Golden Calf

 MAGA and the worship of Trump are the result of the human desire or need to be part of a dominance hierarchy.  

There is comfort in being part of a hierarchy:  you know were you stand in a community; it provides you with a meaningful role; it provides a material, physical presence upon which to base one's thinking.  This does not mean that everyone who is part of a hierarchy benefits or is helped by being part of that hierarchy -- consider slavery.  Nevertheless, some hierarchys unify their members against an "other" -- perhaps an evolutionary development that mobilizes cooperation for mutual defense or other benefit.  The military, teams, businesses organize and mobilize as a group to strive against other groups.

To the extent that people are materialists, being part of a group provides material benefits, even something as "trivial" as a hug or a greeting -- acknowledgement that you exist.  

But the intensity of MAGA believers also suggests that these believers are no longer part of other groups or cultures or families who may originally have provided them with a sense of belonging and meaning.  They need a sense of belonging in the world, and thus a sense of meaning to their lives.

This need to be part of a group with an alpha dog is very strong, as is the need to have an alpha dog to follow.  And, since humans are such materialists, the tendency to elevate a real alpha dog to the top of the hierarchy is very powerful.  At the very least, the role of the alpha dog is to represent the top dog, which can devolve into the person of the alpha dog who, for the most part, replaces the top dog in the minds of the followers.  Muhammed seems to have realized this when he proscribed his image, warning that people might come to worship that image instead of devoting their energy to worshiping God (and also the second commandment proscription against images); images providing a material object to worship.

Worshiping a physically manifesting Trump is psychologically easier than worshiping the practice of democracy.