Hormones: The Secret Sauce of Donald Trump

With Michael Cohen’s admission of election crimes, Paul Manafort’s conviction on eight charges of tax and bank fraud, and Allen Weisselberg’s immunity deal, you’d think the support for Donald Trump would crumble. But it hasn’t. Trump continues to thrill his base. Why? Groups can be lifted to elation or drowned in misery. And the chemistry behind those group moodswings may be one of the secrets of Trump’s success.

In a column published January 3, 2017, James Taranto, current Op-Ed editor of the Wall Street Journal, pointed out something that many failed to see. “With Trump supporters,” Taranto wrote, “the predominant emotions we’ve detected have been joy and hope.” And Taranto went on to point out that “It reminds us very much of the prevailing mood in the mainstream media around this time eight years ago.” That mood on the night when Obama first won the presidency.

Hope and joy are powerful emotions. Humans can’t live without them. And this sort of group exhilaration has a name. One of the founders of modern sociology, Emil Durkheim, called it “collective effervescence.” Where does “collective effervescence” come from?

The key generators of Durkheim’s “collective effervescence” are drugs. Endogenous psychoactive chemicals—drugs produced by the body itself. And they are addictive.

Politics is a battle between subcultures. Trumpites are one subculture. The Obama worshippers of 2008 were another. When a subculture is on a winning streak, research indicates hormones of victory are boosted—hormones like testosterone. But in the losers, testosterone levels dive. So a group win sends a thrill through the collective soul. And a group loss is a personal downer for every member of the group. It suffuses its victims with the hormones of defeat—hormones like cortisol. Which means that a win or loss of the Senate, the Congress, or the White House has consequences for hormones—your hormones and mine. And hormones can take us from joy to misery.

But there’s more. A charismatic leader plants a worldview, a weltanschauung, in his followers. Worldviews identify heroes and villains. They offer a path a paradise in which the worldview’s followers will be uplifted, exalted, and saved. The Obama path was paved by liberal policies like the Affordable Care Act and the plan to save the world from global warming by limiting carbon emissions. The Trump path to paradise is The Donald’s promise to make America Great Again. Donald Trump is a savior who will lift his followers on high all by himself. "I'm the only one that matters,” Trump told Fox TV on November 3, 2017.

What’s the product of that paradisal vision? Hope. An emotion without which humans cannot thrive. For example, in a University of Texas Health Science Center study of 750 San Antonio residents between the age of 64 and 69, when some developed life-threatening illnesses, those who felt no hope died at nearly three times the rate of those who had the feeling of hope. Hope is crucial to life.

Then there’s another source of exhilaration. Technically it’s called “altruistic punishment.” But you know it better as the thrill you get from seeing the daily reports on the misdeeds of your worldview’s demons, its enemies. If you are a Trump follower, you can’t wait for the next revelation of Clinton criminality, of Obama’s plot to unseat Trump, and of the latest sin of the deep state conspirators in the Justice Department and in the FBI who are laboring to toss Trump out of the White House. Last week’s favorite plotter was Bruce Ohr, one of those involved with the “phony” Steele dossier. A dossier about Trump’s alleged Russian involvements and vulnerabilities.

If you are a Trump-loather, you can’t wait for the next recording from Omarosa, or the next scrap of information from Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and Trump’s CFO, Allen Weisselberg.

Here’s the trick. This kind of righteous indignation against the enemy rouses activity in one of the key pleasure systems of the brain, the dopamine system. It produces a sensation like the boost you’d get if you used Methedrine for the first time. And that sensation is habit-forming.

Why do Trump’s followers refuse to desert him no matter how many scandals befall? To abandon Trump would be to abandon hope and joy. Trump is the great savior, the great stimulator of testosterone and dopamine, the great elater, the great energizer of collective effervescence. To abandon Trump would be to give up on life itself.