Agreed. But I have a question: Trump’s goals have to do with power, control and manipulating. But what do his followers goals have to do with? That is the part I don’t understand.
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Well, my theory is it’s the same thing that makes people get into angry fights defending their sports team. They want to be associated with a “winner”. People vicariously feel good when they are connected to someone who is strong and powerful and winning. It probably is a survival instinct. It is more strongly motivational for his pack than for others because he knows how to draw out and amplify those animal instincts. He hasn’t “convinced” them; he has motivated them and made it ok to act like an animal. I would bet that if something happened where Trump were suddenly seen as a big loser by his pack, they would flee.
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$1B is equivalent to about 25000 kg of gold. Instant meat paste. Someone with a couple million will probably be okay.
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For the value of n=1, I have to say: NO, IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY EITHER.
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Okay for what? Soup?
Can I, can I come work where you work?
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Oh please, oh please, oh please.
Hey, I believe there may even be a spare safe lying around here somewhere, freshly checked to contain nothing of value.
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Another aspect that I think is part of the issue is simple projected authority and certainty. Mr. Trump, our Mr. Farage and, well quite a lot of our UK government take care to speak with certainly and assurance about simple solutions.
When an awful lot of the hand life’s dealt you is ‘random’ and completely out of your control (as a lot of life is), that’s tempting - I’m not strongly responsive to the authoritarian approach, but I can see that “The problem is “x”. And also “y”. And we can fix that by “a”, and “b” - then “c”! And then everything will be just fine again - I mean it!” is bloody tempting.
The problem is that if the counter is to say “that isn’t that simple - here’s lots of detail that combine to show that’s not even slightly true”, well that’s not what people want to hear and all those qualifying details don’t sound as authoritative and warm, and certain. They want to hear that it’s simple and easy and here’s the fix… Well, the world isn’t like that, we know, but in debunking all that, the emotional hook isn’t there.
…it’s that use of language that sings to people, that we need to push back against, on both sides of the Atlantic.
(The ‘authoritiarian’ personality idea harks back to Bob Altemeyer’s work with Carnegie.
And there’s a written-to-be-accessible summary at
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ - for the interested.)
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To be fair I nearly was hurled on last week, but if that doesn’t deter you:
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I prefer the Obama method. When they go low, we go high.
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I post that link here about five times a year.
An invaluable bit of research; compulsory reading for anyone trying to deal with these fuckwits.
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It’s an axis of character that people don’t think of - and cuts across both the left and right (but more of the right right now, for some reason)
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Perhaps some time soon there’ll be an opening to sway the gut-thinkers to the point of view that perhaps it isn’t the greatest idea to put a know-nothing blowhard in charge, given the imminent fuckups of titanic proportions that’s bound to cause.
I mean how hard can it be to make the point, even to an anti-intellectual dipshit, that reality is complicated? That folks study tiny slices of it for years to help humanity get a handle on it, and that anyone who dismisses the achievements of science out of hand is absolutely fucking clueless?
These days almost everyone with a clue knows about Dunning-Kruger - so what the fuck are we gonna do about it?
I largely disagree; see reality’s left-wing bias. The less inclined you are to take some nominated authority’s word for stuff, the more likely you are to agree with the best available info, which generally supports a left-wing viewpoint.
Can anyone call Randall and ask him to do a Thing Explainer of the US constitution, the political bodies, and the voting system in the US?
I think it should not be ALLCAPS, however. That’s difficult to read for sans serif types. They don’t see all the tiny thingies making the difference between one thing from another.
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Their goals also involve expressions of power, control and manipulation – they’re just more petty, delusional and self-destructive.
One of the best articles I ever read on the mentality is this one, written during the Bush Jr. years.
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Amusing article, but isn’t it a bit too nihilistic to believe that every white male republican voter wants America to end up in Armageddon just because he does not have a sex life as great as the one TV programs tell him he should have?
I might have thought that part of the article was a bit over the top in 2004. In 2017, with a president* who’s a reality TV star who brags about grabbing p*ssy whenever he wants, I don’t see it as nihilistic at all.
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Looks like somebody gets the Northern Sun catalog.
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