Forty-three Augusts ago, my future — and now ex — wife Kathy and I were heading to one of those backyard parties where a sweating keg of beer served as the centerpiece, though the grimiest star of the night had not yet risen as dusk gave way to darkness.

The 1980s were a strange era. After getting everything possible both right and wrong in the 1960s — and paying for it with a terrible hangover in the 1970s — the decade offered a fresh opportunity to get everything wrong again in new and creative ways. Trickle-down economics was supposed to improve everyone's lives, while the Christian Right had crosses to bear and grudges to sell.

I had just returned to New Jersey after hitchhiking across large swaths of the country, trying to find myself and the occasional job, after leaving the Navy with an honorable discharge and a newfound suspicion of authority. My ponytail, 12-string guitar, and I made it as far as Lake Tahoe — a paradise tucked in the middle of the Sierra Nevada. It was more than I could have imagined, but after nine months, it never quite felt like home. So I spent roughly two weeks' worth of wages and flew back to New Jersey in style, my hitchhiking days effectively behind me.

That was when I met Kathy, and lightning struck. Everything in my life immediately felt sweeter. She was a beautiful, brave young woman studying to become a registered nurse. In no time at all, we were married. She paid most of our bills by healing people, while I began latching onto newspapers and ultimately found the perfect vocation for pushing back against unchecked power and authority.

Trouble still lurked, though, because cocaine was everywhere in those years.

I liked coke, even though I knew I shouldn't. It was insanely expensive, but the twenty minutes after a snort were pure bliss. Life felt perfect — until roughly twenty-two minutes later, when it no longer did, and the need to recapture that bliss took hold. Too many nights followed the same pattern: snort, bliss, crash — repeated over and over. Nearly everyone we knew was doing it, and we still liked them more than the drug itself — until, suddenly, we didn't.

That was when we attended the party with the keg and all those red plastic cups, on that infamous night forty-three summers ago.

The beer was lukewarm, the 1960s and 1970s music was enjoyable, but if people are what make a party, this one was flatter than the brew. An uneasiness hung in the warm, balmy air, and we couldn't figure out why.

Then the grimy pusher arrived — and with him, our epiphany.

A big, oily character with no personality but a bagful of blow rolled through the crowd, and everyone dropped their beer along with their dignity, sidling up to this two-legged mess to get a powdery piece of the action. A man with absolutely nothing to recommend him except the mind-altering substance in his dirty pockets was suddenly the most important person at the party.

It was a repulsive spectacle. Kathy and I exchanged a look and said in unison, "Let's get the hell out of here." That was the last time I was around cocaine — and many of those people.

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Have you noticed that the very second Donald Trump walks into any room containing any people, he immediately begins to lie, exaggerate, pontificate, and make everything about himself? Have you also noticed how so many sycophants fawn over him and fall at his feet?

These may seem like obvious observations. Trump has never walked into any room in his entire life and completely told the truth. Like that loser who crashed our party forty-three years ago selling what amounted to the devil's drug, the insecure Trump simply cannot stop promoting himself.

When he really gets going, he does that accordion-like gesture with his hands and arms. He puffs himself up and gets a twinkle in his cold, dead eyes. Then comes that moment of satisfaction — when one of his lies or insults has landed. It is the only time he ever smiles. But it is less a smile than the satisfied look babies get after filling their diaper.

For the past decade, I have been among the millions who wonder how roughly 35 to 40 percent of the American electorate can possibly remain loyal to this figure no matter what he does. That range is not arbitrary — Gallup tracking polls consistently showed Trump's approval rating hovering in a remarkably narrow band between roughly 35 and 43 percent across his first term, a tighter range than any modern president. Political scientists and psychologists who study identity-protective cognition — the tendency to process political information through the lens of group belonging rather than policy outcomes — have offered one framework for understanding that durability: when political attachment becomes fused with personal identity, factual contradictions alone rarely dissolve it. I have come to the conclusion that they stay with him for the same reason those people at those long-ago parties gravitated toward the lowlife with all the cocaine.

Trump is an expert pusher. He sells his followers something they believe they need to temporarily feel good about themselves and their lives. He feeds all their worst impulses. He hates the same people they do. He speaks the way they do. He grants them permission to be as awful as they wish — without a shred of guilt.

"Hey, if the president can be a spoiled-brat loser, why can't I?"

"If the president can make lewd jokes about women, why can't I?"

"If the president is a stone-cold racist, then it's about time I stopped keeping my bigotry bottled up."

"If he says to attack our elections, who am I to question him?"

"Finally, somebody who makes us feel good about ourselves!"

Life can feel grand when the person in your corner is the President of the United States, prepared to feed your worst habits in exchange for a few dollars and your undying loyalty. Deep down, his supporters may know he is not improving their lives — quite the opposite — but it just feels so satisfying in that moment when he calls a woman a dog or demands to see Obama's birth certificate.

Since being reelected, Trump has done nothing for anyone except enrich himself and remain the center of attention. He has plastered his name across Washington and transformed the White House into a gold-encrusted spectacle that would make Liberace blush. Anyone can visit — provided they bring plenty of cash and equal doses of praise. Do that, and he will perform for you, lying relentlessly and telling lewd jokes. He will gladly deliver his show while you empty your pockets.

After a decade of this, his supporters are completely hooked. They feel they could never return to whatever their lives looked like ten years ago, even if they tried. And if they were to abandon their Trump addiction, who or what could possibly replace it? Who could so dependably deliver that high while dragging everyone else lower?

JD Vance? Marco Rubio? Hardly.

Trump is, in the author's framing, the genuine article — a racist's racist, a traitor's traitor, a liar's liar. Nobody, the argument goes, has pushed more dangerous rhetoric into the veins of America than "Donald the Dealer."

He might seem easy to walk away from, but destructive habits are notoriously difficult to break. They require a measure of courage, responsibility, and decency that Trump is betting his followers will never summon.

Because here, according to the author, is the underlying truth: the reason Trump launches into lying, bragging, and pontificating every time he enters a room is the same reason that man walked into a party decades ago — he is terrified that people will stop buying what he has been pushing for years. That one day, they will simply walk away. On that day, he will be entirely alone, finally forced to confront himself.

He wouldn't last a minute.

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D. Earl Stephens is the author of "Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump's Very Important Letters" and concluded a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here and follow him on Bluesky here. Source: Alternet.