Ongoing notes on what may transpire now that a literal crazy person is our 45th President are here.
230 Things Donald Trump Has Said and Done That Make Him Unfit to Be President
Tag Archives: Trump
Persuasion, What Me Worry?
Mad Magazine – used without permission
Trumpbert
Scott Adams, author of Dilbert cartoons, has been blogging about Donald Trump’s persuasion abilities for nine months. Adams styles himself as an expert on persuasion too, so it is no accident that he highlights Trump because he has his own books about persuasion to sell.
Adams is bold in his estimation of Trump’s abilities, believing, or having come to be persuaded, that Trump is one of the greatest of all persuaders, and, the proof of this will be articulated by a landslide election victory over Hillary Clinton. The gist of Adam’s theory of persuasion is drawn from his thin but supple comprehension of decision-making theory in cognitive and social psychology. Supple is a key qualifier because for Adams persuasion at its highest Trumpian levels is an all-purpose explanatory theory, even when it topples into tautology; ‘one is persuaded because one is persuaded, after all, every preference is produced by persuasion of some sort.’
There is a lot of research about the element of emotion and identification to be found in preference-making, decisions, and choice-making. Additionally, with the popularization of Kahnemann, Haidt, and Tsversky, and with other treatments of cognition “in practice,” and with prolix internet venues for virtual argumentation, more than ever more, people are aware of various cognitive biases, the fallacies of informal logic, and, other tactical means for making one’s own point.
Adams makes the distinction between 2D and 3D persuasion, with the latter being the realm where masters, such as Trump, practice the jedi arts of persuasion. Apparently, these advanced capabilities can arise naturally or be taught. Presumably, the capabilities operationalize a model concerned with emotional construction, but Adams is silent about specifics while he traffics in the broad brush provided by Trump’s ongoing demonstrations of efficacy.
Suckerbert
Adams is crafty! He knows that the psychology of preference-making, etc. will survive the falsification of his own folk-psychological prediction. He is one of the most successful cartoonists in all of human history. His prediction’s failure won’t change that fact. And, he knows should Trump win by landslide or squeaker, the hundreds of acolytes he has persuaded to praise his theory, will claim for Adams, victory.
(Note too: a theory of persuasion is only robust of it also can account for a person not being persuaded. Adams does not, wisely, go “there.”)
There are three aspects, among many, worth highlighting. First, the Dilbert blog has brought together over the last six months a commentariat that mostly consists of Trump fanboys. Adams was compelled to ban overt racists and Nazi sympathizers. Nevertheless, his blog collects together all the unusual suspects of the largely pro-authoritarian alt-right. The blog’s sociological mix is fascinating, and, at the same time it horrifies by showcasing the animosity and triteness of white male victimhood. Trump is their guy!
Second, the blog catalogues all the comeback lines of argument used to beat back opinions/facts contra-Trump. Many of Trump’s advocates on the Dilbert Blog style themselves to be hyper-rational, even objective, and so, for such advocates, support of Trump is a no-brainer. But the actual arguments, albeit repetitive over months, are unintentionally hilarious.
Lobotomybert
Third. Following from this no-brainer advocacy, irony rules the day on the Dilbert blog. Very early on it became obvious that many of the Trump supporters on the Dilbert blog ‘think’ alike on a single matter: ‘we have thoughtfully reached our conclusion, whereas everyone else will be subject, or prey, to Trump’s 3D powers of persuasion.
Reason for me, persuasion for you!
This makes the blog immensely more amusing–well, for me at least. All the dodgy and immature and even shocking commentary brought to bear on behalf of, and take your pick, white supremacy, men’s rights, red pill culture, biodiversity, anti-liberalism, anti-social justice, sovereign segregation, neo-monarchism, anti-feminism, sexism, Nrx, neo-traditionalism, racial segregation, anti-collectivism, (on and on might the litany go,) are each presented as being the product of objective reason rather than each position being the result of the bearer having been at some point suckered into their abject belief by a master of 3D persuasion.
Adams deploys a 3D hedge, but it doesn’t help the Trump supporters in the commentariat because these same supporters are so enthusiastic about the amazing (!) match between their prior support of Trump, and, Adams’s vaunting of their man’s abilities. The hedge is: as far as elections go, 3D persuasion only has to be effective with a portion of the electorate. This clearly doesn’t account for his theory’s lack of explanatory power, but it does open things up for pro-Trump commenters.
Filed under current events, death to fascism
Zeitgeist, Summer 2016
The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections
Riding With Hair Duce
64 Cadillac Fleetwood via photopin (license)
It was bound to happen some night and it happened last night. I had a dream with Donald J. Trump in it. As a longtime dream keeper and dream analyst, the dream with respect to psyche was transparent.
Scene 1
I climb the stairs of a house in an Frisco neighborhood. I’m on the way to help a friend with a rock band she is promoting.
photo credit: via photopin (license)
I find her hanging out with the band in a bedroom. She’s sitting on the bed. The band of four hippie guys in their twenties is spread between a couch and a chair. I sit on the bed with her. She and the band are discussing ideas for a video.
“We have this great ’64 caddy. Maybe just shoot a video with us singing and playing as we drive around?”
She thinks for a moment, looks at me, turns back to the band and suggests,
“Good, but I can top it all off.”
“How so?” I ask her.
“I know Donald Trump. He can be the driver.”
Turning my head toward my friend, the bright and darkly pretty gal on the bed next to me, I raise my eyebrows in a silent, ‘You do?’
“Should I call him, see if he is available?”
The band collectively chuckles, and nods their assent.
After a few minutes on the phone, she ends the call, and announces, “He’ll be right over.”
(Surprise is the feeling tone.)
Scene 2
We all get up and file out down the narrow front stairs. A big maroon 1964 hard top Cadillac sits in the driveway, parked head first.
As the group gets to the car, a black limousine pulls up to the curb, a drive gets out, walks to the rear passenger door, and opens the door for Donald J Trump. He is dressed in a blue suit with a bright red tie.
We hail him, and I move toward the driver’s side of the caddy. Trump has walked briskly and his tiny hand reaches the door handle before my own (ummm, large,) hand does.
“I got this,” he tells me.
We pile into the car, with the band taking over the back seat, and me between my lady friend, and, behind the wheel, Trump. I have the best view as Trump takes the keys from one of the lads and tries to figure out where the key needs to be inserted to start the car.
Leaning toward him, he backs me off,
“I got this.”
He eventually finds the ignition slot and starts the car. He gingerly backs the car out of the driveway onto the street. I think to myself, that Trump seems a bit nervous, seems like he hasn’t driven a car recently. The car slowly backs up until the rear wheels crunch against the opposite curb. Trump looks at me and glares.
He manages to get the caddy faced in the correct lane of the street, and slowly he drives away. Reaching a cross street, he turns right.
Scene 3
(The scene changes. The street we’ve turned onto is a circular cul de sac, but now it is winter, and there is a little bit of snow on the ground and on the road.)
Trump is obviously nervous now and being careful. The caddy skids for a moment and bumps the curb. Now, I give him a look.
“I got this.”
But, the caddy gets sideways. Although it isn’t stuck because of the snow, the curve of the street is such that there isn’t enough room to maneuver, so Trump steers the car up and over a curb and attempts to turn it around.
I turn toward the band in the back seat. One of the hippies gives me a thumb’s up. I turn toward Trump,
“Do you need some help?” With this appeal, I am sure he hasn’t driven a car in a long long time.
A bit frustrated, Trump glances toward me,
“I got this!”
Conscious capacity for one-sidedness is a sign of the highest culture, but involuntary one-sidedness, i.e., inability to be anything but one-sided, is a sign of barbarism. (C.G. Jung, Psychological Types)
Filed under analytic(al) psychology, personal
