If you think I'm sleeping on anything, I haven't explained my position clearly. I will try: I studied psychology and I understand how dark triad personalities interact with authoritarian followers, and I saw the present dangers well enough to leave the country half a decade ago. Yes while Biden was still in office, yes during a pandemic with a toddler in tow. I saw all of this coming. Escape if you can, I don't know when the story ends but it isn't a happy ending. I know how they tick, and I know the history of how we got to this point. Quick math, shit is fucked. The empire is fucked, and maybe it could have been saved in a thousand small ways over hundreds of years, but it wasn't and here we are.

My only point originally was that Vance is, in my opinion, not a true believer. Just like Trump, whose only belief is that "I am the shit"; I don't think Vance even believes that, I think he's a cynical lowlife fuck who will say anything to get what he wants because he used to be poor and now all he wants is to feel powerful and safe no matter who it hurts. Probably his wife is cut from the same cloth, on paper she looks smarter than him but probably compromised to feel safe. He could have had an ounce of class consciousness, empathy, or personal integrity, but instead he just sucks a fat shit every chance he gets. He's spent his entire tenure as VP being Trump's heel, looking bad whenever Trump needs someone to pull aggro. Vance thinks he can play Wormtongue and wait for his chance to wield power. Dude was an atheist (when honesty cost him nothing) and hell, he might be the only motherfucker who converted to Catholicism in all of 2019. I've got his number, Vance is no true believer, he is a poseur down to his core.

His followers mostly are true believers, sure. Of course. If Trump told them the sky was communist, they'd say "how high?". They're idiots, or in academic language "authoritarian follower-type personalities". They compartmentalise their beliefs, exhibit relatively low logic and memory with regard to how badly their beliefs work as predictive models, and they avoid introspection like the plague (if MAGA cultists could be relied upon to avoid plagues, that is). They live to be told who the enemy is, how the enemy are not as human, and they delight to hear how badly the enemy is suffering whether it is true or not. That's all they really care about is to be told "the bad guys are dying and they suck, yay!"

I see the danger, and I see them in high resolution clarity. I don't even know what the newest absurdly beyond-human-perception screen format is called these days, but it's that.