The fantasy of Trump: I’m trying to figure out why people I know voted for him

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“The Little Match Girl” by Hans Christian Andersen is a dark fairy tale with a cautionary message. In the story, a little girl has been cast out by her father with nothing but matches to sell. People pass her on the street but no one buys the matches.  

Cold and desperate, she lights the matches. In each flame, she sees a fantasy, and they are so intriguing to her that she watches them all night instead of seeking food and shelter. In the morning she is found frozen to death. The story critiques her community for not helping her and illuminates a childlike trap — getting caught in fantasy and doing nothing. 

Damn it, America, Donald Trump is a fantasy, and the longer we stare at him and believe his lies, the closer we all get to dying like frogs in boiling water.  

Strongman rule is a common fantasy during hard times, according to Timothy Snyder, a Yale University history professor and Substack journalist. He writes that the fantasy part of this conviction is that the strongman will be your strongman. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, he says, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something.  

He won’t. 

I searched around Santa Cruz to see if anyone was willing to talk to me about what attracts them to Trump. One afternoon at my gym’s hot tub, I entered a political conversation with four people. A woman in her 50s admitted that she voted for Trump. I asked her what drew her to Trump and she said she likes his personality. Quickly she surmised that she was outnumbered in her opinion and said that she preferred not to talk more about it.

This spurred me to call my former brother-in-law Jeff, who always likes to talk politics. He and I both worked on Capitol Hill, for opposing political parties, when we were young and idealistic.  

“Trump is standing up to the oligarchy, the rich people who are ruining this country,” he tells me, sounding angrier than I remember him. 

“We need someone this rich to stand up to them,” he reasons. “He is the only one who can do it.” 

And regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection, he tells me that the Democrats orchestrated that to make Trump look bad.  

Jeff agrees that Trump is a narcissist, yet insists that Trump cares about people like him. Otherwise why would he run for office again, he argues?  

This sounds like a strongman fantasy to me.

I have my own theory about the rise of Trump. I call it displacement theory, not to be confused with replacement theory, where minorities allegedly replace white people’s jobs. People like my former brother-in-law take their unowned anger and out-of-control feelings and “displace” those feelings onto a non-threatening target, in this case the people in government. 

Once they have displaced the feelings, they relax some because now they have someone to blame. Dictators love this and try to activate it so they can swoop in and save us. That is how I see Trump – a predator disguised as a rescuer or a strongman fantasy.

“He loves power, not you and I,” I retort. “He wants to abolish the Affordable Care Act. That is how the kids and I get our health insurance.”

Jeff seems astonished. 

“You guys are on the Affordable Care Act for health and dental insurance?” 

“Yes, and we are relying on financial aid and state schools for college.” 

Then I talk more about government programs and how they have helped both of us. Jeff agrees that community college was great for him when he needed to up his skills in order to keep his job and continue supporting his family.  

In the story of “The Little Match Girl,” she does nothing to help herself. She stares at the screen, I mean flame, all night. And this is the main point of the story.

America is mesmerized by anything that will numb the pain, and for some it is Donald Trump’s promises and lies. 

I am glad I called Jeff. I don’t think it will change his mind, but at least I am a real person to him. He can’t escape into the fantasy about that.

Lisa Herendeen, LCSW, M.Ed., is a private practice psychotherapist working with couples, families and individuals in Santa Cruz. Before she became a therapist she was a writer for various political organizations in Washington, D.C.