This is an update of a piece I wrote back in August, after the conventions, a few days after David Frum wrote his piece in The Atlantic, “Why Trump Supporters Think He'll Win.” With the publication of the new Trump interview in Time Magazine this past week, it comes clearer. The simplest understanding is that Trump tweets to attack, and the attack is meant to create either damage or damage-control, by either creating reality out of whole cloth, or trying to discredit an opponent. That’s his modus operandi. Now, here is why every single criticism of Trump not only forces him to tweet — it also reinforces in his supporters their contempt for all outside their epistemic bubble, and reinforces their support for him. To understand this, you will need to understand the ideas of psychologist Clare Graves, and neurologist Antonio Demasio, and the disempowering feelings of emasculation felt by many of the blue-collar men who flocked to support Trump, many in anger at a world that has passed them by.
Clare Graves was a contemporary of Abraham Maslow, understood Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, yet realized that there was something more at work here. He posited that levels of human development evolve from life conditions and mind capacity, at both societal and individual levels.
In this paradigm of Gravesian Bio-Psycho-Social Model of Human Development, which has itself developed into what is known as Spiral Dynamics, Donald Trump operates out of the third level of human consciousness, described, in its simplest terms, as:
A highly individualistic level, often with a lot of anger in it. Can be seen in the ‘terrible two’s’ and rebellious teenage behaviour. Also evident in macho street violence later in life. Core values here include power, immediate gratification, escaping from being controlled, being respected and avoiding shame. [emphasis mine.].
Now, here are some caveats of this paradigm:
- No level should be seen as ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than any other level
- People operate out of the level where they get answers to life’s problems.
- Each level enfolds and incorporates all the levels that precede it
It should be noted that no one is a level, or at a level. We tend to operate in a center of gravity in and around a level. You may want to look at the above links and peruse the other levels. You likely operate, but not exclusively, between the 4th and 7th level. Most of the people on this site operate mostly in the 6th level. And again, “no level should be seen as ‘better or ‘worse’ than any other level.”
This final caveat is essential in our understanding of Trump:
- Up to and including level 4, it is very difficult to see (and above all appreciate the value in) any level beyond the one you are currently at. [emphasis mine]
What does that last caveat mean? Well, the 4th level is described in its simplest terms as:
Strong sense of right vs. wrong, good vs. bad and the need for order in society. In cultural terms, judicial systems develop at this level. Fundamentalist religious beliefs are seen here too. Core values include justice, security and morality. Also a desire to control impulsivity and “evil” deeds. Can be seen in movements such as “right to life” and “moral majority”.
People operating at each level and be malicious, or benign. People operating at the 3rd level can even be spontaneous and joyful. The Robin Williams character in Mrs. Doubtfire comes to mind, in the beginning of the film, when he does what he likes, and the kids love him, to hell with consequences, until Sally Field is so fed up at constantly having to operate at level 4, be the one who has to say “No,” and lay down the law, that she divorces him.
The 3rd level, though, is also where we find bullies. And that’s where Trump comes in.
Trump, operating in the 3rd level, has a very difficult time seeing, and above all appreciating the value, of a strong sense of “right vs. wrong, good vs. bad,” etc. He can pretend to be at level 4, in calling for law and order, and playing to the religious right, but he, at his core, operates at the 3rd level. Remember that people operating at the 3rd level need to be respected and, at all cost, to avoid shame.
Trump, as fits someone in that third level of consciousness, has no use for existing rules. He wants to makes his own rules: ban Muslims; build walls; torture; kill the relatives of terrorists; ban newspapers; make it easier to sue people who say bad things about him — and the last one is key, because calling him on his behavior brings shame. And when he is caught, that’s when he experiences the biggest shame. Humiliation is his biggest fear. So what does he do? He has to attack. He has to defend. He has to be right.
It is this last part that compels him to react to any and all criticism almost immediately. That’s why he MUST tweet. He can’t help it. He must defend himself, mostly by attacking, because the best defense is often offense, and when he can’t refute someone, he will attack their credibility (I won the popular vote because 3 million illegal aliens voted against me. Obama “tapped” my phone. The British did it. I saw it on Fox, so it must be true!). He cannot stand to be laughed at, or shamed, or disrespected.
That’s why he lies — he has to change the truth in order to be right. That’s why he lies so casually, so matter-of-factly. Because facts don’t matter anymore. Because calling him out, admitting that he is wrong, catching him in a lie — brings shame. So, in his mind, he never said the things he said, because if they were wrong, those things could not have been said by him. He has to convince you of that. Everything else is “fake news.”
Notice, for example, how the healthcare disaster was actually the fault of the Democrats. And, because he can’t be wrong, when he thought he would lose in November, he pre-framed the November election as rigged, in advance, so that when he lost, he would have actually won.
Every such attack also offends his supporters. They rush to Trump’s defense, and they really don’t care one whit what people say about him. Facts don’t matter. Feelings do. And Trump’s followers have such intense feelings of anger, they are so “mad as hell” that they are “not going to take it anymore,” that they willfully hold in contempt those of us who may challenge the supremacy of The Donald.
And they don’t care about consequences, either. They just wanted to get rid of the status quo, regardless of consequences, regardless of what came next. They are like those who voted for Brexit in the UK. They don't give a shit about facts. Facts no longer matter.
David Frum, noted Republican, in the article I noted above, wrote in July of synthesized “conversations I’ve had, and the insights I’ve gleaned, presented in the voice of an imagined Trump supporter.”
“Tom Kean/Tim Kaine? So, so sorry we got the name of your latest precious progressive New South governor a little mixed up. Just kidding: not even a little bit sorry. What you need to take on board is how profoundly so many Americans do not give a … oh yeah, you still live in a country where people don’t use language like that when they talk about politics. Come visit Reddit sometime and see how the other half lives. But I’ll spare your feelings. They like that Donald doesn’t know any of that sh …. Oops. Sorry again….
"You Acela people live in a beautiful country where everything works. You believe in institutions because they work for you. So it bothers you that Donald doesn’t seem to know what the OECD does or who’s in charge of the FDIC. But our people don’t believe in institutions any more. The institutions they do still care about—the military and the cops—you use for props when you need them, and as dumping grounds when you don’t.
Facts don’t matter. The feelings, however, are visceral. That brings us to neurologist Demasio.
Jonah Lehrer discussed this on NPR’s "Fresh Air" a number of years ago:
…. I think one of the best examples of this comes from the work of a neurologist named Antonio Demasio, who in the early 1980s was studying patients who, because of a brain tumor, lost the ability to experience their emotions. So they didn't feel the everyday feelings of fear and pleasure. And you'd think, if you were Plato, that these people would be philosopher-kings, that they would be perfectly rational creatures, they'd make the best set of decisions possible. And instead, what you find is that they are like me in the cereal aisle, that they're pathologically indecisive, that they would spend all day trying to figure out where to eat lunch.
They'd spend five hours choosing between a blue pen or a black pen or a red pen, that all these everyday decisions we take for granted, they couldn't make. And that's because they were missing these subtle, visceral signals that were telling them to just choose the black pen or to eat the tuna fish sandwich or whatever. And then when we're cut off from these emotional signals, the most basic decisions become all but impossible.
We think facts matter. They don’t. Facts only matter when we give them a meaning, and that meaning determines how we feel. How we feel determines the decisions we make. In fact, without emotions, we are incapable of having feelings, and from making any decisions at all. The Khans resonated with us, at the end of the Democratic Convention, because the fact that a Muslim American died in combat is meaningless compared to the feelings generated by the image of the grieving parents, and of his father taking his copy of the Constitution from his pocket.
We all make decisions based on how we feel. How we feel comes from emotions, not facts, except to the extent that the facts can generate or validate emotions, like fear.
Frum touches also on the feelings of emasculation that these men feel.
“…. In your America, you worry about how there aren’t enough women making Hollywood films or sitting on corporate boards. In our America, the gender gap closed a long time ago—and then went into reverse. Obama in the Oval Office was humiliating enough. But Hillary will be worse: We’re going to lose any idea at all that leadership is a man’s job.
“You’ve been building up to this for a long time. No more Superheroes rescuing women in the movies. The girl always has to throw the last punch herself. In the commercials, Dad’s either an idiot—or he’s doing the housework with his boyfriend.”
Compare this to The Salon article from a couple of years ago, “Inside the terrifying, twisted online world of involuntary celibates.” It starts:
In a recent post on Love-shy.com, a forum for the dateless and sexless, the man wrote, “I am seriously thinking about just getting a gun and shooting everything up,” he said. “I fantasize about it everyday … that’s how fucked up my mind is.” The truly “fucked up” thing is that this isn’t another newly discovered online posting from Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who went on a shooting rampage Friday, killing six people. These are just the words of yet another angry man on the Internet expressing rage at society — especially women — over his own celibacy.
[...]
To be sure, this poster isn’t representative of male virgins, just as Elliot Rodger isn’t the spokesperson for all men who identify as “involuntarily celibate” (“incels” for short). But sympathy for Rodger, and strikingly similar ideologies, are disturbingly common in the online communities for “love-shy” and incel men. PUA Hate, the site where Rodger shared his resentment about being a self-described incel has been taken down amid the current media frenzy, but plenty of similar sites remain.
On the blog That Incel Blogger, the author says of Rodger’s massacre:
“What happened is punishment for evil and violence of feminists and liberals….”
We can talk facts, and spout statistics and economic data about sexism, but the facts don’t matter. The feeling of emasculation is real. Sometimes, tragically, sometimes it leads young men to want to go out in a blaze of glory just to show that they were here on the planet, to gain a semblance of significance, as Elliot Rodger and others have done. Sometimes, it leads people to Authority Figures who pretend to have the answers, and who both tap into and feed the fuel of fear and hatred that comes from this feeling of emasculation. We laugh at poor white men, with guns, at our own peril.
The license plate motto of Quebec is "Je me souviens." It means "I remember." I worked with a Canadian teacher when I was a school teacher, many years ago, who would tell his students that he would give grief to his Québecois relatives.
"You remember?" he would say. "Remember what?"
"I remember before the English came."
"No you don't!" he would reply. "That was hundreds of years ago. You can't possibly remember that!"
"I remember," his Québecois relatives would answer, "that it was better than it is now."
Of course they didn't remember that. The same idea, though, "that it was better than it is now" is what flocks people to want to "make America great again. As if it was better before.
Emasculated men who feel that the world has passed them by, who feel that women already have the upper hand, were never going to vote for Hillary. Hillary thought she would win without them. Whether she would have prevailed without whatever influence the Russians had on the election, we will never know.
What we do know is that facts will not puncture an epistemic bubble. Facts cannot overcome feelings. Bringing facts to attempt to sway most Trump supporters is like bringing a speech to a knife fight.
And that’s why while attacks on Trump hurt him personally — which is why he must tweet to every slight and taunt — they don’t seem to hurt him with his base. That’s why attacks, taunts, and self-inflicted wounds that would have destroyed other candidates, did not hurt him. Because his supporters want that kind of Authoritarian leader, that strong father figure, to lead them out of the politically correct world of equal opportunity and feminism.
Where does this lead us? First, we need to acknowledge these threatened, emasculated males are a part of our nation. We are going to have to live with them, and would have regardless of the outcome of the election. It will be helpful to recognize who they are — not as evil cretins, of course — but as scared and scarred. If we hold them in contempt, laugh at them, and ridicule them, and further emasculate them, we have to understand the consequences. As Frum’s composite notes:
I bet you don’t own a gun. I bet you’ve never had a DUI either. So it wouldn’t worry you that you could lose the first if you get the second. But it worries our voters. Their lives are kind of messed up. They get into trouble. That’s why they want guns for themselves, and not just for Mayor Bloomberg’s bodyguards.
A friend of mine, well versed in Gravesian psychology, reminded me over the summer that, regardless of the outcome in November, “the anger remains. And the level of anger is dangerous.” A shift in tone is required. “Until we receive their anger, there is no possibility of meeting the genuine unmet needs that they are feeling. Even if they don’t know quite what those needs are yet. And that’s a fact.”
Sometimes, the hardest thing to do in politics is to find common ground. If you don’t believe me, ask the Republicans who just failed to repeal ObamaCare. Our task is to help Trump supporters realize how they were duped by the man, and how he is not their hero or savior, but without judging or ridiculing them in the process. If we can
- have compassion for who they are;
- if we can recognize their wounds and where they come from;
- when we can acknowledge their grievances and offer them an alternative to solutions designed to help billionaires; and
- when we can do so in spite of the static and noise from the Kochs and Fox which aim to distract them;
then, and only then, can use that anger and rage to help them help themselves, aligning themselves with their own self-interest for a change, and with us as well.
“BUT” — I hear you sputter — “Many of them are racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic Deplorables! We don’t want them on our side!”
Yes. Even if we disagree on more than a few issues. Some we won’t be able to reach. Some we won’t want to reach. Many will have no interest because we can’t puncture their epistemic bubble. For the rest, it will still be worth it.