They’re basically all children who never grew up. They’re nostalgic for when they were young and the world wasn’t as scary feeling, and decades of being told that those times weren’t the best for everyone have prompted them to backlash and double down. Trump is their messiah because he made them feel unjudged wanting to return to their childhood times of simplicity. Another reason why him dying of old age would really put a lot of these people well into the depressive mindset.

I mockingly refer to this dynamic as them clinging to him having made them feel safe to say the N word, but having dealt with my own missing my childhood brought on by my mom hitting a very solid old people decline milestone, I’ve learned to be understanding if not sympathetic to what’s actually going on here.

Of course over tens of millions of cult members there are other parts in each individual, undiagnosed narcissism being the biggest one, hence why they’re all so furious about the idea of their kids no contacting them over their beliefs. There’s also the despair factor of the opiate crisis and the abandonment of exurban and rural settlements by young folks.

When these people see young folks getting horny for a highly developed high speed rail network, what they see is young people conspiring to not even have to come visit when passing through on a road trip anymore, and making city roads less accomodating to trucks and minivans in favor of pedestrianization just rubs salt in the wound by making them unable to go confront them for never calling anymore.