The secret of Donald Trump's success
Donald Trump has become an unprecedented political phenomenon. His success stems from a very particular narrative.
Donald Trump is prevailing in the Republican presidential primaries at such a rate that it seems likely that he will become the next Republican presidential candidate, and perhaps the next president. Democrats don't quite understand why he wins and so comfortably, and many Republicans don't see him as one of their own and are trying to stop him, but they don't know how. There are several theories: people are angry and he speaks to the anger of him. People do not have a good opinion of Congress and want someone who does not come from politics. Both ideas can be valid. But why? What are the details? And why Trump?
Many people are puzzled. Trump seems to have come out of nowhere. His views on various issues do not fit the common mold.
He likes Planned Parenthood, Social Security, and Medicare, and those aren't standard Republican positions. Republicans hate the doctrine of eminent domain (the expropriation of private property by the state) and love the Trans-Pacific Agreement for Economic Cooperation (TPP), but Trump holds the opposite view on both issues. He is not a religious man and despises religious practices, yet evangelicals (rather, white evangelicals) love him. He thinks that health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, as well as military contractors, make too much profit and he wants to change that. He insults the main groups of voters, for example Latinos, while the majority of Republicans tries to seduce them. He wants to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants and he thinks he can do it. He wants to prevent Muslims from entering the country. What's going on?
The answer requires the explanation of some antecedents that have not been discussed in the media until now.
Some background ...
I work in cognitive science and the study of the brain. In the 1990s, I set about finding the answer to a question in my field: How do the different political positions of conservatives and progressives fit together? Take conservatism: what does being against abortion have to do with being in favor of gun ownership? What does gun ownership have to do with denying the reality of global warming? How does being anti-state fit with wanting a stronger army? How can you be pro-life and be in favor of the death penalty? Progressives hold the opposite ideas. How are your views harmonized?
The answer came from the realization that we tend to understand the nation metaphorically in familiar terms: we have founding fathers. We sent our sons and daughters to war. We have home security. Conservative and progressive views, which divide our country, can be understood very easily in terms of moral views that are encapsulated in two different models of family life: that of protective parents (progressive vision) and that of strict father (progressive vision). conservative).
What do social issues and politics have to do with the family? We are governed first of all within our families, and therefore we grow up understanding the institutions of government in terms of systems of family governance.
In the case of the strict father family, the father knows what is best for his children. He can tell good from bad and he has the ultimate authority to make sure his wife and his children do what he says, which is considered the right thing to do. Many conservative wives accept this view, uphold the authority of the father, and are strict in the domains of family life over which they are in charge. When children disobey, it is the father's moral obligation to punish them causing enough pain so that in the future, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not only do what gives them pleasure. Through physical discipline, children are supposed to become disciplined and able to thrive in the outside world. And what happens if they don't prosper? That means that they are not disciplined and therefore cannot be moral and deserve their poverty. This reasoning appears in conservative politics in which the poor are perceived as lazy who deserve nothing and the rich as deserving of their wealth. Responsibility is then taken as personal responsibility and not as social responsibility. What you become depends on yourself; society has nothing to do with it. One is responsible for oneself, not for others, and others are responsible for themselves.
Win and insult
As Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, used to say, “Winning isn't everything. Its the only thing". In a world governed by personal responsibility and discipline, those who win deserve to win. Why does Donald Trump publicly and mercilessly insult other candidates and political leaders? Very simple: because he knows that he can win in a game of insults for television. In the eyes of a conservative, that makes him a formidable winning candidate who deserves to be one. The electoral competition is perceived as a battle. Insults that "turn on" are considered victories, and deserved victories.
Take for example Trump's statement in which he denies that John McCain is a war hero. The reasoning: McCain was shot. Heroes are winners. They beat the bad guys. They don't shoot them down. Those who are wounded, beaten to death and locked in a cell are losers, not winners.
The moral hierarchy
The strict parent logic goes further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that in a well-ordered world there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, the Disciplined (the Strong) above the Undisciplined (the Weak), the Rich above the Poor, the Employers above the Employees, Adults above Children, Western Culture above others. Our Country above the others. The hierarchy extends to Men above Women, Whites above Non-Whites, Christians above Non-Christians, Heterosexuals above Homosexuals.
We see these trends in most Republican presidential candidates, as well as Trump, and generally conservative policies emanate from the strict father mentality and this hierarchy.
Moral concepts based on the family run deep. Since people want to see themselves doing good rather than evil, moral concepts tend to be part of self-definition, that is, of who one is in essence. And so moral concepts define for one how the world should be. When not, you can feel frustrated and angry.
There is a certain latitude of maneuver in the vision of the strict father and also important variations. Thus, it is possible to draw a main division between a) white evangelical Christians, b) conservatives who defend laissez-faire and the free market, and c) pragmatic conservatives who are not tied to evangelical beliefs.
White evangelicals
Those whites who have a personal vision of a strict father and are religious are inclined towards evangelical Christianity, since God, in evangelical Christianity, is the Supreme Strict Father: if you follow his commandments, you go to heaven; If you defy his commandments, you will burn in hell for all eternity. If you are a sinner and want to go to heaven, you can be "reborn" by proclaiming your faith by choosing his son, Jesus Christ, as your personal Savior.
Such a version of religion is natural to those with strict parenting morality. Evangelical Christians join the church because they are conservative; They are not conservative due to the circumstance of being part of an evangelical church, although in some cases they can grow with both characteristics at the same time.
Evangelical Christianity focuses on family life. Therefore, there are organizations like Focus on the Family and constant references to "family values", which should be taken as values of a strict evangelical father. In strict father morality, it is he who controls sexuality and reproduction. Where the church has political control, there are laws that require parental and marital notification in cases where abortions are suggested.
Evangelists are very well organized politically and exercise control over a large number of local political powers. Consequently, the Republican candidates mostly have to accompany the evangelicals if they want to reach the nomination and win the local elections.
Pragmatic conservatives
Pragmatic conservatives, for their part, may not have any religious orientation. Instead, they may be concerned primarily with their own personal authority, and not with the authority of the church, or Christ, or God. They want to be strict parents in their own domains, with authority over their own lives, fundamentally. That is why a young, single conservative - male or female - may want to have sex without worrying about marriage. They may need access to birth control, advice on sexually transmitted diseases, information on cervical cancer, etc. And if a teenager or woman becomes pregnant and there is no possibility or desire to marry, abortion may be necessary.
Trump is a quintessential pragmatic conservative. And he knows that there are a large number of Republican voters who are like him in his pragmatism. There's a reason he likes Planned Parenthood: There are plenty of young, single (or even married) pragmatic conservatives who may need what Planned Parenthood has to offer, cheaply and confidentially.
Similarly, young or middle-aged pragmatic conservatives want to maximize their own wealth. They don't want to bear the financial burden of caring for their parents. The social security system and Medicare relieve them of most of those responsibilities. That is why Trump wants to keep the social security system and Medicare.
Defenders of laissez-faire and the free market
The conservative policies of the establishment have been shaped not only by the political power of white evangelical churches but also by the political power of those who seek free markets with the utmost laissez-faire, in which wealthy people and corporations enforce rules of thumb. market that favor them with a minimum of regulation and compliance control by the State. They see the payment of taxes not as an investment in public provision resources for all citizens, but as an action by the government to take away their income (their private property) and deliver the money, through public programs, to those who do not. deserve. This is the source of the anti-tax stances and in favor of the downsizing of the State that the republican establishment supports. This version of conservatism seems fine to outsource to increase profits by moving manufacturing and many services to foreign countries where labor is cheap, with the consequence that the United States loses well-paying jobs and wages are reduced. . As they depend on the import of cheap items, they would not be in favor of imposing high tariffs.
But Donald Trump is not in a business that makes products abroad to import and price them for a profit. He builds hotels, casinos, office buildings, golf courses. He can build them abroad using cheap labor, but he doesn't care. In addition, he acknowledges that most small business owners in America look like him: American businesses like dry cleaners, pizzerias, restaurants, hardware stores, plumbers, gardeners, contractors, car washes, and professionals like architects, lawyers, doctors, and nurses. . High tariffs do not appear to be a problem.
Many entrepreneurs are pragmatic conservatives. They like the power of the state when it works for them. Let's consider eminent domain. Establishment Republicans see it as an abuse by the state, a state that takes private property. But conservatives at construction companies like Trump depend on eminent domain so that homes and small businesses located in the areas they want to develop can be expropriated by this principle, for the benefit of their real estate plans. All they have to do is get local government officials to join them, through campaign contributions and the promise of increased local tax dollars to help acquire eminent domain rights. Trump is targeting Atlantic City, where he is building a casino using eminent domain to seize ownership.
If companies have to pay for their employees' health plans, Trump would want them to pay as little as possible to maximize profits for companies overall. Therefore, he would want both companies that provide health coverage and pharmaceuticals to charge as little as possible. To increase competition, he would want insurance companies to offer nationwide plans, to avoid state-run exchanges under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). These exchanges exist to maximize health coverage for citizens and help low-income people get coverage, not to increase business profits. However, Trump wants to maintain the mandatory character of the ACA, which the conservatives of the establishment detest, since they consider it an excess on the part of the state because it forces people to buy a product. For Trump, on the other hand, the mandatory nature increases the insurance fund and reduces costs for companies.
Direct causation versus systemic causation
Direct causation is dealing with a problem through direct action. Systemic causation recognizes that many problems arise from the system they are in and must be resolved through systemic causation. Systemic causality exists in four versions: the chain of direct causes, the interaction of direct causes (or chains of direct causes), feedback loops, and probabilistic causes. Systemic causality to global warming explains why global warming in the Pacific can produce terrible snowstorms in Washington, DC: Masses of highly energized water molecules evaporate over the Pacific, fly northeast and over the North Pole, and lower in the winter over the East Coast and parts of the Midwest as snow masses. Systemic causality has a chain of direct causes, interacting causes, feedback loops, and probabilistic causes, often in combination.
Direct causality is easy to understand and seems to be represented in the grammar of every language in the world. Systemic causality is more complex and is not represented in the grammar of any language. It has to be learned.
Empirical research has shown that conservatives tend to reason using direct causality and that progressives do best reasoning using systemic causality. The reason is thought to be that, in the strict father model, the father expects the son or wife to respond directly to an order and that the refusal should be punished as quickly and directly as possible.
Many of Trump's policy proposals are framed in terms of direct causation.
Immigrants are coming in from Mexico en masse: a wall must be built to stop them. In the case of all immigrants who have entered illegally, they simply have to be deported, even if there are 11 million of them working throughout the economy and living throughout the country. The cure for gun violence is to have a gun ready to just shoot the assailant. To prevent jobs from moving to Asia where labor costs are lower and cheap products flood the local market, the solution is straightforward: you have to put a very high tariff on those products, so that are much more expensive than those made in the United States. To save on pharmaceuticals, you have to make the largest consumer - the state - accept the lowest price offers. If the Islamic State (IS) is making money from Iraqi oil, US troops must be sent to Iraq to take control of the oil. ISIS leaders must be threatened with murdering their family members (even if that is a war crime). To obtain information from suspected terrorists, you have to use the submarine or even worse torture methods. If a few terrorists can sneak in among Muslim refugees, stop allowing any Muslim to enter the country. All of this makes sense to those who think according to direct causality, but not to those who see the enormous difficulties and dire consequences of such actions due to the complexity of systemic causality.
Political correctness
There are at least tens of millions of conservatives in America who share the strict father's morality and his moral hierarchy. Many of them are poor or middle class and many are white men who consider themselves superior to immigrants, non-whites, women, non-Christians, homosexuals; also to people who depend on public assistance. In other words, they are what liberals would call "intolerant." For many years, such intolerance has been publicly unacceptable, especially as more immigrants arrived, the country became less white, more women had access to education and entered the job market, homosexuals became more visible, and marriage gay, ok. As anti-intolerance organizations loudly pointed out and publicized the non-American nature of that bigotry, these conservatives felt more and more oppressed by what they call "political correctness," the political pressure against their opinions and against what they see as "freedom of expression". This became more exaggerated after September 11, when anti-Muslim sentiments intensified. The election of President Barack Hussein Obama created fury among those conservatives, who refused to see him as a legitimate American (as in the case of the birthers movement), much less as a legitimate authority, especially since his liberal views almost contradicted everything else they believe in as conservatives.
Donald Trump expresses his feelings out loud, with force, aggressiveness and anger, and without shame. All they have to do is support Trump and vote for him, and they don't even have to express their "politically incorrect" opinions because he does it for them and his victories make them respectable. Trump is his champion. He gives them a sense of self-respect and authority, and the possibility of power.
Every time you hear the words "political correctness," remember this.
Biconceptual
There is no middle ground in American politics. There are moderates, but there is no ideology of the moderate, nor a single ideology on which the moderates agree. A moderate conservative has some progressive views on certain issues, but these vary from person to person. Similarly, a moderate progressive has some conservative views on certain issues, but again, these vary from person to person. In short, the moderates have both political-moral views, but use one of them to a greater extent. Those two moral views generally contradict each other. How can they inhabit the same brain at the same time?
Both are characterized in the brain by the neural circuitry. They are connected by a common circuit: mutual inhibition. When one turns on, the other turns off; when one gets stronger, the other gets weaker. What makes them turn on or off? Language that matches one vision activates that vision, strengthens it, while turning off the other vision and weakening it. The more Trump's views are discussed in the media, the more they become activated and stronger in the minds of both hard-wing conservatives and moderate progressives.
This is so even when Trump's positions are attacked. The reason is that denying a frame activates it, as I have pointed out in the book Don't Think of an Elephant. It doesn't matter if you are promoting Trump or if he is attacking you, in both cases he is helping you.
A good example of Trump's win with progressive biconceptuals is certain unionized workers. Many union members are strict parents at home or in private life. They believe in "traditional family values" - a conservative code - and can identify with the winners.
Why has Trump been winning in the Republican primaries?
Look at all the conservative groups he has reached!
The Democratic Party has not taken seriously many of the reasons Trump receives support or the range of that support. And the media hasn't addressed many of the reasons for that support, either. That has to change.
