A draft for Project Syndicate: Did Trump win because key tranches of the electorate had a will to be misinformed, or because of Trump & his enablers' will to misinform them?...
I understand and share the strong need to believe that if only things could be *explained* better, if there had been better arguments, more clearly expressed information, some other intellectual move, then the outcome would have been different. That's the intellectual and moral world you (we) inhabit and aspire to.
But the fundamental flaw with this analysis is that there's no plausible way anybody (certainly not the enthusiastic subset of Trump's voters) is misinformed _about Trump_: his character, behavior, and ethics has been too visible for too long in ways that are too clear-cut. Any information- or policy-driven analysis of the outcome, or even explanations driven by nostalgia, feelings of rejection, etc, flounders against the reductio that
1) You cannot not know Trump at at least a surface level.
2) To vote for Trump you have to consider him a human being you can give power to over yourself and other people, regardless on your feelings about inflation or migration or anything else.
3) A majority did.
What makes the outcome of this election painful at a foundational level is that it disproves the idea that the aggregate US population has a basic moral threshold regarding internal violence, democratic institutions, a cogent view of reality, and so on. It forces us to an impossible conflict between an axiomatic commitment to Democracy and an equally axiomatic commitment to basic decency in public life. What happens when We The People chooses this with open eyes? Because whatever their opinion about policy issues, everybody knows Trump well enough that the basic moral decision about his suitability as a human being to be given power was there.
I'm not in the US, but of course US politics have a global impact, and here in Argentina we face a very similar situation. I believe the impulse to educate and argue with our fellow citizens is an honorable one that must be sustained as the only viable long-term solution, but in the shorter term we must navigate a morally tricky and spiritually exhausting path where we must simultaneously respect our commitments to democratic institutions (which many of our fellow citizens seem to only do contingently) while, to be frank, figure out how to punch above our current voting strength weight to constrain and influence policy.
It feels dirty, it feels immoral, it feels wrong, and we *know* that there's a version of that strategy that leads to much, much darker places: history is scarred by atrocities at the very least enabled by people who probably began by thinking and feeling the way I do. That's a path fraught with the temptation of "hard choices." But any political strategy that assumes that right now there's a basic ethical agreement with a comfortably large majority of the people we share our countries with fails, I believe, to adequately grasp reality.
Again, not that I don't understand and share the need to believe otherwise....
Regardless of anything else, it does say something that the US population put less weight on Trump's awful moral failings than on other fears, etc. that they have. But definitely true - and even stranger that it comes from the Christian evangelicals - a supreme form of hypocrisy. BUT what it does say is that to them, the "ends justify the means".
Going by the empirical tolerance Evangelicals [and many other expressions of organized religion] extend to themselves and their own hierarchy for similar behavior, it might not be necessarily surprising. Trump isn't the first transparently greedy and sexually predatory leader eagerly supported by conservative, religious citizens.
We might argue on whether those might not actually be positive attributes for many of them ---much as I disagree with or water down many of Harold Bloom's views, I find his observation that Christianity in the US is basically a different religion very compelling--- but we know they aren't disqualifying. Heck, it doesn't prevent them from explicit vocal support, which does tell you that it's not even taboo within their own communities.
I don't know what to say or do with that, other than to give up on the idea of appealing to the religious doctrine of a Conservative Christian to oppose Trump, just as it's past time we give up on the idea of appealing to the Constitution and the rule of law to get a GOP Congressperson to oppose Trump. If it could work, it would already have happened on its own.
A very smart psychologist I know says it works like this:
1. Trump works like fortunetellers work. He says generic things, observes the response, and tunes his message. This allows listeners to project their dreams and needs on him.
2. The beliefs that follow are there to protect those aspirations and dreams. Trump is fond of saying things like "They want to silence me because they want to silence you". He never says "about what?" because there isn't one answer.
3. This puts us in the position of telling them things they don't want to hear, so they don't listen.
This is a stable structure. It is hard to crack. It does crack, but the process isn't a rational, reasoned one. It's an emotional one.
What needs to happen is grieving. Who doesn't go through life without setbacks and hurts? However, the process above interrupts and forestalls a normal grieving process.
No, I don't know how to do this at scale. I do know ways to push on this on a personal level, but it requires a solid personal connection.
With all due respect to Dean Baker, he misses the key point. Once the big lie is taken in, the effort to correct it requires a 10 fold effort to correct it. I spent a considerable amount of time while in the pharma industry working on various drug safety issues and was a frequent spokesperson (often in hostile environments which was not pleasant). Trying to explain how SSRI antidepressants were developed, how safety was assessed and followed once the drug(s) was on the market is not amenable to soundbites. The same can be said for vaccines which was also part of my work. The autism link to childhood vaccines has been debunked for some years, yet there is still a significant number of people who want to believe in it and even if you sit down and explain things, the likelihood that they will change their opinion is small.
I venture to say that most of us who subscribe to Professor DeLong's musings were not markedly impacted by the transient inflation of two years ago. The same cannot be said from most of those working-class individuals who voted for President Trump. They looked at the grocery bill and instantly knew something was wrong. It is difficult to campaign on this if you are being linked as one of the conspirators that caused the increase in prices.
I don't know how many of you have read the Buettner/Craig book, "Lucky Loser", that is all about the multiple business failures of President Trump. It's well worth it. For me if there is any single person who we can "laughingly" blame for the current situation it is Mark Burnett who cast Donald Trump in NBC's "The Apprentice." For most of his supporters, this was proof of his business acumen. He had numerous business bankruptcies, why can't he do the same thing to the US?
The Apprentice, like wrestling, and so much else, is called REALITY TV. But it isn't, yet people believe it, just as they use movie stories to "learn about [fake]history". For many others, they live in a social buvvle that includes Faux News that tells them lies on a daily basis. If the press is "an enemy of the people", and you believe it, then you will no more believe the press than a religious person will believe those of another faith or no faith.
I was recently watching Hitler's speech from January 30, 1940 when war had already started. It was a masterful example of propaganda, far superior to Trump's pale imitation. England and France had cons[ired to destroy the German people and forced the Nazis to rearm and fight back. They only wanted to unite Europe gainst the power of England that had acquired much of the World's resources. England was the invertor of concentration camps (true) and killed 20,00 including women and children, but no mention of the German concentration and extermination camps. It was all righteous indignation of teh unfairnous of England and teh League of Nations, and the brilliant German people were going to show the world they they were superior, proving it wiyth the rapid invasion of Poland. The MAGA tropes just change the names.
I think it has been said that "liberals" want to persuade from facts and logic, but this is resisted by teh right wing. [ Not unlike De LOng's juxtaposition of Hayek and Polyani in "Slouching..."] I think it is very clear this isn't going to work, and that media that even attempts to will eventually be corrupted or shut down, as we see in Hungary, Italy, and of course, in interwar Germany.
Just out of curiosity, what concentration camps did England have in 1940? And who were the 20,000 killed? Maybe India? Or South Africa? IMO Stalin was the inventor of concentration camps, aka gulags. Although numerous rulers prior to Stalin had the same idea; they were just not as ruthless or efficient.
South Africa during the Boer War at the end of the C19th. IIRC Churchill was involved. IDK much about that time although it is included in biographies of Churchill. Hitler wasn't that original. He borrowed the idea of genocide from the US experience with the indigenous population, and the idea of racial superiority and purity from the eugenics movement that was also strong in the USA. Propaganda works best when using a fact and then twisting it to support their own beliefs and actions. For eample. Germany lost WWI (true). It lost because it was stabbed in the back by [Jewish] elites. (false). Therefore...and we arrive at a perfectly reasonable start of WWII that is the fault of the imperial powers, especially England and France, and that Germany was simply preserving its people.
There were many reasons people voted for Trump. Some are authoritarian bigots. Some are authoritarian Christian nationalists (there's some overlap). Most are terribly mis/disinformed because of their own biases confirmed by an information system (mainly social media) that keeps feeding them information chosen by algorithms based on what they've already clicked on.
But the thing that changed since 2020 is inflation, and I think many of us fail to understand how this is experienced by households. We keep talking about how inflation is under control, which is true, and apparently has been for the past year or so. But prices haven't dropped, and while wages are beginning to rise, they haven't yet caught up. Life is still hard for ordinary people. Inflation is to price level as acceleration is to speed. If you're sitting in the passenger seat and your nut job friend is accelerating on a curvy road, you get anxious. If he slows the acceleration at 95 mph, you're still anxious. The acceleration has slowed, but you're still doing 95 mph on a curvy road. Rents are still high, and food is still expensive, and your paycheck doesn't go as far.
The swing factor in this election was inflation. The border was an issue, but not as personal. The Harris campaign was not willing to address inflation, which is a normal campaign strategy. You want to focus attention on the issue that benefits your election chances, and in this case, that was Trump. The irony is that in avoiding talking about inflation, they didn't talk about what the administration was already doing to reduce the concentration of market power that has helped keep prices high. Under Trump, that work will cease.
Well, first unclear what any president or candidate can actually do about inflation - the Fed messed up. And yes, I agree that they should have talked far more about market concentration, but unclear how much folks would have understood it.
And remember that most voters had never experienced inflation, so big shock to them. Good discussion of all this on Noah Smith's substack.
Except for “the FED messed up.” The inflation was caused mostly by the supply shock from COVID isolation and exacerbated by the ham-fisted COVID relief. At least, that’s my take. Maybe our host (Professor DeLong) disagrees.
Yes to both the reasons (although again it may have been a much worse situation without the COVID relief - see how the US did against everyone else because of that - much faster recovery than the 2008 recession as well).
But what I meant is that yes, inflation had causes, but the Fed was incredibly slow to react and that made it worse (and perhaps pushed it higher and resolved later)
I agree on the slow response. Even at that, interest rates reached record ho-hum levels, but if you’re a young adult, you never saw interest rates that high.
Harris was very cynical in vowing to stop "price gouging." Note there is no quantifiable definition of price gouging. And if somehow Harris was serious about stopping price gouging, she would have to start with Apple. The company's stylish design and effective marketing campaigns result in huge profit margins. Are liberal Democrats willing to call this price gouging?
It wasn’t cynical at all. Price-gouging is how the public thinks of it. That’s how the press talks about inflation. Candidates have to speak the language the public understands. The administration was already working to break-up and prevent concentrations of market power and force more competition, which is why Harris said she couldn’t think of anything she’d change.
Oh, I have a personal anecdote that illustrates what I think the problem is.
A few years ago, I had a couple of phone calls with the sister of a friend of mine. I was helping them clean up their estate after their mother died. She lives in what was once known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, and is now known as Haida Gwaii.
In the course of our conversation, she mentioned, multiple times, how there was so much crime in the city. She'd seen it on TV.
I took time out to mention that I get where she's coming from, having grown up in a rural area, and visited many places close to where she lives (1000 miles north of the Canadian border). And then I told her that having lived in the city for 25 years, I had been the target of a crime exactly once, and it was very minor, some kid coming in and grabbing certain toys.
She responded very nicely, discussing some of the difficulties they had with kids in their community.
But the kicker is, the next time I talked with her, she was back to "there's so much crime in the city". As if the conversation never happened.
She needs that belief for some reason. To justify all the other problems with where she lives, I guess. Maybe to cope with potential jealousy? I don't really know. But the belief is there because she needs it there.
By the way, I know from her brother that her deceased husband was abusive. And she stuck it out with him nonetheless. Also, she probably has some level of anxiety disorder, possibly also social anxiety.
This isn't about a rational process. Not with her.
Yes, and generally in America, crime rate per capita is higher in rural and semi-rural areas. As well as addiction and domestic violence. Now, harder to say which is cause and which is effect. Some of those areas have been hard hit by loss of manufacturing jobs, closing down hospitals, etc, etc. But again the question is whether that is being convinced by misinformation and "needing" to believe it (good example you gave)
I think viewing Trump belief as a new religion (“Trumpism”) provides an interesting perspective. Many or most Trump voters can be considered to be members of this new religion, which in some respects is, for them, parallel, and in others perpendicular, to whatever “real” religion, if any, that they may profess. It doesn’t matter whether it all adds up: it’s easy for people to believe in contradictory dogmas at the same time.
Trumpism has its Articles Of Faith. If you don’t subscribe to them, you cannot be true to the faith. Yes, there are cynics who are in it for laughs or plunder, but many are true believers. It can take a long time for objective reality to break through the doctrinal bubble, because no one has more incentive to believe unbelievable things than a true believer.
It may also be the case that, for many Trumpists, their already existing religious communities have in effect groomed them for their new prophet.
A lot of the misinformation comes from Fox News, which continually warns of immigrants and paints blue states as hell holes. But many rural areas are in bad shape, losing population and jobs. Whites have lost a lot of their status that was automatically given to them and they want it back.
I find it very doubtful that Hispanic men and White males between 21-37 watch Fox News at all. The latter listen to Joe Rogan and his ilk, the former are too busy working at jobs in construction and yard care.
I like the poll. I think the results are interesting. I think your belief that
"The bulk of Trump voters are then good-hearted people who think that,... things need to be fixed. ...they are voting for Trump more out of love than out of hate." misses a key point.
They are voting for a past when they did not have to consider anyone other themselves or their clic.
They are voting for a past when their status and income and wealth and relative position in society was safe and they were not vulnerable to things outside of their control.
They do not feel safe across many facets of their lives and they are furious to be in this position and they have found someone to blame.
Anger often comes out of fear, and they are fearful. They could blame the powerful and the rich but they have come to believe (and many Americans have believed for a very long time) that the poor and the black and the powerless are to blame. Trump and the current Republican leadership and more than a few plutocrats and a few religious groups have decided that encouraging this belief helps them to accrue more power and wealth. They are using their resources to encourage these beliefs.
Our work is cut out for us. It will not be solved quickly. It may never be solved. Let's begin.
The "loss of status" is gigantic - and leads to fear and anger. Whether that is white males (losing good jobs for less educated) having to compete with women and minorities more. Or more fundamentalist Christians no longer dominating every "moral" conversation. There are more examples. Fear of loss is known to be a bigger motivator than desire for gain.
I gather that in primate bands status is a better pseudo-guaranty of food, grooming, and mating opportunities than competence at any of them.
It must be particularly scary to lose a status you thought you got deserved for being something you believe can't be changed, like being white or male…particularly when all that is solid appears to be subliming into air.
I share the view of some here that there is a lot of overthinking going on. I think the article contains the correct explanation in this line: "...Trump voters are voting as they do because they want to be misinformed in a way that will give them permission to hate lots of their fellow citizens."
Trump is a demagogue, and it won't be news to anyone here that this is *exactly* how the demagogue playbook works. The rubes adore him because he openly spews hatred like no other American politician before him. We all know that hating is much easier and more satisfying than having to act like an adult; it's so much easier to blame your problems on "others" and channel your disappointments into hatred of those others. Trump gives them permission to do that, and in general behave like 3rd graders. This is exemplified by Trump himself, the quintessential spoiled 8-year old. They love it.
That's it. No amount of explanation, reasoning, or provision of accurate information is going to have any impact on them. All the "issues" that they cite (immigrants, crime, inflation, etc.), are just ready-made justifications provided by Fox and Trump; things that they can cite as reasons in situations where they sense that they are expected to have an "adult" opinion.
You may well be right. Fox News is on in the stores and cafes. WE'd have to get a breakdown on the makeup of Fox's audience. Have place in Northwest Wisconsin and there are almost no Hispanics there. Allen Kamp
I think Jennifer Pahlka (if you don't know her and her work, you should) has the best take on this: The Democratic Party has failed to deliver in the ways that its potential base perceives and values, and it has failed to make government effective. That the Biden administration managed to deliver only 7 EV charging stations in 4 years is utterly damning. Legislation is needed, and overhaul of the bureaucratic structure of the federal agencies is needed. Both are urgent; the Democratic Party has ignored both. Oh, and the neoliberal virus has vitiated the Democratic Party--it is now largely a center-right party. And largely feckless. This is all a tragedy, but denying it doesn't help.
Not quite convinced about the "love out of hate" line, but I do think a lot of Trump voters were completely convinced that the country is falling apart. You get a similar breakdown when asking if the economy is in recession- even though the majority say they are doing OK personally. And the same thing if you ask about whether they are affected by crime vs "somewhere else", it is terrible. (remember that media for years has loved "if it bleeds, it leads")
I don't know the answer on whether folks want to be misinformed or get conned - complex issue - but the misinformation made a significant difference in the election.
A sad looking middle aged woman: "I voted for Trump. Four years ago we were doing fine. Now we can barely get by. Trump will fix it." Folks cannot dream of ever owning a home. Young folks cannot afford their own apartment. Buying food has become a problem. There are a lot more homeless people on the street. They used to see themselves in a little suburban home someday, and now see that they could end up sleeping in a cardboard box in an alley. Trump is a disgusting, malignant creature and his reign will be terrible for these people. But they want a new shuffling of the deck.
Nobody voted for Trump out of love. Our fellow citizens voted out of hate or fear with the collaboration of a ruinous media/social media sphere. Sorry, I forgot to mention the fucking capitalists. (Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for the mortal chill).
I hope we're not sunk as a nation but the immediate future is very dark and those willing to engage in the fight for even a marginally liberatory politics may soon find themselves screaming from a firey stake. The electorate who chose the grifter, are braying for blood (and circuses). The 47th president will not deny them.
1) US median income remains below 2019 level, yet the overall economy has grown by 10 percent. Ergo, the top 5 percent are getting almost all the new wealth, with some fragment perhaps going (indirectly) to Medicaid users/the poor (not the "middle class"). But, in our money-driven politics and media ecology, it is nigh-on impossible to talk directly about changing the flow of wealth and income.
2) This is a harvest of Patriotic Correctness, which, thanks in part to the gutting -- and STEM-ing/de-liberal-artsing -- of our schools, is still the foundation of what feels like knowledge to the vast sea of folks with only low and middling K-12 training. Our intellectual culture, like our media ecology, sucks, in other words. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
A pastor I once heard via a SubGenius MediaBarrage™ tape intoned 'In The World, "Seeing is believing.", for us Christians, believing is seeing!'. The opinion of that expert on misinformation and on conservative Christians counts for a lot with me, as does nearly everything I have observed about humans over five decades, some autists, martial artists, and scientists excepted.
Yes, people's love of being misinformed _would_ mean that we'd be in trouble. You may have noticed….
(What has changed: though I love many of the changes of the past seventy years, what has changed mostly has been the willingness of people to believe well-established institutions interested in their own long-term survival. The okder situations had its problems, everything from the Vietnam War to the Roman Catholic Church's pædophilia toleration…but it's not as if people instead started to reason reasonably from fairly gathered and dispassionately evaluated facts. Instead they've glommed-onto a motley assortment of [to quote B. Kliban] ninnies and feebs, {objective reality}-speaking to treat as authorities, each of whom has little or no interest in long-term survival over immediate profit, and so has great incentive to come-up-with the most attractive lies possible.
Shorter: People disgusted with the lies and the obviously self-serving nature of their parents' churches thought that People's Temple guy sure sounded good…what could go wrong?)
@Brad
I understand and share the strong need to believe that if only things could be *explained* better, if there had been better arguments, more clearly expressed information, some other intellectual move, then the outcome would have been different. That's the intellectual and moral world you (we) inhabit and aspire to.
But the fundamental flaw with this analysis is that there's no plausible way anybody (certainly not the enthusiastic subset of Trump's voters) is misinformed _about Trump_: his character, behavior, and ethics has been too visible for too long in ways that are too clear-cut. Any information- or policy-driven analysis of the outcome, or even explanations driven by nostalgia, feelings of rejection, etc, flounders against the reductio that
1) You cannot not know Trump at at least a surface level.
2) To vote for Trump you have to consider him a human being you can give power to over yourself and other people, regardless on your feelings about inflation or migration or anything else.
3) A majority did.
What makes the outcome of this election painful at a foundational level is that it disproves the idea that the aggregate US population has a basic moral threshold regarding internal violence, democratic institutions, a cogent view of reality, and so on. It forces us to an impossible conflict between an axiomatic commitment to Democracy and an equally axiomatic commitment to basic decency in public life. What happens when We The People chooses this with open eyes? Because whatever their opinion about policy issues, everybody knows Trump well enough that the basic moral decision about his suitability as a human being to be given power was there.
I'm not in the US, but of course US politics have a global impact, and here in Argentina we face a very similar situation. I believe the impulse to educate and argue with our fellow citizens is an honorable one that must be sustained as the only viable long-term solution, but in the shorter term we must navigate a morally tricky and spiritually exhausting path where we must simultaneously respect our commitments to democratic institutions (which many of our fellow citizens seem to only do contingently) while, to be frank, figure out how to punch above our current voting strength weight to constrain and influence policy.
It feels dirty, it feels immoral, it feels wrong, and we *know* that there's a version of that strategy that leads to much, much darker places: history is scarred by atrocities at the very least enabled by people who probably began by thinking and feeling the way I do. That's a path fraught with the temptation of "hard choices." But any political strategy that assumes that right now there's a basic ethical agreement with a comfortably large majority of the people we share our countries with fails, I believe, to adequately grasp reality.
Again, not that I don't understand and share the need to believe otherwise....
Regardless of anything else, it does say something that the US population put less weight on Trump's awful moral failings than on other fears, etc. that they have. But definitely true - and even stranger that it comes from the Christian evangelicals - a supreme form of hypocrisy. BUT what it does say is that to them, the "ends justify the means".
Going by the empirical tolerance Evangelicals [and many other expressions of organized religion] extend to themselves and their own hierarchy for similar behavior, it might not be necessarily surprising. Trump isn't the first transparently greedy and sexually predatory leader eagerly supported by conservative, religious citizens.
We might argue on whether those might not actually be positive attributes for many of them ---much as I disagree with or water down many of Harold Bloom's views, I find his observation that Christianity in the US is basically a different religion very compelling--- but we know they aren't disqualifying. Heck, it doesn't prevent them from explicit vocal support, which does tell you that it's not even taboo within their own communities.
I don't know what to say or do with that, other than to give up on the idea of appealing to the religious doctrine of a Conservative Christian to oppose Trump, just as it's past time we give up on the idea of appealing to the Constitution and the rule of law to get a GOP Congressperson to oppose Trump. If it could work, it would already have happened on its own.
A very smart psychologist I know says it works like this:
1. Trump works like fortunetellers work. He says generic things, observes the response, and tunes his message. This allows listeners to project their dreams and needs on him.
2. The beliefs that follow are there to protect those aspirations and dreams. Trump is fond of saying things like "They want to silence me because they want to silence you". He never says "about what?" because there isn't one answer.
3. This puts us in the position of telling them things they don't want to hear, so they don't listen.
This is a stable structure. It is hard to crack. It does crack, but the process isn't a rational, reasoned one. It's an emotional one.
What needs to happen is grieving. Who doesn't go through life without setbacks and hurts? However, the process above interrupts and forestalls a normal grieving process.
No, I don't know how to do this at scale. I do know ways to push on this on a personal level, but it requires a solid personal connection.
With all due respect to Dean Baker, he misses the key point. Once the big lie is taken in, the effort to correct it requires a 10 fold effort to correct it. I spent a considerable amount of time while in the pharma industry working on various drug safety issues and was a frequent spokesperson (often in hostile environments which was not pleasant). Trying to explain how SSRI antidepressants were developed, how safety was assessed and followed once the drug(s) was on the market is not amenable to soundbites. The same can be said for vaccines which was also part of my work. The autism link to childhood vaccines has been debunked for some years, yet there is still a significant number of people who want to believe in it and even if you sit down and explain things, the likelihood that they will change their opinion is small.
I venture to say that most of us who subscribe to Professor DeLong's musings were not markedly impacted by the transient inflation of two years ago. The same cannot be said from most of those working-class individuals who voted for President Trump. They looked at the grocery bill and instantly knew something was wrong. It is difficult to campaign on this if you are being linked as one of the conspirators that caused the increase in prices.
I don't know how many of you have read the Buettner/Craig book, "Lucky Loser", that is all about the multiple business failures of President Trump. It's well worth it. For me if there is any single person who we can "laughingly" blame for the current situation it is Mark Burnett who cast Donald Trump in NBC's "The Apprentice." For most of his supporters, this was proof of his business acumen. He had numerous business bankruptcies, why can't he do the same thing to the US?
The Apprentice, like wrestling, and so much else, is called REALITY TV. But it isn't, yet people believe it, just as they use movie stories to "learn about [fake]history". For many others, they live in a social buvvle that includes Faux News that tells them lies on a daily basis. If the press is "an enemy of the people", and you believe it, then you will no more believe the press than a religious person will believe those of another faith or no faith.
I was recently watching Hitler's speech from January 30, 1940 when war had already started. It was a masterful example of propaganda, far superior to Trump's pale imitation. England and France had cons[ired to destroy the German people and forced the Nazis to rearm and fight back. They only wanted to unite Europe gainst the power of England that had acquired much of the World's resources. England was the invertor of concentration camps (true) and killed 20,00 including women and children, but no mention of the German concentration and extermination camps. It was all righteous indignation of teh unfairnous of England and teh League of Nations, and the brilliant German people were going to show the world they they were superior, proving it wiyth the rapid invasion of Poland. The MAGA tropes just change the names.
I think it has been said that "liberals" want to persuade from facts and logic, but this is resisted by teh right wing. [ Not unlike De LOng's juxtaposition of Hayek and Polyani in "Slouching..."] I think it is very clear this isn't going to work, and that media that even attempts to will eventually be corrupted or shut down, as we see in Hungary, Italy, and of course, in interwar Germany.
Just out of curiosity, what concentration camps did England have in 1940? And who were the 20,000 killed? Maybe India? Or South Africa? IMO Stalin was the inventor of concentration camps, aka gulags. Although numerous rulers prior to Stalin had the same idea; they were just not as ruthless or efficient.
South Africa during the Boer War at the end of the C19th. IIRC Churchill was involved. IDK much about that time although it is included in biographies of Churchill. Hitler wasn't that original. He borrowed the idea of genocide from the US experience with the indigenous population, and the idea of racial superiority and purity from the eugenics movement that was also strong in the USA. Propaganda works best when using a fact and then twisting it to support their own beliefs and actions. For eample. Germany lost WWI (true). It lost because it was stabbed in the back by [Jewish] elites. (false). Therefore...and we arrive at a perfectly reasonable start of WWII that is the fault of the imperial powers, especially England and France, and that Germany was simply preserving its people.
There were many reasons people voted for Trump. Some are authoritarian bigots. Some are authoritarian Christian nationalists (there's some overlap). Most are terribly mis/disinformed because of their own biases confirmed by an information system (mainly social media) that keeps feeding them information chosen by algorithms based on what they've already clicked on.
But the thing that changed since 2020 is inflation, and I think many of us fail to understand how this is experienced by households. We keep talking about how inflation is under control, which is true, and apparently has been for the past year or so. But prices haven't dropped, and while wages are beginning to rise, they haven't yet caught up. Life is still hard for ordinary people. Inflation is to price level as acceleration is to speed. If you're sitting in the passenger seat and your nut job friend is accelerating on a curvy road, you get anxious. If he slows the acceleration at 95 mph, you're still anxious. The acceleration has slowed, but you're still doing 95 mph on a curvy road. Rents are still high, and food is still expensive, and your paycheck doesn't go as far.
The swing factor in this election was inflation. The border was an issue, but not as personal. The Harris campaign was not willing to address inflation, which is a normal campaign strategy. You want to focus attention on the issue that benefits your election chances, and in this case, that was Trump. The irony is that in avoiding talking about inflation, they didn't talk about what the administration was already doing to reduce the concentration of market power that has helped keep prices high. Under Trump, that work will cease.
Well, first unclear what any president or candidate can actually do about inflation - the Fed messed up. And yes, I agree that they should have talked far more about market concentration, but unclear how much folks would have understood it.
And remember that most voters had never experienced inflation, so big shock to them. Good discussion of all this on Noah Smith's substack.
Except for “the FED messed up.” The inflation was caused mostly by the supply shock from COVID isolation and exacerbated by the ham-fisted COVID relief. At least, that’s my take. Maybe our host (Professor DeLong) disagrees.
Yes to both the reasons (although again it may have been a much worse situation without the COVID relief - see how the US did against everyone else because of that - much faster recovery than the 2008 recession as well).
But what I meant is that yes, inflation had causes, but the Fed was incredibly slow to react and that made it worse (and perhaps pushed it higher and resolved later)
I agree on the slow response. Even at that, interest rates reached record ho-hum levels, but if you’re a young adult, you never saw interest rates that high.
You and I are on the same page.
Harris was very cynical in vowing to stop "price gouging." Note there is no quantifiable definition of price gouging. And if somehow Harris was serious about stopping price gouging, she would have to start with Apple. The company's stylish design and effective marketing campaigns result in huge profit margins. Are liberal Democrats willing to call this price gouging?
It wasn’t cynical at all. Price-gouging is how the public thinks of it. That’s how the press talks about inflation. Candidates have to speak the language the public understands. The administration was already working to break-up and prevent concentrations of market power and force more competition, which is why Harris said she couldn’t think of anything she’d change.
Oh, I have a personal anecdote that illustrates what I think the problem is.
A few years ago, I had a couple of phone calls with the sister of a friend of mine. I was helping them clean up their estate after their mother died. She lives in what was once known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, and is now known as Haida Gwaii.
In the course of our conversation, she mentioned, multiple times, how there was so much crime in the city. She'd seen it on TV.
I took time out to mention that I get where she's coming from, having grown up in a rural area, and visited many places close to where she lives (1000 miles north of the Canadian border). And then I told her that having lived in the city for 25 years, I had been the target of a crime exactly once, and it was very minor, some kid coming in and grabbing certain toys.
She responded very nicely, discussing some of the difficulties they had with kids in their community.
But the kicker is, the next time I talked with her, she was back to "there's so much crime in the city". As if the conversation never happened.
She needs that belief for some reason. To justify all the other problems with where she lives, I guess. Maybe to cope with potential jealousy? I don't really know. But the belief is there because she needs it there.
By the way, I know from her brother that her deceased husband was abusive. And she stuck it out with him nonetheless. Also, she probably has some level of anxiety disorder, possibly also social anxiety.
This isn't about a rational process. Not with her.
Yes, and generally in America, crime rate per capita is higher in rural and semi-rural areas. As well as addiction and domestic violence. Now, harder to say which is cause and which is effect. Some of those areas have been hard hit by loss of manufacturing jobs, closing down hospitals, etc, etc. But again the question is whether that is being convinced by misinformation and "needing" to believe it (good example you gave)
I think viewing Trump belief as a new religion (“Trumpism”) provides an interesting perspective. Many or most Trump voters can be considered to be members of this new religion, which in some respects is, for them, parallel, and in others perpendicular, to whatever “real” religion, if any, that they may profess. It doesn’t matter whether it all adds up: it’s easy for people to believe in contradictory dogmas at the same time.
Trumpism has its Articles Of Faith. If you don’t subscribe to them, you cannot be true to the faith. Yes, there are cynics who are in it for laughs or plunder, but many are true believers. It can take a long time for objective reality to break through the doctrinal bubble, because no one has more incentive to believe unbelievable things than a true believer.
It may also be the case that, for many Trumpists, their already existing religious communities have in effect groomed them for their new prophet.
A lot of the misinformation comes from Fox News, which continually warns of immigrants and paints blue states as hell holes. But many rural areas are in bad shape, losing population and jobs. Whites have lost a lot of their status that was automatically given to them and they want it back.
Allen Kamp.
I find it very doubtful that Hispanic men and White males between 21-37 watch Fox News at all. The latter listen to Joe Rogan and his ilk, the former are too busy working at jobs in construction and yard care.
I like the poll. I think the results are interesting. I think your belief that
"The bulk of Trump voters are then good-hearted people who think that,... things need to be fixed. ...they are voting for Trump more out of love than out of hate." misses a key point.
They are voting for a past when they did not have to consider anyone other themselves or their clic.
They are voting for a past when their status and income and wealth and relative position in society was safe and they were not vulnerable to things outside of their control.
They do not feel safe across many facets of their lives and they are furious to be in this position and they have found someone to blame.
Anger often comes out of fear, and they are fearful. They could blame the powerful and the rich but they have come to believe (and many Americans have believed for a very long time) that the poor and the black and the powerless are to blame. Trump and the current Republican leadership and more than a few plutocrats and a few religious groups have decided that encouraging this belief helps them to accrue more power and wealth. They are using their resources to encourage these beliefs.
Our work is cut out for us. It will not be solved quickly. It may never be solved. Let's begin.
The "loss of status" is gigantic - and leads to fear and anger. Whether that is white males (losing good jobs for less educated) having to compete with women and minorities more. Or more fundamentalist Christians no longer dominating every "moral" conversation. There are more examples. Fear of loss is known to be a bigger motivator than desire for gain.
I gather that in primate bands status is a better pseudo-guaranty of food, grooming, and mating opportunities than competence at any of them.
It must be particularly scary to lose a status you thought you got deserved for being something you believe can't be changed, like being white or male…particularly when all that is solid appears to be subliming into air.
I share the view of some here that there is a lot of overthinking going on. I think the article contains the correct explanation in this line: "...Trump voters are voting as they do because they want to be misinformed in a way that will give them permission to hate lots of their fellow citizens."
Trump is a demagogue, and it won't be news to anyone here that this is *exactly* how the demagogue playbook works. The rubes adore him because he openly spews hatred like no other American politician before him. We all know that hating is much easier and more satisfying than having to act like an adult; it's so much easier to blame your problems on "others" and channel your disappointments into hatred of those others. Trump gives them permission to do that, and in general behave like 3rd graders. This is exemplified by Trump himself, the quintessential spoiled 8-year old. They love it.
That's it. No amount of explanation, reasoning, or provision of accurate information is going to have any impact on them. All the "issues" that they cite (immigrants, crime, inflation, etc.), are just ready-made justifications provided by Fox and Trump; things that they can cite as reasons in situations where they sense that they are expected to have an "adult" opinion.
You may well be right. Fox News is on in the stores and cafes. WE'd have to get a breakdown on the makeup of Fox's audience. Have place in Northwest Wisconsin and there are almost no Hispanics there. Allen Kamp
I think Jennifer Pahlka (if you don't know her and her work, you should) has the best take on this: The Democratic Party has failed to deliver in the ways that its potential base perceives and values, and it has failed to make government effective. That the Biden administration managed to deliver only 7 EV charging stations in 4 years is utterly damning. Legislation is needed, and overhaul of the bureaucratic structure of the federal agencies is needed. Both are urgent; the Democratic Party has ignored both. Oh, and the neoliberal virus has vitiated the Democratic Party--it is now largely a center-right party. And largely feckless. This is all a tragedy, but denying it doesn't help.
More from Pahlka here: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/curiosity-and-conflict
Not quite convinced about the "love out of hate" line, but I do think a lot of Trump voters were completely convinced that the country is falling apart. You get a similar breakdown when asking if the economy is in recession- even though the majority say they are doing OK personally. And the same thing if you ask about whether they are affected by crime vs "somewhere else", it is terrible. (remember that media for years has loved "if it bleeds, it leads")
I don't know the answer on whether folks want to be misinformed or get conned - complex issue - but the misinformation made a significant difference in the election.
A sad looking middle aged woman: "I voted for Trump. Four years ago we were doing fine. Now we can barely get by. Trump will fix it." Folks cannot dream of ever owning a home. Young folks cannot afford their own apartment. Buying food has become a problem. There are a lot more homeless people on the street. They used to see themselves in a little suburban home someday, and now see that they could end up sleeping in a cardboard box in an alley. Trump is a disgusting, malignant creature and his reign will be terrible for these people. But they want a new shuffling of the deck.
Nobody voted for Trump out of love. Our fellow citizens voted out of hate or fear with the collaboration of a ruinous media/social media sphere. Sorry, I forgot to mention the fucking capitalists. (Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for the mortal chill).
I hope we're not sunk as a nation but the immediate future is very dark and those willing to engage in the fight for even a marginally liberatory politics may soon find themselves screaming from a firey stake. The electorate who chose the grifter, are braying for blood (and circuses). The 47th president will not deny them.
My own adds:
1) US median income remains below 2019 level, yet the overall economy has grown by 10 percent. Ergo, the top 5 percent are getting almost all the new wealth, with some fragment perhaps going (indirectly) to Medicaid users/the poor (not the "middle class"). But, in our money-driven politics and media ecology, it is nigh-on impossible to talk directly about changing the flow of wealth and income.
2) This is a harvest of Patriotic Correctness, which, thanks in part to the gutting -- and STEM-ing/de-liberal-artsing -- of our schools, is still the foundation of what feels like knowledge to the vast sea of folks with only low and middling K-12 training. Our intellectual culture, like our media ecology, sucks, in other words. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
A pastor I once heard via a SubGenius MediaBarrage™ tape intoned 'In The World, "Seeing is believing.", for us Christians, believing is seeing!'. The opinion of that expert on misinformation and on conservative Christians counts for a lot with me, as does nearly everything I have observed about humans over five decades, some autists, martial artists, and scientists excepted.
Yes, people's love of being misinformed _would_ mean that we'd be in trouble. You may have noticed….
(What has changed: though I love many of the changes of the past seventy years, what has changed mostly has been the willingness of people to believe well-established institutions interested in their own long-term survival. The okder situations had its problems, everything from the Vietnam War to the Roman Catholic Church's pædophilia toleration…but it's not as if people instead started to reason reasonably from fairly gathered and dispassionately evaluated facts. Instead they've glommed-onto a motley assortment of [to quote B. Kliban] ninnies and feebs, {objective reality}-speaking to treat as authorities, each of whom has little or no interest in long-term survival over immediate profit, and so has great incentive to come-up-with the most attractive lies possible.
Shorter: People disgusted with the lies and the obviously self-serving nature of their parents' churches thought that People's Temple guy sure sounded good…what could go wrong?)
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