I try to keep a pulse on this thing, i live in deep maga territory. I understand the instinct to believe everyone knows they are being duped, but after i spent time getting to know some Trump supporters i have become deeply infuriated at the education system: they are indeed that dense. For disadvantaged men, at least, the culture of being tough and masculine leads to a lot of unaddressed trauma that is then channeled by the media to reinforce conservative ideology.

It is not that complicated to see, for example: being gay is bad in the ideology, anything deemed as gay is ostracized; human sexuality is a spectrum and only a small minority are perfectly straight, so any given man probably has some subtle gay feelings they have to repress. These men are then fed the story that they are better than the gay men because they (the conservatives) have self restraint. This contempt that has been manufactured is then translated directly into votes, because why would one let “reckless unrestrained fools” (my paraphrasing of perspective) run the country?

This is why culture war nonsense is so damned important, if people knew they were being fooled the culture war wouldn’t work.