's popular.
He's hated as are his supporters by blue tribe. That he's hated by his supporters opponents makes him attractive. The red tribers that hate him get labeled as RINO, uniparty would likely be a better description.
Voting for Trump is the protest vote for those wanting to see the Uniparty burn.
I mean, in the top post I said the following:
"Negative partisanship is the driving force in American politics more than anything else, and Trump's ability to make liberals seethe apparently earned him so much goodwill that Republicans will vote for him no matter how many elections he loses."
This gets at your point. I'd say it's basically a personality cult built around maximizing outgroup hatred.
He was this in 2016, but the landscape has shifted since then. It'd be great to have someone who's against the Uniparty with words on Twitter like Trump was... but also who'd follow through with actual policy actions.
Its not maximizing outgroup hatred. Its establishment hatred.
There are tons of people who switched to supporting Trump who would have backed Ron Paul, or Bernie Sanders despite the three not overlapping in policy at all.
OP said he was worried Trump would "Break America" There are tens of millions who are just voting for whatever they think will make America break.
Lots of Americans would support basically anyone to rule the US as long as the first thing they did was put DC to the sword and Harvard to the torch.
This is a distinction without a difference. Trump's base (and many others!) hates "the establishment"... because they think it's controlled by their outgroup.
Agree on the "many Americans want to put DC to the torch", but that's simply because negative partisanship and media negativity bias creates a picture of a terrible amorphous political class that people love to rage against without concrete proposals for how to make it better.
Put DC to the Sword is a concrete policy proposal, dissolve the Union, destroy the political class, and make America 50 independent states.
Balkanization would be terrible, as it would almost certainly lead to foreign meddling and violence breaking out between states like it was a jumbo-sized Yugoslavia.
No reasonable person thinks this would be a good idea. It's shortsighted toxoplasma in its most extreme form.
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