The question has perplexed philosophers, scholars, pundits, strategists, and just plain dummies ever since Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower accompanied by his imported muse, Melania, in what now seems like the ancient times of 2015. What is
We’re teetering on decade nine! I loved last year saying that I was 25…celsius, and watching my “audience” (children and grandchildren) race to google!
Hate is easy. Thinking is hard. Trump hates the same people they hate. Having just watched the film Forbidden Planet, all I can think of is "monsters from the id". He gives his followers permission to be as ugly as they want to be.
I find this profoundly insightful. Yet what lack - or overt act - stripped self-respect from so many?
Could at least part of it possibly be the saturation of modeling of imbecilic behavior on such networks as NBC? CBS? ABC? Fox???
Honey Booboo? The Kardasians? The Real Housewives of Plastic Surgery? Dr. Phil? Endless quests for Sasquatch?? Let’s not forget the establishment of the Orange Gawd as the wise one?
I am tired of, obviously, but mostly heartsick at the sheer insanity in the last ten years.
(Btw, I’d never seen Back to the Future 2 but I just came across it on television trying to avoid the news. Not sure if this or Idiocracy portrays the future of our country if The MAGA king wins in November.) good grief.
It’s been progressively happening for the past 30 years. Computer technology has accelerated it. The schools teach nothing and people now rely on them to do the work for them. If you don’t use it, you lose it. People can no longer do basic math or even sign their names. I’ve always used my computers as instruments of education, not enslavement.
Look no further than Ronnie Raygun's accendancy to the governorship of California. I will copy and paste a comment I made a few weeks ago on Robert Reich's post of June,2 :
Ronnie was a face, cultvated by the largest "defence" contractor in the world, G.E. to be the calming voice that could sell the masses their program of Supply Side and the wisdom of the Arms Race. He hosted General Electric Theater and was trusted with the lies of the MIC to get elected as California Governor who railed against the Free Speach Movement and the anti war movement. He appointed Max Raferty as the Superintendent of Public instruction expressly to dumb down the finest educational sysytem in the world to stop producing graduates who would question the wisdom of right wing and defence authority. That carried him to the White House, from which he introduced us all to Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. The propaganda machine was born and guess what? The population coming up was so ignorant that they accepted it all and did not ask questions. And everybody loved him. Adored that lovable old man . Gee whiz. They stuck it up our collective keester, sho nuff. The Orange blob is their new face and the masses of those who need to follow are riled up enough this time to maybe pull it off, if we let them. Dumbing down education was a very effective weapon.
That was the set up for what we are seeing today. It was the response to the Powell Memo.
Not "everybody liked him", RR. I thought he was an unqualified, programmed manikin who spoke the words of others, kinda like the actor he was. I didn't vote for him and didn't respect him as a person, and it left a bad taste in my mouth because I had to follow his lead as my Commander-in-Chief. I agree that the dumbing down of education in this country, not to mention inane, mindless TV programming over the past several decades, has led to the MAGGOT movement and it's corrupt leader. It's hard to imagine that will ever be turned around.
My dad, a lifelong middle school teacher in Pennsylvania, and with increasing bitterness over the years, said to anyone who would listen that Ronald Reagan destroyed the best pubic education system in the world.
computers have indeed made thinking less necessary (a case in point: even as i peck out that last word i had to pause then to correctly spell it where b.c. - before computers, i would, in script, unthinkingly write 'necessary')
but the dumbing down has been pressured by many other things as well,
such as tv shows that provide non-stop mind numbing entertainment instead of books to read, tv news that tell the viewer what occurrences they need to be concerned about, instead of newspapers to peruse at leisure.
i could go on, but my keyboard pecking is frustratingly slower than what my scripting could produce.
Hello Patris. I like your question. Yes it could be those soul numbing series and we can’t leave out The Apprentice, Trump’s audition for President of the United States.
I think it started when people left the land, their real mother. Over time the people lost knowledge and skillful means. Then from their perch in a tower somewhere, they agreed to exploit their mother for all she was worth, forgetting to ask “Who’s going to take out the garbage?”
We lost the knowledge of ourselves—of what we really are. It’s as simple as that. All our energy is spent in the frantic devices we employ so we never find out. Every innocent child is caught up in the rut of their society. A few escape.
Which is why we teach our children to teach their children how to think critically, to read (kindles are fine for that actually), to develop passion for arts. Enjoy the life - the entire world around them. To recognize history in the failures of today and know they can get past failure.
What we can’t let them do is give up their integrity, to not accept oligarchy or authoritarian behavior, to value the democratic experiment, albeit flawed. To communicate. To not live with their heads up their bottoms.
Yes. To make the best of it. That love you passed on to your kids is vital. Then they have it to pass on..and on.
Maybe the answer to your original question is that cults draw to them those who didn’t receive that legacy of love from their parents in the first place. The cult leader knows who he is attracting. They are his marks.
So-called reality tv is disgusting. It's so shallow and worthless. My best friend, who is very intelligent, watches this crap. I guess it's just a chance to turn off the mind, something like meditation but ugly. A person may think they are just resting but that stuff gets in you head. Crazy times.
I think I was just asking a similar question—why have they lost their self-respect? Feeding people Honey Boo Boo certainly implies a lack of respect, but why do they not have it for themselves?
That is a good question, Susan Rohrbach. "Why do they not have it for themselves?" Self-respect isn't something that's given to you or that you just deserve by default, it's something you work to instill inside yourself through life experience and achievement and moral courage. They are very busy seeing themselves as victims, and victims don't have much self-respect--they are filled with enraged self-pity, in the case of the MAGAts, IMHO. I'm thinking more on this and may have more to add... Thank you for your excellent question!
Isn’t self respect first created in the child whose parents respect her? They look at her with delight and teach her why her word is important. They show her good nutrition and shoot hoops with her and read bedtime stories to her. They love her. Now she is armed with love and passes it on to others. As an adult she knows self respect or the lack of it comes with every decision she makes for the rest of her life.
Another insightful column, Lucian! I've wondered how many MAGA followers grew up in or live in authoritarian families, churches, and/or schools. If independent critical thinking was seen as immoral or shameful, or someone had no meaningful examples of it, then a Trump, Orban, or Putin is going to feel comfortable, someone they're used to and know how to deal with. I'm sad for those people -- and really scared for our country.
Cults are SO hard to resist … People do break out of them, but it’s almost serendipitous when they do — Their vision is so focused only on following. It takes a sudden realization, most often, that the world of the cult is somehow amiss. But those realizations come in an unguarded moment, and cults work to prevent “unguarded moments” from happening.
I hope we can resist and undo that horrible orange man.
"Independent critical thinking," LOL! That's already against God's Plan, sinful, and leads to card playing, dancing, or worse, young lady, perhaps requiring having your mouth washed out with sap, I mean soup, er, soap, that's it, that'll improve your thinking skills!
You are so right, Lucian! I just saw a meme where it said the poor always vote for Repubs. The funny thing is that the poor are still poor. If Dems did not go deep enough into Appalachia or the Bayou to educate voters, then that’s on us. It will be a damn shame when people pull their heads out of their asses and they realize Dick and Jane have been arrested for being black or brown, or Derek and Mary are being sent to an institution because they each have a disability. Thus is the goal by the makers of Project 2025. This 900+ page manifesto is the guideline by which the wealthy and fanatical religious white folks (men) want to rewrite history. They will invoke draconian laws that were passed in the 1800’s. VOTE BLUE! Fight back against these motherf**kers!
Only a (that generation) Kennedy had a voice that could rise above the RW drone from Sinclair/Fox/et al. resonating on all air waves. That wasn't imposed on them, it is what they demand to see and hear after a long history of broken Dem promises. That rests on an acute awareness of our—not just Hillary's—attitude that they're a basket of deplorables. That's a vicious cycle. When MAGAts walk and talk like MAGAts, how can you think of them as not deplorable? How can they not then resent our attitude? Now they're ready to believe anything bad they're told about Dems, right down to Qanon accusations. It was not always so. I remember reading an nyt piece about Florida maybe not continuing to be rock-solid Dem, unthinkable as that might be.
Back when, I was a Kerry campaign volunteer in the WV state capital, where most of my private conversations could have happened in NYC. Yard signs were all Kerry-Edwards. As soon as you hit the city limits they all became Bush-Cheney. When making GOTV calls to registered Dems I unexpectedly found myself on the phone with the local Democrats for Bush chairman. Maybe you'd have to have been there to understand the transition under way.
I lived in West Virginia 1978-81, when John D Rockefeller reigned with grace and kindness. Heartbreaking to hear that the good folk of the mountains and hollows that I served (National Health Service Corps) have been bamboozled, probably by the same Fox network that has bamboozled my neighbors here in rural Michigan, my siblings in The South, my...
I first saw the West Virginia of mountains and hollows (also of shops selling creepy Confederate flag-decorated trinkets) doing a resort hotel PR job, pinching every penny for a move to NYC, next during the campaign I mentioned on sightseeing day trips from Charleston. So what I know about that culture is what I read; it seems dismayingly passive to me and resistant to the possibilities action might offer. I wonder if all of the bamboozled have that in common. … Yes, a fine man, John D Rcckefeller, along with his good friends in the Senate, Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy. I died and went to heaven on a rope line during that campaign when I had the privilege of shaking the hands of all three, and miners union chief Cecil Roberts's. Kerry lost the state anyway and, distressing my sister-in-law, anti-choice Manchin won the governor's mansion.
Yep. The party pulled out all the stops for a rally featuring that quartet. Select campaign leaders got to rub shoulders at a private event the night before. Our team leader brought my SIL and me. Shoulderwise, the evening was hers. When no paper could be found, Teddy autographed the left shoulder of the T-shirt Terri was wearing. This was shortly after Bobby Byrd had switched his judiciary committee vote from yes to no on Clarence Thomas after declaring that he believed Anita Hill's testimony. (To his everlasting disgrace, Joe Biden did not.) I invited Senator Byrd to move to New York so I could vote for him. I must thank Steve Morse for the inspiration, but I don't think Bobby quite got it. No Jay Rockefeller tales, but that's no index to my admiration for his record. It took a while for him to prove he wasn't a carpetbagger, but his understanding of West Virginia won the state over.
Yes, In em and Linda Fulcher--I've lost a sister to Trumpism and conspiracy "theories." (They're not "theories" in the strict sense of the word as scientists understand it. They're junky slogans, they're garbage "thought," they're a pathetic excuse for actual critical thinking... Yes, that's a pet peeve of mine.) But back to your point: It seems to me that MAGAts see the world through a cult lens, and it's extremely hard to persuade a cult member out of their brainwashed, propagandized, "emotion-washed," manipulated-on-every-front state.
I truly think Trump is, unbeknownst to him, really just a straw man. Being manipulated by some nasty folks who don’t have the testicular fortitude to be as rude and crass as Trump. They need him to carry out their wishes and count on the arrogance of the man to think it is all about him.
Oh, and I thought MAGA stood for Manipulating Americas Gullible Assholes.
The only thing good about the current situation is that these people are killing themselves, literally. Not taking vaccines, not wearing masks, thinking that owning a gun makes them immortal. I grew up with these people and went to school with them. Their “loss of standing” is their own fault. They could have enlisted, use the G.I. Bill to go to college or stay for 20 years with a decent retirement. They could have used a G.I. Loan to buy a house and used The VA for healthcare. It’s their own fault but they won’t own up to it.
You can’t decide to get off the bus and then have a problem with where you end up, which is exactly what the maggot crowd is doing. A lack of education by choice has left many of them unprepared for the changes that are enveloping them. Change is a constant, if you can’t accept that, then your rigidity will wear you away, it’s really quite simple. What we are witnessing is a dumbing down of America, to many of us it’s both horrifying and demoralizing to watch it evolving in front of our eyes. Scales are all about balance, I hope that we are not so far out of balance that we loose our democracy and all of it’s promise, the outcome is far from certain, to an observer sitting on this side of the scale that is a frightening prospect. 🙏
aNYC mayor Mike Bloomberg called Trump a con man. And in the presidential election NYC overwhelmingly did not vote for him. Now, on a personal level, in watching Trump in action, I saw his methodology the same as that of my father who, in North Dakota my home state, was a farm machinery salesman. When I was old enough to work, he had me work during the summers at his farm machinery implement business. And it was there that I saw him in action with farmers who were millionaires. And he played them like a fiddle. I hated work at the shop, but I was in awe in how my dad dealt with those farmers. So, when I see Trump doing his assorted speeches, I see a reflection of what my dad did. The difference? My dad was honest with his customers--he delivered with his sales pitch and upon his death the church was packed.
There are none so blind as those who WILL NOT see. They don’t want to see how they’ve been bamboozled; as Sagan (Carl) famously said, people can’t stand to learn they have been, so they fight back any attempts to convince them. I am afraid that all we can do is stand back and let them die off, which they seem bound and determined to do, or outgrow it in their own time. And work hard for publicly funded colleges.
Be happy that you're still a youngster in your sixties! A nice thing about getting older is senior discounts. They are helpful to those who must live on Social Security, but many of us, including me, who have pensions and no longer have a mortgage to pay off or kids to put through school, are financially more secure than we've ever been and don't need senior discounts. Maybe they should switch to junior discounts.
Henry Cohen, for scores of years, I've believed that a portable pension should be mandated for those of us whose workplaces did to offer a pension. I congratulate you on your financial security. If it were not for Social Security, many millions of us would be out on the streets, starving, lacking the wherewithal for medical care and other basics that more advanced societies provide to their citizens as a matter of course.
Linda, I have a public pension (though I did recently return to part time work) and I often think of my dear late father who said, when I got the job, how great it was that I'd have job security, health insurance and a pension. At age 19 , with the economy being what it was, I was just happy to get a job! Yet I lost my husband to cancer 18 years ago and I've been on my own ever since. I realize every day how fortunate I am.
There are actual differences in brain structures in conservative and liberal believers. Here is a link from the National Institute of Health on 'Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure". As a long time MRI Technologist, I have followed these studies for several years. Search for brain structure differences in conservatives and liberals and there will be more papers - Scientific American, Nature, universities, neuroscience researchers. It explains much, especially the broad range of ages, incomes, education, displayed by MAGAts. It does go against the grain to simply say they can't help it, and it also may explain why there is no talking sense into them. It's also a scary thought if there is a genetic component to this, the next authoritarian wannabe will have a new generation of remora...
George Lakoff, in his book "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," posits roughly speaking, that conservatives come from "strict father"-model families and the liberals come from "nurturant-parent"-model families. There is a great deal to be said for his theory--I found the book most persuasive. I've seen some of what you're describing here, too, and that, also is quite convincing.
I love George Lakoff! His work on linguistics describes the right-wing weaponization of language, which directly contributes to their “cult” characteristics, especially their inability to critically think. There are comments above that touch on this—@Andrea L Lacey mentioned a friend’s observation that reality TV contributes to ‘meaness of people’ and she’s right. In fact, all gratuitous violence on tv and in games triggers mirror neurons and alters behaviors. (It’s also the reason games are used to actually teach shooting skills .. . but I digress.)
Lakoff teaches that we think in terms of metaphor, linking objects with emotional input. If a coupled phrase is repeated enough, people no longer consider what is said—they short cut to what the “meaning” is. For example, how have we come to think of “liberal” or “Hilary.” You’ll notice trump routinely adds negative adjectives to names of his perceived enemies, and the Cult MAGAts are conditioned to pick up on this. As @Auntie Beans quoted, “There are none so blind as those who WILL NOT see.”
"Since the sequencing of the human genome in 2003, genetics has become one of the key frameworks for how we all think about ourselves. From fretting about our health to debating how schools can accommodate non-neurotypical pupils, we reach for the idea that genes deliver answers to intimate questions about people’s outcomes and identities.
Recent research backs this up, showing that complex traits such as temperament, longevity, resilience to mental ill-health and even ideological leanings are all, to some extent, “hardwired”. Environment matters too for these qualities, of course. Our education and life experiences interact with genetic factors to create a fantastically complex matrix of influence.
But what if the question of genetic inheritance were even more nuanced? What if the old polarised debate about the competing influences of nature and nurture was due a 21st-century upgrade?
Scientists working in the emerging field of epigenetics have discovered the mechanism that allows lived experience and acquired knowledge to be passed on within one generation, by altering the shape of a particular gene. This means that an individual’s life experience doesn’t die with them but endures in genetic form. The impact of the starvation your Dutch grandmother suffered during the second world war, for example, or the trauma inflicted on your grandfather when he fled his home as a refugee, might go on to shape your parents’ brains, their behaviours and eventually yours." [More]
Excellent commentary as always. I am a descendant of immigrants on both sides and my husband is a descendant of immigrants on his mother’s side. My paternal descendants, fleeing hard times in Ireland, came to the US during the early 1840’s and then again in the late 1840’s. My maternal descendants, fleeing hard times and no economic future in their Pomeranian homeland, came to the US in the early 1880’s. How they all ended up in a southern Wisconsin town growing and drying big leaf tobacco is a tale worth telling. In the meantime, their tiny town was adjacent to Janesville, WI where Paul Ryan grew up and where, my beloved 1997 GMC Yukon, and still going strong today with 275,000+ miles, was built.
We should change "pro-life" to "pro-death," because that's what they are. Another example is the Supreme Court case out of Idaho that was accidentally released today. Idaho, in violation of federal law, does not allow abortions in medical emergencies where the woman's life is not in danger. The Supreme Court previously, without ruling on the merits of the case, allowed the Idaho law to remain in effect, which has resulted in women having to be airlifted to other states for emergency medical care. Now the Court, still not ruling on the merits of the case, has temporarily enjoined enforcement of the Idaho law. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/us/politics/supreme-court-abortion-idaho.html
Correction: I'm in my eighth decade, not seventh. Geez...
h/t Edward Rice.
We’re teetering on decade nine! I loved last year saying that I was 25…celsius, and watching my “audience” (children and grandchildren) race to google!
Oh, rats... So am I! Condolences, Lucian...
OY! I liked it better the other way!
Hate is easy. Thinking is hard. Trump hates the same people they hate. Having just watched the film Forbidden Planet, all I can think of is "monsters from the id". He gives his followers permission to be as ugly as they want to be.
He did. He does. They are.
Let’s try hard to undo him.
Onward …
I find this profoundly insightful. Yet what lack - or overt act - stripped self-respect from so many?
Could at least part of it possibly be the saturation of modeling of imbecilic behavior on such networks as NBC? CBS? ABC? Fox???
Honey Booboo? The Kardasians? The Real Housewives of Plastic Surgery? Dr. Phil? Endless quests for Sasquatch?? Let’s not forget the establishment of the Orange Gawd as the wise one?
I am tired of, obviously, but mostly heartsick at the sheer insanity in the last ten years.
(Btw, I’d never seen Back to the Future 2 but I just came across it on television trying to avoid the news. Not sure if this or Idiocracy portrays the future of our country if The MAGA king wins in November.) good grief.
The dumbing down of America has occurred and is complete!
It’s been progressively happening for the past 30 years. Computer technology has accelerated it. The schools teach nothing and people now rely on them to do the work for them. If you don’t use it, you lose it. People can no longer do basic math or even sign their names. I’ve always used my computers as instruments of education, not enslavement.
Look no further than Ronnie Raygun's accendancy to the governorship of California. I will copy and paste a comment I made a few weeks ago on Robert Reich's post of June,2 :
Ronnie was a face, cultvated by the largest "defence" contractor in the world, G.E. to be the calming voice that could sell the masses their program of Supply Side and the wisdom of the Arms Race. He hosted General Electric Theater and was trusted with the lies of the MIC to get elected as California Governor who railed against the Free Speach Movement and the anti war movement. He appointed Max Raferty as the Superintendent of Public instruction expressly to dumb down the finest educational sysytem in the world to stop producing graduates who would question the wisdom of right wing and defence authority. That carried him to the White House, from which he introduced us all to Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. The propaganda machine was born and guess what? The population coming up was so ignorant that they accepted it all and did not ask questions. And everybody loved him. Adored that lovable old man . Gee whiz. They stuck it up our collective keester, sho nuff. The Orange blob is their new face and the masses of those who need to follow are riled up enough this time to maybe pull it off, if we let them. Dumbing down education was a very effective weapon.
That was the set up for what we are seeing today. It was the response to the Powell Memo.
St Ronnie Raygun eliminated free state college tuition while governor of California. Rethuglicans depend on the masses to be ignorant.
Not "everybody liked him", RR. I thought he was an unqualified, programmed manikin who spoke the words of others, kinda like the actor he was. I didn't vote for him and didn't respect him as a person, and it left a bad taste in my mouth because I had to follow his lead as my Commander-in-Chief. I agree that the dumbing down of education in this country, not to mention inane, mindless TV programming over the past several decades, has led to the MAGGOT movement and it's corrupt leader. It's hard to imagine that will ever be turned around.
He should have won an Oscar for his role as President. He followed the script given to him perfectly.
hmm, RR,
there's a lot packed in there. im gonna find that Robert Reich post.
btw, who/what is MIC
Military Industrial Complex
My dad, a lifelong middle school teacher in Pennsylvania, and with increasing bitterness over the years, said to anyone who would listen that Ronald Reagan destroyed the best pubic education system in the world.
youve put your finger on some of it, SG O.D.
computers have indeed made thinking less necessary (a case in point: even as i peck out that last word i had to pause then to correctly spell it where b.c. - before computers, i would, in script, unthinkingly write 'necessary')
but the dumbing down has been pressured by many other things as well,
such as tv shows that provide non-stop mind numbing entertainment instead of books to read, tv news that tell the viewer what occurrences they need to be concerned about, instead of newspapers to peruse at leisure.
i could go on, but my keyboard pecking is frustratingly slower than what my scripting could produce.
ugh
Longer than 39 years ago. RReagan started the slide.
i think, JDS, it is better put as the dumbing bunch of Americans have arisen
Hello Patris. I like your question. Yes it could be those soul numbing series and we can’t leave out The Apprentice, Trump’s audition for President of the United States.
I think it started when people left the land, their real mother. Over time the people lost knowledge and skillful means. Then from their perch in a tower somewhere, they agreed to exploit their mother for all she was worth, forgetting to ask “Who’s going to take out the garbage?”
That but not only that, striving for better, maybe it’s that simple. Confronting hard times is not new, whether it’s in rural
OR urban areas. Its determination to overcome.
We lost the knowledge of ourselves—of what we really are. It’s as simple as that. All our energy is spent in the frantic devices we employ so we never find out. Every innocent child is caught up in the rut of their society. A few escape.
Which is why we teach our children to teach their children how to think critically, to read (kindles are fine for that actually), to develop passion for arts. Enjoy the life - the entire world around them. To recognize history in the failures of today and know they can get past failure.
What we can’t let them do is give up their integrity, to not accept oligarchy or authoritarian behavior, to value the democratic experiment, albeit flawed. To communicate. To not live with their heads up their bottoms.
Yes. To make the best of it. That love you passed on to your kids is vital. Then they have it to pass on..and on.
Maybe the answer to your original question is that cults draw to them those who didn’t receive that legacy of love from their parents in the first place. The cult leader knows who he is attracting. They are his marks.
…and many just try to make the best of it. That’s what we are trying to do.
I think we were taught to - but also to work to make the best, better.
A friend recently said he thinks that reality TV has definitely contributed to the meanness of people
So-called reality tv is disgusting. It's so shallow and worthless. My best friend, who is very intelligent, watches this crap. I guess it's just a chance to turn off the mind, something like meditation but ugly. A person may think they are just resting but that stuff gets in you head. Crazy times.
I think I was just asking a similar question—why have they lost their self-respect? Feeding people Honey Boo Boo certainly implies a lack of respect, but why do they not have it for themselves?
That is a good question, Susan Rohrbach. "Why do they not have it for themselves?" Self-respect isn't something that's given to you or that you just deserve by default, it's something you work to instill inside yourself through life experience and achievement and moral courage. They are very busy seeing themselves as victims, and victims don't have much self-respect--they are filled with enraged self-pity, in the case of the MAGAts, IMHO. I'm thinking more on this and may have more to add... Thank you for your excellent question!
Isn’t self respect first created in the child whose parents respect her? They look at her with delight and teach her why her word is important. They show her good nutrition and shoot hoops with her and read bedtime stories to her. They love her. Now she is armed with love and passes it on to others. As an adult she knows self respect or the lack of it comes with every decision she makes for the rest of her life.
Another insightful column, Lucian! I've wondered how many MAGA followers grew up in or live in authoritarian families, churches, and/or schools. If independent critical thinking was seen as immoral or shameful, or someone had no meaningful examples of it, then a Trump, Orban, or Putin is going to feel comfortable, someone they're used to and know how to deal with. I'm sad for those people -- and really scared for our country.
Cults are SO hard to resist … People do break out of them, but it’s almost serendipitous when they do — Their vision is so focused only on following. It takes a sudden realization, most often, that the world of the cult is somehow amiss. But those realizations come in an unguarded moment, and cults work to prevent “unguarded moments” from happening.
I hope we can resist and undo that horrible orange man.
"Independent critical thinking," LOL! That's already against God's Plan, sinful, and leads to card playing, dancing, or worse, young lady, perhaps requiring having your mouth washed out with sap, I mean soup, er, soap, that's it, that'll improve your thinking skills!
You are so right, Lucian! I just saw a meme where it said the poor always vote for Repubs. The funny thing is that the poor are still poor. If Dems did not go deep enough into Appalachia or the Bayou to educate voters, then that’s on us. It will be a damn shame when people pull their heads out of their asses and they realize Dick and Jane have been arrested for being black or brown, or Derek and Mary are being sent to an institution because they each have a disability. Thus is the goal by the makers of Project 2025. This 900+ page manifesto is the guideline by which the wealthy and fanatical religious white folks (men) want to rewrite history. They will invoke draconian laws that were passed in the 1800’s. VOTE BLUE! Fight back against these motherf**kers!
Only Bobby Kennedy went to Appalachia.
Only a (that generation) Kennedy had a voice that could rise above the RW drone from Sinclair/Fox/et al. resonating on all air waves. That wasn't imposed on them, it is what they demand to see and hear after a long history of broken Dem promises. That rests on an acute awareness of our—not just Hillary's—attitude that they're a basket of deplorables. That's a vicious cycle. When MAGAts walk and talk like MAGAts, how can you think of them as not deplorable? How can they not then resent our attitude? Now they're ready to believe anything bad they're told about Dems, right down to Qanon accusations. It was not always so. I remember reading an nyt piece about Florida maybe not continuing to be rock-solid Dem, unthinkable as that might be.
Back when, I was a Kerry campaign volunteer in the WV state capital, where most of my private conversations could have happened in NYC. Yard signs were all Kerry-Edwards. As soon as you hit the city limits they all became Bush-Cheney. When making GOTV calls to registered Dems I unexpectedly found myself on the phone with the local Democrats for Bush chairman. Maybe you'd have to have been there to understand the transition under way.
I lived in West Virginia 1978-81, when John D Rockefeller reigned with grace and kindness. Heartbreaking to hear that the good folk of the mountains and hollows that I served (National Health Service Corps) have been bamboozled, probably by the same Fox network that has bamboozled my neighbors here in rural Michigan, my siblings in The South, my...
I first saw the West Virginia of mountains and hollows (also of shops selling creepy Confederate flag-decorated trinkets) doing a resort hotel PR job, pinching every penny for a move to NYC, next during the campaign I mentioned on sightseeing day trips from Charleston. So what I know about that culture is what I read; it seems dismayingly passive to me and resistant to the possibilities action might offer. I wonder if all of the bamboozled have that in common. … Yes, a fine man, John D Rcckefeller, along with his good friends in the Senate, Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy. I died and went to heaven on a rope line during that campaign when I had the privilege of shaking the hands of all three, and miners union chief Cecil Roberts's. Kerry lost the state anyway and, distressing my sister-in-law, anti-choice Manchin won the governor's mansion.
But, WOW! All Three!!
Yep. The party pulled out all the stops for a rally featuring that quartet. Select campaign leaders got to rub shoulders at a private event the night before. Our team leader brought my SIL and me. Shoulderwise, the evening was hers. When no paper could be found, Teddy autographed the left shoulder of the T-shirt Terri was wearing. This was shortly after Bobby Byrd had switched his judiciary committee vote from yes to no on Clarence Thomas after declaring that he believed Anita Hill's testimony. (To his everlasting disgrace, Joe Biden did not.) I invited Senator Byrd to move to New York so I could vote for him. I must thank Steve Morse for the inspiration, but I don't think Bobby quite got it. No Jay Rockefeller tales, but that's no index to my admiration for his record. It took a while for him to prove he wasn't a carpetbagger, but his understanding of West Virginia won the state over.
My Trump friends gave him up resoundingly after Jan 6.
Mine didn't. I just gave up on them.
i don't know how my old (literally and socially) friend now stands after 9 years of disengagement.
when i had to cover my beer as he sputtered over my declaration that trump was an idiot, the friendship of decades was torn asunder
Yes, In em and Linda Fulcher--I've lost a sister to Trumpism and conspiracy "theories." (They're not "theories" in the strict sense of the word as scientists understand it. They're junky slogans, they're garbage "thought," they're a pathetic excuse for actual critical thinking... Yes, that's a pet peeve of mine.) But back to your point: It seems to me that MAGAts see the world through a cult lens, and it's extremely hard to persuade a cult member out of their brainwashed, propagandized, "emotion-washed," manipulated-on-every-front state.
We could turn off the cult koolaid spigot at Fox news and at pulpits all across this once good nation.
Sad and so difficult to understand.
Not difficult to understand. They want someone else to do their thinking for them. They can then feel themselves to be a part of something important.
I truly think Trump is, unbeknownst to him, really just a straw man. Being manipulated by some nasty folks who don’t have the testicular fortitude to be as rude and crass as Trump. They need him to carry out their wishes and count on the arrogance of the man to think it is all about him.
Oh, and I thought MAGA stood for Manipulating Americas Gullible Assholes.
The puppet is who he is!
The only thing good about the current situation is that these people are killing themselves, literally. Not taking vaccines, not wearing masks, thinking that owning a gun makes them immortal. I grew up with these people and went to school with them. Their “loss of standing” is their own fault. They could have enlisted, use the G.I. Bill to go to college or stay for 20 years with a decent retirement. They could have used a G.I. Loan to buy a house and used The VA for healthcare. It’s their own fault but they won’t own up to it.
FM,Jr.,
to some or most of those ppl you speak of i apply the label lazy thinkers.
they may have counted on getting a factory job once out of school only to see factories closing.
they might have seen themselves as star professionals sports players before finding there were far better players in the big world.
same with guitar players and dancers and cooks and actresses.
no need to learn a trade or get a degree, their skills will carry them into the big money games.
they really needed to think again, more.
You can’t decide to get off the bus and then have a problem with where you end up, which is exactly what the maggot crowd is doing. A lack of education by choice has left many of them unprepared for the changes that are enveloping them. Change is a constant, if you can’t accept that, then your rigidity will wear you away, it’s really quite simple. What we are witnessing is a dumbing down of America, to many of us it’s both horrifying and demoralizing to watch it evolving in front of our eyes. Scales are all about balance, I hope that we are not so far out of balance that we loose our democracy and all of it’s promise, the outcome is far from certain, to an observer sitting on this side of the scale that is a frightening prospect. 🙏
And they still don't/won't understand that the ONLY reason he is running again is to stay out of jail!
And to wreak vengeance for perceived slights.
aNYC mayor Mike Bloomberg called Trump a con man. And in the presidential election NYC overwhelmingly did not vote for him. Now, on a personal level, in watching Trump in action, I saw his methodology the same as that of my father who, in North Dakota my home state, was a farm machinery salesman. When I was old enough to work, he had me work during the summers at his farm machinery implement business. And it was there that I saw him in action with farmers who were millionaires. And he played them like a fiddle. I hated work at the shop, but I was in awe in how my dad dealt with those farmers. So, when I see Trump doing his assorted speeches, I see a reflection of what my dad did. The difference? My dad was honest with his customers--he delivered with his sales pitch and upon his death the church was packed.
There are none so blind as those who WILL NOT see. They don’t want to see how they’ve been bamboozled; as Sagan (Carl) famously said, people can’t stand to learn they have been, so they fight back any attempts to convince them. I am afraid that all we can do is stand back and let them die off, which they seem bound and determined to do, or outgrow it in their own time. And work hard for publicly funded colleges.
"in my seventh decade"
I regret to inform you that someone in his seventies (which includes me) is in his eighth decade.
Gee thanks Henry....that means I'm in my seventh decade!
Be happy that you're still a youngster in your sixties! A nice thing about getting older is senior discounts. They are helpful to those who must live on Social Security, but many of us, including me, who have pensions and no longer have a mortgage to pay off or kids to put through school, are financially more secure than we've ever been and don't need senior discounts. Maybe they should switch to junior discounts.
Henry Cohen, for scores of years, I've believed that a portable pension should be mandated for those of us whose workplaces did to offer a pension. I congratulate you on your financial security. If it were not for Social Security, many millions of us would be out on the streets, starving, lacking the wherewithal for medical care and other basics that more advanced societies provide to their citizens as a matter of course.
Linda, I have a public pension (though I did recently return to part time work) and I often think of my dear late father who said, when I got the job, how great it was that I'd have job security, health insurance and a pension. At age 19 , with the economy being what it was, I was just happy to get a job! Yet I lost my husband to cancer 18 years ago and I've been on my own ever since. I realize every day how fortunate I am.
hey, HC!
ima looking forward and counting off the years to get discount skiing.
at 80, most ski resorts are free.
im finally going to see what aspen is like (i don't think i will like what i will see) :)
Are there still student discounts? It’s been many, many years since I was a student.
umph, me too. In fact...YIKES...I'm about to enter my eighth decade!
One thing I find interesting
when reporters are
interviewing MAGA people
is they never ask them
personal questions about
their current lifestyles, if
they have a job or if they're
on unemployment. If they
own a home or rent. Are
things as bad off for them
as Trump tells them?
A lot of the MAGA fans travel
all over the country following
Trump. That costs money.
Sure, it's a cult and he's got it
wired, but why not show and
tell how some of these
people really live.
Thanks Lucian for another
great post.
There are actual differences in brain structures in conservative and liberal believers. Here is a link from the National Institute of Health on 'Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure". As a long time MRI Technologist, I have followed these studies for several years. Search for brain structure differences in conservatives and liberals and there will be more papers - Scientific American, Nature, universities, neuroscience researchers. It explains much, especially the broad range of ages, incomes, education, displayed by MAGAts. It does go against the grain to simply say they can't help it, and it also may explain why there is no talking sense into them. It's also a scary thought if there is a genetic component to this, the next authoritarian wannabe will have a new generation of remora...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/
George Lakoff, in his book "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," posits roughly speaking, that conservatives come from "strict father"-model families and the liberals come from "nurturant-parent"-model families. There is a great deal to be said for his theory--I found the book most persuasive. I've seen some of what you're describing here, too, and that, also is quite convincing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book)
I love George Lakoff! His work on linguistics describes the right-wing weaponization of language, which directly contributes to their “cult” characteristics, especially their inability to critically think. There are comments above that touch on this—@Andrea L Lacey mentioned a friend’s observation that reality TV contributes to ‘meaness of people’ and she’s right. In fact, all gratuitous violence on tv and in games triggers mirror neurons and alters behaviors. (It’s also the reason games are used to actually teach shooting skills .. . but I digress.)
Lakoff teaches that we think in terms of metaphor, linking objects with emotional input. If a coupled phrase is repeated enough, people no longer consider what is said—they short cut to what the “meaning” is. For example, how have we come to think of “liberal” or “Hilary.” You’ll notice trump routinely adds negative adjectives to names of his perceived enemies, and the Cult MAGAts are conditioned to pick up on this. As @Auntie Beans quoted, “There are none so blind as those who WILL NOT see.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37277249/
Don't forget epigenetics!
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jun/17/the-big-idea-can-you-inherit-memories-from-your-ancestors
"Since the sequencing of the human genome in 2003, genetics has become one of the key frameworks for how we all think about ourselves. From fretting about our health to debating how schools can accommodate non-neurotypical pupils, we reach for the idea that genes deliver answers to intimate questions about people’s outcomes and identities.
Recent research backs this up, showing that complex traits such as temperament, longevity, resilience to mental ill-health and even ideological leanings are all, to some extent, “hardwired”. Environment matters too for these qualities, of course. Our education and life experiences interact with genetic factors to create a fantastically complex matrix of influence.
But what if the question of genetic inheritance were even more nuanced? What if the old polarised debate about the competing influences of nature and nurture was due a 21st-century upgrade?
Scientists working in the emerging field of epigenetics have discovered the mechanism that allows lived experience and acquired knowledge to be passed on within one generation, by altering the shape of a particular gene. This means that an individual’s life experience doesn’t die with them but endures in genetic form. The impact of the starvation your Dutch grandmother suffered during the second world war, for example, or the trauma inflicted on your grandfather when he fled his home as a refugee, might go on to shape your parents’ brains, their behaviours and eventually yours." [More]
That is fascinating. Thanks for the link.
Excellent commentary as always. I am a descendant of immigrants on both sides and my husband is a descendant of immigrants on his mother’s side. My paternal descendants, fleeing hard times in Ireland, came to the US during the early 1840’s and then again in the late 1840’s. My maternal descendants, fleeing hard times and no economic future in their Pomeranian homeland, came to the US in the early 1880’s. How they all ended up in a southern Wisconsin town growing and drying big leaf tobacco is a tale worth telling. In the meantime, their tiny town was adjacent to Janesville, WI where Paul Ryan grew up and where, my beloved 1997 GMC Yukon, and still going strong today with 275,000+ miles, was built.
"Deaths in infancy are up in red states across the country."
This is in part because abortion bans force women to give birth to babies with fatal birth defects. See
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/upshot/texas-abortion-infant-mortality.html
We should change "pro-life" to "pro-death," because that's what they are. Another example is the Supreme Court case out of Idaho that was accidentally released today. Idaho, in violation of federal law, does not allow abortions in medical emergencies where the woman's life is not in danger. The Supreme Court previously, without ruling on the merits of the case, allowed the Idaho law to remain in effect, which has resulted in women having to be airlifted to other states for emergency medical care. Now the Court, still not ruling on the merits of the case, has temporarily enjoined enforcement of the Idaho law. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/us/politics/supreme-court-abortion-idaho.html
This Supreme Court is out of control crazy!
religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool. – Voltaire.