A year or two ago I wound up eating dinner with a guy who was wearing a hat that said “Trump 2020: Make liberals cry again”. It was interesting to think of the kind of mentality he must have to sit across at dinner with someone while wearing a hat openly declaring hatred for that person while pretending to be nice and respectful. His motivation for supporting a political candidate was literally to cause other Americans to suffer and cry. It wasn’t about disagreeing on religion or economics or other policies. He is actively and deliberately voting to cause me, my friends and family and countless others, to suffer. His goal is to cause suffering and he is announcing it on a hat.
This is an official Trump hat. If you read pro-Trump comments online you frequently find this same sentiment. They are not voting for him because they actually think he makes a good president. They are voting for him because they hate liberals or blacks or Muslims or whoever it is they happen to hate, and want to deliberately cause them harm.
When I was much younger I went through a period of extreme conservative, right-wing values, and looking back I realize it was almost entirely driven by my internal, repressed pain, which manifested itself as a desire to see other human beings suffer. It’s not evil and I don’t think it’s helpful to think of it that way, but when you’re in that perspective, you don’t see the harm you’re doing. It all feels like a game or a joke, like you’re not dealing with actual human lives.