Trump is doubling down on the crazy. This morning, he tweeted this:
Other Trump family members and spokespeople have similarly said that the concerns for Covid-19 are politically motivated to make Trump look bad. They claim that once Biden is in office, or Trump wins reelection, everyone will stop caring about the virus and will go about their business as usual.
Yup, they are actually claiming that concern about the virus is a manufactured plot to sink Trump’s reelection.
Not coincidentally, Florida made this announcement:
All schools in Florida are required to open in August, and students are required to be in school five days each week, even though Florida is in the midst of a Covid-19 outbreak.
We also learned this:
Meanwhile, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows went on Hannity tonight and said Trump is “the only thing that stands between a mob and the American people. First it’s the statues. Then it’s the businesses. Then it’s their homes.”
With a pandemic raging and unemployment soaring, Trump wants to make the election about saving America from “left wing mobs.”
Also today, this poll was published:
On Twitter, people are still asking how the Republican Party remains so in love with Trump:
(Note: Some of what follows may be repetitive to long-time followers, but I tried to pull together various strands of scholarship to illuminate why the GOP voters (Trump’s “base”) continues to love him.)
In the news of the day, you can see the work of four of my favorite scholars (Hofstadter, Snyder, Stenner, and Haidt) coalescing to explain all that GOP-Trump love..
Historian Richard Hofstadter surveyed history from the founding of the nation through McCarthyism and noticed a pattern among a small impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum. They believe “unseen satanic forces” are trying to destroy their way of life.
Trump taps directly into this. The left wing mobs are trying to destroy Ameria! Those with the “paranoid style” love Trump because they think he understands what nobody else understands.
Next up: Yale prof. Timothy Snyder and what he calls the politics of Sadopopulism. He gives a short lecture on the topic here.
Sadopopulism works like this. The sadopopulist leader:
- identifies an “enemy”
- enacts policies that create pain in their own supporters
- blames the pain on the “enemies”
- presents themselves as the strongmen who can fight and defeat the enemies.
This explains how Trump can literally cause physical harm to his supporters, but they love him anyway.
Sadopopulism arises from a policy problem facing would-be oligarchs. Leaders of liberal (rule of law based) democracy enact policies to better the lives of the citizens. Oligarchs and would-be oligarchs can’t do this or others will be able to rise up and challenge their place at the top of the hierarchy. The need to keep the masses in their places, so they enact policies that benefit them (tax cuts for the rich) and harm their supporters, like taking away healthcare while encouraging the spread of a virus by minimizing the risk and encouraging people to refuse to wear masks. They persuade their followers that the “liberal fascists mobs” attacking statues are a bigger danger than the virus.
Hofstader’s theory explains why sadopopulism works: the paranoid are more afraid that their “enemies” (the liberals, Democrats, and minority communities) than they are of the virus. The virus will kill some people. They think the liberals will “kill” their way of life.
Next up: Political psychology.
Political psychologists tell us that approximately 1/3 of the population has what they call an anti-democratic or authoritarian personality.
(Info is from from Ngo, and Sanders, “The Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale” and Karen Stenner and Jon Haidt’s paper, “Authoritarianism is not a Momentary Madness but an Eternal Dynamic within Liberal Democracies,” which Karen Stenner has made available free on her website, here. )
The work on the anti-democratic personality began after the rise of fascism in the 1930s. I won’t go into the details about this personality type. “Anti-democratic personality” and “authoritarian disposition,” are descriptive. More info is available in the cited articles.
That 1/3 percentage reappears through history. Huey Long and Joseph McCarthy had 30-35 approval. The Nazis came to power with 33% approval.
Trump’s support hovers at about 40%, which is higher than the 1/3 we might expect. The reason given for the higher-than-should-be number is usually the polarization or hyper-partisanship in the US. It seems to me hyper-partisanship is not the cause. It’s a description of the effect. The cause is the rise of a well-oiled and well-funding right-wing propaganda network which increases what should be 1/3 to 40%.
There’s a theory afloat that the Republican elected leadership backs Trump because they’re being blackmailed. I suggest that they support Trump because they like what he stands for. There can also be kompromat, but the kompromat would be their willingness to work with and for Russia, which happens because they prefer a Putin-style oligarchy to what American democracy is becoming.
The “blackmailed” theory gives the GOP leadership too much credit, and assumes that without blackmail material, they’d abandon Trump. In fact, the GOP-Russia love affair has been evident for some time.
Remember when Sen. Rand Paul went to Moscow to “open lines of communication“? And Guiliani attended a pro-Russian conference? Katie Hopkins, with Ann Coulter sitting near her, says “Putin rocks.” She praises Russia as being “untouched by the myth of multiculturalism and deranged diversity.”
Putin’s regime, remember, is built on homophobia and fear of those who are different.
Remember Paul Hassen, the guy who planned to mass murder liberals? I was struck by a phrase on page 3 of the Motion for his Pre-Trial Detention. Hassen talked of “Looking to Russia with hopeful eyes.” What’s with the hopeful eyes?
They see Russia as the savior of the white Christian race. They see Trump as the savior of white Christian America.
The demographics of the GOP are also shrinking. The Fox viewership is aging. So Trump is popular with a minority party. He’s decided to double down on his base and run for reelection as a George Wallace.
