There are right-wing conservatives whose dog-eat-dog view of society is so repugnant that I’d never want to discuss politics with them, and yet whom I respect for their rejection of Donald Trump. Dick Cheney is an example. It isn’t that long since my speaking of respect for Dick Cheney would have been unthinkable.

I bet I’d commend numerous others among the bipartisan collection of “741 former senior national security leaders, comprised of over 230 general and flag officers including 15 retired four-star generals and admirals, 10 cabinet secretaries, 10 service secretaries, and 148 ambassadors,” cited in a recent news release who recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and the many former Republicans who’ve left the party.

I don’t find their behavior at all puzzling. Country over party for many of them. Another group that doesn’t puzzle me is the undecided voters. If by now they haven’t seen and heard enough from Trump to send them running, and instead want to hear more from him, and more from Kamala, clearly they cannot process simple information or think coherently.

Trump tells them I’ll run the show no matter what Congress says and I won’t tell you what I’ll do because you know that nothing I say can be depended on. And they think, now I must hear what Kamala thinks about Hezbollah. Hopeless.

This leaves those who intend to vote for Trump and his allies like self-admitted Liar Vance, “Black Hitler” Robinson, and Trump’s insurrectionist army of gerrymandering, vote-suppressing, fraud-projecting election thieves.

I confess. The Trump crowd baffles me. They listen enthralled as he has great difficulty staying on a topic. He has an almost empty knapsack of issues from which he draws at random no matter what he or someone else asks. He recites. Is distracted. Draws another random sample and sallies forth. He is much like a Don Quixote but without the charm or noble dedication.

In his effort to mimic Hitler he tries to be charismatic, but falls on his face by forgetting his line of thought. He flirts with racial purity and white nationalism but returns for votes by hypocritical lying about his love for Jews and people of color. He promises brutal and authoritarian rule if elected but then backs away.

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What do they see in him? Is it really nothing more than that he’s not in office and change is needed?

Sometimes I imagine that it really isn’t about him at all. Are they so lost in a frightening world that they desperately need a strong man who promises to take care of them? I think that’s the way Trump reads them because his message is always about what terror abounds, why they should be miserably afraid, and how he will save them.

For example, over and over Trump bellows about the millions and millions of illegal immigrants pouring through our southern border, bringing disease and crime to wherever they settle. But the real numbers are far less. In 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded 2.4 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border — or apprehensions of migrants crossing into the U.S. without authorization. Since 2021, it is estimated that, from all borders, around 1.7 million ”gotaways” have entered the U.S. undetected. A safe estimate is that about two-thirds of the getaways were from Mexico, about 1.1 million. But even if every ”gotaway” was from Mexico, we still don’t get to millions, much less millions and millions.

Ah, there I go again, foolishly thinking that facts matter.

Trump’s message is, be afraid, be deathly afraid, and only I can save you. So, buy my autographed bubble gum. Be afraid of immigration. So, buy my autographed T-shirts and believe in me. Be afraid of crime, especially in Democrat-run cities. So, buy my new red $50 MAGA light bulbs.

Be shivering in your bedclothes over the socialism that is taking over this country, even though no one even remembers what a genuine political left looks like. So, send me the pink slip for your car. Only I can protect you from China, with my autographed tariffs that you will love paying for to defend our country. And know that only election fraud can produce a defeat for me. So, send me the deed to your house.

And they follow him. Like lemmings. They buy the crap he sells and the crap he spews.

I don’t imagine this will change anyone’s mind. But it felt good. Sort of.

Richard S. Bogartz is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an Amherst justice of the peace.