trumpista base

perhaps belated 819

held together by evil fox trinity: hanty, ingraham and tucker

see despair

see low info non-college

aha 1/20 promote primary, evil pending; trump only hope to stay in power, so pander to end times homo trans phobia, 1st anti-abortion march; 2x whammy b/c smash and grab anti BO voodoo tax cut to oligarch and corps

BAK 820 html

conscience will

an 920

Herd developed’: Trump’s death cult would rather get COVID-19 than admit they were wrong

Amanda Marcotte / SalonSeptember 16, 2020

Donald Trump was doing spectacularly bad science again, this time during a town hall in Philadelphia hosted by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday night. The event went about as well for the…

guys generally angry for a while at loss of status [but anger by ppl more generally to McC for no aid bill covid 3?]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/columnist-explains-how-the-rnc-dressed-up-the-fury-smoldering-at-the-center-of-the-populist-republican-party/

alex h

during the 2020 Republican National Convention last week, it was painfully clear that President Donald Trump was emphasizing white grievance along with fear-mongering. Some of the speakers tried to soften Trump’s image and show empathy, including First Lady Melania Trump and White House Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump (the president’s daughter). But journalist David Ignatius, in his Washington Post column, stresses that Trumpism continues to be a very bitter and angry ideology.

Republicans, Ignatius writes, “dressed up their rage in prettier colors at this year’s convention.”

“Speakers from First Lady Melania Trump to Vice President Pence tried to make the GOP sound like a party of healing and tolerance,” Ignatius explains. “But smoldering at the center of the populist Republican Party, there’s still the bright orange ball of fury that is Donald Trump — wounded and angry and promising white men in his trademark, code-worded slogan that he’s going to ‘Make America Great Again.’”

The United States, Ignatius stresses, is a very “wounded” country in the Trump era. But he applauds former Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, for calling out Trump’s racism as well as violence at protests. And he warns that Trumpian rage is as strong now as it was four years ago.

"When historians try to understand what happened to the United States in these years, they will study what spawned the Trump spasm of rage,” Ignatius argues. “Perhaps the most striking demographic change in the years preceding his election was the catastrophic decline in the health, income and cohesion of white men without college educations. That group voted 64% for Trump in 2016, making it one of his largest voting blocs, according to the Pew Research Center. The best account of this white collapse is ‘Deaths of Despairand the Future of Capitalism,’ published this year by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton.”

Research by Case and Deaton showed how high suicide rates have become, in recent years, among whites who lack a college degree. And Ignatius cites “the loss of income and respect for working-class white men” as one of the things that fuels the anger and bitterness of Trumpism.

“For white men without a college degree,” Ignatius explains, “their ‘median earnings lost 13% of their purchasing power between 1979 and 2017,’ even as per capita national income rose 85%, write Case and Deaton….A freewheeling democracy that prizes individualism is our great American gift. But it’s also why we need good leaders so badly — to hold together and avoid the abyss of social disintegration.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/experts-explain-the-**4-main-psychological-factors-that-drive-trumps-rabid-fan-base/**

no lnx

a looming question in today’s political climate is: Why do Donald Trump’s devotees continue to support him despite the carnage of his well-documented failures? Although we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic that is surging and not contained, Trump seems to maintain a base support of 35% to 40%. What are the psychological factors that influence or underpin his supporters’ attraction to him? And might this provide some perspective on how to change these supporters’ minds?

Multiple psychological factors seem to influence and explain his supporters. We have divided these factors into four major categories: Rebelliousness and Chaos; Shared Irrationality; Fear; and Safety and Order.

Rebelliousness and Chaos [DISRUPTOR? BROWNSHIRTS HOODLUMS?]

Some Trump supporters have a strong desire for rebelliousness and chaos, and view Trump as the perfect vehicle for achieving their personal goals. These supporters tend to become “anti-establishment and anti-government,” even when it is against their best interest. Many are unhappy with their station in life and believe chaos in the political system will bring them important gains. They seek immediate and sweeping changes and believe a rebellious attitude and rebellious behavior are what is necessary. They would rather have chaos, even dangerously or regressively so, than the status quo.

These supporters believe in Trump’s professed anger and rebelliousness, while often ignoring the content of the issues at hand. Trump’s talk of“draining the swamp” [SHORTHAND FOR DESTROY DC POWER PPL? NEWT CALLED DISEASE?] and of eschewing “political correctness” is attractive to them. They react emotionally and irrationally in embracing Trump’s decisions to create chaos, such as by sending federal troops into American cities to provoke hostile conflict with protestors. They enjoy and thrive upon Trump disavowing norms, rules, and laws. Rebelliousness and chaos can be a major psychological influence, but it can have serious negative consequences such as undermining the chance for real change.

Shared Irrationality

The Dunning-Kruger effect. Some people are under-informed and misinformed and are completely unaware of their lack of information. They tend to overestimate their level of knowledge and hold onto that position. They develop “illusory superiority” from their inability to recognize their true lack of knowledge. In other words, some people think they know more than they do and hold firmly to their opinions. These people are resistant to change their political thinking because they believe they are the knowledgeable ones. Trump and some of his supporters have this psychological phenomenon in common; they are unable to remedy their own limitations of knowledge and their inaccurate thinking.[QANON?]

Magical thinking.This is the belief that one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, or words can bring about effects in the world. Or, similarly, that one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, or words can cause something to happen. Magical thinking presumes a causal link between one’s internal, personal experience and the external physical world. This often emerges from an inability to distinguish fully between emotions and logical thoughts. Relying totally on emotion or “gut reactions” results in magical thinking. Trump engages in magical thinking almost constantly. This is especially dangerous regarding the pandemic: “It will disappear very quickly,” “We have it under control,” “We may have some embers or some ashes…” Many supporters engage in magical thinking and are encouraged and validated by Trump, leading them to align strongly with him.

Obsession with celebrity. Some people are obsessed with celebrities and reality television. Trump entertains them and amuses them. Some supporters are always waiting to see what outrageous thing he says or does next. These supporters are happy as long as they are being entertained by him. They act as if life is a “game” or a “show” that is somehow disconnected from the difficult realities of everyday life, but it is not.

Shared omnipotence. This is a fantasy based in childhood experiences during our earliest years–due to our complete dependency upon parenting persons–that if one can find the “right” leader, then everyone can live harmoniously together forever. While this dynamic is often seen in romantic relationships, especially during the early infatuation period, this exact same dynamic can be seen in political relationships as well. In this case, some people believe that Trump is the “right” leader who can take them to a place of harmony and never-ending happiness and success. This is an infantile fantasy that is unrealistic and unachievable because it is not rooted in the real world of adult life. Even so, a childhood fantasy can be intense and not easily given up.

Fear

Brain reactivity to threats. Research shows that some people have an exaggerated fear response to threats. When presented with specific perceived threats–immigrants, democrats, protestors, socialism–conservatives’ brains light up in activity and experience a need to seek safety. Trump actively encourages his supporters to experience exaggerated fear responses, such that their brains remain energized.

Fear mongering. Terror management theory explains why fear mongering works. When people are reminded of their mortality, which happens with fear mongering, they reflexively defend those who share their world view and their natural and ethnic identity. Tribal identification is an outgrowth of fear mongering. Racism and bigotry are related to fear. Trump appeals to racist and bigoted supporters when he calls Muslims “dangerous” and Mexican immigrants “rapists and murderers.” This fear mongering by Trump is aimed at supporters who are vulnerable to racist and bigoted thinking because it fits with their world view. Another major fear among Trump supporters is falling behind financially and losing the economic capacity to control their lives and protect themselves. A third major fear among Trump supporters is of socialism and believing that capitalism is being threatened and even destroyed. Trump is very adept at focusing on these specific fears among his supporters, using key words and names to trigger and stoke their emotional concerns NEWT]. Trump supporters believe that he is capable of protecting them from their fears. And when they feel protected, they overlook his offensive and outlandish behavior.

Conspiracy theories. Certain people are attracted to conspiracy theories because of their vulnerable personalities and even by mental illness. Life is complex and perplexing and at times dangerous. It is not simple or safe. Research shows that feelings of anxiety make people think more conspiratorially. A conspiracy theory can provide comfort by identifying a convenient scapegoat and thereby making the world seem much more straightforward and controllable. Fantasies that remove fear and doubt can be especially attractive, even if they are unrealistic and irrational. People who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events, to attribute intentionality where it is unlikely to exist, and to have lower levels of critical thinking. Trump has voiced many conspiracy theories: Spygate, Obamagate, Deep state, Trump Tower wiretapping, and others.

Security and Order

Social dominance orientation. People who score high on social dominance orientation prefer an established societal hierarchy. They are attracted to Trump because he promotes and normalizes the belief that high-status people and groups should be dominant over low-status people and groups. Trump’s clear distinction between groups on top of society (Whites) and those “losers” on the bottom (immigrants, Blacks, and Latinos) is a classic social dominance view. Individuals who are high on social dominance orientation are typically domineering, tough-minded, disagreeable, and relatively uncaring seekers of power. As such, these individuals have an attraction to authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism. Several traits characterize authoritarianism: deference to authority, aggression toward outgroups, a hierarchical view of the world, and the belief that the world is dangerous and threatening. Some people believe in having an authoritarian leader because they feel protected and safe by a strong, powerful presence. Trump’s authoritarian leanings are highly attractive to these supporters. Interestingly, research studies have shown the joint power of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation to predict far-right-wing voting in the United States and Europe.

How To Change Supporters’ Minds

Based on our understanding of these psychological influences, each Trump supporter must be considered individually. Not all supporters are connected to Trump in the same way or for the same psychological reasons. For each Trump supporter, an individual assessment is required as to whether it might be best to address rebelliousness and chaos; shared irrationality; fear; and/or security and order. Rational arguments aimed at each of these categories, separately or in some combination, might be most effective.

Trump supporters are tied to him based on multiple and complex psychological principles and phenomena. To continue to respond to them as if they are psychotic or evil is a grave mistake and will not lead to change. Identifying the category or categories of psychological influence for each person can be a much more productive strategy.

There are three months to go before our presidential election. Let us use this time to focus our energies on changing minds based on an understanding of psychology. Name-calling and dismissive statements will not work. Lumping all supporters together will not work. Psychology holds the answer.

Alan D. Blotcky, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, Alabama.

David M. Reiss, MD, is a psychiatrist in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

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These supporters believe in Trump’s professed anger and rebelliousness, while often ignoring the content of the issues at hand. Trump’s talk of “draining the swamp” and of eschewing “political correctness” is attractive to them. They react emotionally and irrationally in embracing Trump’s decisions to create chaos, such as by sending federal troops into American cities to provoke hostile conflict with protestors. They enjoy and thrive upon Trump disavowing norms, rules, and laws. Rebelliousness and chaos can be a major psychological influence, but it can have serious negative consequences such as undermining the chance for real change.

Shared Irrationality

Magical thinking. This is the belief that one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, or words can bring about effects in the world. Or, similarly, that one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, or words can cause something to happen. Magical thinking presumes a causal link between one’s internal, personal experience and the external physical world. This often emerges from an inability to distinguish fully between emotions and logical thoughts. Relying totally on emotion or “gut reactions” results in magical thinking. Trump engages in magical thinking almost constantly. This is especially dangerous regarding the pandemic: “It will disappear very quickly,” “We have it under control,” “We may have some embers or some ashes…” Many supporters engage in magical thinking and are encouraged and validated by Trump, leading them to align strongly with him.

Obsession with celebrity. Some people are obsessed with celebrities and reality television. Trump entertains them and amuses them. Some supporters are always waiting to see what outrageous thing he says or does next. These supporters are happy as long as they are being entertained by him. They act as if life is a “game” or a “show” that is somehow disconnected from the difficult realities of everyday life, but it is not.

Shared omnipotence. This is a fantasy based in childhood experiences during our earliest years–due to our complete dependency upon parenting persons–that if one can find the “right” leader, then everyone can live harmoniously together forever. While this dynamic is often seen in romantic relationships, especially during the early infatuation period, this exact same dynamic can be seen in political relationships as well. In this case, some people believe that Trump is the “right” leader who can take them to a place of harmony and never-ending happiness and success. This is an infantile fantasy that is unrealistic and unachievable because it is not rooted in the real world of adult life. Even so, a childhood fantasy can be intense and not easily given up.

Fear

Fear mongering. Terror management theory explains why fear mongering works. When people are reminded of their mortality, which happens with fear mongering, they reflexively defend those who share their world view and their natural and ethnic identity. Tribal identification is an outgrowth of fear mongering. Racism and bigotry are related to fear. Trump appeals to racist and bigoted supporters when he calls Muslims “dangerous” and Mexican immigrants “rapists and murderers.” This fear mongering by Trump is aimed at supporters who are vulnerable to racist and bigoted thinking because it fits with their world view. Another major fear among Trump supporters is falling behind financially and losing the economic capacity to control their lives and protect themselves. A third major fear among Trump supporters is of socialism and believing that capitalism is being threatened and even destroyed. Trump is very adept at focusing on these specific fears among his supporters, using key words and names to trigger and stoke their emotional concerns. Trump supporters believe that he is capable of protecting them from their fears. And when they feel protected, they overlook his offensive and outlandish behavior.

Conspiracy theories. Certain people are attracted to conspiracy theories because of their vulnerable personalities and even by mental illness. Life is complex and perplexing and at times dangerous. It is not simple or safe. Research shows that feelings of anxiety make people think more conspiratorially. A conspiracy theory can provide comfort by identifying a convenient scapegoat and thereby making the world seem much more straightforward and controllable. Fantasies that remove fear and doubt can be especially attractive, even if they are unrealistic and irrational. People who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events, to attribute intentionality where it is unlikely to exist, and to have lower levels of critical thinking. Trump has voiced many conspiracy theories: Spygate, Obamagate, Deep state, Trump Tower wiretapping, and others.

Security and Order

Authoritarianism. Several traits characterize authoritarianism: deference to authority, aggression toward outgroups, a hierarchical view of the world, and the belief that the world is dangerous and threatening. Some people believe in having an authoritarian leader because they feel protected and safe by a strong, powerful presence. Trump’s authoritarian leanings are highly attractive to these supporters. Interestingly, research studies have shown the joint power of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation to predict far-right-wing voting in the United States and Europe.

How To Change Supporters’ Minds

Alan D. Blotcky, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, Alabama.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/heres-your-field-guide-to-the-5-main-types-of-pandemic-deniers/

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no lnx

Sophia A. McClennen / Salon July 26, 2020

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Every day there is more data to prove the dangers of the coronavirus. Yet, bizarrely, the more proof we have of the damage of the pandemic; the more vicious and hysterical its deniers. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of uninformed, deluded ideas covidiots spew on a daily basis. We mourn not just the lives lost and the bodies damaged, but the collective intelligence of our nation. With international news consistently depicting the United States as the dumbest nation in the developed world, it is as if news of the covidiocy is almost as depressing as news of the virus’s spread itself.

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The trend to what is described as America’s move from freedom to “freedumb” has sadly been a long time in the making. The pandemic only painfully reveals a process that was well-documented by Charles Pierce’s 2010 book “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.”

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Pierce opens with a story of Americans descending on the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where homeschooled children on field trips can behold a dinosaur wearing a saddle. With stories like these it is not hard to understand how this country lost its grip on even the most basic scientific concepts. It is not a big leap from dinosaurs in saddles to believing that face masks make us sick.

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Shortly before the 2016 election we started to hear that part of the problem with America’s stupidity was the fact that social media allows us to exist in information silos or echo chambers where our ideas aren’t challenged and where we get a daily dose of confirmation for our brand of personal wackiness. Surely, information silos are a problem, but as the pandemic deniers have shown, there is actually a fairly diverse array of covidiocy types.

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In fact, when we lump all pandemic deniers together into the same pile, we miss the fact that what plagues America on a cognitive level is a far more serious disease, one that has neither one symptom nor one easy cure. Here are five main types of covidiots to look out for:

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The Eye Rollers

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The eye rollers think that all of the news over the pandemic is exaggerated hype. This is the line of reasoning that suggests that if we didn’t test for the virus so well, our numbers would be more in line with other developed nations. The eye rollers think that the coronavirus is just like the flu and that its mortality rates are of no real significance.

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You’d think all you’d need to do with an eye roller is show them the inside of an ICU or have them hear stories from those who have been gravely sickened by the virus. But the key to the eye roller is that they aren’t going to believe a single piece of evidence because, from their view, all proof of the dangers of the pandemic is manufactured to produce hysteria.

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The eye roller is disturbing for the fact that they have a long history of not taking a single critical issue in this nation seriously. So, coupled with their eye rolling over what they perceive as coronavirus hype, they are also likely to believe that we have no racism, no sexism, in fact, no significant problems whatsoever. For them, liberals manufacture issues that aren’t real so that they can create social anxiety and elevate their policy platform. These are the people who disparage the Black Lives Matter movement as reverse racism and mock #MeToo as a problem of thin skin.

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The Shoulder Shruggers

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The shoulder shruggers are your Ayn Rand-style covidiots. These folks get the numbers and the science. They have a full sense of the dead bodies and damaged lungs, but they simply don’t care. They epitomize the “profit over people” worldview.

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This is the line of reasoning we saw on display by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrickwho suggested that grandparents should be willing to die in order to save the economy for their grandkids: “My message: let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living, let’s be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves.” According to him, there is no reason to “sacrifice the country” in order to save a few old people.

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Like the eye rollers, the shoulder shruggers have a far more pernicious mindset that shapes their views on a wider set of concerns than the virus. These are the folks who see in the virus neoliberal opportunities to capitalize rather than empathize.

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The Narcissistic Hedonists

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The hedonists simply don’t want to be inconvenienced by the virus. They want their manicures, haircuts and happy hours. Their own selfishness dominates their behavior and clouds their ability to consider the wellbeing of others. They see the entire world from the vantage point of their pleasure-driven egos and they outright refuse to be inconvenienced for the benefit of others.

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The narcissistic hedonists talk about how they have a right not to wear a mask and how those who worry over the pandemic should just stay home. “You’re infringing on my rights,” they scream any time they are told they can’t enter a store without a mask. “This is a free country, and I’m here to shop.”

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The narcissistic hedonists have no commitment to a social project nor do they care a wit about the common good. They have weighed the costs and risks of their behavior and they think that their own desires are more valuable than their grandparents’ lives.

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This strain of covidiot also has a long history in this nation. Unlike the eye roller who thinks everything in the nation is already great or the shoulder shrugger who cares more about the economy than society, the narcissistic hedonist places their desires at the center of everything. And, even worse, they think that their own destructive ego-driven behavior is their “right” as Americans.

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The Self-Proclaimed Scientists

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The self-proclaimed scientists are a unique strain of covidiot that derives from this nation’s long resistance to expertise. The self-proclaimed scientist will tell you that you should not listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci. Instead you should listen to them, since they have done “research” and they know more about the virus than world-leading scientists.

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Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently warned of the dangerous consequences of our national anti-science bias: “One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are — for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable — they just don’t believe science and they don’t believe authority.”

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Yet, as Pierce documents in the book I cited earlier, theAmerican tendency to eschew expertise and disparage science has extremely deep roots in our collective history. It is tied not just to religious extremism, but also to the history of anti-intellectualism in the U.S. The urge to put down teachers and professors alongside scientists is part of the American habit of distrusting smart people and it is tied to the idea that some folks would prefer a president they want to have a beer with over an intellectual or even highly educated president.

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The anti-expertise sickness that plagues the United States is sadly to blame for much of the failed U.S. response to the pandemic, but its negative impact on the functioning of our nation goes well beyond flaws in our healthcare system and public health policy. As long as we continue to be skeptical of knowledge and attracted to BS, we can expect our nation to continue to look less and less like a developed nation.

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The Conspiracy Theorists

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One of the special features of conspiracy theorists is that they are found on both the left and the right, unlike a lot of the other strains of covidiots. They converge in the bizarre alternate reality of anti-vaxxers. But, regarding the coronavirus, the conspiracy theories are largely skewed to the right.

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The range of conspiracy theories about the pandemic is simply too broad to cover in this piece. It spans from theories that the virus was deliberately started by China or by Bill Gates to theories that the virus simply isn’t real at all. Nature reported in March that “the website Biohackinfo.com falsely claimed that Gates planned to use a coronavirus vaccine as a ploy to monitor people through an injected microchip or quantum-dot spy software.”

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Healthline reported in June that 25 percent of people believe unproven theories about COVID-19. This is all to show that there is a strange urge in this country to attach to fantasy theories rather than facts.

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The danger to the conspiracy theorist is not just their refusal to accept evidence that challenges their views, but rather their paranoid worries that any evidence is actually propaganda designed to dupe them and cause harm. The conspiracy theorist is so worried thinking that information is manipulation that they lose any sight of what the truth actually is. And as coverage of a Palm Beach County Commission meeting that went viral for the outlandish arguments presented by residents against a mask ordinance (which the Florida county did pass) shows, covidiots tend to mix up their reasons for refusing to wear masks and take the pandemic seriously. Trying to follow these arguments against wearing masks will hurt your brain.

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What’s worse is that having to “debate” matters of science and evidence-based medicine tends to leave us fighting each other rather than the virus. Even more disturbing, there is no vaccine for covidiocy: It promises to linger well after the virus has been contained, wreaking havoc on our society, taking up resources and frustrating progress. It’s a condition that has plagued our country for decades and it won’t be cured until and unless we make a collective effort to prevent its spread.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/how-trumps-psychosis-infects-his-followers-and-how-to-get-them-better/

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Many believe that the falling poll numbers for Donald Trump are a measure of his mishandling the coronavirus pandemic to the point of calamity or his divisiveness in the face of a racial crisis. While these things may be partially true, there is a far more important, overriding factor: his inability to hold ongoing rallies.

His loss of continual exposure to the public has meant his supporters would separate enough to see reality for themselves. This is a phenomenon mental health experts have spoken about in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: how his continual exposure through the presidency would make him uncontainable, and we issued a “Prescription for Survival” in March 2020, to highlight how his removal or, if not, at least removal of influence was necessary for our collective health.

Mental disease could be more contagious than other forms of infection since it does not require physical exposure but only emotional bonds.

There are many medically unjustifiable misconceptions we have about mental disease, but none is perhaps as consequential as the denial that it can be contagious. Indeed, its contagion could be more efficient than other forms of infection since it does not require physical exposure but only emotional bonds. We noted at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that the more important pandemic to gain control over was “the mental health pandemic.”

Weakened hosts, an environment that facilitates transmission, and our lack of consideration even of the possibility—even among some psychiatrists wedded to an atomistic view of people—has made Americans more vulnerable. In addition, poor mental health contributes to denial, and therefore those who are the most affected are the least likely to admit that anything is wrong. Bioterrorism is frightening, but psychological warfare even more so, for it hijacks the very mind that is capable of protecting itself.

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My focus as a preventive psychiatrist has been the ecology surrounding individuals. Contagion of mental symptoms is common in public hospital and prison settings, where there are high concentrations of untreated, severe mental disturbances. Severe symptoms can spread among family members, criminal co-conspirators, gangs, and other tight-knit groups. A colleague and collaborator at the World Health Organization, Dr. Gary Slutkin, has long advocated that we consider violence and other behavior an infectious disease whose spread we can interrupt. International terrorism and suicide are known to be contagious, for example. Effective prevention, therefore, requires population-level interventions and application of psychiatric principles to systems, institutions, and cultures. The last course I designed for students at Yale Law School was one of translating law into social policies that prevent violence and further societal health.

Three conditions are necessary for the spread of mental symptoms:

1 Severe pathology in an influential figure

The transmission of mental symptoms has been given different names: induced delusional disorder, shared psychosis, folie à deux, trois, quatre,…, or millions—depending on the number affected—or mass hysteria when affecting a whole population. All describe the same phenomenon, but none are satisfactory. The latest, induced delusional disorder, focuses on the most commonly transmitted symptom, delusions, but does not cover other possible symptoms, such as mood. Shared psychosis captures the syndrome-like severity, but is a misnomer because it often does not involve actual psychosis. Folie à deux, or “madness in two,” is perhaps the most preferred but a foreign phrase. Finally, “mass hysteria” describes well the frenzied quality that arises from the sharing of symptoms among crowds, but often does not actually involve symptoms of “hysteria”, or histrionics. The important feature is that mental symptoms are not confined to the person; they take hold and spread across interpersonal boundaries, just as they initially take over one portion, and then eventually the whole of the mind of an individual.

Severe psychopathology in an influential figure, therefore, transmits to others or a group, until the exposed persons or groups come to feel, think, and behave as if they had the same disorder as the primary person. Unlike normal social dynamics, where enthusiasm, common purpose, or even outrage can be “infectious” but individuals retain their uniqueness, the spread of pathology is especially efficient and deleterious, taking over the personalities of those involved.

Transmission happens more readily in vulnerable persons, but those who succumb are not necessarily of unsound mind to start. Delusions of persecution or general paranoia are the most common to transmit, but even bizarre beliefs, such as the primary person being of divine origin, are not rare. Exposure to actual delusions is unlike exposure to strategic lies or simple misinformation; they are more infectious because the primary person is genuinely convinced of them and the emotional pressures for others also to believe them is stronger. For example, when an influential figure holds the paranoid belief that a serious viral pandemic is a “hoax”, orchestrated by one’s enemies to bring down one’s presidency, it can be more emotionally persuasive than any reality and is difficult to correct.

2 Group members with high emotional investment

Another condition for the spread of mental disease is emotional investment. Folie à deux describes shared madness within a pair, but here we will focus on folie à groupe, or the spread of mental symptoms in a group. The group can be a household (folie à famille), a prison dormitory or cell-block, a religious or other highly emotionally-bonded group, a community, or a nation. Members may have high emotional investment in the primary person because of family relations, gang affiliation, cultic programming, or similar symptoms to start. Pathology in the primary individual facilitates transmission: a compulsive drive to “tweet”, a desire to deny reality coupled with propaganda, intolerance of uncertainty leading to pressures of conformity, and an insatiable need for adulation driving addiction-inducing, hypnotic rallies. These symptoms create the ideal conditions for additional transmission of symptoms.

As symptoms spread, cognitive distortions, delusions, and other manifestations take on an emotional power that are difficult to match with normal responses. Induced delusions function like primary delusions, wherein resistance is too great for evidence or truth to gain traction. Those who try to maintain their grounding in reality experience stress, anxiety, ostracism and exhaustion and may eventually submit. When it originates in disease, it is different from culture but is more aptly called a “cultural disorder.”

3 An environment that fosters contagion

Conditions of isolation, either physically or through filtered information, especially when they “immunize” against alternative viewpoints through phrases such as “fake news” or “the enemy of the people,” combined with constant, high levels of exposure to the symptomatic primary individual, is the formula for shared delusions. The environment, therefore, is very important.

Many have remarked on the cult-like quality of the leader-follower arrangement we see with the president and his supporters. The dynamic alarmed my colleagues in the mental health profession enough to write entire volumes. Existing arrangements of “viral” social media, profit-driven news programs that rely on ratings, and rallies that reinforce herd mentality and conformity, all contribute to the spread of symptoms.

How is the recognition of shared psychosis, or folie à groupe, helpful? We know from the scientific literature that, when contact with the inducing individual is removed, the shared symptoms usually subside just as dramatically as they have appeared. If removal is not possible, we know that reducing exposure can be helpful. We can prevent epidemics from occurring in the first place by screening for mental impairment before individuals take positions of influence. Further, we can take steps to protect ourselves in the future by promoting public mental health and education about mental disease, as well as reducing environmental “toxins” that include propaganda, brainwashing, and filtered information. Knowing that mental compromise can contribute to physical demise, and recognizing the distinct, characteristic patterns of disease, we can better avoid mistaking it for a normal choice or just another ideology that excites people.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/what-trump-will-do-if-he-loses-is-the-wrong-question-what-matters-is-what-his-supporters-will-do/

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hnn

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It looks like Biden will beat Trump badly and the Republicans will suffer disastrous losses across the country in November.Although the polls have just been inching toward the Democrats, suddenly articles about what Trump might do if he loses are multiplying, here, here, and here.

Trump might declare the elections fake, go on FOX News to say he had really won, call out the National Guard, barricade himself in the Oval Office, order the Secret Service to shoot Biden on sight.

But what he will do is the wrong question. What matters is what his supporters will do when they lose.

Three groups of supporters are crucial to observe. The media will focus at first on Republican politicians.Will Senate losers in Montana, Arizona, Colorado, and other states jump on the fake news bandwagon? Would Mitch McConnell go quietly if Amy McGrath beats him in a very close race? Maybe Susan Collins will accept defeat in Maine, but what about QAnon promoter Jo Rae Perkins in Oregon? How about Lauren Boebert, QAnon enthusiast and House candidate in Colorado, and the other 7 Republican congressional candidates on the ballot who have expressed support for QAnon?

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The whole Republican Senate delegation has already cast doubt on the results by allowing their leader to proclaim unchallenged that the election will be fraudulent. On June 22, Trump said the 2020 election “will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history”. In 2018, the National Republican Senatorial Committee followed up a Trump tweet about “electoral corruption” in the Arizona Senate race by charging that the election they lost there was rigged. Stripped of power, perhaps for years, it’s not hard to imagine Senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham, among others, casting doubt on the results.

Thus far the bravest Republicans in Washington, aside from Mitt Romney, are Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who called Trump’s pardon of Roger Stone a “mistake”, and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who said she won’t campaign against Joe Biden. The majority of Senate Republicans cowers in silence.

Will Trump’s toadies now running our intelligence services and justice system speak up and what will they say? Across the country, Republican state legislators who lose their gerrymandered majorities could join the chorus.

A second set of Trump supporters use their control of media to send waves of influence into every corner of America. Will FOX News report the official results or attack them? How about the other people to whom Republicans listen, even more partisan and less connected to reality, like Limbaugh, Breitbart, InfoWars, Drudge? Will powerful evangelical pastors Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress proclaim that their God-given leader was cheated?

The third group is the most important and hardest to gauge – the MAGA-hat-wearing, Confederate-flag-waving white supremacists and conspiracy partisans who make up his legendary “base”. Will they see the end times coming as their messiah is defeated? Will the dozens of armed militia groups adopt 2^nd Amendment remedies to the impending takeover of America by radical socialist pedophiles? What will Ammon Bundy, the boogaloo boys, the Oath Keepers, and the more than 500 other anti-government groups loosely allied in the so-called “patriot movement” identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center do? Will the NRA call out its members to fight the commies?

Trump could scream himself hoarse with no effect unless his supporters sing along. As full election results trickle in the days after November 3 and as the implications sink in with the approach of Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021, a coalition of supporters in Washington, state governments, media, and on the ground might throw our country into an existential, not merely Constitutional crisis.

It’s certain that Trump will do nothing brave himself, will commit himself to no action that he can’t back out of. But the radicals who drive their cars into Black Lives Matter protesters, who bring their assault rifles to the pizza palace, and who believe anything “Q” says are much more volatile, unhinged, and violent.

Whatever answers such questions might elicit now will change over the next few months, as Trump stokes more fear among his supporters, pushes them further away from the American center, and forces his Republican allies to come along.

Watch Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Matt Gaetz (Florida) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (California), Gov. Ron DeSantis (Florida), and Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff. Watch wily Mitch McConnell, who shares with Trump a powerful belief in the importance of his own survival.

And watch out for America.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/if-trump-loses-and-drags-down-mitch-mcconnell-expect-the-gop-to-get-even-scarier-political-scientist/

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yikes // sherman below

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Trump’s poll numbers are bad and getting worse, and Republicans are bracing for a possibly devastating loss in November’s election.

The coronavirus pandemic has proven to be an anchor on the president’s political fortunes, and his failures may drag down Mitch McConnell’s Senate majority and increase the Democrats’ House majority, according to political scientist Daniel Drezner’s new column for the :{Washington Post:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:.

“Let’s assume this outcome for a second — what does it mean for the GOP?” wrote Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “Politics is a coldblooded game, and even before Trump has been declared a political dead man walking, speculation is beginning about what comes after.”

Some Republicans have already jumped ship and become #NeverTrumpers, but Drezner is doubtful that the GOP will engage in deep self-reflection about the conditions that led to that downfall.

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“Even if Trump crashes and burns, his cult of personality will command significant loyalty from his #MAGA base,” Drezner wrote. “That alone is enough to influence party primaries that in turn influence the party’s future leaders.”

Right-wing conspiracy theorist and anti-immigrant bigot Allen West was elected this week to lead the Texas GOP, and Drezner sees that as a sign that a post-Trump Republican Party could move even further to the fringes.

“The scary thing about a post-Trump GOP is the prospect that it learns nothing,” Drezner wrote. “After getting pasted in 2006 and 2008, the GOP adopted an obstructionist posture during the Obama years. The more disaffected voters were during the Great Recession, the better this strategy worked.It is all too conceivable that the post-Trump GOP changes itself not at all. It can count on the vagaries of partisan politics in the United States to eventually inherit political power once again.”

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Jeremy Sherman July 19, 2020

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/this-is-the-rhetorical-trick-most-likely-to-cause-our-species-extinction/

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For all the invective we throw and recycle at the MAGA cult, we have yet to put a finger on, let alone driven a stake through that cult’s mindless, heartlessness. Our invective is at most therapeutic for us with little effect on them.

They’re shape-shifters, masters of deflection, but it’s not a blur of various identities. They’re shape-togglers shuttling fluidly between two identities, prude and brat, pope and punk, saint and cynic, family-values and incel revolt, high-horse parent and petulant child, defenders of the status quo and cultural wrecking crew, upholders of moral propriety and anarchist dismantlers.

Yes, that’s just another example of the cult’s hypocrisy, but I think it’s the pivotal one, the mother of all of their hypocrisies. It’s how they declare us losers for not meeting their moral standards and losers for caring about moral standards. These shape-togglers reproach us for our political incorrectness and conversely for being PC.

Holy war is an oxymoron: Holiness is a commitment to righteousness but all’s fair in war. There’s no racket one can’t dignify with holy war because there’s no deed too dirty for the saints who wage it.

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They don’t just go low. They go above and below, anywhere but meeting us at eye level. They’re pedant parents talking down to us, or petulant teens complaining about how domineering we are. That’s how they escape adult-to-adult debate. It’s “shame on you!” when that’s to their advantage and when we try shaming them, it’s “So what? You do it too” cynicism.

You don’t have to be dumb to become one of these shape-toggling assholes fluidly shifting between playing saint and boor. You just have to be a little hungry, lazy, or swept up in some supposedly holy war.

The dumbness comes easily with time. Thinking about your inconsistency only gets in the way. Discover this shape-toggling trick and your mind just atrophies. You’ve found a more efficient way to thrive: Ignore words. Listen for sounds. If you hear threats to your authority, ape saintly high-horse condemnation. If you hear concern and care, ape crass ridicule and contempt. That’s all. Two buttons; two pre-recordings. You’ll find you no longer need a mind or a heart. Nothing purges a conscience as fast as outrage and with shape-toggling you have the only two routes to outrage you’ll ever need – caring and not caring about moral standards.

Their cardinal sin is something viral. It’s not alive and yet it’s a parasite that makes zombies of people – not just the MAGA cult – that’s just the current epidemic. There have been epidemics of it throughout history.

No deed too dirty for the holy followers of Christ, Hitler, Stalin, the Jihadists. It’s how anyone plays God, eternally omnificent, omnipotent and omniscient. It’s the ass-holy trinity whereby saintliness licenses sin, sin wins and winning “proves” saintliness.

This zombie-like rhetorical end-run is, I’d argue the most probable cause of human extinction. Why? Because there’s no talking to those infected. Reality, which zombies refuse to heed gives them the ultimate smackdown.

:{:{Here’s a four minute video I made about it: }:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"/maxresdefault.jpg)}:

Jeremy Sherman, PhD. I am a psychoproctologist. I do non-partisan research into the nature of absolutists, regardless of what they pretend to believe. How do people become total jerks? What's gotten into them? Actually, It's what they fall into, a shell within a shell for protection from life's doubts and possibilities, first some comforting doctrine and since that's not protection enough, a sealed shell of empty rhetoric. The narration: You’ve seen them, acting lofty yet slithering beneath all dignity with dead yet piercing eyes and vaporous yet overbearing presence that they lord over you. Nobody’s home and yet they take up so much space, insisting on having their way, whatever way they happen to be swinging in the moment. What’s gotten into them? Where’s the human? All you get is inhumanity playing God. They claim they’ve found truth, different truths yet all the same. They loom and boom most at each other, reactionaries and counter-reactionaries, cults and counter-cults. In The Book of Revelations, the right and righteous drop their mortal bodies, beamed up to heaven, there to sit incorporeal and eternal by God on high, forever at peace with the One True Way. That’s how they act no matter what they claim to believe, Godly or Godless, like zombies, the undead howling with authority. One can’t influence what’s already dead. And they take up so much space. It’s not what got into them; it’s what they got into, a shell within a shell as protection against uncertainty, the sandstorm of possibilities we humans trudge through, clothed only in our wits and a smattering of comforting thoughts. Sometimes the comforting thoughts congeal into a comforting doctrine, a shell woven from comforting thoughts intertwined, though with gaps. People tuck or fall into a comforting doctrine for extra comfort, safer than winging it like a human, though it’s still exposed to the elements. The sandstorm’s sting of discouraging counter-possibilities still sears through. For still more comfort, they burrow into a second layer of protection. Gapless, hermetic, it’s thin yet opaque, an impenetrable film of empty rhetoric that converts all possibilities into self-affirmations, all discouragement into encouragement, harnessable energy as they swagger and barrel through the sandstorm in complete comfort. Nothing can challenge them now. Same shell of empty rhetoric regardless of their comforting doctrine. That’s why they all sound the same. It’s what gives them that airy inaccessible loft. There’s no getting to them. They have an empty rhetorical answer for everything. They’re now two shells in and all but gone, first burrowed within a comforting doctrine and then within the shell of empty rhetoric within which selves decompose. Selfhood interferes with the smooth operations of empty rhetoric. Gone then is all concern with one’s integrity, honor or reality. The comforting doctrine decomposes too, converted to lip service wielded by the empty rhetoric. The empty rhetoric sedates the self with a comforting story of transformation. Revelation is the archetype: The right and righteous will shed their mortal beings, beamed up to heaven, there to sit incorporeal and invincible, forever at peace with the One True Way, no reason ever to return to human hardship. Godly or Godless these people split, the tawdry self going low and decomposing, the empty rhetoric going high and eternally insubstantial. You, a human, can no longer meet them at eye level.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/trump-is-bleeding-support-from-the-only-voters-who-have-stuck-with-him-since-2016/

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620 an raw story

Donald Trump is losing support from his evangelical base as he lurches from one crisis into another.

Numerous polls show that religious Americans, like most other Americans, disapprove of the president’s performance, and that could imperil his re-election chances, reported the New York Times.

Nearly 80 percent of white evangelicals — a group that’s already shrinking as a share of the electorate — approved of Trump’s performance in March, but his handling of the coronavirus pandemic has bled 15 points from their support, according to a new poll from Public Religion Research Institute.

“He had an opportunity in March when people were looking to him,” said Robert Jones, the institute’s chief executive, “and then within four weeks he squandered it.”

Those losses could be offset by efforts from activist group’s such as Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition, which plans to spend tens of millions of dollars to identify and register new religious conservative voters and rallying right-wing Christians.

And another PRRI poll from last year found that 31 percent of white evangelical voters said there was almost nothing Trump could do to lose their support.

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aha: this has existed for a while as dirty tricks tactic (us vs them enemies; dirty germy foreigners; we are victims? amplifty and acclerate by trump and soc med echo escalator post truth; bktv 5/20 re-imagine capitalism says inequality acknowledged by all, even ceo; increases social instability and will --> left or rt populism and you won't like either, ceo's [lipton tea, aetna min wage]

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-uses-his-weird-grip-on-republicans-to-stoke-a-nihilistic-culture-war/

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no lnx pix

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trump uses his weird grip on Republicans to stoke a nihilistic culture war

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Donald J. Trump holding a rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, on May 8, 2019 // Office of the President of the United States/Donald J. Trump

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Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon May 29, 2020

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I don’t think there’s ever been a U.S. president with more influence with his political base that Donald Trump. All presidents are defended by those who support them, of course. Even the most unpopular failures have diehard fans who stick with them to the bitter end.

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But Trump is unusual in that he has only ever attempted to govern on behalf of the people who support him and has no feeling of responsibility toward any other citizens. He has taken the already polarized Republican Party and turned it into a cult of personality. His influence over the 40 to 45% of the population who seem to idolize him is immense.

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Perhaps it’s because Trump was a celebrity with a TV show long before he entered politics that makes his fans love him so unconditionally. Whatever it is, Trump and his supporters have an unusually personal and almost intimate bond. It’s clear after three and a half tumultuous years that they will follow his lead no matter what.

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The political implications of this are profound. This weird relationship between president and base now completely dominates the Republican Party, apparently making it impossible for any prominent national figure in the party to allow even the smallest daylight between himself or herself and Trump. (Frankly, very few even seem to be trying.)

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The red MAGA hat serves as an official symbol of Trump loyalty, and there is a certain part of his following that uses it as a tool of intimidation. Even more disturbing, there has been a spate of mass shootings and other acts of violence by people who have named Trump or his ideas as motivation.

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In order to maintain his supporters’ devotion, Trump has stoked the culture wars at every turn, ruthlessly dividing the country in order to keep his fans engaged. They receive such hypocritical gestures of solidarity as his newfound “pro-life” zealotry with enthusiastic gratitude — but what they really love are his brutal assaults on those they consider their political and cultural enemies. In that, Trump and his base are one.

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So it should come as no surprise that when Trump faced the first crisis of his presidency that was not of his own making — and failed to meet the challenge — he would reflexively fall back on culture-war tactics to reinforce his base. His response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been abysmal, with the death toll now over 100,000 and the economy in dire straits. After bungling the response so badly that it will be studied by historians for centuries as an example of poor leadership, Trump is returning to his original instinct, which was simply to deny that the whole thing mattered, or was even happening.

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His supporters have eagerly followed his lead, defying public health guidelines and demanding that their governors “reopen” immediately (or in Trump’s own words of incitement, that they “liberate” their states.) Trump clearly believes that he can wish away the virus — or at least people’s concern about the virus — by pretending that the crisis is over and that we can go back to normal.

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As we speak, he’s arguing with the state government of North Carolina about the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled for late August in Charlotte. Republican officials had reportedly been discussing how they could stage the event while observing CDC social distancing guidelines, and everything had been going smoothly. Trump, however, wants his big party, and wants it to be crammed with people screaming ecstatically at his every word. What he doesn’t want is anyone wearing masks.

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In fact, wearing a mask, or rather not wearing one, is fast becoming as much of a symbol of Trump fealty as those red MAGA hats. Trump’s allies on Fox News have pushed it hard among the faithful (with the unexpected exception of Sean Hannity.)

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Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Laura’s war against masks continues

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Embedded video

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As Salon’s Igor Derysh reports, studies show that people who watch Fox are far more inclined to defy public health guidelines. But really, it’s Trump himself who has turned masks into a culture-war symbol by ostentatiously refusing to wear one.

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This makes little sense, of course, if he genuinely wants to reopen the country in a way that allows workers and consumers to feel safe going about their business. Masks and social distancing are common-sense ways to begin doing that, and normalizing that behavior will bring back the economy more quickly. But Trump has decided to pretend that the crisis is over, as I said earlier, and mask-wearing and social distancing don’t exactly send that message.

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I also suspect that his resistance is largely due to vanity. The man truly believes that wearing one will make him look foolish (which can only be described as amazing) and he may also have concerns about the mask rubbing off his thick orange makeup.

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All of this comes as he’s also implying it’s somehow weak, unmanly and un-American to wear one. In fact, he’s seized upon this as a new attack line against Joe Biden:

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Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

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New Trump ads on Facebook mock Biden for wearing a mask

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View image on Twitter

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Some Republicans are actually pushing back on this, notably state governors who will have to deal with the resurgence of cases if people follow Trump’s dangerous example. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged people to wear them. It’s hard to know why these dissenters are stepping up now, but maybe it’s because they see something really dark and ugly taking hold among the Trump faithful.

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For instance, Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature who have been railing against public health measures turned out to have concealed the fact that one of their own members had contracted the virus. They quarantined themselves but never told their Democratic colleagues, allowing them to potentially expose their family members and loved ones without knowing it.

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According to the Washington Post, there are businesses in various parts of the country now barring customers from wearing masks in their establishments. This was from an interview with Kevin Smith, proprietor of the Liberty Tree Tavern in Elgin, Texas:

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“If we’re only allowed to be at 25 percent capacity, I want them to be the 25 percent of people that aren’t p—–, that aren’t sheep,” Smith told The Washington Post. “Being scared all the time isn’t good for your health. It suppresses your immune system.”

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Trump posted this tweet yesterday, cutely pretending that he was just making an observation:

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Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

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So many different viewpoints! https://twitter.com/leesmithdc/status/1265629746450358273 …

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Lee Smith

@LeeSmithDC

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Terrific ?@molmccann? piece in ?@FDRLST? — masks aren’t about public health but social control. Image of Biden in black mask endorses culture of silence, slavery, and social death. https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/mandatory-masks-arent-about-safety-theyre-about-social-control/ …

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39.6K

5:16 AM - May 28, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

20.7K people are talking about this

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The science is clear on this: Masks work. If everyone wore them when they were out in public it would make a significant difference in slowing the transmission of the virus. These people are pretending to be tough, but in reality they’re just following the example of the president and living in denial.

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Imagine a world where, instead of behaving so foolishly, Trump modeled sensible behavior by wearing a mask and social distancing and encouraging businesses to open up responsibly? His followers would buy red MAGA masks by the truckload and turn social distancing into the mark of macho American individualism. But he can’t do that, of course, because stoking the culture war is literally his last hope of winning re-election.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-trolls-the-libs-with-100000-dead-and-39-million-out-of-work-and-his-fanboys-love-it/

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memorial Day weekend will likely be remembered by history as one marked by unimaginable tragedy. The official count of people dead from COVID-19 approached 100,000 — a milestone that will surely be passd on Tuesday or Wednesday — and the actual death toll is likely much higher. The weekend kicked off with new reports of soaring unemployment, putting the number of Americans who have filed benefit claims at 38.6 million, nearly one of every four workers in the United States.

Donald Trump, who currently occupies the White House despite losing the 2016 popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million, could not care less about all this suffering among the people he is purportedly there to serve. We know this, because he spent his weekend ranting on Twitter about pretty much anything — including obviously false conspiracy theories about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough — except the crisis he prefers to pretend isn’t happening at all.

What’s equally upsetting is the soul-deadening knowledge that Trump’s voters, who could well hand him another electoral victory even in the face of a near-certain popular vote defeat, also don’t appear to care about his sociopathic behavior. On the contrary, many of them seem to relish the fact that Trump continues to “trigger the liberals,” even as the nation falls apart around him.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/heres-why-people-stick-with-trump-and-fox-news-even-when-their-lies-kill/

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no lnx

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Here’s why people stick with Trump and Fox News — even when their lies kill

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Written by Ian Reifowitz / Daily Kos April 26, 2020

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Why are Trump supporters so devoted? The simple answer is that they are members of a death cult. Call it the #TrumpDeathCult. Beyond that simple answer, there’s this: When your identity rests on Trump and his party being right, to admit that they are wrong—or worse, that they don’t even give a rat’s ass about you and yours—requires rethinking everything you are. I guess for some people, dying is easier.

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Donald Trump and his state propaganda sycophants over at Fox News hyped hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer,” until it was game over. We learned this week that taking the drug not only doesn’t help people recover from COVID-19, it makes it more likely that they will drop dead. Why doesn’t this make hordes of Republican voters say, “What in the world am I doing listening to these shameless liars?” The fact that they don’t is what makes them dangerous.

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But wait, there’s more.

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If this news, reported by The New York Times, doesn’t make a person run screaming from the land of Trump, Fox News, and bald-faced lies back to the world of facts and science, then I don’t know what will.

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The official who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said on Wednesday that he was removed from his post after he pressed for rigorous vetting of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug embraced by President Trump as a coronavirus treatment, and that the administration had put “politics and cronyism ahead of science.”

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In a scorching statement, Dr. Bright, who received a Ph.D. in immunology and molecular pathogenesis from Emory University, assailed the leadership at the health department, saying he was pressured to direct money toward hydroxychloroquine, one of several “potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections” and repeatedly described by the president as a potential “game changer” in the fight against the virus.

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“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in his statement. “I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.”

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Folks, we are living in 1984, and we have been for some time now. To paraphrase George Orwell: Hydroxychloroquine is a game changer. Hydroxychloroquine has always been a game changer. We will not speak of hydroxychloroquine. We have never spoken of hydroxychloroquine.

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And yet I still can’t believe these people don’t stand up and reject their right-wing masters. I’m like Charlie Brown, who thinks that this time—despite it never having happened before—Lucy will let me kick that ever-loving football. “What’s wrong with these conservatives?” I scream in my head. Don’t they care about themselves? About their own friends and families? Do the Fox News viewers even notice that suddenly no one is talking about hydroxychloroquine anymore, after it was hyped for weeks? Don’t they care?

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Of course, this is even bigger than just hydroxychloroquine. Even though they had been warned—and thus knew better—Trump, Republicans, and Fox News have been lying about the severity of the coronavirus since the start. Then, once the bodies started piling up, they began lying about the fact that they had lied.

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Will large numbers of Trump supporters and Fox News true believers ever get angry enough about being peddled deadly lies that they turn against Republican candidates? The answer appears to be no. Are they really more interested in “owning the libs” than the lives of their loved ones?

Sadly, the answer appears to be yes.

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Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas).

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trumps-anti-intellectualism-didnt-come-from-nowhere-the-gops-disdain-for-science-has-endangered-us-all

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no lnx

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Trump’s anti-intellectualism didn’t come from nowhere — the GOP’s disdain for science has endangered us all

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Written by The Washington Monthly April 24, 2020

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Donald Trump recently created a stir by retweeting a call by a Republican politician to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci. The reason: Fauci had the temerity to contradict the president on scientific facts. Then, whether out of fear or a willful suspension of intellect, the president’s coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx proclaimed that Trump has been “so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data”—in contradiction to the avalanche of lies Trump puts out in his daily propaganda rallies masquerading as pandemic briefings.

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Yet these are but surface examples of an ongoing tension between experts and Trumpists.It is a dynamic that has been at play since the very beginning of the administration: the war between experts and propagandists, between actual facts and “alternative facts.” Driving it is a wave of anti-intellectualism growing in America. And now, in this era of pandemic, tens of thousands of American lives are at stake. So, too, is the nation’s credibility. Given Donald Trump’s relentless antipathy toward truth and expertise, the outlook doesn’t look promising.

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As the novel coronavirus rampaged across the country, a storm broke out in the White House over how to respond. Rather than taking dramatic actions early on to curtail the spread of the virus and prepare states and hospitals to meet the coming surge, the administration reverted to its profound anti-intellectualism, all in a bid to deflect its own failure in protecting American lives.

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Disturbingly, Trump promoted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychlorine to tackle the virus, despite the fact that it hasn’t gone through the proper testing and approval process. After hearing about a country doctor in upstate New York who claimed to have treated patients for the disease with a cocktail of hydroxychlorine and other drugs with positive results, the president ran with it as a magic bullet. “I’ll tell you what, what do you have to lose?” he said. A just-released Veterans Administration study shows not only no benefit from use of hydroxychlorine, but there were more deaths among patients given the drug.Then, Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro asserted that studies have showed the drug to have “clear therapeutic efficacy” in treating Covid-19 patients. Asked his qualifications for making such a claim, Navarro told CNN, “I’m a social scientist.” Others also trumpeting the medicine include the president’s usual Fox News chorus, led by Sean Hannity, and Rudolf Giuliani. This has had real impact: the White House directed health officials to put the anti-malarial medication ahead of other efforts to combat the outbreak. The federal government has since stockpiled 29 million pills.

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Scientists, however, are counseling caution. “In terms of science, I don’t think we can definitively say it works,” said Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top epidemiologist. American Medical Association President Patrice Harris added: “You could lose your life. It’s unproven.” Axios reported a major blow-up in the situation room at one point between Navarro and a skeptical Fauci, who has confided to colleagues that Trump “almost always” ignores the advice he gives him before the daily press briefings.

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Trump’s own CDC issued a statement on April 7 saying, “There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19.” Medical experts are cautioning it will take a minimum of 12 to 18 months to come up with a vaccine.

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In the meantime, Trump is putting the public health at even greater risk by propagating lies and misinformation. As of this writing, the coronavirus has claimed more than 47,000 American lives. Fatalities far surpass those in China, a nation with four times our population. And the rate of confirmed cases is growing faster in the United States than in all of Western Europe. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts some 67,000 Americans could die by August. Right now, one American dies of coronavirus every 45 seconds.

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How many more will die depends on who is calling the shots: experts or hacks.

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The Trump administration’s attitude toward science can only be described as contemptuous.There has been an 85 percent turnover of federal agency senior executives,and President Trump has failed to appoint anyone to nearly half of the federal scientific leadership positions. More often than not, Trump appointees are unqualified and ideologically driven.

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Trump’s disdain for science comes with grievous consequences.He was alerted by the intelligence community of an emerging pandemic in January. Still, the president squandered more than two months before treating the issue seriously. That came after he disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic team and defunded a $200 million USAID program for detecting virus outbreaks overseas. Simply put, the president rid the government of some of its best resources to prepare for and respond to this kind of emergency. These actions come on top of the administration’s measures to marginalize science and fact-based research, including denying climate change.

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But Trumpism did not come out of nowhere. Undergirding the president’s war on expertise is a recurrent strain of anti-intellectualism in America’s social and political DNA. As the late writer Isaac Asimov observed, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

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Trump panders to rightwing populists’ contempt for empirical facts and expert knowledge. Rush Limbaugh, whom Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, has named science as one of his so-called Four Corners of Deceit, which also include government, academia and media. The coronavirus, Limbaugh said, “appears far less deadly” than the flu, but the government and the mainstream news media “keep promoting panic.”

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The evangelical movement, a bedrock of Trump’s base, promotes an anti-science culture that rejects critical thinking.Pro-Trump Pentecostal preacher Rodney Howard-Browne has called his followers to attend church services in defiance of social distancing restrictions, dismissing coronavirus as a “phantom plague.”

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Of course, it’s no surprise that anti-intellectualism also extends into the halls of Congress, where a sitting congressman declared a few years ago that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” and where the chairman of a Senate environmental committee brought a snowball into the chamber to prove that climate change is a hoax.

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The coronavirus is not a hoax. It’s a mega-killer. A month after President Trump assured everyone that it would “go away,” more than 850,000 Americans have tested positive and the U.S. leads the world in the number of Covid-19-related deaths. Now, with his call over the weekend to “liberate” states imposing shelter-in-place orders, and red-state governors taking a care-free approach to social distancing, the risk of these numbers burgeoning out of control becomes very real.

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Perhaps reality will sink in as the body count rises. Statistics, after all, are stubborn things. No amount of bluster, bluffing, and bullshit by the president and his enablers can obfuscate or contradict them. If there was ever a moment when it should be clear to voters why the nation needs a return to policies based on facts, knowledge, and science, this is it.

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trump base protest ohio, mi [devos freedom fund] , kty

aha TP koch astro creation that cd be pointed at whatever eg aca, // trumpistas? via fox?

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trumpistas the most vuln to covid, and getting least help rural small bix has no big bank relation

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-fans-cant-admit-hes-to-blame-for-this-crisis-so-theyre-launching-nonsensical-protests-instead

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no lnx

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Trump fans can’t admit he’s to blame for this crisis — so they’re launching nonsensical protests instead

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Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 16, 2020

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On Wednesday, a crowd of right-wing nuts — complete with their oversized but underworked utility vehicles, Confederate flags, guns and other such overcompensation accoutrements — descended on the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, to whine about the temporary pause to dinners at Applebee’s and accidental brushfires at gender-reveal parties. The deep fear of emasculation driving the protest was not particularly subtle at this protest, as the crowd chanted “Lock her up” at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who is accused of no other crime other than making deeply insecure men fuss about a woman in power.

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The ostensible purpose of the protests was to pressure Whitmer to relax some of the restrictions on businesses and movement under the coronavirus lockdown. In reality, of course, this is happening because a bunch of Fox News-loving Trump supporters have been poisoned by propaganda that has convinced them the coronavirus is overblown or a hoax, all being spread by the libs to destroy Trump’s chances at re-election.

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Well, that, and the fact that they’re a bunch of sexists who hate having a female governor, which goes a long way toward explaining why the Michigan protest was bigger than others in Ohio or North Carolina, whose governors are male.

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The immense Trump propaganda infrastructure is marshaling these folks for one simple reason: This crisis is Trump’s fault, and he desperately needs someone to blame for his failures, which have led to the spread of the virus and the collapse of the economy. So these numbskulls are being organized to protest the governors who are trying to clean up Trump’s mess, which is a little like protesting the doctors who are treating patients who got sick because Trump refused to do anything serious to limit the spread of the virus.

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Oh wait — they did that, too, by blocking ambulances trying to take patients to the hospital.

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The protest is incoherent. Everyone wants to reopen the economy, but the main reason we can’t is because Trump, in his incompetence and malice, has persistently refused to take steps to institute the widespread testing that’s necessary before lockdowns can be eased. If these conservatives want the economy to restart, they should stay home, stop watching Fox News and give money to any Democrats running for anything, because the only way this country can survive this is with competent leadership that’s willing to do what needs doing.

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That incoherence goes even deeper than the immediate idiocy of blaming the people who are trying to fix the problem instead of the orange menace in the White House who caused it. These protests also lay bare the larger incoherence of the right-wing mythology that conservatives are rugged individualists who are tougher and better prepared than those supposedly soft, effete liberals in the big cities.

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Right-wingers love to talk a big game about how tough they are, compared to the avocado-toast-eating class, but what Wednesday’s protest revealed was a bunch of spoiled brats ready to fall apart in the face of even the slightest inconvenience.

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Rosanne Ponkowski, one of the protest’s organizers, complained to the Daily Beast, “We can’t take our boats on the water if they have an engine” and added, “We can’t buy paint and go paint our house.”

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Other massive infringements on liberty: The inability to buy patio furniture, Legos or bug spray. It’s not easy to hire somebody to mow the lawn. You literally can’t make this stuff up.

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What is immediately clear is that these “rugged individuals” fall apart completely at the first sign of even the slightest hardship. For all the History Channel documentaries about World War II they might consume, they aren’t exactly the hard-bitten warriors they dream themselves to be. Instead, they’re a bunch of whiny babies who have spent their entire lives in the consumer bubble, and react to the prospect of giving up fishing for a few months as if their legs were being forcibly amputated.

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Turns out that these individuals are, in fact, highly dependent on the communities they live in, so much so that a few weeks of needing to curtail shopping and socializing has led to a total meltdown.

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The obvious truth here is that times are hard on everyone. That’s especially true for the 22 million Americans who’ve filed for unemployment, the more than 600,000 who are sick, and the families of the nearly 30,000 people who have died from this virus. But there’s plenty of room to feel compassion for the rest of us who are going stir-crazy, who are fighting with family members or who are suffering from social isolation.

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Hell, there’s nothing wrong with being grumpy that you can’t get your garden planted in time this year or that you can’t go fishing. People deserve pleasure, especially during a crisis when the small things are often what keep us going. State governments should certainly strive to write quarantine regulations that strike a balance between public heath needs and ordinary people’s desire to find joy in their daily lives.

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But it’s really rich for the self-proclaimed “rugged individuals” of America to be such big, whiny babies in the face of this.

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We’re forever hearing from right wingers how the rest of us need to toughen up a little. People on food stamps just need to “get a job,” even though most food assistance recipients already have one. If millennials can’t afford to buy houses, it’s because they’re over-indulged hipsters who eat too much avocado toast. (Reality: They’re trapped by soaring housing costs and saddled with too much student debt.) A woman who doesn’t want to be forced into childbirth should have just kept her legs shut.

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Right-wing Americans have little sympathy for millions of their fellow citizens who face real hardship, but an endless amount of self-pity because they have to skip a fishing trip. No wonder they love Trump, a man who can’t be bothered to care about Americans dying, but is in full-blown panic mode because he might not get re-elected.

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In reality, this pandemic has exposed how we’re all in this together and none of us are “rugged individuals.” We need those health care workers and grocery store employees and teachers. We are all dependent on each other, not just for the basic necessities of life, but the luxuries like boating and gardening. Right wingers have spent decades denying this fact, clinging to their Ayn Rand fantasies that they’re not dependent on the rest of us and are under no obligation to pay their taxes or by treating others with decency and compassion.

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But it turns out that conservatives are more dependent on the system that all the people they deplore as weak, so much so that a minor interruption in their daily life causes a full-blown temper tantrum like the one we witnessed in Michigan this week. More are coming, we can be sure of that.

===

ref 1

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/16/trumps-tea-party-are-right-wing-open-the-country-protests-an-astroturf-operation/

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no lnx

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Dawn Perreca protests on the front steps of the Michigan State Capitol building in Lansing, Mich., Wednesday, April 15, 2020. Flag-waving, honking protesters drove past the Michigan Capitol on Wednesday to show their displeasure with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's orders to keep people at home and businesses locked during the new coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)]

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Trump's Tea Party: Are right-wing "open the country" protests an AstroTurf operation?

Right-wing donors are overtly funding this feeble wave of protests — and it could be a Trump campaign operation

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SOPHIA TESFAYE

APRIL 16, 2020

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Familiar chants of "Lock her up!" rang out during Wednesday protests at the State Capitol in Michigan, a state Donald Trump flipped in 2016. The day before, protesters carried the "Don't Tread on Me" Gadsden flag, repopularized by the far right in recent years, at a North Carolina rally. In Ohio on Monday, more than 100 protesters swarmed the governor's daily press briefing on the coronavirus response, carrying signs that claimed "the cure is worse than the virus."

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This backlash from the far right against attempts to "slow the spread" of the deadly pathogen is a textbook example of what happens when faith in public health experts is undermined — in this case, due to a deliberate, decades-long campaign to erode trust in expertise.

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Perhaps all this was to be expected. One of the first signs was the venomous response to workers, like those at Amazon, Instacart and Target who deigned to protest their safety conditions in the midst of a global pandemic. Laborers who called for increased pay and protections to correspond with surge demand were unfairly exploiting a crisis, some right-wing commentators argued. Others in "Trump's death cult," as Salon's Chauncey DeVega has described them, rushed to demand that the powers that be "reopen the country," even as the coronavirus continued to spread, and well before — shelter-in-place orders had a chance to do their work. The American way, they made clear, means markets must be valued over human lives.

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So while Trump's campaign rallies have indefinitely relocated to a socially-distanced White House, it comes as little surprise that his supporters have taken to openly flouting CDC guidelines in order to protest the call for personal sacrifice to help ensure the safety of the community. One unanswered question is whether this is an organic movement or a more organized effort, akin to the AstroTurf Tea Party protests that were prominent on the right during the Obama years.

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The protests come just as President Trump's short-lived "rally around the flag" polling bump begins to subside, and as Democratic governors across the nation see their job approval ratings rise. Beginning in Ohio on Monday, then North Carolina on Tuesday and Michigan and Kentucky on Wednesday, with more planned for Arizona in the coming days, these modest gatherings certainly suggest a degree of national coordination. Call it Trump's Tea Party or the right-wing Resistance — no matter how the pushback has been organized, it's clear that the political objective of these protests goes beyond any specific policy outcome.

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Protesters against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's shutdown orders had promised a car-bound event dubbed "Operation Gridlock," but at least 200 people physically gathered at the steps of the State Capitol in Lansing on Wednesday, armed with Confederate flags, pro-Trump banners and anti-Whitmer signs, some comparing the governor to Hitler. Most protesters did not wear masks. Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield greeted the protesters by waving an American flag from a window at his Capitol office.

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Thousands of people from all over Michigan are converging on our state Capitol today to protest the governor's restrictive "Stay Home" order and get their voices, and car horns, heard. #OperationGridlock pic.twitter.com/bgjH4wKCUQ

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— MI House Republicans (@MI_Republicans) April 15, 2020

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Whitmer, a co-chair of Joe Biden's presidential campaign, has become a target of the right after she publicly tangled with Trump over the federal government's inadequate pandemic response. While Whitmer's management the coronavirus outbreak in her state received a 71% approval rating in a poll released this week, Trump's handling of the crisis was rated considerably lower, with only 51% of Michganders approving.

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This week, six Republican House members from Michigan released a letter calling on Whitmer to amend her order, accusing her of "needlessly shutting down large sectors of the economy and further restricting the lives of residents." Announcing their plan to defy Whitmer's shelter-in-place orders, four Michigan sheriffs argued the governor was "overstepping her executive authority." Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel tweeted that Whitmer was turning Michigan into a "police state."

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"Gretchen, stop auditioning for VP & do your job," she said.

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Similar protests took place in Kentucky on Wednesday, directed at Democratic Gov.Andy Beshear's stay-at-home order and organized by a onetime political appointee of former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. The GOP operative recently made headlines for claiming, without evidence, that Beshear defeated Bevin last November due to vote "hacking."

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On Tuesday, more than 100 protesters in Raleigh, North Carolina, came together to oppose Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's stay-at-home order. The protest was organized through a private Facebook group named #ReOpenNC started by a stay-at-home mother who told the Raleigh News & Observer that she is "against mandatory vaccination." The group said it plans to hold weekly rallies, a promise also made by the 100-plus protesters who interrupted Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, on Monday.

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Will be forever haunted by this image of protestors in Ohio demanding the governor open businesses back up pic.twitter.com/P0nivaYSsY

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— future canon (@futurecanon) April 15, 2020

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So who is behind the sudden sprouting of right-wing resistance? Unlike with the Tea Party movement of the recent past, the mega-donors behind today's right-wing rallies are making no effort to hide their involvement.

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FreedomWorks, the instrumental force behind the Tea Party, "is holding weekly virtual town halls with members of Congress, igniting an activist base of thousands of supporters across the nation to back up the effort" led by right-wing commentator Stephen Moore. the Associated Press reported. Other right-wing groups vocally opposing shutdowns include Americans for Prosperity, an organization funded by the Koch brothers, and the conservative Heritage Foundation.

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There is even a connection to the family of Trump's Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. As Michigan's governor noted, the DeVos family foundation helped fund Facebook ads for this week's protest. While noting that the Education Secretary ended her political spending when she joined Trump's Cabinet, a spokesperson for the family took a swipe at Whitmer. "They understand the frustration of fellow Michiganders, however, as elements of the governor's top-down approach appear to go beyond public safety," Nick Wasmiller told MLive, adding that "Michigan deserves competent governance."

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Trump's acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, posted an image to social media on Wednesday suggesting that stay-at-home orders were unconstitutional. That same day, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Fox News' Tucker Carlson, "We've gotta reopen, and when we do the coronavirus is gonna spread faster." Rep. Trey Hollingsworth told an Indianapolis radio station on Wednesday that it was time for lawmakers to put on their "big-boy and big-girl pants" and prioritize "the American way of life" over the lives of actual Americans. "It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils," Hollingsworth said, "and we intend to move forward that direction."

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It's clear these small groups of protesters share more than a sense of irritability with being inconvenienced. After all, protesters have been beaten, strikers have been shot, and freedom of assembly has been infringed plenty of times in the past — and those crackdowns have been loudly applauded by the same right-wing, pro-capital protesters now complaining about social distancing guidelines. Recall that after Trump's election, Republican state legislatures rushed to pass laws restricting the right to protest. In Arizona, where right-wing protests against shelter-in-place orders are scheduled for this weekend, Republicans tried to pass a bill allowing police to arrest anyone involved in a nonviolent demonstration. Now the same people who rally around a "back the blue" campaign whenever police shoot an unarmed black person or when anti-fascists take to the streets are righteously exercised about civil liberties.

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"Are you goons of [Gov.] Cooper or servants of the people?" one North Carolina protester reportedly yelled at law enforcement officers this week.

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This redirected right-wing rage comes as Trump continues to change direction, hoping to find a pandemic response that makes him look like a leader. Whether this so-called protest movement isorchestrated by his campaign or not — and that seems highly plausible — ultimately it's a PR stunt conducted on his behalf, meant to avoid a grim new reality as the bodies pile up.

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SOPHIA TESFAYE

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's Deputy Politics Editor and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

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===

ref 2

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no lnx

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AMANDA MARCOTTE

President Donald Trump, with members of the president's coronavirus task force, speaks during a news conference in the Brady press briefing room at the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Hey, Trump supporters: He'd rather endanger your health than lose an election

Trump and his trolls downplay coronavirus to protect him — and may be encouraging their fans to take dumb risks

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AMANDA MARCOTTE

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

Donald Trump lies, all the time, about everything. Right-wing media and congressional Republicans back him up on these lies. As many a liberal who has confronted Trump supporters over the relentless lying has found, a lot of his voters simply don't care if he lies. They view his lying as fair game, because it's all in service of sticking it to the hated liberals. If Trump lies, cheats and steals — as his base sees it — he's doing it for them, so they can claim big wins in the culture war. Therefore it's all justified.

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But this may be Trump's biggest deception of them all, because, in truth, he doesn't actually care for his own voters one single whit. The only person Donald Trump cares about is Donald Trump. While his supporters bray in glee over the way Trump's lies drive "the libs" nuts, they're falling for his biggest con of all — because he wouldn't hesitate to screw over every single one of his supporters, if he thought it would help him.

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Trump's ease with betraying even his most loyal followers has been evident in his response to the threat of coronavirus, the apparent viral epidemic that began started in China and has now spread to at least 47 countries, including the United States. For most leaders who don't have a crippling case of sociopathic narcissism, the threat of this disease turning into a global pandemic would cause concern for the well-being of the nation, and of humanity at large. The response of any normal president, of whichever party, would be guided by the principle that the most important thing is the health and safety of Americans.

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For Trump, however, the main priority — in fact, the only significant one — is to make sure this viral outbreak doesn't harm his chances of getting re-elected in November. If that means lying to his loyal supporters, even in a way that puts their own lives in danger, he won't hesitate to do that.

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That much was made obvious in Wednesday's White House press conference on the epidemic. Even as Trump's own health officials noted that there have been at least 60 cases in the U.S. and they expect many more, Trump dismissed the situation, suggesting that the disease has already been beaten back. "We've had tremendous success," he said, asserting that the whole thing was likely to end quickly, with "just one or two people [infected] over the next short period of time."

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Instead of admitting how serious this situation looks, Trump — who only sees other people's actions through a Trump-centric lens — has suggested that his enemies have exaggerated the threat of the disease to hurt him. He tweeted on Wednesday that the media was "doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus [sic] look as bad as possible" for the purpose of "panicking markets" to hurt his re-election.

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(In fact, most of these media figureheads Trump hates so much stand to lose lots of money if the stock market tanks. But Trump is incapable of understanding that people have motivations that have nothing to do with him.)

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It's not especially surprising that Trump, who projects his own ugly impulses onto others, would believe that people are exaggerating or inventing the coronavirus threat for political gain. After all, that's what he would do.

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He has done that, in fact, as my colleague Sophia Tesfaye noted in a Thursday-morning piece in which she reminds readers that Trump and the Republicans deliberately hyped up the threat of Ebola virus to spread racist fears about Africans and damage Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections.

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Similarly, one of Trump's favorite things to do at his rallies is to claim, with absolutely no evidence, that "windmills," as he calls wind turbines, cause cancer. He just made this up out of whole cloth, and the purpose is obvious: Trump despises the push for clean energy, and believes he can use it as a culture-war campaign issue about nanny-state liberalism. He will say literally anything, no matter how false or inflammatory, in order to demonize any energy source that doesn't involve burning fossil fuels.

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But this isn't just about Trump's sociopathic solipsism. Right-wing media in general is all too happy to threaten the health and well-being of its audience by telling them that the media is overhyping the threat in order to undermine Trump. Rush Limbaugh, who now has stage 4 lung cancer after years of denying that smoking was dangerous, has accused the media of lying about coronavirus, suggested that it's no worse than "the common cold," and implied that leftists are making up the threat of a pandemic, just as they made up the climate crisis. (In actual reality, both things are real.) Laura Ingraham has advanced a nutbar conspiracy theory that China is somehow lying about the virus to hurt Trump.

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To make it worse, the Trump-supported media has decided to attack one of the remaining competent people in charge, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They're furious that Messonnier has spoken to media outlets, commenting on the threat of the virus and asking health care workers to prepare themselves.

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To punish and discredit her for the sin of putting the public health over Trump's political interests, Limbaugh, aided by right-wing bloggers, has been spreading a conspiracy theory accusing Messonnier of being part of a "deep state" conspiracy against Trump. Their evidence? She is the sister of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee now hated by Trumpers because he got fed up with lying for the president and started telling the truth. These lurid and false conspiracy theories should be contrasted with the mildness of Messonnier's actual comments, which have focused on the CDC's plans to slow the spread of the disease.

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What's interesting about Trump and his minions ruthlessly and relentlessly lying is that the audience for these lies is mostly Trump's supporters, not the general public. Most Americans, who don't support Trump, know perfectly well that he's a liar and don't believe a word he says. The people who are being told to take risks with their health and ignore advice from Messonnier and other public health officials are Trump voters themselves.

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This is hardly the first time that Trump has risked the safety of his own supporters in service of his own ego. Last summer, he infamously used a Sharpie to fake a map in order to make it seem like Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama, even though weather experts said it would not. He did this entirely to save face, because he had previously tweeted that Alabama was under threat and was angry about being publicly corrected.

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The incident went viral, partly because the fake map was so badly done, but also because it showed that Trump won't hesitate to put his own supporters in danger, for the slightest, pettiest and most self-serving reasons. Luckily, the map was not remotely convincing, and did not lead to panicked evacuations, which sometimes cause injury and death in accidents.

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Trump's lies about coronavirus, on the other hand, are a big deal. The advice from health officials on how to prevent transmission is fairly standard — wash your hands; pay attention to travel advisories — but it's now being counteracted by Trump and the right-wing media encouraging their audiences to be distrustful of all such expertise. Will some people in MAGA America, eager as always to stick it to "the libs," forgo hand-washing rather than betray their faith in their leader? It's possible. Trump simply don't care if his fans get sick or die, as long as he feels his own interests are being protected.

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AMANDA MARCOTTE

Amanda Marcotte is a politics writer for Salon who covers American politics, feminism and culture. Her new book, "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself" is out now. She's based out of Brooklyn and can be followed on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/leading-cult-expert-explains-how-trump-trained-his-followers-to-believe-no-one-but-him-and-why-his-mind-control-cult-now-faces-an-existential-crisis/

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no lnx

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Leading expert explains how Trump trained his followers to believe no one but him — and why his ‘mind control cult’ now faces an ‘existential crisis’

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Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon April 7, 2020

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During the 1970s, Steven Hassan was a senior member of the Unification Church, an offshoot Christian sect led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Hassan was so loyal to the Unification Church that he pledged to die or kill at Moon’s command.

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After escaping the Unification Church, Hassan dedicated his life’s work to freeing other people from mind control organizations and destructive cults. He is now one of the world’s leading experts on mind control and cults.

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Hassan is a direct personal witness to the way cult leaders are defined by their use of money, power, greed, sex, lies, charisma and violence to control their followers and empower themselves. In 2016 Hassan saw those traits personified in the form of Republican nominee Donald Trump. He then tried to alert the public to the danger that a cult leader would become president and that ruin and despair for the United States would be the inevitable result. Hassan’s new book “The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control” attempts to explain how this all came to be.

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While many pundits and others have remained in denial about the existential threat posed by Donald Trump and his movement, Hassan warned early on that Trump’s followers were effectively cult members and would not be swayed from supporting their leader for any reason. With the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s power over his followers is on full display, as he and his spokespeople are now suggesting that older and other vulnerable Americans should be willing to risk their lives in order to “save the economy” — and of course to aid Trump’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

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I recently spoke with Steven Hassan about Trump’s death cult and the power the president has over his followers. Hassan also explains how Trump resembles notorious cult leader Jim Jones and why Trump’s followers remain in love with him even as his decisions are literally making them sick. Hassan also explains how Fox News and other parts of the right-wing disinformation machine are key elements of Trump’s mind control powers over his political cult.

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Hassan also warns that Trump’s followers are capable of committing acts of great violence against their fellow Americans, should their leader command it.

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You can also listen to my conversation with Steven Hassan on my podcast “The Truth Report” or through the player embedded below.

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As usual, this conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

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Donald Trump continues to make ridiculous statements, such as claiming he was the first person to call the coronavirus a “pandemic,” or that there will be a magical flash of light and all will be well. It is clear he is mentally unwell. How do you make sense of his behavior?

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Trump grew up in the church of Norman Vincent Peale. Peale taught magical thinking and that if a person just believed something 100%, God will magically make it come true. Trump was trained to be amagical thinker as a child. It’s been described as a type of solipsistic reality where Trump defines his own world and what is real or not. That is a type of thinking which is very common to cults.

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In this way of thinking, if Trump says the coronavirus pandemic is just going to somehow get better then it is going to happen. And when that does not happen, then Trump can deny ever saying such a thing, blame the Chinese, the Democrats or anyone else, instead of just saying he was wrong.

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How does Donald Trump fit the profile of a cult leader?

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Donald Trump fits the stereotypical profile of all destructive cults. These traits include malignant narcissism. Trump can easily be compared to Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, and other cult leaders. Trump always had a cult of personality around him in terms of his businesses and his social interactions with people. But once Trump attained the presidency, he took over the Republican Party and instituted a fiefdom where he rewards loyalty and punishes anyone who displeases him.

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As for definitions, a “destructive cult” is an authoritarian pyramid-structured group with someone at the top who claims to know all things and says God is working through him or her. Trump does that as well. Donald Trump is also trying to control people’s behavior, the information they have access to, and their thoughts and emotions, to make them dependent and obedient and under his control. Consider the novel coronavirus pandemic and how Trump has all these followers who do not trust real experts and only take what Trump says to be true. Trump’s followers also don’t believe in science and medicine.

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Do members of cults know that the leader is lying but convince themselves it does not matter? Or have the cult members totally lost the ability to think rationally?

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Unfortunately, when a person is in a mind control group, critical thinking does not take place. Thinking in a cult does not depend on independent verifiable data. Information about the world — empirical reality — goes through a filtering system where the default is to support the cult identity and the cult leader and what they tell you to believe. The way to escape a mind control cult’s power and influence is for a person to find a way to access who they were before they got involved in the cult. A person in that situation needs to separate themselves from the ongoing indoctrination.

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In the case of Trump and his movement, that can be through Fox News, right-wing religious TV or radio shows, the internet, smartphones,etc. Phones are a key part of how these Christian and other religious cults work where they send the members emails and texts. The brain needs a respite from all that communication. To escape Trump’s cult, the members need to regain perspective on reality and develop the cognitive tools to say, “Yes, Trump lied to me.” They need to say that to themselves and realize that Trump is not for the average person. He’s not making America great. He’s making things worse. He’s dividing us. He’s enriching himself. He’s undermining the separation of church and state. He’s undermining the rule of law.

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What is the role of Fox News in Trump’s power over his followers, especially during this pandemic?

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Fox News is the main propaganda arm of Donald Trump and his true believers. Fox News is continually disseminating and reinforcing Trump’s messages. Fox News is a dangerous entity.

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Donald Trump and his Republicans, right-wing media and various churches have been saying that older people should be willing to get sick and die for the sake of the “economy.” Moreover, they suggest that to die from this disease is an act of “patriotism” and “piety” and “love.” This sounds like human sacrifice to an ancient mythological being. Specifics are critical here: is Donald Trump leading a death cult? And how are death cults different from other types of cults?

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A death cult is a type of cult where the leader is telling the followers to kill themselves. A death cult also does not cherish the sanctity of life. It is very simple in terms of how it views the world in binary black and white terms. If the “last days” are here and God is going to return to somehow magically renew the world and send true believers to heaven, then it does not matter if those people who are not in the death cult die.

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I would say right now it is premature to say that Donald Trump leads a death cult. But at the point where the coronavirus pandemic overwhelms the health care system, Donald Trump would then be the leader of a death cult.

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For people outside Trump’s cult and the Republican Party, it seems ridiculous and evil to suggest that people should go out and die from the novel coronavirus to save the economy. But Trump’s followers seem willing to do so. What is going on in their minds?

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If you are in a cult where the leader is claiming to be some type of apostle or prophet who gets revelations directly from God, and who says “just believe in me” and tells you to reject reality or outside information, then you believe that you will be fine. You will be “saved” and go to “paradise.” Therefore, if Trump or his other spokespeople tell people to go out, get sick and then die, it is fine because the cult members believe they are going to heaven.

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Unfortunately, there are millions of Americans who believe that Donald Trump is doing a good job with the coronavirus pandemic because they are not looking at any other source of news or reality testing. These people are doing a lot of praying and they have put their faith in an authoritarian leader who continually tells them, “I know better than everyone else, the experts, the doctors, etc.” Trump says that all the time. He always tells his followers that he knows better than the scientists, generals and other experts. Trump is telling his followers that he is omnipotent.

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What happens to a person’s mind when it becomes subsumed by the cult leader?

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As someone who was in a cult, the way I try to explain it is that mind control is a type of dissociative disorder where there is a split between who you really are and the cult identity. Cult members do have moments where their real authentic self re-emerges. For example, they miss their families. But then the cult part of the mind reasserts itself through fear or thought stopping or any number of other techniques to suppress the authentic self again.

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As long as a person stays in the cult, they are receiving constant reinforcement of the cult identity. What is happening at present is very different from my experience in the 1970s. Then, you had to be taken to an isolated place to have your brain conditioned and programmed by the cult. Now the Internet, YouTube, Facebook and other types of media can program a person into a cult identity. Fox News and right-wing talk radio are obvious ways that Trump’s followers are indoctrinated into his cult. Sleep deprivation by having people constantly tuned into the cult programming is another form of programming.

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Trump’s policies are actually causing real, measurable physical and economic harm to his “white working class” followers, as well as others. Yet those people remain among Trump’s most devoted supporters. The coronavirus pandemic is a literal life and death example of the harm that Trump is causing his cult members. Yet they still love him. How does a person’s mind reconcile such an outcome?

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Donald Trump constantly tells his followers that he loves them. His people need and want to believe that Donald Trump loves them. Trump’s followers have a deep investment in him emotionally and personally.I would tell Trump’s true believers the same thing I would tell people in other mind control cults: Think back to what you thought you were getting involved with, and now think about where you are now. If you knew then where you would be three and a half years later, would you have ever gotten involved with Donald Trump in the first place?

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I would also tell Trump’s cult members to think about his lies. They need to realize that they made decisions based on things proven to not be true. Now Trump’s followers know better. It is time for them to leave his cult. I would tell his cult members that it is time for a new chapter in their lives. They need to reboot their minds and behavior. Trump’s followers need to think about the future, how they want to live and how they want to raise their children.

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How will the coronavirus impact how Trump’s cult members think about reality? How do they reconcile their love of Donald Trump with seeing people die all around them?

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The cult part of their psyche is going to say it was their time. If Trump’s followers are religious, they will simply rationalize it as the dead are going to a better place in heaven. These people will believe that the deaths are good because it is the end times or something of the sort. As they see their loved ones die, the authentic self may reassert itself. If it does, those people are going to get very angry and upset at Donald Trump.

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Trump and his mouthpieces are now trying to blame Barack Obama and the Democrats for the coronavirus disaster. Trump and his media are also blaming Asians and Asian-Americans. There has been a rise in hate crimes as a result. What comes next as the pandemic continues?

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One of the main things that cult leaders do is to project outward on to false enemies, to deflect their own irresponsible behavior and blame others. I can imagine scenarios where Trump’s cult members, his followers go out and hurt other Americans. They would even go so far as to hurt their neighbors if Donald Trump and his spokespeople told them to.

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I’m an idealist at heart. I want to have hope. I want people to rise up to their higher self and not descend down to barbarism and tribalism. Unfortunately, it really takes a great deal of energy to think critically, to look at data and not allow emotions to sway you to doing things that you will regret later.

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covid

trumpistas perfect venn diagram?!

atlantic art'l

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copins?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/some-trump-supporters-delight-in-defying-pandemic-protocols-to-own-the-liberals-report/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/heres-the-data-that-proves-americans-who-rage-against-political-correctness-are-the-most-xenophobic-and-most-likely-to-vote-trump-in-2020

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no lnx

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Here’s the data that shows Americans who rage against political correctness are the most xenophobic — and most likely to vote Trump

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Written by Samuel L. Perry / Religion Dispatches March 24, 2020

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Admittedly, Trump’s initial references to “the Chinese Virus” earlier in March seemed rather ad-hoc. Though clearly xenophobic in context and implication, it seemed that Trump was casually parroting the language of other far-Right commentators like Charlie Kirk. Within the past week, however, Trump has ramped up his labeling campaign, often going out of his way to refer to COVID-19 as “the Chinese Virus” in Twitter storms and White House press briefings.

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Two key strategies likely drive Trump’s efforts here. Both involve distracting Americans from his own administration’s failings at dealing with the coronavirus earlier on. The first is simply to blame China, laying responsibility for America’s situation solely at their feet. The fact that a Chinese propaganda director recently suggested the virus may have originated with American soldiers who brought it to China provided the perfect (and tacitly justifiable) motivation for Trump to remind the world forcefully and repeatedly where the virus originated.

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The second factor also involves distraction from Trump’s failings, but one in which “China” is only incidental. They are merely a stand-in for all “dangerous outsiders.” By repeatedly and brazenly referring to “the Chinese Virus,” and provoking a media backlash against the xenophobic implications of his language, Trump wishes to remind his base who our internal threats are: politically correct liberals who care more about defending foreigners than they do the American people.

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Though Trump has previously raged against political correctness explicitly, and indeed, campaigned on it in 2016, when it comes to this recent COVID-19 labeling campaign, other far-Right thought-leaders have been doing this for him. For example, in a March 14th interview on Fox News, Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton stated, “Anyone who complains that it’s racist or xenophobic to call this virus the Chinese coronavirus or the Wuhan virus is a politically correct fool, and they ought not to be listened to about anything.”

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And March 20th, Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly told Glenn Beck: “The worst thing in this pandemic virus outside of the actual illness itself of course is the political [sic] correct media still, still peddling garbage that hurts the American people.” Quoting an ABC News reporter, O’Reilly said in a whiny, mocking voice, “A lot of people think it’s racist if you call it the Chinese Virus. …It’s sickening.”

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But survey data confirm that white Americans—like President Trump, Senator Tom Cotton, Bill O’Reilly, or their followers—who attack politically correct language as the enemy are in fact the most likely to hold racist or xenophobic views. In a nationally representative survey fielded in February 2020, we asked Americans to indicate how much they agreed with statements about using politically correct language. We also asked Americans for their views on refugees from the Middle East and America’s control over its Southern border.

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In the first figure [left], we see that, as Americans’ agreement with the statement “Too many people are easily offended these days over language” increases, the more likely they are to believe that the federal government should do more to secure the Southern border and that Middle Eastern refugees pose a terrorist threat.

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In the second figure [below, right], we see a similar trend, but in the opposite direction. The more strongly Americans disagree with the statement “People need to be more careful with language to avoid offending people,” the more likely they are to hold xenophobic views about refugees from the Middle East and to want stricter border control.

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In sum: both figures show that white Americans who voice the strongest opinions against politically correct language also hold the strongest anti-immigrant attitudes.

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Just as important, they are also the group most likely to plan on voting Trump in 2020.

[no graf]

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The last figure [left] shows the percentage of white Americans who indicate they plan on voting Trump in 2020 by their level of agreement with our two statements regarding politically correct language. Nearly 80% of white Americans who strongly disagree that “People need to be more careful with language to avoid offending people,” or who strongly agree that “Too many people are easily offended these days over language,” intend to vote for Trump in November.

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Seen in light of these data, Trump’s dual strategy is clear. By unapologetically referring to COVID-19 as “the Chinese Virus,” Trump is first able to signal to his white base that he too is disdainful of scheming, disease-ridden outsiders. But he can also intentionally provoke a backlash against his hurtful and xenophobic language, which he and his followers can dismiss as leftist “political correctness.” Trump shores up support against both a perceived external threat (immigrants) and an internal threat (liberals) with a single dangerous and offensive swipe.

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===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-right-wingers-and-trump-apologists-could-get-people-killed-with-coronavirus-disinformation-columnist/

no lnx

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How right-wingers and Trump apologists could ‘get people killed’ with coronavirus disinformation: columnist

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Written by Alex Henderson March 10, 2020

As the death toll from coronavirus continues to climb — passing 4,200 worldwide on Tuesday, according to John Hopkins University in Baltimore — many figures in the United States’ right-wing media believe that their job isn’t to provide accurate information but to defend President Donald Trump at every turn. And by doing so,Never Trump conservative Max Boot asserts in his Washington Post column, they are helping to make a bad situation even worse.

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“President Trump has been widely and correctly excoriated for the way he is dealing with the novel coronavirus,” Boot notes. “By minimizing the danger, he heightens it. Even on Monday, Trump was comparing covid-19 to the ordinary flu — even though its mortality rate appears to be many times higher and its economic effect infinitely greater.”

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Boot quickly adds, however, that “Trump could not spread disinformation all by himself.”

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“A herd of right-wing pseudo-journalists has jumped the shark along with him,” Boot writes. “They are promulgating narratives so at odds with reality that they are likely to get people killed.”

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Boot goes on to cite some examples, including familiar Trumpistas at Fox News and Fox Business.

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“On Monday,” Boot notes, “Trish Regan was on Fox Business denouncing coronavirus concern as ‘yet another attempt to impeach the president.’ In her demented view, Trump’s opponents are deliberately inducing stock-market losses — presumably, Democrats don’t own 401(k)s — in an attempt to ‘to demonize and destroy the president.’ Naturally, Trump — Fox News viewer No. 1 — retweeted her diatribe.”

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Breaking911

@Breaking911

Fox Business’ Trish Regan says coronavirus is a “scam” to “impeach the President”

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Embedded video

Boot is equally critical of Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who insisted on Monday that the president’s critics are trying to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax” and that they are “scaring people unnecessarily.”

“To a lot of viewers,” Boot asserts, “it will sound as if Hannity is calling the virus a hoax, even if that’s not what he intended.”

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Boot also slams radio host Rush Limbaugh as “irresponsible” for claiming that reporting on coronavirus is a plot to hurt Trump’s reelection campaign. However, one right-wing media figure who Boot cites as an “outlier of sanity” on coronavirus is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Boot points out that although Carlson is “often the most rabid host on Fox,” he hasn’t been downplaying the severity of coronavirus and has correctly warned his viewers, “This is real.”

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Boot concludes his column by stressing that whenever right-wing media figures try to make coronavirus seem less dangerous than it is, they are putting their more gullible viewers or listeners in danger.

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“The ‘conservative’ media have long shown their contempt for facts and science — for instance, by playing down the danger of climate change or Russian election attacks,” Boot warns. “Never has their contempt for the truth been more dangerous than it is today. To defeat coronavirus, we must first combat the mental afflictions — irrationality, conspiracy-mongering and Dear Leader-like devotion to Trump — spread by exposure to right-wing media.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/here-are-5-ways-trump-and-his-supporters-are-using-the-same-strategies-as-science-deniers/

no lnx

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Here are 5 ways Trump and his supporters are using the same strategies as science deniers

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Written by Lee McIntyre, The Conversation November 27, 2019

--=

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-supporters-have-little-trust-in-societys-institutions-heres-why-thats-disturbing/

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https://theconversation.com/trump-supporters-have-little-trust-in-societal-institutions-131113

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...Donald Trump has a history of disregarding advice from experts, including diplomats, military leaders, trade experts and scientists.

Trump is not alone in his distrust. Our unpublished research shows that people who support Trump have lower trust in societal institutions, when compared with supporters of leading Democratic candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.

Trust ratings

We asked 930 U.S. residents via an online survey how much they trust six institutions that are key to a working democracy.

We chose three institutions that Americans perceive as liberal – journalists, professors and scientists – and three that conservatives either traditionally support or currently control – the police, the Supreme Court and the federal government. Each institution fulfills an essential role within a democratic society, but depends on the others to function properly.

We also asked participants to report how warm or cold they felt toward Trump, Warren, Sanders and Biden on a scale from 0 to 100.

Even when we controlled for age, education, gender, ethnicity and ideology, Trump supporters had the lowest trust in the six institutions, at 3.75 out of 7 – at least 11.4% lower than anyone else we surveyed.

That means that the patterns we are seeing aren’t caused by fitting a particular demographic profile or having conservative beliefs. In fact, conservatives who do not support Trump had the highest trust in these institutions.

This suggests that there’s something about supporting Trump that shapes how much trust Americans have in the country’s core social and political institutions.

When we looked at each institution individually, we found that Trump supporters had significantly lower trust in journalists, professors and scientists – the more stereotypically liberal institutions – than supporters of the Democratic candidates.

[graf]

But the reverse was not true. Democratic candidate supporters trusted the police, the Supreme Court and the federal government as much as Trump supporters. The one exception was Biden supporters, who actually trusted the Supreme Court significantly more than Trump supporters did. A tower of trust

Although our sample was not representative of the U.S. population, we think that these findings provide valuable insight into the state of U.S. democracy.

We don’t yet know which comes first. Does being a Trump supporter lead to lower trust in societal institutions, does having lower trust in these institutions lead people to support Trump, or do both play a role?

If being a Trump supporter leads to low trust, this could be a result of Trump’s influence, given his apparent distrust in expert advice. If people who have low trust in these institutions are attracted to supporting Trump, then this is cause for concern, considering that previous research shows that politicians are more responsive to their supporters than they are to the general public.

Politicians have the trust of their supporters, and those supporters generally trust some institutions as well. That gives those institutions power to hold the politicians accountable. If the supporters don’t trust in institutions, they have less power to enforce accountability.

Research has shown that institutions are most efficient and effective when people trust them.

The interdependent nature of institutions means that if one becomes ineffective, the others will be affected as well. For example, if citizens lose trust in journalists, journalists will not be able to keep citizens informed. If citizens are ill-informed, they may not make the best decisions when voting or lobbying their democratic representatives, which in turn may decrease the effectiveness of the government.

Like a stack of Jenga blocks, each institution that is removed makes the whole stack less stable.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/why-the-alternative-universe-of-trump-loyalists-wont-be-broken-by-the-bolton-bombshell/

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no lnx

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Why the ‘alternative universe’ of Trump loyalists won’t be broken by the Bolton bombshell

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Written by Alex Henderson January 28, 2020

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When President Richard Nixon announced his resignation on August 8, 1974, he was being inundated with Watergate headlines and realized that many right-wing Republicans in the U.S. Senate would join Democrats in voting to remove him from office; Nixon, in other words, quit because he knew he would inevitably be fired.

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But President Donald Trump, in contrast to Nixon, has been able to count on fiercely loyal Republicans no matter how scandal-ridden he becomes. Republicans, during Trump’s impeachment, have adamantly rallied around the president — and journalist Susan B. Glasser, in a January 28 article for The New Yorker, argued that even John Bolton’s bombshell allegations aren’t swaying diehard Trumpistas.

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Bolton, former national security adviser in the Trump Administration, alleges in his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” that Trump tied military aid to Ukraine to an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, according to multiple reports. Trump and his cult-like defenders have maintained there was no such “quid pro quo” — that investigating the Bidens was never a condition of military aid. But in a leaked manuscript of Bolton’s book, the New York Times reported over the weekend, Bolton alleges Trump and his allies made it clear to the Ukrainian government that there would be no military aid without an investigation of the Bidens.

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Trump loyalists, Glasser notes, have been quick to defame Bolton.

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“The attack on Bolton was swift and predictable: Bolton was a disgruntled former employee, a neocon, a money-grubber with a two-million-dollar book to sell,” Glasser explains. “The president himself led the mob, beginning to tweet and retweet anti-Bolton statements.”

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The Republican National Committee (RNC), Glasser observes, has been “sending out official talking points attacking Bolton.” And many Senate Republicans, she writes, are still opposed to featuring Bolton or any other witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial — no matter how damning Bolton’s allegations are.

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“At any other moment in Washington in my lifetime, I would have predicted with absolute confidence that the Bolton revelation would force Republican senators to switch their position and support witnesses — and not just a few, but almost all of them,” Glasser asserts. “But this is now, and the unthinkable and inconceivable have become increasingly routine. Here it was: the proverbial smoking gun, right in the middle of the trial — crucial evidence that Trump, his advisers, his lawyers and his enablers on Capitol Hill knew about and were trying to suppress.”

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Glasser concludes her New Yorker piece on a somber note, lamenting the fact that no matter what Bolton has to say about Ukraine, Trump’s loyalists and sycophants aren’t budging an inch.

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“Monday proved once again that this alternative universe has become the new normal in Trump’s GOP,” Glasser writes. “It is not the exception but the rule. The post-Bolton-bombshell Republican Party will be largely the same as the pre-Bolton-bombshell Republican Party.”

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signs of life wapo? op-ed text vs tv

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/is-trumps-base-of-support-a-cult-ask-3-people-who-left-it/

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===

as impeach goes So for trump, big push to keep base

Trump expected to give anti-abortion extremists huge gift in an unprecedented move at the ‘March for Life’

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/far-right-white-evangelicals-love-trump-for-many-reasons-including-their-terrifying-obsession-with-the-end-times-report

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===

cf mma RU solanli 1/24/20 split screen silent // scroll of djt accomplishments

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/fox-news-coverage-of-trumps-impeachment-trial-has-been-an-embarrassing-joke/

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no lnx

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Fox News’ coverage of Trump’s impeachment trial has been an embarrassing joke

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Written by Alex Henderson January 24, 2020

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When Rep. Hakeem Jeffries addressed the U.S. Senate on Thursday night as part of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, there was a crucial difference between how Jeffries’ speech was covered on different cable news outlets: while CNN and MSNBC broadcast the speech, Fox News muted the speech while its pundits offered pro-Trump talking points. CNN and MSNBC allowed viewers to hear Jeffries making a compelling case for removing Trump from office; Fox News let views see Jeffries but not hear him. And that Trump-friendly way of covering the trial is the subject of an article journalist Aaron Rupar wrote for Vox this week.

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“Starting with ‘The Five,’ the network’s early evening roundtable commentary show, and continuing throughout the evening, Fox News broadcast portions of screen-in-screen video of the trial,” Rupar explains in his Vox article. “But instead of playing the audio, network hosts provided the normal Trumpian spin. So while someone who just looked at the screen may have concluded Fox News was covering the trial, in fact it wasn’t covering it at all.”

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Fox News, Rupar adds, “went as far as to broadcast screen-in-screen video of the trial during commercial breaks — but again, without the sound that was necessary to make any sense of what was being discussed.”

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Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Fox News has the optics of covering the #ImpeachmentTrial without actually covering it. They've been showing screen-in-screen video of the proceedings without audio. Instead, hosts are providing Trumpian spin. It's propaganda giving the illusion of journalism. Remarkable.

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Embedded video

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Lis Power

@LisPower1

Step 1: Dems try repeatedly to get new evidence into the trial

Step 2: Republicans repeatedly vote it down

Step 3: Fox criticizes Dems for having no new evidence.

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Rinse and repeat.

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Fox's Jason Chaffetz: "It had nothing to do with proving the facts, there was no new evidence"

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Millions of Fox News viewers, Rupar points out, have been fed a steady diet of “propaganda” and misinformation during Trump’s impeachment trial.

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“The 2.7 million people who have been watching Fox News’ impeachment trial coverage at any given time are being told a story about it that’s completely untethered from reality — one that reinforces America’s deep polarization between the roughly 50% of voters who want Trump removed from office and the 40 to 45% who continue to support him through scandal after scandal.”

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Like Jeffries, Rep. Adam Schiff (the California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee) has, during the trial, made convincing arguments in favor of removing Trump from office for his impeachable offenses — which, according to Schiff, include trying to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and withholding military aid to Ukraine in the hope of getting that investigation. Someone who watched MSNBC or CNN got to hear Schiff skillfully laying out fact after fact after fact showing that Trump committed impeachable offenses. But Fox News carnival barkers like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, as Rupar points out in Vox, haven’t seriously addressed the facts Schiff presented — only insulted and defamed him.

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Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Tucker Carlson began his show dismissing the #ImpeachmentTrial by comparing it to "a movie written & directed by children whose ending you already know, & by the way, it's 20 hours long, in Hungarian, with misspelled subtitles." That's how his viewers will process things.

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Andrew Lawrence

@ndrew_lawrence

Fox News added scary music and, in one section, a red overtone to an Adam Schiff supercut from today

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“There’s nothing Schiff could have said on Wednesday that Fox News’ evening and primetime hosts wouldn’t have spun as evidence of his mental instability, his obsession with taking down Trump,” Rupar asserts. “And while viewers were being spun on Wednesday, they were shown soundless video of the trial, the misleading implication being that they don’t have to bother watching it since Fox News is on top of it for them.”

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/maga-activist-karyn-turk-sentenced-to-a-month-in-prison-for-social-security-fraud/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/heres-how-trump-weaponizes-crackpot-ideas-to-maintain-a-firm-grip-on-his-maga-base

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/expert-on-the-far-right-says-its-pointless-to-tell-people-donald-trump-is-bad-heres-what-we-can-do-instead

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Expert on the far right says it’s pointless to tell people Donald Trump is bad. Here’s what we can do instead

Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon December 19, 2019

Donald Trump’s impeachment is a rebuke against the global new right and its assault on democracy and the rule of law.

On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives finally voted to impeach Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, including abuse of power and obstructing Congress and the rule of law. There are many possible reasons to impeach Trump, but these relate to his efforts to extort the government of Ukraine into launching a fake investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 Democratic nominee.

Trump now becomes the third American president to have ever been impeached. But he is unique and distinct in one way, as the only president to be impeached for using his public office to interfere in U.S. foreign policy and betray a foreign ally for personal gain.

Although the power of impeachment is largely symbolic — since Trump will almost certainly not be removed from office — it still marks an act of resistance against the rising tide of the global right, and its assault on democracy and the rule of law.

Cas Mudde is one of the world’s leading experts on right-wing extremism, populism, democracy and the global new right. Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia and a contributing writer for the Guardian. He is the author of several books, including “The Far Right in America,” “On Extremism and Democracy in Europe” and “Populism: A Very Short Introduction” (with Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser). His newest book is “The Far Right Today.”

In our conversation, Mudde discussed how Donald Trump’s authoritarian populist movement is similar to (and different from) related movements led by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other such leaders around the world. Mudde also detailed the goals of what he calls the “populist radical right,” explored its understanding of reality and “common sense” and explained the role of racism and nativism in this global assault against liberal democracy.

Mudde also issued an important warning to the Democratic Party and other defenders of liberal democracy in the U.S. and around the world: They must offer a positive, alternative vision to that posed by global right-wing extremism if they hope to defeat it. If Democrats simply run as the “anti-Trump” party in 2020, Mudde suggests, they will most likely lose.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You are an expert on the global new right. How does it make you feel to watch their power and influence grow and take hold with Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and many other leaders and movements around the world?

I feel sad and I feel stressed, in part, because I believe that the type of politics that is truly detrimental to liberal democracy is winning. I also feel that way because the divides in this country are so deep and fundamental that there are more and more people with whom I can’t have a real conversation because we just live in different worlds.

Democracy is prefaced on some shared reality and a basic consensus about the truth. Trumpers and other members of the right-wing have rejected that premise. Without such a common understanding, how is it possible to engage in basic decision-making about politics and society?

This question of “alternate realities” is about much more than people who do not care about the truth. I believe that most people on the radical right actually think that they are basing their arguments on the facts. They believe that we are being swamped by immigrants. They believe that the conspiracies they spread are true and that the only reason other people do not accept these conspiracies as being true is because the mainstream media doesn’t talk about them. This makes matters much more difficult, because if it was just simply ignorance then we could have an argument about the facts.

It goes much further than just different opinions. Those who are members of the right wing and those outside it have different truth organizations. What the New York Times is to many liberals, Fox News is to many conservatives. Fox News, despite how inaccurate it is, is the media of record for conservatives. As such, they hold it in high esteem.

Has this illiberal, anti-democratic right-wing movement constructed its own reality? Or is it something else?

There are two parts of the far right. On the one hand there are the neo-Nazis who in fact are not very “new” in their beliefs and ideologies. Today’s neo-Nazis stand for roughly the same things as their predecessors.

But the radical right isn’t that much different from the mainstream. The idea of nativism is pretty much based on the idea of the nation-state, which is a dominant principle in most politics, particularly in Europe . For example, the idea that Germany is a country of Germans. If that’s the case, everyone who is not German is a threat.

Authoritarians believe in law and order from their own point of view. They even believe in some version of “democracy.” But for these members of the far right, democracy is pretty much just unfettered majority rule.

Minority rights are, for them, almost by definition undemocratic. The far right does not want something completely different than what many in the more mainstream of society want. However, they have a very different interpretation of what “democracy” and “nation” mean.

How did the global new right come into power?

From a more European perspective, it is a result of a combination of changes. For many people, social democracy has outlived its purpose because it has successfully created a welfare state, to the extent the public wanted it. This moment with the rise of the far right is also a consequence of broader globalization and the integration of markets — but also immigration, which has fundamentally changed society and has also created tensions that were always present but just not as salient.

For example, I grew up in the Netherlands. Those years ago, my school was almost completely white. I believe we had one nonwhite student in my high school, and everyone wanted to be friends with him because he was considered cool. If you were to go to my former high school now, it will probably be between one-third to one-half nonwhite.

When I was young, I assumed that Dutch people were white, but that was never an issue me. It didn’t feel relevant to me. At present, issues such as “whiteness” and what it means to be “Dutch” or “Muslim” have all become relevant.

Why are these members of the radical right — and other more mainstream conservatives as well — so compelled toward simple explanations about the world?

Simple things always give people a feeling that they understand the world and that they can control what happens around them. What members of the right-wing — and especially the far right — have is a very essentialist understanding of categories.When they talk about what it means to be “white,” they do so as if that category is objective and fixed and has never changed. Whiteness, in fact, is something different than what many people thought whiteness was 50 years ago in the United States and elsewhere.

When we explain to people who believe in these essential and fixed categories that whiteness is dynamic and changing and that itself is evidence of how social integration is possible, they will still say, “Oh yeah, but certain groups can be integrated and others can’t.” What they assume to be some natural state of being of racial homogeneity is not true. The very ideas of “whiteness” and “race” are constructs.

How do you make sense of the relationship between what was the mainstream right — here in the U.S., that being the Republican Party — and the more radical elements of the far right?

There are significant differences between, for example, the role of far-right ideas and people within the British Conservative Party, the U.S. Republican Party and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France. The mainstream right has pretty much always been pro-market.

Even when they were open to immigrants, they were considered “guests,” particularly in Europe. As guests, they were expected to adjust to the country they were in. Even the whole concept of “tolerance” — which most social democrats, for example, would stand for — is still a hierarchical concept. It means that, I, the real authentic native person, tolerates you, the immigrant. In practice, I have the power to tolerate you. Now, that was never really a problem as long as the number of immigrants was small.

When that number became bigger, it became much more problematic. And you see this in the most extreme form in the United States. One of the key reasons why Donald Trump won in 2016, and why his type of politics win, is a massive fear of the U.S. becoming a “majority minority” country.

A changing society, white fears of becoming a “minority” in “their own country,” and of course 9/11 and rampant Islamophobia helped to create this moment with Trump being president.

In the most basic sense, what do these right-wing movements and parties have in common internationally? And how are they different?

What the radical right has in common, from [Jair] Bolsonaro to Trump to Le Pen, is a combination of nativism, authoritarianism and populism as an ideological core. However, that does not mean that they are all part of one movement. Actually, the ties between the different groups are very slight. This is in part because they are nationalists first. The radical right’s leaders are not very interested in building global networks. On top of that, they come from very different traditions and operate in very different organizations.

Bolsonaro did not even have his own party until a few weeks ago. Trump has taken over the Republican Party. Whereas Marine Le Pen is a product of her party and political culture. This fourth wave of the far right exists in extreme heterogeneity, but they do share some common ideas.

What is “populism”? And how is it being used by the mainstream news media and others, correctly or otherwise?

Populists believe that they are “the voice of the people” where “the people” are never the full population. “The people” are those who share the same interests and values as the populists. However, populism is not by definition nativist or racist. There are inclusive populist movements as well. For example, in both Spain and Greece left-wing populists were pro-immigration. Populists are also not necessarily white either.

But at present, populism is almost exclusively right-wing — I describe them more accurately as the “populist radical right.” Populism is only one part of their ideology. Nativism, which is a more ethnic interpretation of “the people,” is predominant. Therefore, when the populist radical right talks about “the people” they mean the people of a certain nation. That nation can be multiracial, but often it is not.

How does the populist radical right envision the world? What is their version of “common sense”?

The “common sense” of the radical right wing is that “like wants to live with like.” This means implicitly that whites want to live with whites. The Dutch want to live with the Dutch. In Europe, we do not like to talk about “races.” We talk about “Dutch culture” and the like.

The “common sense” of the right is also shown by how they like to talk about the animal world: “Tigers don’t live with lions.” For them, that is common sense. That’s natural. That’s the other thing that the right has always done, which is to believe in “natural differences.” They believe that it’s unnatural for the state to intervene because that goes against the inherent nature of what human beings are. Human beings want to be with people like themselves. They claim they want to go back to the natural order, and that in a natural order everyone knows their place. That means ethnic minorities, but also women and in various cases, gays and lesbians, etc.

Why do Trump’s followers embrace him given that his policies, and that of these right-wing populists more generally, will hurt most of his own rank-and-file supporters, both economically and in other ways?

The vast majority of voters for the radical right, let alone for Trump, are not destitute. They actually have an economic buffer, as Brexit showed. These voters are willing to pay a price for what they consider to be “freedom.” I’m not sure that Trump’s voters, and other radical right voters, are naïve. I believe many of them just find it much more important that there are fewer immigrants around them. In these voters’ minds, it means they will make more money.

To take one example: There are many people in the United States who find it more important to make abortion illegal than to improve their personal economic well-being. Their voices are as rational as that of someone who votes on the basis of their wallet. They are not being misled. There is another myth about Trump’s voters that needs to be highlighted. Some people argue that Trump’s voters see him as some sort of God. They do not. The vast majority, even among his most ardent supporters, see all of Trump’s flaws.

What they like is, first and foremost, that Donald Trump is not of the professional political class. Trump is screwing up the system. That is what his followers want out of him. What that should tell outside observers is not so much what is wrong with Trump but why so many people feel angry towards mainstream politicians and the political professional class more generally.

In the U.S. there is wage stagnation. We have growing economic inequality. The welfare state is being dismantled in many countries. We have massive corporate interests, and mainstream parties have failed. The Republicans have failed at least as much as the Democrats. But this idea from the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party that if Trump is defeated there will be some return to the so-called good old days of the 1990s is really being blind to the problems that have created Donald Trump and his movement.

How can liberals and progressives do better in the struggle over language? For example, there are all these worries about the health of “liberal democracy” in the U.S. and the West. But too many Americans hear “liberal” and that comes with negative associations about black and brown people, gays and lesbians, and of course “big government.” Conservatives have been masterful in programming that negative association. “Liberal” now means something bad.

The right wing has been incredibly successful in winning the battle over language. I think it is most visible in terms like “political correctness,” which is a weaponized term that has very little to do with what it was originally about. At present, “free speech” is a very potent example of how the right has weaponized language.

“Free speech” in the current context, as used by the right-wing has nothing to do with what free speech initially meant, namely that the state should not prevent you from saying things. Whereas now it is about the idea that the New York Times, for example, must let you write an op-ed for them. This is absurd, this notion that you have a God-given right to an op-ed in the New York Times.

And that free speech should come without consequences.

As used by the right, “free speech” means, by and large, that you can say something racist and I can then correctly identify it as being racist. But members of the right believe that they can say something racist and no one can be critical of it.

Language is one of the weaknesses, at the moment, of the left in general, but even with liberal Democrats. Hillary Clinton is an example of this, but she is certainly not alone. Many Democrats do this when they talk about “hard-working Americans.”

In the United States that language has a very racialized connotation. White people hear “white people” when you say “hard-working Americans.” Whereas many minorities will think, “Oh, you said ‘hard-working Americans.’ You’re talking to white people.”

“Working class” is another example. It is amazing how in the U.S. “working class” is used to mean the white working class. We also quite often speak about the “working class” when we actually mean men and not women. Language is a significant part of the political struggle of the left.

“Moderate” is another example of problematic language. Consider Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Apparently, the narrative goes that they are “radical” and the American people want a “moderate.” Now, first of all, the country is polarized. So what does “moderate” even mean? What does the center mean in a polarized world? Many of the positions that Sanders and Warren stand for are actually supported by a majority of Americans. Why would that be “radical”? But in practice “radical” still has that negative connotation and the term “moderate” has a positive connotation in American political discourse.

What do we do about the old problem that there are individuals, political parties and other groups who use democratic procedures such as voting to infiltrate a government with the goal of undermining if not destroying democracy?

I’m definitely a free-speech extremist. I think that you should be allowed pretty much to campaign for everything. You should have a right to be a member of the Nazi Party and to campaign to create a Nazi state. I actually would prefer to know that beforehand so I can make an informed decision.

We should also, however, not be blind to the illiberal aspects of many so-called liberal democratic parties. If you look at Europe, for example, freedom of speech is pretty constrained. You can’t deny the Holocaust. You can’t say things that are perceived as racist. Even the U.S. does not have full freedom of speech. A person is not allowed to praise terrorism, for example.

Why should Americans care about British politics and the recent election victory of Boris Johnson and the Conservatives?

I do not believe that Americans should care that much about the recent British election. Johnson is going to take the U.K. out of the EU, but the EU is going to survive and will not be much weaker because the U.K. is not in it. He will try to get a special relationship with Trump and will not get it. I just wrote a column in the Guardian about this. I do not think that there is a strong lesson from the U.K. elections for the U.S. elections.

Johnson’s win does not mean that if a party or candidate goes hard left that they cannot win the election. There are any number of specific factors that played a role in the British election — Brexit, which is unique, being one of them. It is important to see things for what they really are. First and foremost, these were British elections. Boris Johnson might look a bit like Trump, but he is still a British politician set in the British context of politics and culture.

What can be done to stop the global ascent of the radical right?

First and foremost, we should see things in the correct perspective. In almost all countries, the radical right is a minority and the vast majority of people vote for liberal democratic parties, be they conservative, liberals or social democrats. That is very important. Hillary Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump. The radical right is not the majority. The second question, then, is why don’t these people vote for the radical right? And why are the people who support liberal democracy not mobilized like those people who vote for the radical right?

Advocates for liberal democracy, for the most part, do not offer anything. This goes back to neoliberalism to a certain extent. Advocates of liberal democracy, the political mainstream centrists, do not offer positive narratives. Yes, the U.S. is a bit different with Warren and Sanders, who are in fact providing positive narratives. But in most cases, this is not true.

Defenders of liberal democracy are basically just saying, “Don’t vote for the radical right.” “Don’t vote for Trump.” “Don’t vote for Johnson.” “Don’t go out of the EU because things will be worse.”

“Things will be worse” is not a very good mobilization strategy. The Democrats do not need to convince anyone anymore that Trump is bad. The people who don’t see that now will not see that fact a year from now either. Whatever you tell them, the vast majority of people know that Trump is bad. The point is, they don’t think the Democrats are worth coming out for. That is the challenge faced by the Democrats.

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

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majority of americans favor impeach?! on fox poll 1219 but see 10 things wrong believe

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/this-disturbing-psychological-analysis-of-trump-supporters-has-exposed-key-5-traits-about-them/

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This disturbing psychological analysis of Trump supporters has exposed key 5 traits about them

Written by Bobby Azarian / Raw Story December 16, 2019

The lightning-fast ascent and political invincibility of Donald Trump has left many experts baffled and wondering, “How did we get here?” Any accurate and sufficient answer to that question must not only focus on Trump himself, but also on his uniquely loyal supporters. Given their extreme devotion and unwavering admiration for their highly unpredictable and often inflammatory leader, some have turned to the field of psychology for scientific explanations based on precise quantitative data and established theoretical frameworks.

Although analyses and studies by psychologists and neuroscientists have provided many thought-provoking explanations for his enduring support, the accounts of different experts often vary greatly, sometimes overlapping and other times conflicting. However insightful these critiques may be, it is apparent that more research and examination is needed to hone in on the exact psychological and social factors underlying this peculiar human behavior.

In a review paper published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, Psychologist and UC Santa Cruz professor Thomas Pettigrew argues that five major psychological phenomena can help explain this exceptional political event.

1. Authoritarian Personality Syndrome

Authoritarianism refers to the advocacy or enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, and is commonly associated with a lack of concern for the opinions or needs of others. Authoritarian personality syndrome—a well-studied and globally-prevalent condition—is a state of mind that is characterized by belief in total and complete obedience to one’s authority. Those with the syndrome often display aggression toward outgroup members, submissiveness to authority, resistance to new experiences, and a rigid hierarchical view of society. The syndrome is often triggered by fear, making it easy for leaders who exaggerate threat or fear monger to gain their allegiance.

Although authoritarian personality is found among liberals, it is more common among the right-wing around the world. President Trump’s speeches, which are laced with absolutist terms like “losers” and “complete disasters,” are naturally appealing to those with the syndrome.

While research showed that Republican voters in the U.S. scored higher than Democrats on measures of authoritarianism before Trump emerged on the political scene, a 2016 Politico survey found that high authoritarians greatly favored then-candidate Trump, which led to a correct prediction that he would win the election, despite the polls saying otherwise.

2. Social dominance orientation

Social dominance orientation (SDO)—which is distinct but related to authoritarian personality syndrome—refers to people who have a preference for the societal hierarchy of groups, specifically with a structure in which the high-status groups have dominance over the low-status ones. Those with SDO are typicallydominant, tough-minded, and driven by self-interest.

In Trump’s speeches, he appeals to those with SDO by repeatedly making a clear distinction between groups that have a generally higher status in society (White), and those groups that are typically thought of as belonging to a lower status (immigrants and minorities).

A 2016 survey study of 406 American adults published this year in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found thatthose who scored high on both SDO and authoritarianism were those who intended to vote for Trump in the election.

3. Prejudice

It would be grossly unfair and inaccurate to say that every one of Trump’s supporters have prejudice against ethnic and religious minorities, but it would be equally inaccurate to say that many do not. It is a well-known fact that the Republican party, going at least as far back to Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” used strategies that appealed to bigotry, such as lacing speeches with “dog whistles”—code words that signaled prejudice toward minorities that were designed to be heard by racists but no one else.

While the dog whistles of the past were more subtle, Trump’s are sometimes shockingly direct. There’s no denying that he routinely appeals to bigoted supporters when he calls Muslims “dangerous” and Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “murderers,” often in a blanketed fashion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a new study has shown that support for Trump is correlated with a standard scale of modern racism.

4. Intergroup contact

Intergroup contact refers to contact with members of groups that are outside one’s own, which has been experimentally shown to reduce prejudice. As such, it’s important to note that there is growing evidence that Trump’s white supporters have experienced significantly less contact with minorities than other Americans. For example, a 2016 study found that “…the racial and ethnic isolation of Whites at the zip-code level is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support.” This correlation persisted while controlling for dozens of other variables. In agreement with this finding, the same researchers found that support for Trump increased with the voters’ physical distance from the Mexican border.

5. Relative deprivation

Relative deprivation refers to the experience of being deprived of something to which one believes they are entitled. It is the discontent felt when one compares their position in life to others who they feel are equal or inferior but have unfairly had more success than them.

Common explanations for Trump’s popularity among non-bigoted voters involve economics. There is no doubt that some Trump supporters are simply angry that American jobs are being lost to Mexico and China, which is certainly understandable, although these loyalists often ignore the fact that some of these careers are actually being lost due to the accelerating pace of automation.

These Trump supporters are experiencing relative deprivation, and are common among the swing states like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. This kind of deprivation is specifically referred to as “relative,” as opposed to “absolute,” because the feeling is often based on a skewed perception of what one is entitled to. For example, an analysis conducted by FiveThirtyEight estimated that the median annual income of Trump supporters was $72,000.

If such data is accurate, the portrayal of most Trump supporters as “working class” citizens rebelling against Republican elites may be more myth than fact.

Bobby Azarian is a science writer with a PhD in neuroscience. His research has been published in journals such as Cognition & Emotion and Human Brain Mapping, and he has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, BBC Future, Scientific American, Psychology Today, and others. Follow him on twitter @BobbyAzarian.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/are-blue-collar-white-women-trumps-red-wall/

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Are blue-collar white women Trump’s red wall?

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Written by Anne Kim / Washington Monthly October 25, 2019

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Despite a nonstop onslaught of fresh and damning revelations about his misconduct in office, President Donald Trump has so far maintained his core supporters’ loyalty. As of the start of this week, Trump’s average approval rating holds at 42 percent—only slightly less than the share of Americans opposing the inquiry into his impeachment.

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But for Democrats desperate to oust the president, either by impeachment or the ballot, breaching this “red wall” of support (if, in fact, it can be breached) is a matter of utmost importance. Democrats face two key questions: who are Trump’s most stalwart defenders, and can they be persuaded to abandon him?

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New research suggests an answer to the first of these queries. It’s a group that Democrats should—and could—be winning over: blue-collar white women. While Democrats made crucial gains among these voters in the 2018 election, these women may now be rallying to Trump’s defense.

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Opinion polls have shown increased momentum toward impeachment since evidence came to light that Trump pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Biden family. As of October 21, Real Clear Politics’ average found that 51.0 percent of Americans support an inquiry, whereas 42.8 percent are opposed. Among blue collar white women, however sentiment is moving in the opposite direction, according to Trendency Research, which maintains a longitudinal panel of more than 1,000 Americans polled daily.

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As of October 21, Trendency found that a solid majority (54 percent) of non-college-educated white women either outright oppose or lean against impeachment,while just 37 percent strongly support it. In fact, blue-collar white women are the strongest opponents of impeachment among all white voters (see chart below). This opposition is in stark contrast to college-educated white women, among whom only 26 percent indicated “no support” for impeachment as of October 21.

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Blue-collar white women also seem relatively impervious to the dramatic developments shifting public opinion over the last month. Trendency found that the share of non-college white women indicating “no support” for impeachment has dropped by only one percentage point since the end of September, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally announced the inquiry.

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Blue-collar white men, in contrast, have swung dramatically in favor of impeaching Trump. While just 26 percent of blue-collar white men showed “strong” support for impeachment as of September 28—with 59 percent who outright opposed—40 percent of these men now strongly support impeachment as of October 21 and a minority of 47 percent now oppose it. (College-educated white men show a similar and even more dramatic swing, as the chart below shows.) Among all adults, Trendency found that 52 percent supported impeachment as of the same date, a figure in line with polling averages maintained by trackers like RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight.

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Trendency CEO Stefan Hankin told me hisfirm has not yet conducted research to understand the seeming divergence in blue-collar white women’s attitudes toward impeachment compared to every other group.

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It’s a question worth urgent exploration.

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By sheer numbers, blue-collar white women are the nation’s biggest voting bloc. According to Democratic political research firm Catalist, non-college-educated white women made up 25 percent of voters in 2018 and 26 percent of voters in 2016. These women outnumber both non-college white men, who accounted for 22 percent of the 2018 voters, and college-educated white women, who comprised just 15 percent of the 2018 electorate.

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Luckily for Democrats, blue-collar white women are still a potentially winnable group. Catalist’s analysis, for instance, found that while Democratic candidates lost among both blue collar men and women in 2018, the margin of defeat among non-college-educated white women was half that among non-college-educated white men. (Democrats lost by 36 points among blue-collar white men and 18 points among blue-collar white women.)

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These women have also shown more willingness to cross the aisle.Although college-educated suburban white women won much of the credit for delivering House Democrats a majority in 2018, blue-collar white women have shown some shifting allegiances, even if not of the same magnitude. Democrats’ performance with them in 2018 was still a three-point improvement over 2016, according to Catalist. (By comparison, Democrats gained 11 points among college-educated white women, solidifying their new status as a core constituency of the party.)

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One potential explanation for Democrats’ gains among white women—a traditionally loyal GOP constituency—is that both college-educated and non-college-educated white women have similar economic priorities, despite major differences on cultural issues such as immigration. A November 2018 poll by Expedition Strategies for the Progressive Policy Institute found that both groups of women cited health care, Social Security, and Medicare as their top three concerns.

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Both groups are also economically anxious. The Democratic economic message, with its promises of a broader safety net, may appeal to many of these women. Post-election focus groups conducted by pollster Stan Greenberg for the American Federation of Teachers found that Democrats’ messaging on health care was especially appealing to non-college-educated white women.

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All of these findings, however, predate the inquiry into Trump’s impeachment. The question now is whether the specter of impeachment has catalyzed renewed support among blue-collar white women for the president and erased the gains from the 2018 election.

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For Democrats, regaining their toehold among these voters means two things. First, and most significantly, it means investing more resources in understanding what’s happening with blue-collar white women—and why. Democrats cannot afford to overlook this vital constituency; they should neither write them off, nor take them for granted. Second, Democrats should continue to push their message on health care and other kitchen-table issues that matter to all voters. The party leadership’s current instincts are correct that impeachment should not overtake the entirety of the political conversation through next fall.

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Ultimately, though, Democrats can’t view this challenge as a test of Trump’s resiliency with the white working-class voters that comprise so much of his base. Rather, Democrats have to see it as a test of whether they can devise a durable economic message that outweighs Trumpism’s appeal and unites women across all socioeconomic lines. It’s a challenge they should tackle now, before it’s too late.

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Anne Kim is a Washington Monthly contributing editor and the author of Abandoned: America’s Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection, forthcoming in 2020 from the New Press.

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crit of NYT column white educate trumpistas

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/nyt-steers-dems-away-from-the-obvious-formula-for-defeating-trump/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/heres-a-crucial-element-missing-from-the-media-narrative-about-trumps-white-working-class-base

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no lnx

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Here’s a crucial element missing from the media narrative about Trump’s ‘white working class’ base

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Written by Alex Henderson August 28, 2019

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Much has been written about President Donald Trump’s appeal among downscale white voters who live in the American Rust Belt. One of the most famous lines of Trump’s 2016 campaign was “I love the poorly educated,” and he continues to enjoy strong support among white males without a college degree.

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But New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall stresses that there is one group that the media often overlook when analyzing Trump’s base of support: whites who have a higher income but lack a college degree.

The phrase “downscale whites” has often been used in connection with Trump’s base. But Edsall, analyzing a recent report from political scientists Herbert Kitschelt and Philipp Rehm, stresses that it is quite possible for whites who never went to college to have a higher income — not wealthy, but comfortably middle class.

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And those who fit that description are an important part of Trump’s base.

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“Perhaps most significant, Kitschelt and Rehm found that the common assumption that the contemporary Republican Party has become crucially dependent on the white working class — defined as whites without college degrees — is overly simplistic,” Edsall explains. “Instead, Kitschelt and Rehm find that the surge of whites into the Republican Party has been led by whites with relatively high incomes.”

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And those higher-income whites, Edsall stresses, don’t necessarily have college degrees.

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“High-income whites without college degrees were swing voters 60 years ago, pursued by both parties,” Edsall notes. “Now, they are rock-ribbed Republicans.”

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In an e-mail, Kitschelt told Edsall, “Unlike much of the current debate, the ‘white working class’ — concentrated in the low-education/low-income sector of the white population — is not the category that has most ardently realigned toward Republicans. It’s higher income/low-education whites who are currently still doing well, but fear that in the Knowledge Society, their life chances are shrinking as high education becomes increasingly the ticket to economic and social success.”

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Nonetheless, Edsall notes, low-income whites without college degrees are still an important part of Trump’s base.

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“In the 1950s and ‘60s,” Edsall recalls, “low-income whites without degrees formed the base of the Democratic Party. Now, this group leans Republican.”

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Meanwhile, Edsall reports, another demographic has become increasingly important to the Democratic Party: whites who are college-educated but low-income. That demographic was almost unheard of 60 or 70 years ago, when a college degree practically guaranteed a decent income.

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“Two generations ago, there were almost no low-income whites with college degrees, a group that made up 1.5% of white voters in 1952,” Edsall observes. “These voters were a swing bloc without firm commitment to either party. By 2016, this constituency had grown to form 14.3% of all voters. They have, in turn, become the most loyal white Democratic constituency.”

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Looking ahead to 2020, Edsall asserts that the next presidential race “may well prove to be a base-vs.-base election.” But he quickly adds that “the outcome may lie in the hands of the substantial proportion of the electorate that is undecided: 7%, according to Pew.”

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Truckers are facing a ‘bloodbath’ in their industry — and it’s turning many in the pro-Trump group against him: report

Truckers are numerous, conservative, and hurting. And despite their widespread…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-and-the-culture-wars-here-are-the-divisive-themes-trump-will-focus-on-as-his-economic-policies-crumble/

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no lnx

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Trump and the culture wars: Here are the divisive themes the president will focus on as his economic policies crumble

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Written by Alex Henderson August 19, 2019

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President Donald Trump, in recent weeks, has been stressing both economic themes and culture war themes. The economic themes were evident during a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on August 15, when Trump tried to frighten 401(k) owners into reelecting him and insisted, “You have no choice but to vote for me because your 401(k), everything is going to be down the tubes (under a Democratic president). So whether you love me or hate me, you’ve got to vote for me.” But if the U.S. does go into a recession in the months ahead, Trump will have a harder time selling himself as the salvation of the American economy — in which case, he would likely become even more aggressive in pushing divisive culture war themes.

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Although Trump is wildly unpopular in heavily Democratic areas of the U.S., he is still quite popular among his hardcore base — and one saw that playing out in the 2018 midterms. Democrats enjoyed a net gain of 40 seats in the House of Representatives, but Republicans slightly increased their majority in the Senate thanks, in part, to Trump’s ability to rally his base in conservative areas. And Trump’s rally-the-base approach has been painfully evident in recent weeks.

When Trump told four congresswomen of color to go back to the countries they originally came from — even though three of them (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ayanna Pressley) were born and raised in the U.S. — it was a rally-the-base move. When he tried to discredit Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings by describing Baltimore (a predominantly African-American city) as a “rat- and rodent-infested mess,” he was clearly trying to rally his base. But when he was discussing 401(k) plans in New Hampshire, Trump appeared to be trying to expand his base and convince non-culture warriors to vote for him.

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The harder it becomes for Trump to campaign on the economy in the months ahead, the more important culture war issues and rally-the-base moves will become for him. It isn’t inconceivable that Trump could pull off a narrow Electoral College victory in 2020 even if the U.S. goes into a recession, but doing do would mean firing up his base as much as possible and benefitting from a low Democratic turnout — and there are many culture war and nativist themes that could become even more important to Trump if the economy declines.

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Abortionis at the top of the list. When he was a Blue Dog Democrat back in the 1990s, Trump was highly critical of abortion yet reluctantly pro-choice; these days, he is vehemently anti-choice and has vowed to only nominate severe social conservatives and “pro-life” zealots to the U.S. Supreme Court. So far, he has made good on that promise with Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh — and he has made it abundantly clear that if he is reelected and more seats become available on the Supreme Court, he will continue to do so and make the Court even more socially conservative.

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As it stands now, Roe v. Wade is likely to be overturned. But that possibility will become even stronger if Trump has a chance to nominate more Supreme Court justices.

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Trump, in the months ahead, is also likely to fan the flames of the Culture War by reminding the Christian right that Supreme Court justices aren’t the only people he would be nominating for the federal judiciary in 2021 and beyond. During a second term, he could nominate more far-right social conservatives to the lower federal courts as well.

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The Christian right, as journalist Chris Hedges has often stressed, is not only a fundamentalist religious movement — it is also a movement with severe nativist and white nationalist tendencies. And Trump can rally his Christian Right supporters not only with abortion or school prayer, but also, with nativism and anti-immigrant rhetoric. The worse the U.S. economy becomes for Trump, the more important issues like immigration and building a U.S./Mexico border wall become to his 2020 campaign.

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The Department of Labor, under Trump, has proposed rolling back Obama-era protections against anti-gay discrimination in the workplace and allowing companies with government contracts to discriminate against those who offend a contractor’s religious views. Christian Right groups like the Family Research Council and Liberty Counsel are applauding the move, which gives Trump yet another thing to campaign on when he is pursuing Culture War votes in 2020.

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Anti-Islam extremism is another issue Trump will likely pander to in 2020. Even President George W. Bush was careful to draw a distinction between radical jihadist Islam and non-radical Islam; Trump’s Christian Right and anti-Islam supporters draw no such distinction.

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Christian fundamentalist support for Israel is another Culture War issue for Trump to campaign on. Bizarrely, the Christian Right believes that Jews are doomed to hell unless they convert to fundamentalist Christianity, yet consider themselves stridently pro-Israel — and claiming that Democrats could never love Israel as much as he does is a way for Trump to rally his far-right base.

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If the U.S. economy goes south, that doesn’t make Trump any less dangerous; if anything, it makes him even more dangerous and more desperate to fire up extremists in his base. And whether he is ranting about abortion, illegal immigration, a U.S./Mexico border wall, Islam, or countries with predominantly non-white populations, Trump will have many ways to pander to his supporters’ worst instincts in the 2020 election.

AN AH

Trump’s tumbling support among ‘the poorly educated’ may crush his 2020 prospects: report

Alex Henderson

When Donald Trump famously declared, “I love the poorly educated” during his 2016 campaign, it was obvious that he was taking a much more populist (or rather, pseudo-populist) approach than…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-our-movement-is-built-on-love-dont-laugh-his-followers-really-believe-it/

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no lnx

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Trump: ‘Our movement is built on love.’ Don’t laugh — his followers really believe it

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Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon August 20, 2019

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Last Thursday, Donald Trump took his political rodeo to New Hampshire. As usual, he told lies about the Democratic Party being dominated by “socialists” and “hating” America, bragged about the size of the crowd, and threatened that if he is not re-elected in 2020 the United States will face economic ruin. The Trumpian faithful were greatly entertained.

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The “highlight” of the event was when Trump taunted a “protester”:

But while the Democrats rage and rages — that guy has got a serious weight problem. Go home, start exercising. Get him out of here, please. Got a bigger problem than I do. Got a bigger problem than all of us. Now he goes home and his mom says, what the hell have you just done?

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This is political discourse at the level of a six-year-old child. Trump’s supporters loved it. (And the man in question, who was evicted by event security, was not even a protester but a Trump supporter.)

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What Trump said afterward was far more important than his childish taunts. “There’s never been a movement like this,” he told his worshipful following in the Granite State. “Never. Our movement is built on love.”

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Really? What kind of love is that?

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It is the love of a political cult for its leader. It is also Donald Trump’s unhealthy love for himself. It is also the love born of collective narcissism, which is typical of right-wing fake populism.

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At its core, Donald Trump’s love is filtered through fascism and authoritarianism. His form of tainted love rests upon moral inversion, a state of being in which truth is replaced by lies, empirical reality itself is usurped, and the evil and immoral are transformed into the good and the noble. As Hannah Arendt warned in her landmark book “The Origins of Totalitarianism”:

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

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In this malignant reality, people who are in thrall to Donald Trump (or the other ignominious fascist and authoritarian leaders whom he adores and imitates) do not know what right and wrong are anymore. When these distinctions are pointed out, Trump’s supporters double down on their investment in the Great Leader and “the Movement,” focusing their rage and violence against the political truth-teller.

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Donald Trump’s love is exclusive rather than inclusive, narrow rather than broad. It is focused inward on the in-group as a way of legitimating violence and meanness towards the out-group. Trump’s love is not a celebration of the best of humanity but is itself inhumane.

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Donald Trump’s love is first and foremost based upon cruelty, As the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer observed in his widely cited essay “The Cruelty Is the Point”:

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Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

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Donald Trump’s love is easily channeled into cruelty and contempt directed at nonwhite people — especially the migrants, immigrants and refugees who are being detained in his concentration camps. Trump’s love attracts others who feel the same way, such as White House adviser Stephen Miller, a man who has shown himself to be an obsessive racist and white supremacist.

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The Washington Post’s recent profile of Miller includes this reporting:

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Among Miller’s co-workers are a few who believe he harbors racist views. “I don’t know what other principle could animate such a laserlike focus,” said one former career official at DHS. …

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Miller is obsessed, current and former administration officials said, with boosting deportations. Early in the tenure, he tried to persuade [John] Kelly, as DHS chief, to deport anyone here illegally. Kelly wanted to focus on criminal felons, frustrating Miller, people familiar with the disagreement said. “He is singularly focused on how to get people out of the country,” a former senior administration official said. …

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While some in the administration fret over images of squalid and inhumane detention conditions at the border, Miller has argued that they, too, are a deterrent — and that publicizing them is not a bad strategy.

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Trump’s love inspires perverse acts of devotion, including right-wing terrorism and other forms political violence, which he has tacitly encouraged ever since the beginning of his presidential campaign. In Charlottesville, El Paso, Portland and other places around the United States and the world Donald Trump’s white supremacist paramilitaries proudly wear his MAGA regalia while they chant racist slogans and commit acts of violence against nonwhite people, Jews, Muslims and other “enemies” of the Trump regime.

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Trump’s love also takes the form of hatred and contempt for American democracy and the rule of law.

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Predictably, Trump feels deep affection and admiration for foreign dictators and despots like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

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The full context of Donald Trump’s claims that his “movement” is built upon “love” is even more problematic for what it reveals about his larger political worldview:

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We are continuing our incredible movement, the greatest political movement in the history of our country. There’s never been a movement like this. Never. Our movement is built on love and it is and we love our families. We love our faith, we love our flag and we love our freedom and that’s what it’s about. And add to that the fact that we love our neighbors and we love our country. Together, we are all united by one fundamental principle. A nation’s first duty must always be to its own citizens. Its own. We got to take care of our own. You haven’t heard that from a politician or a political leader in a long time.

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Public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown that racial authoritarianism and white rage are the glue that binds together and motivates Donald Trump’s movement. Trump knows this to be true, which is why he and his strategists have decided upon using overt white supremacy — replacing the conservative movement’s traditional “dog whistle” racism of the post-civil rights era — to win the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s electoral coalition, like that of the Republican Party more generally, is 90 percent white. Under Trump, the Republican Party has become America and the world’s largest white identity organization; racism and conservatism are now fully one and the same.

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Ultimately, Donald Trump’s use of the first-person plural, as in “our movement,” “our flag” and “our freedom,” is an explicit appeal to ethnic and racial bigotry. To be a “real American,” for Trump and his supporters, is to first and foremost be a white person. Because of that assumption, the “Americanness” of nonwhites is viewed as being contingent, tertiary, and at its root fraudulent. In effect, Trump and the Republican Party, along with their media and supporters, view America’s multiracial democracy as illegitimate.

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“Our families.” “Our neighbors.” “Our flag.” “Our country.” All these things are meant to signify whiteness — and loyalty to Donald Trump.

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Nationalism and racism have been responsible for some of the greatest tragedies in modern history. The United States once led the world in preventing such horrors. Now, working in league with the racist and authoritarian global New Right, the Trump regime has instead chosen to betray America’s moral leadership on those issues.

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Sydney J. Harris warned, in his 1953 collection of essays “Strictly Personal,” that the difference between patriotism and nationalism could be dangerous: “[T]he patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.”

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Such political combustion is made even more likely when racism and ethnocentrism are added to the mix.

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As demonstrated by his regime’s repeated assault on their rights and dignity, Trump’s “our families” does not include LGBT people. Nor does Trump’s love of “family” include nonwhite immigrants, migrants and refugees from Latin and South America, whom he and his followers take special delight in terrorizing.

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Trump’s love of “our faith” does not include Muslims, a group he previously proposed banning from entry to the United States. Trump’s love of “our faith” is primarily limited to white right-wing evangelicals who want to overturn the U.S. Constitution and install a Christian nationalist regime. Research shows that white Christian evangelicals share Trump’s racist attitudes, with particular hostility toward nonwhite immigrants.

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There are hopeful indications that Donald Trump may be voted out of office in 2020. Early polls and predictive models show him losing to the Democratic Party’s leading presidential contenders. Trump’s defeat is especially likely if the American economy collapses into a recession.

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But these predictions are based on traditional understandings of American politics. These first of all assume that Donald Trump would accept defeat at the polls, rather than, for example, declaring a national emergency to stay in power indefinitely; and secondly do not account for emotions and their role outside of “normal” politics.

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Donald Trump may be defeated in the 2020 election, but he has given permission for a type of American fascist politics that will long outlast his time in the White House. Trumpism is in many ways a dream come true for white supremacists and those sympathetic to their ideas: A sympathizer who shares their goals now leads the most powerful nation on the planet. Whenever Trump leaves office, his American fascist movement will feel great satisfaction that they were at least four years in power — or perhaps eight, or even more.

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Trump’s fanatical followers will not be satisfied until they experience that power again.

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How do you defeat a dream? Moreover, how do you defeat a dream once it has come true?

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These are questions that Democrats, liberals, progressives and other people of conscience will have to answer as they try to repair the damage that Trump and his regime have done to American society. Trump the man may well be removed from the White House. But Trumpism — the idea, and the movement — will linger on as poisons in the American body politic and collective imagination for a long time.

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