WATCH: QAnon Shaman’s Lawyer says His Client Was John Hinckley To Trump’s Jody Foster. ‘He Had A Fondness For Trump Not Unlike A First Love’

Jesus take the wheel. This I was not expecting. Jacob Chansley’s lawyer, Albert Watkins, just explained how his client felt for Donald Trump like John Hinckley felt for Jodie Foster.  Trump as Jodie Foster, could you fall on the floor? Watkins didn’t use that analogy, but that’s exactly what he’s describing. Chansley felt for Donald Trump like a star struck lover. Like the rest of us felt in adolescence when we had our first serious infatuation, even if it is on a rock star or someone we have no chance of ever meeting, let alone forming a relationship with. That’s what his lawyer says. And my sinking gut tells me the lawyer is right.

What is compelling here, is I totally get the part where he says Chansley felt that he could finally identify with a politician. That’s because Trump wasn’t a politician, he was a reality TV actor playing one and his interpretation of the role was to gin up grievance and tell massive lies. That much was apparent from early on. Trump has a kind of charisma which allows him to get away with batshit behavior. The genius in what he does is that he reacts to whatever is being said in the moment. He takes the last comment of the last person he spoke to on a subject and cobbles it into a talking point right there on the spot. He totally believes what he’s saying in any given moment and then a minute later he forgets what he just said and moves on to something else.

Trump is ephemeral, like smoke, or like demons are said to be. He never stays in one place for very long. He keeps reinventing the illusion of the moment. And that got him followers like Chansley, the “deplorables.”

Now here’s what Watkins said about the deplorables earlier and this I liked. Remember this?

Now that’s when Watkins was thinking straight, in my view.

I agree with the second comment. It’s fine to have a crush on somebody. Those feelings are wonderful. To translate that into joining a cult, putting on war paint and a horned helmet and breaking into the Capitol to kill Pence and Pelosi and what all is a whole other level of obsession. It goes beyond the healthy aspect of infatuation, it goes into dangerous sociopathic behavior. It is Hinckley-esque. And I believe that Chansley and the others who are obsessed with Trump see the sociopath in him — as do the rest of us. The difference is, the rest of us couldn’t backpedal fast enough to get away from it and Chansley and his loser buddies wanted four more years of it.

All I can say is that it’s not new information that people mature at different rates and stop maturing at different levels. I’m sure we all have known adults who stop maturing sometime in high school or others who stop growing in their early twenties. Stimulation is a key to growth, the psychologists say, and so if you get into a cocoon where nothing new or interesting comes in, you will stagnate. That’s a no brainer. And it happens to a lot of people.

Trump appeals to the stagnated, the immature and the lost. The fact that there are so many in this country is what is appalling. Those of us on the left criticize them, because we make a tacit assumption that these are adults in their right mind making the decision to vote for Trump and this incenses us. Why, we cry? Can’t you look at what Trump actually stands for and know that you’re voting against your own self interest? It’s because these people are neither adults nor in their right mind. But they are 18 and they have the right to vote. This is very sobering. I think Watkins is right about all of this and I think he knows his client and his client’s cohorts well. They are cultists and Trump is their charismatic leader.

And I think fascism is lurking in the shadows in America. If 73 million people voted for a trust fund baby with a great line of bullshit, whose track record shows him to be just that, because of this primal, negative identification, then it’s just a matter of time before the next one comes along. If you look at the GOP, Ron DeSantis and Josh Hawley in particular, they are grooming themselves to be the next Trump and the first Big Brother.