Post by ck4829 on Dec 27, 2016 0:26:20 GMT
American people must once again take power into their own hands
Fear makes for bad decisions. So says a body of research in social psychology called terror management theory (TMT), which was brought to my attention by Sheldon Solomon at Skidmore University. Dr. Solomon and his co-authors theorize that the awareness of death and perceived threats to well-being create a need to reinforce self-esteem and social status. An “any port in a storm” effect takes over at moments of real or perceived threat in which critical thinking is suspended in favor of quick solutions that may be without merit.
When researchers show experimental subjects a photo or phrase that reminds them of terrorism, war or death, this triggering actually changes voting preferences and political opinions among the study participants, as confirmed in several experiments going back to the early 1970s. Specifically, research subjects preferred authoritarian figures over more knowledgeable or skilled politicians when they had previously been primed with visual or verbal cues (photos of bombings say, or World Trade Center or 9/11) related to violence or threat, whether the politicians were real-life political figures or invented ones. Solomon and his colleagues apply terror management theory in a forthcoming chapter in a book explaining the Trump election.
The Trump rally speeches go through a litany of perceived threats to the American worker: the immigrants taking “our” jobs, the terrorists who want to kill “us,” the media who want to silence “us.” Trump is no social psychologist, but he has an instinctive sense for crowds: The purpose of this rhetoric is to tear down the listener to a point of malleability, at which point, he “alone” supplies the answer (as in his “I alone can fix it” speech at the Republican National Convention in the summer).
He drowns the listener in fear and then reaches out a helping hand from the threat that he, himself, has conjured. This verbal waterboarding breaks down the Trump fan into a panicked rage and then channels that fear and anger into the pretend solution of a giant wall or jailing Hillary Clinton, which not incidentally, also places Trump at the center of power and control over his fans’ lives. Fear actually short-circuits rational thought and gets the rally-goer to accept the strongman as the only way to avoid the perceived threat.
Note the “in” group and “out” group structure of Trumpian discourse. The in-group is implicitly or explicitly white, straight, male and Christian, or holders of what Ta-Nehisi Coates recently called in the Atlantic, a “badge of advantage.” Others may be accorded honorary status (there are black, female Trump supporters), but only through identification with or fealty to the true members of the in-group. Out-group members, those who do not hold the badge or do not appropriately wield it (“cucks” in the lexicon of the alt-Reich), must be subjected to extreme vitriol, thus reinforcing in-group membership on the part of the aggressor. The crisis inflicted on the psyche of the Trump supporter is magically solved by the ceremonial or ritual humiliation of the out-group. The litany of the Trump rally, “Lock her up!” and “Build the wall,” its call-and-response, re-affirms and celebrates membership in the cult of whiteness/America/Trump.
www.salon.com/2016/12/26/unraveling-the-cult-of-trump-american-people-must-once-again-take-power-into-their-own-hands_partner/
Fear makes for bad decisions. So says a body of research in social psychology called terror management theory (TMT), which was brought to my attention by Sheldon Solomon at Skidmore University. Dr. Solomon and his co-authors theorize that the awareness of death and perceived threats to well-being create a need to reinforce self-esteem and social status. An “any port in a storm” effect takes over at moments of real or perceived threat in which critical thinking is suspended in favor of quick solutions that may be without merit.
When researchers show experimental subjects a photo or phrase that reminds them of terrorism, war or death, this triggering actually changes voting preferences and political opinions among the study participants, as confirmed in several experiments going back to the early 1970s. Specifically, research subjects preferred authoritarian figures over more knowledgeable or skilled politicians when they had previously been primed with visual or verbal cues (photos of bombings say, or World Trade Center or 9/11) related to violence or threat, whether the politicians were real-life political figures or invented ones. Solomon and his colleagues apply terror management theory in a forthcoming chapter in a book explaining the Trump election.
The Trump rally speeches go through a litany of perceived threats to the American worker: the immigrants taking “our” jobs, the terrorists who want to kill “us,” the media who want to silence “us.” Trump is no social psychologist, but he has an instinctive sense for crowds: The purpose of this rhetoric is to tear down the listener to a point of malleability, at which point, he “alone” supplies the answer (as in his “I alone can fix it” speech at the Republican National Convention in the summer).
He drowns the listener in fear and then reaches out a helping hand from the threat that he, himself, has conjured. This verbal waterboarding breaks down the Trump fan into a panicked rage and then channels that fear and anger into the pretend solution of a giant wall or jailing Hillary Clinton, which not incidentally, also places Trump at the center of power and control over his fans’ lives. Fear actually short-circuits rational thought and gets the rally-goer to accept the strongman as the only way to avoid the perceived threat.
Note the “in” group and “out” group structure of Trumpian discourse. The in-group is implicitly or explicitly white, straight, male and Christian, or holders of what Ta-Nehisi Coates recently called in the Atlantic, a “badge of advantage.” Others may be accorded honorary status (there are black, female Trump supporters), but only through identification with or fealty to the true members of the in-group. Out-group members, those who do not hold the badge or do not appropriately wield it (“cucks” in the lexicon of the alt-Reich), must be subjected to extreme vitriol, thus reinforcing in-group membership on the part of the aggressor. The crisis inflicted on the psyche of the Trump supporter is magically solved by the ceremonial or ritual humiliation of the out-group. The litany of the Trump rally, “Lock her up!” and “Build the wall,” its call-and-response, re-affirms and celebrates membership in the cult of whiteness/America/Trump.
www.salon.com/2016/12/26/unraveling-the-cult-of-trump-american-people-must-once-again-take-power-into-their-own-hands_partner/