Recently, as I was pondering the at-times-inexplicable political rise of Donald Trump, I found myself turning to religion. I wasn’t seeking atonement for the human race, although, in light of some of Trump’s recent pronouncements, this was tempting.

Instead, I was thinking about religion’s underlying appeal —the role it plays in simplifying the caprices of our complicated and cruel world.

The contemplation was prompted by a book written by one of the more eminent users of this site, Jon Krakauer. Under the Banner of Heaven, published in 2003, investigates an infamous double-homicide committed in 1984. It’s also a fascinating dissection of the creed the murderers followed, a fundamentalist version of Mormonism.

Towards the end of the book, as Krakauer hypothesizes over the motives of the killers, one of whom claimed to have been instructed by God to murder his sister-in-law and her infant daughter, there’s an expository passage on Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Krakauer writes:

“Indeed, to a noteworthy degree, narcissists fuel the cultural, spiritual and economic engines of Western society…Narcissism is especially common among accomplished businessmen, attorneys, physicians and academics. Such people have a sense of vast self-importance…”

Coming as it does after 300 pages of contextual enquiry into the origins and evolution of The Church of Latter-Day Saints, this passage, when I first read it, had the impact of a full-on epiphany. Last week, I found myself re-reading the pages, as they seemed to cast some much-needed illumination on another uniquely American cult (some would say aberration), Donald J. Trump.

Consider this definition of NPD from the American Psychiatric Association:

Criteria for narcissistic personality disorder include these features:

1. Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance

2. Exaggerating your achievements and talents

3. Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people

4. Requiring constant admiration

5. Having a sense of entitlement

6. Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others

7. Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner

Although some features of narcissistic personality disorder may seem like having confidence, it’s not the same. Narcissistic personality disorder crosses the border of healthy confidence into thinking so highly of yourself that you put yourself on a pedestal and value yourself more than you value others.

Does this sound familiar?

It should. Trump isn’t the only public figure who seems to exhibit symptoms of NPD. Here, in essence, is an identified personality dysfunction that helps to explain why the scum so often rises to the to the top the world over.

Chances are, some of the people who have direct influence over your life — your workplace CEO, your democratic representative, your Catholic priest — are subject to the same disorder. According to sources quoted by Krakauer, 1% of Americans are afflicted with NPD.

The societal implications of these instances in which men (for it is nearly always men) accrue success and prestige off the back of malignant self-love are difficult to exaggerate. Once this concept of NPD insinuates itself into your worldview, it starts to decipher the manipulative clout of famous-figures-gone-bad from Lance Armstrong to Jimmy Saville.

For Trump, the self-professed “winner” who emblazons his capitalized surname onto everything he sells, narcissism manifests itself in a toxic overconfidence in his own zealotry. It means that he can lie with utter conviction, free from fear of consequence. It means that when a kneejerk thought pops into his fuzzy head he needn’t worry about processing its wisdom or its potential implications before vomiting it up into the lap of his audience. He doesn’t have to think. He’s Trump!

But NPD sufferers aren’t mad. By straddling the line between everyday self-interest and all-out psychopathology, they maintain an illusion of trustworthiness and credibility. That’s what makes them dangerous.

But if this psychological impairment is obvious — if we know that the things coming out of his mouth are ill-considered and toxic — it begs an urgent question…

Why do people fall for it?

Trump’s political foray is extraordinary, not just for the tidal wave of censure its provoked, but for the unwavering nature of the support it’s received from his devotees.

Who are these people in Trump’s flatulent orbit? And, more importantly, what the fuck is wrong with them?

Editorial convention dictates that it’s unseemly to directly denounce the electorate. Each person’s voting inclinations are a unique aggregation of environmental influences that those on the other side of the political divide cannot hope to understand. Condemn the shepherd, sure, but not the sheep.

However, when you have a group of — what was Sarah Palin’s eloquent description? — “Right wingin’, bitter clingin’, proud clingers of our guns, our god, and our religions, and our Constitution,” who sit unflinching when their political figurehead appears to start invoking the spirit of Hitler; when people whoop and cheer for policies that sit in direct conflict with the lessons of history and the egalitarian principles enshrined within their own beloved constitution…it’s hard, from the other side of the fence, not to be left scratching your head in consternation.

In pursuit of understanding, let’s summon another word from the high-school psychology text-book: paranoia.

Here’s another definition to chew on:

There are three key features of paranoid thoughts. If you have paranoia, you may:

1. Fear that something bad will happen.

2. Think that other people or external causes are responsible.

3. Have beliefs that are exaggerated or unfounded.

Generally speaking, if you are experiencing paranoia, you will feel a sense of threat and fear.

For fans of Trump — indeed, for many ardent right-wingers the world over — paranoia is the bedrock on which all political opinion must be built. Scared, confused and angry, they just want a simple narrative, something to make sense of the insensible, and a confident, bombastic narcissist like Trump provides certitude with gusto.

Fans of Trump don’t want facts or science or quantified claims or considered policy. They just want reassurance. They want reassurance that climate change isn’t going to wash away their duplex; that a soccer-mom with a beretta in her purse can stop a brigade of determined terrorists; that it’s all someone else’s fault; that God (because, naturally, he’s on our side) will make sure it’s all OK.

This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect — wherein a person of limited skill or analytical prowess suffers from delusions of superiority — at its most influential. Think America’s gone to shit? “Don’t worry. Trump says we can fix it all by building a wall.” Scared of terrorists? “Trump says we just gotta ban the Muslims.”

For those in thrall to this simple narrative, the more nuanced petitions of sensible politicians and commentators have come to represent some sort of conspiracy of the thoughtful and unstupid. They have tied themselves to the mast of the good ship Donald, and they will not be dissuaded.

Why America? Why? Why? Why?

Every country has its lunatic fringes. But the painful truth for American moderates is that if a wannabe President spouted this stuff in just about any other developed country, he’d be pilloried by all but the most knuckle-dragging fascist.

Similarly, and contemporaneously, if thousands of people were being murdered in mass shootings here in Europe, huge proportions of the population wouldn’t respond by clasping instruments expressly designed to blast great holes in human flesh ever tighter to their collective bosom. Neither would people in their millions spurn a watered-down version of universal healthcare out of a kind of pathological inability to countenance any policy with the whiff of socialism, even though socialist principles of redistribution have, in Europe, come to be seen as a hallmark of civilization.

From the outside looking in (you can probably tell that I am not American, merely a baffled observer from across the pond), America seems almost uniquely susceptible to the kind of demagoguery practised by its flag-waving, rifle-toting, fear-mongering right-wing.

Wedded to the idea of national exceptionalism, sections of the American public can’t help but be carried away by whoever flies the flag the highest. Just as Mormons (or, indeed, the adherents of any religion) cling unquestioningly to their church for a sense of unity and comfort, so do disciples of Trump pardon even the most toxic, sexist, racist, madcap, inflammatory, bilious utterances in the hope that the simple Manichean vision he presents — America good, elsewhere bad — is Truth.

Such an analysis is, I’m fully aware, almost criminally reductive, and an impardonable insult to the tens of millions of Americans who think Trump is a poisonous shit-mouth. But then lazy national stereotyping is in vogue at the moment. And, quite honestly, we non-Americans are scrabbling around for something, anything, to explain the jibbering effluence that seems to dominate the right-hand side of your national discourse.