{"id":434,"date":"2020-11-07T23:18:30","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T04:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=434"},"modified":"2020-11-08T17:41:45","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T22:41:45","slug":"trumpism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=434","title":{"rendered":"Trumpism"},"content":{"rendered":"

A meme (\/mi\u02d0m\/ MEEM) is an idea, behaviour, or style that becomes a fad and spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.<\/em><\/p>\n

Psychology is, in large part, about prediction. And with prediction, comes some measure of increased understanding. To reliably \u2018know\u2019 what is about to happen (within the usual disclaimer of \u2018margin of error\u2019), one must have identified a sufficient number of variables impacting a given person or event in a significant way to, in the lingo, \u2018account for the variance\u2019 in a particular outcome. One reduces the \u2018wiggle room\u2019 (in beautifully complex equations \u2014 algorithms, if you will) to be able to say, with some certainty that such and such will happen or so and so will behave in a \u2018predictable\u2019 way. <\/p>\n

Among the legion shared obsessions of early November, two have surfaced in spades \u2014 well, one really: the pollsters (or if you\u2019re DJT, the polesters<\/em>) blew it again and, the . . . we interrupt this editorial moment to share the AP\u2019s announcement at 11:47 a.m., four days post-election:
\n\"Screen<\/a>
\nBack to the blog at hand.<\/p>\n

. . . and \u2018What the _______ were they thinking?\u2019<\/p>\n

That small segment of us who is both numbers-obsessed and enamoured of predicting human behaviour, needed to grasp how, not once (2016) but twice, the crunchers got it wrong \u2014 again! The Blue Wave not only didn\u2019t happen, it took four days for said wave to even begin to break \u2014 and sweep away the sand castles that have populated the world\u2019s beaches these past four years. <\/p>\n

A New Yorker<\/em> piece published in this very odd interlude since November 3 \u2014 when uncertainty was the rule \u2014 considered an \u2018aftermath\u2019, optimistically (now a reality), a pathway to transition. The article focussed in part on a distinction between Trump (the man) and Trumpism (the \u2018movement\u2019, if it\u2019s even appropriate to dignify the \u2018red mirage\u2019 as such). And herein lies a clue to how a slam dunk of what was to be a \u201910 point victory\u2019 could fail to so palpably materialize and very nearly half of a voting public could entrench \u2014 again. <\/p>\n

Consider the man. \u2018Trump has famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits\u2019 \u2014 as catalogued in Jane Mayer\u2019s NY\u2019er article this week. Jimmy Kimmel did his own diarizing: \u2018Cozying up to many of the world\u2019s autocrats (Putin, Kim jong-un to name but two of the low lights), put children in cages, villainized the press, ducked paying income taxes (sorry, paid $750), tear-gassed peaceful protestors, pardoned criminal \u2018buddies\u2019, mismanaged and minimized a lethal pandemic, dismantled health care, incited white supremacists to violence, and lied, and lied, and lied. . .\u2019 Hmm. Not exactly the resum\u00e9 that would get you the job \u2014 but it very nearly did. . . again. Who could reasonably walk into a polling station, review in mind the four-year performance \u2014 with all the foregoing \u2018highlights\u2019 \u2014 and check the DJT box? Evidently nearly 71,000,000 voters of the recorded 145,000,000 total votes cast! <\/p>\n

Sarah Cooper, the now widely viewed comedian best known for her \u2018lip synching\u2019 of DJT, offers some insight. Asked why her routines are so compelling, she noted that when we watch<\/em> Trump in full flight we are so distracted by the caricature that is the man himself, that we fail to fully absorb the ignominy of his blither. We hear it . . . sort of. Her TicTok moments separate the man from the message. Failing to do so leaves us only slightly more aghast, disbelieving, numbed than we were before than last barrage. <\/p>\n

As I watched election night and it became increasingly clear that there would be no resolution on that evening or for several to follow, like so many others, I began to reflect on a similar scenario four years earlier. A definitive Clinton victory had been predicted, then morphed into a toss-up, then simply disappeared. And this was before a term of chaos, prevarication, bullying, criminal behaviour, denial, and delusion. The \u2018base\u2019 had remained the \u2018base\u2019; and for a time appeared to have come through \u2014 again! <\/p>\n

As tempting as it is to characterize the base as a collection of disenfranchised, disgruntled, gun-totin\u2019, poorly educated rednecks incapable of critical thought, this is simply untrue (our Beer, BBQ, and Freedom<\/em> demonstrator aside). \u2018Election tailoring\u2019 courtesy of Cambridge Analytica and the infamous social media targeting of messages to vast numbers of intellectually vulnerable droids is improbable \u2014 particularly for a second time around.<\/p>\n

More likely some 48% of the US voting public cast their ballot, not for Donald J. Trump \u2014 but for a meme<\/em>. A meme that has successfully polarized a nation \u2014 and capitalized on that divided number. A meme that did not require authentication, was completely lacking in accountability, empathy, compassion, planning. How else to make sense of an electorate\u2019s decision, in the face of such cognitively dissonant truths, to express itself this way. Happily the \u2018fad\u2019 has run its course. The slogans have been found wanting, empty. Despite a very signifiant minority\u2019s failure to separate the \u2018myth from the man\u2019, reality from the cartoon, we can now exhale. . . and heal. Having pulled the curtain away and, to paraphrase Rachel Maddow, revealed the small, pitiful, and irrelevant being behind \u2014 still in denial, still ranting. The work ahead will be to address the meme: Trumpism. Trump is out but the residual, the resonance his meme fostered remains. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A meme (\/mi\u02d0m\/ MEEM) is an idea, behaviour, or style that becomes a fad and spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. Psychology is, in large part, about prediction. And with prediction, comes some measure of increased understanding. To […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}