I have seen lots of arguments that political polarization is the result of intolerance on both sides, and those of us opposed to MAGA supporters (those who accepted the ideology, most of whom voted for Trump) should try to understand them and look for common ground.
My view is that voters are thinking people, and many are thinking very badly, to the point of being immoral. Personality psychologists have a concept of the "dark triad" of personality traits: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy. What holds these together is that they are explanations of behavior that is fundamentally "malevolent", i.e., immoral. The study of the dark triad is about the study of immorality.
I take the same attitude toward MAGA supporters. I have no interest in finding common ground with them any more than with wife beaters. I do want to understand them better, from a scientific point of view, in hopes of reducing their numbers in the future.
Most MAGA supporters were not good citizens. I have, in several papers (summarized in "Social norms for citizenship", https://muse.jhu.edu/article/692751/pdf) outlined what I take to be the norms required for citizens to make democracy work for the greater good. These include cosmopolitanism, anti-moralism, and actively open-minded thinking (AOT). The absence of these constitutes a dark triad for citizenship: parochialism, moralism, and closed-mindedness.
On parochialism, I have argued that voting is not worthwhile if all you care about is self-interest, or even narrow national interest, although it is worthwhile if you care enough about everyone affected in the world now and in the future. My latest attempt to publish a paper clarifying this argument was rejected from a philosophy journal roughly on the grounds that it was nothing new. Other philosophers write papers on the question of whether nationalism is as bad as racism. So far as I can see they have not come with a good argument that nationalism (properly defined and distinguished from various benign forms of national pride) is less bad. Yet the question seems not to occur to many voters.
At a minimum, people outside of a precisely defined circle of "Americans" should get some consideration. This includes potential immigrants and those they would leave behind. It strikes me as strange that much of the support for MAGA ideology comes from self-professed Christians, who seem to define that in terms of opposition to abortion -- only ambiguously supported in the Bible -- while ignoring the very explicit demand to help those who suffer, worth quoting from Matthew 25 (NIV):
[The King will say] "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'"
On AOT, before one acts in a way that affects others, it seems reasonable to think just a little about whether you are choosing the best option. Thinking in this case involves looking for reasons why you might be wrong. Sometimes this requires looking at what others have to say. It seems that MAGA voters upset about the price of food and housing reasoned simply that these came under Biden, so Trump would solve the problems. They did not ask how he would do that, or what Biden did to create the problem. If they had asked, and looked how Trump's proposals were covered in news sources, they would find good arguments that these proposals would likely make the situation worse.
Moralism, as I have used the term, is the attempt to impose questionable moral principles on others who question or oppose those principles on rational grounds. The principles are often justified on the basis of appeal to religious authority that must be assumed on faith to be correct. The principles may concern both behavior and motivation. Opposition to homosexuality, for example, often takes the form of regarding both homosexual behavior and homosexual desires as immoral. Such principles must be followed even when the consequences of following them, for the frustration of harmless desires, are clearly worse. Moralistic principles are often at the center of political movements toward theocracy. Islamism in Iran is the clearest example, but the same tendency is found in Indian Hindutva and, notably, American Christian nationalism, which is part of the MAGA coalition.
Just as the dark triad traits overlap and reinforce each others, the three dispositions I have listed do the same, as do their positive reflections. Education for AOT could lead people to question the moral relevance of nationality, or at least make them more receptive to questions from others. And it could reduce their confidence in moralistic doctrines, given their weak foundation. Questioning of parochialism and moralism as principles could, if properly presented, serve as examples of reflective thought in general and thus encourage AOT.
In sum, I think that a lot of Trump's support came from thinking that is wrong and immoral. This sort of immorality does not call for punishment but rather prevention.
