- Goofy Republican responses to the latest indictment, about Federal employees, and to the teaching of psychology;
- The spectacle goes on and on, as the US experiences what some are saying is the most important legal indictment in its history:
- John Scalzi’s take, in particular about con men;
- A meaty piece at Politico about how people who support authoritarian con men, like Trump and Putin and Orbán, are also susceptible to conspiracy theories.
- And some thoughts about disruptive events and the sunken-cost fallacy.
These first three are from a site that obviously tracks such items.
Joe.My.God, 3 Aug 2023: Jordan: “Hillbillies Are So Sick Of Attacks On Trump”
The relevance of this item to my discussions in recent days about conservative morality is left as an exercise for the reader.
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Joe.My.God 3 Aug 2023: DeSantis: “We Will Start Slitting Throats On Day One”
Can he really mean what he said? No doubt he would say he was speaking “figuratively.” Using literally cutthroat metaphors.
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Joe.My.God, 3 Aug 2023: Florida Bans AP Psychology Because “Don’t Say Gay”
There are some things man was not meant to know, and some things students should never learn about, according to Florida.
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Next, let’s check out what John Scalzi has been saying about this latest indictment. As always, he makes some excellent points.
John Scalzi, Whatever: Furiously Reasonable, 2 Aug 2023: Various and Sundry, 8/2/23
I’ll quote his entire three paragraphs on this subject, but the key point is about con men and how those conned will do anything other than admit they’ve been conned.
The Absolutely Unsurprising Freak-Out Of The Right at the New Trump Indictments: Jack Smith, knowing what was coming, clearly delineated between Donald Trump lying out of his ass about having won the last election, which was his right as an American under the First Amendment, and actively trying to change the result of the election after he lost, which, to put it charitably and patiently, was not his right, under any part of the US Constitution, or any other part of it laws of governance. This, however, has not stopped (most) of the right in the US from desperately trying to pretend there is no difference, and otherwise trying to obfuscate the issues under consideration here.
Ken White, aka Popehat, a lawyer with a not inconsiderable knowledge of the issues at hand, takes the National Review to task for just such obfuscation, in an article entitled People Are Lying To You About The Trump Indictment, which, naturally, I encourage you to read. On one hand, it is not at all surprising the right is lying out its ass about the indictments; when you’ve yoked yourself to a conman, your options are to help perpetrate the con, or to admit you’ve been conned all this time, and no one likes to publicly admit they’ve been conned. On the other hand, fuck these guys, they all know it’s a lie, and we all deserve better.
But also, they don’t want the con to stop. The right wing machine has spent a whole lot of time cultivating a class of mostly old, mostly white, mostly scared people, and there’s still cash to be bilked out of them; Trump hardly waited for the indictments to come out before sending out solicitations. Scaring old white people is where the money is; if that means lying to them, well, eggs and omelets.
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Finally for today, a meaty piece about how authoritarian con men work. Yet again, the points here are familiar, but worth noting, and being aware of.
Politico, Marcel Danesi, 30 Jul 2023: What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán Understand About Your Brain, subtitled “Why do some people who support Trump also wind up believing conspiracy theories? There’s a scientific explanation for that.”
The writer opens:
Why do people believe some politicians’ lies even when they have been proven false? And why do so many of the same people peddle conspiracy theories?
Lying and conspiratorial thinking might seem to be two different problems, but they turn out to be related. I study political rhetoric and have tried to understand how populist politicians use language to develop a cult-like following, divide nations, create culture wars and instill hatred. This pattern goes back to antiquity and is seen today in leaders including former President Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. These leaders are capable of using words and speeches to whip people into such an emotional tempest that they will do things like march on the seat of Congress or invade a neighboring country.
Cutting to the chase: it’s about using incendiary, dehumanizing language (like Trump with his characterization of Mexicans as being murderers and rapists).
My research analyzes real speeches made by politicians past and present, including those of Trump, Orbán and Putin, using cognitive linguistics — a branch of linguistics that examines the relationship between language and the mind. What I have found is that throughout history, speeches by dictators and autocrats have one thing in common: they use dehumanizing metaphors to instill and propagate hatred of others.
It is well-documented that for example words like “reptiles” and “parasites” were used by the Nazi regime to compare outsiders and minorities to animals. Strongmen throughout history have referred to targeted social groups as “rats” or “pests” or “a plague.” And it’s effective regardless of whether the people who hear this language are predisposed to jump to extreme conclusions. Once someone is tuned into these metaphors, their brain actually changes in ways that make them more likely to believe bigger lies, even conspiracy theories.
These metaphors are part of a cognitive process that entraps some people in this kind of thinking while others are unaffected. Here’s how it works.
And the writer goes on with how politicians do this.
In order to hack into the minds of the public, people need to feel fear or uncertainty. That could be caused by economic instability or pre-existing cultural prejudices, but the emotional basis is fear. The brain is designed to respond to fear in various ways, with its own in-built defense mechanisms which produce chemicals in the response pattern, such as cortisol and adrenaline. These chemical responses, which zip straight past our logical brains to our fight-or-flight reactions, are also activated by forms of language that instill fear, either directly (as in a vocal threat) or, more insidiously, by twisted facts which allay fears through lies and deceptive statements.
This of course aligns with my perception that conservatives, at their worst, are fearful, paranoid people.
Unfortunately, research into this brain wiring also shows that once people begin to believe lies, they are unlikely to change their minds even when confronted with evidence that contradicts their beliefs. It is a form of brainwashing. Once the brain has carved out a well-worn path of believing deceit, it is even harder to step out of that path — which is how fanatics are born. Instead, these people will seek out information that confirms their beliefs, avoid anything that is in conflict with them, or even turn the contrasting information on its head, so as to make it fit their beliefs.
The piece ends with a possible remedy. Closing paragraphs:
Not all hope is lost, however. History has shown that disruptive events — such as the toppling of a regime or the loss of a war — can force a new perspective and the brain is able to recalibrate.
So it is at least possible to change this pattern. Once the critical mind is engaged, away from the frenzy of fear and manipulation, the lie can become clear. This is the uplifting moral tale that can be gleaned from history — all the great liars, from dictators to autocrats, were eventually defeated by truth, which eventually will win out.
But the bad news is that you need that kind of disruption. Without these jarring events to bring a dose of reality, it is unlikely that people with strong convictions will ever change their minds — something that benefits the autocrat and endangers their society.
“All the great liars were eventually defeated by Truth.” Next up, Trump?
And what would the next disruptive event be? Perhaps the effects of climate change, and the increasing number of extreme weather events affecting even people in the US. But it doesn’t seem to be happening; none of the climate change deniers are walking back their opposition to mitigation effects; the Republicans are doing the opposite (see my post two days ago).
Finally, there’s a flavor of the “sunken-cost fallacy” here; once people make an investment in any kind of cause, a political allegiance or a conspiracy theory (or a religion) at any point in their lives, they’re almost always committed to it in a way that it becomes part of their personality, their identity, especially their identity within their community. Changing their minds would be an admission of being wrong, and a betrayal to the community. And people hate admitting they were wrong, or change their minds.
