Control
propaganda is secular theocracy
The control method in all theocracies is self-hate. The cultural leaders make everyone feel like they aren't worthy, that who they are is disgusting and needs to be hidden from the world. Once you're living a lie, you're willing to believe whatever lies are demanded by your leader. We have millennia of refinement in controlling people who need to put a false front up for the world.
America is a propaganda empire, and propaganda is just the secular next-level of religious control. It’s getting people to do what you want because they think it’s what they want. Everyone I've ever met looks at the world through a mask. It's very prominent in the autistic community. It comes hard for us, and we understand that masking is exhausting. You'd be surprised at the lengths people go through to get us to mask. ABA, the currently dominant treatment for autistic children, was developed by the same asshole who invented conversion therapy to turn gay people straight. He went hard against the autistic people. There's a famous picture of a little girl, maybe four or five, with exposed wires looped over her ears and her face contorted in a rictus of agony and they behaviorally conditioned her to hide who she was through electric shocks.
Trump doesn't understand shit, but he instinctively tapped into this. This is trump's appeal--he doesn't mask. We made racism déclassé about thirty years ago. Despite the fact that they are also masking their homosexual tendencies, and compassion, and well deserved white guilt, and 90% of their personality already, Drumpf got the white people to blame the fact that bigotry is no longer acceptable in the public sphere for the fact that they hate themselves and live life locked in an inner war with a person they find repellent. And, honestly--I think most of 'em probably are repellent, by now. Be careful what you wish to be--you can become it. "Fake it 'till you make it" is bullshit. It's "fake it 'till you forget you're full of shit", but these people started out full of shit and just picked a different, fascist flavor of shit to pretend to be. It doesn't mean they're not dangerous. The deprogrammable rate looks to be about 2 in 1500, based on who rejected trump's pardons.