Question for A Saturday Revised With An Answer
During the 2020 election campaign the Republican Party nominated and ran Trump for reelection without the benefit of a governmental policy platform.
They ran on the strength of Trump’s personal charismatic attractiveness and pull. They conducted and ran their campaign for the Presidency of the United States on what has been dubbed as ‘Trumpism’.
The Trump MAGA movement consists of the following:
White Identity
White Grievance
White Privilege
White Supremacy
and
White Nationalism
Nowhere in the Trump manifesto is there any sort of reference to Jeffersonian Equality and/or Madisonian Democracy.
The commonplace of lying in public discourse and interaction has made fact and truth unnecessary integers in the political or electoral process.
Transparency in government is characterized as some kind of weakness or flaw that should be minimized or eliminated.
Trump’s following are cultists who have forsaken any semblance of political rationality in favor of their blind fealty and loyalty to Trump and the notion that America, and everything that America represents, belongs to white people.
The reason why ‘Trumpism’ appeals to so many is racism. Trump’s appeal and resonance lies in the fact that he is the racist who has given voice to those who cannot and will not accept America as a multicultural and multiracial Democratic Republic…
These people would cling to their racism rather than preserve their democracy to the point of becoming violent in defense of their bigotry.
So here’s the question:
How do you ‘reason’ people out of a position that they didn’t ‘reason’ themselves into?
I believe that it would take the revelation of the wholesale betrayal of these folks by their ‘leadership’ to dissuade any of the avowed cultists:
01/12/2022 @ 8:57 pm
That depends on the extent to which they’ll actually listen to a conversation.
The population is not as cynical as the leadership. Not close. And the leadership has some problems with complete cynicism. If you saw the recent castigating of Ted Cruz by Tucker Carlson, Carlson did so strictly on the basis of who Cruz’s point would hurt and not at all on its validity. He basically says that loyalty has to trump principle. Even Cruz has principles in there somewhere.
It starts with a disagreement about facts, because perceived facts are what followers base their views on. It then moves on to consistency. These people do not like to think of themselves as inconsistent. For example, if you hear about reverses discrimination, talk about how much de facto affirmative action there is for the admission of White students. Sports that aren’t played in poor neighborhoods. Legacies. Policies that limit the number of better performing Asian students. Open their eyes.
As to how to get them to distrust their sources, I’m not sure this will work but it’s what I’d try: Listen to a mainstream news network during hard news. Now listen to your source. What you’re listening for is the announcer trying to get you to feel a certain way. Moral indignation. Straight information doesn’t come with moral indignation. Does the person you’re listening to tell you how you should react? That’s not news, it’s sales. Listen for it. You want to question mainstream news, understand that all these people coming out of journalism programs have been trained to double check their sources and try to keep their bias out and, if they’re wrong, to issue retractions. Whether or not they’re successful, do you have any evidence that your sources are careful about that? What determines the quality of a news organization is not what they believe before they report.
For me, I’ll read Daily Kosh if they send me an email. I trust them for information. I don’t trust them for approach because it’s sales and sometimes I don’t agree. I don’t always share their moral indignation. I’m more nuanced than that and I’ve been around longer than most of them.
The other thing you can do is talk about consequences. What leads to what? What can derail the domino sequence they envision?
And a last thing: Watch for the assumption that another group of people behaves way, way differently than they do. They’re poor and they don’t want to work. Then why do offered jobs result in lines around the block? What makes you think that anyone would rather be lazy and poor than successful and able to afford stuff? If you’re looking at lazy and poor, you’re looking at people convinced they can’t get any further than that. Why wouldn’t they be able to?
01/13/2022 @ 12:24 pm
Kosh, My guess is that none of the people who participated in the violence at the Capitol on Jan 6 and the people who support and defend the insurrectionists’ actions, would listen long enough to comprehend your ‘arguments’, much less be swayed by them.
I believe that it would take the revelation of the wholesale betrayal of these folks by their leadership to dissuade any of the avowed cultists:
As MAGA zealots they are intractable and beyond the redemption or salvation of the case for a multicultural and multiracial Democratic Republic.
01/13/2022 @ 6:31 pm
The insurrectionists, no. Those who support them, some of them. It depends on the depth of support.
01/13/2022 @ 11:41 pm
What differentiates us from conservatives is how much we know. Most racists are racists because they allow themselves to believe alternative truths. That’s exactly how the Holocaust happened. If most racists really got what Black people faced they’d view things differently. I’m not saying they’re nice guys, but I am saying they have to build their views on something, some phony truth that enables them to feel like victims. The question becomes how we relieve them of these truths.
Let’s look at the election, for example. We know what that myth is. Here are a few questions I’d ask if in a discussion with those people:
If the election was stolen, why did Rudy Giuliani have so little of substance to say in court and why were all his arguments thrown out, mostly by Republican judges?
If this was on Giuliani’s incompetence, why were no other attorneys for Trump able to get anywhere in court? If you think there were no competent attorneys who supported Trump, why not? There are a ton of Republican attorneys in the United States. We’re a country of about 350 million people. Do you think out of that population that no attorneys would be able to help Trump in court if they had anything to work with?
Why were the votes in Georgia and Arizona counted in favor of Biden when both election commissions were run by Republicans who wanted to see Trump elected? Why would Republican election officials commit fraud in favor of Biden? Did you see what happened when votes in Arizona were recounted? (Biden picked up votes in the recount.)
What do you think Trump meant when he asked the Republican head of the Georgia election commission to find him a few thousand more votes? From where? Trump was recorded saying this. If Biden or Hillary had done something like this, would you think it was excusable?
Why are so many Republican Senators who are blatantly anti-Biden convinced that the election was a fair one?
Why was it OK for the “protestors” at the Capitol on January 6 to hurt police officers?
Do you think real patriots would replace American flags with Confederate flags in the Capitol?
I’m not loading my questions. I”m making people think about them.
Sometimes it’s not about leading them down the path with information they know about. Sometimes it’s about showing them the ramifications of information they haven’t thought about, like the contention that Black people are advantaged and White people are disadvantaged when it comes to college admissions because of Affirmative Action. So you think it should all be about merit? Do you understand that if it were about merit there would be far fewer Whites in college because those slots would be taken by Asians who study harder? Do you understand the problem with athletic scholarships and admissions preferences for sports that show up almost exclusively in White majority schools? Do you understand the pro-White bias of admitting legacies? (We used to call that the Grandfather Clause in politics.) Do you understand that all of these policies amount to de facto affirmative action for White students? Is there a reason it’s OK to give extra admissions help to White students but not to Black students?
“No, I”m not accusing you of racism. I’m accusing you of blindness to one side of what happens. You see when you’re disadvantaged unfairly but not when you’re advantaged unfairly. If you’re really worried about fairness, it has to be both.”
Questions. No attacks. Attacks instantly means you stop reaching them. It is almost impossible to be introspective and defensive at the same time and in this case we need introspection. We need them to come to their own conclusions about how they are or have been.
Not everyone is arguing honestly. I’ll tell you one way you tell and it’s something you can say in the conversation before it happens. If someone is arguing dishonestly, if they’re pushing a viewpoint to their advantage without worrying about fairness at all, meaning if they’re intending to trick you with an argument rather than being honest with you, when they’re caught you’ll often see a smirk. The instant you see it you’ll know.
01/14/2022 @ 1:05 pm
“The population is not as cynical as the leadership.”
The leadership isn’t as cynical as they are hypocritical. They know better.
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” —MLK
The leadership exploits the sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity of Trump’s following.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” —LBJ
The so called ‘Southern Strategy’ was predicated on the cynicism and hypocrisy of this notion and it is in and of itself a lie.
The Southern Strategy is the lie that is, in large measure, responsible for what the Republican Party has become and is today.
“Most racists are racists because they allow themselves to believe alternative truths.”
Most racists are racists because they choose to be despite all of the evidence to the contrary. There are no “alternative truths”.
There are alternate ways to articulate and interpret facts but there are no ‘alternative truths’.
‘Conservative’ leaders won’t allow Trump’s followers to sit still long enough to listen to, and digest, your arguments…
And, in most cases, your arguments would fall on deaf ears….
These folks would rather cling to their racism and bigotry and defend doing so violently, than uphold and defend American Democracy…
01/14/2022 @ 4:45 pm
Of course there are no actual alternative truths. They view them as truths but they’re not truths. If we accepted the same truths we’d be closer together.
Maybe the biggest problem is that these people are willing to lie to themselves.
By the way, above I didn’t make arguments. I asked questions. That’s different. It’s harder to argue with questions. These aren’t “when will you stop beating your wife” questions. Why did Giuliani go nowhere? Why didn’t any other Republican lawyer get anywhere? Why did Republican-led state election commissions decide elections for Biden? These aren’t questions that can be argued with. If Trump had succeeded in the courts, he’d still be in the White House. It can’t be argued that the election commissions in Georgia and Arizona counted their states for Biden. It can’t be argued that those election commissions are and were Republican-dominated. How Did These Happen is a valid question. We simply have enough obvious evidence indicating that the election was not stolen.
01/14/2022 @ 5:16 pm
“We simply have enough obvious evidence indicating that the election was not stolen.”
And yet, the fact remains that 50% of Republicans believe and adhere to ‘the big lie’…
Thus the question:
“How do you ‘reason’ people out of a position that they didn’t ‘reason’ themselves into?”
01/14/2022 @ 10:47 pm
You get them to consider questions about what they believe.
01/15/2022 @ 11:57 am
“Maybe the biggest problem is that these people are willing to lie to themselves…
…I didn’t make arguments. I asked questions.”
A rhetorical question is one for which the questioner does not expect a direct answer: in many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying or emphasize the speaker’s or author’s opinion on a topic. ——Wikipedia
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information. Relevant items of information include a person’s actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things.[1] According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.[1][2] The discomfort is triggered by the person’s belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.[1][2][3]
Coping with the nuances of contradictory ideas or experiences is mentally stressful. It requires energy and effort to sit with those seemingly opposite things that all seem true.
——Wikipedia
Kosh, your ‘rhetorical questions’ are impossible to consider without creating or generating cognitive dissonance within the minds of the target audience and individuals.
Perhaps a strategy for the effective weaponization and use of cognitive dissonance should be developed and implemented as a countermeasure to ‘Trumpism’.
01/14/2022 @ 1:03 am
CALIFORNIA
Gov. Gavin Newsom rejects parole for Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of killing Robert F. Kennedy
Jan. 13, 2022
01/14/2022 @ 1:11 pm
JP,
Does the phrase ‘rot in jail’ apply and resonate?
01/14/2022 @ 3:42 pm
STATEMENT ON ASSASSINATION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, APRIL 4, 1968
(The following text is taken from a news release version of Robert F. Kennedy’s statement.)
Senator Robert F. Kennedy
Indianapolis, Indiana
April 4, 1968
Listen to this speech.
JFK Library excerpt immediately prior, RP. Please see Gov Newsome’s LA Times adjudication.
Also, Open Salon’s Steel Breeze during one of our ruminations, Steel Breeze wrote that the murder of Bobby Kennedy, that one single day, is one of the paramount “what ifs” of history.
Finally, here’s an excerpt wrought last when I felt like chasing for a milk shake in my little town…like: ANYBODY HERE?
01/14/2022 @ 4:06 pm
Just Can’t Remember Whom
the fields are gripe, broken news, I cannot stop looking and listening, nor tassel my Silver, for a haircut and shave. I can’t kickoff cowboy boots … nor chastise blushed blondie…1st now I read Bruce’s Blinded by the Light…and thought…::…unique rhymes with bleak … even for dem dat seek…click clack LO;}…{ how’s that go? real slow…like bend the ear of the high steppin’ strutters our gifted editors too…as far as the eye can see: a sizzle flip a panacake, typing fast and slow yet only see JABS swabs up at the inner eye why o why my o my delta dawn deltoids poked as silent as the Chattanooga Choo Choo just a kid as antsy as the Cuban Mistletoe Crisis so we took it outside insouciantly and played shuffleboard in the northeast wind upon particulate hot tar while that crow watched from slack wire nearby the sun melded to a stop sign good for the juvenile universal soldiers just when BALL LIGHTNING as wide as Jesus’ crucified arms swooped make-no-never-mind lit up like that cyclone fence my palms scraped and shorn your temple bruised your bright blood tingling my high cheek bristled, purple bright: particulate glass 8 years yet away free at last 3 years or such that thorny rose bunch right after brunch; our safety cadet, convivial sport, gangly as a gerund, They shot the President … and sped to the hofsfatoll. I set down my saxophone. We watched left then right, my Le Blanc as cumbersome as a cot in the wilderness, cruel as though a pendulum, my Billy Bruton mit sashed to the alto’s case and our gym teacher unlocked the plate-glass door — his index finger said shhhh, hurry