The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

by Gabor Maté

asked Daniel Siegel what draws people to follow leaders who exude hostility and an authoritarian streak, such as a Donald Trump. “People may actually feel excitement that someone in the public eye is expressing aggression or assertion, the opposite of impotence,” the psychiatrist and mind researcher said, noting how such traits can feel empowering to those in whom a sense of real power is wanting. “It’s like a child wanting to be with a parent that will protect them. There is a sense of ‘I’m going to be safe and everything is going to be okay.’” What Dan describes is also a sense memory, an indelible and usually unexplored imprint from childhood, a longing stored in the bodymind and activated by present-day insecurities projected into the political realm. On the liberal side, idealizing leaders as kind, supportive, caring, and inclusive can be another form of displaced longing for attuned parenting. One prominent Democratic-supporting celebrity, the song parodist known as Randy Rainbow, tweeted out a photo of a smiling Joe Biden with Kamala Harris the night she was announced as Biden’s running mate. His caption read “G’night, Mom and Dad. See you in the morning.”[16] People under the sway of such childlike idealizations, even in half jest, are liable to ignore discomfiting counterevidence.