Late Wednesday, a lawyer for Trump, Marc E. Kasowitz, wrote to theTimes demanding a retraction of its article and threatening to sue for libel. TheTimes refused, saying it had “published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern.”
.. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal, citing Trump’s advisers and other Republican sources, reported that the candidate had “effectively given up the conventional wisdom of trying to reach voters far outside his core of support.” Rather than reaching out to moderates, independents, and other groups he would need to bring over to win a majority in November, the Journal article said, Trump now “plans to renew the nationalist themes that built his base and amplify his no-holds-barred attacks against Hillary Clinton to try to depress Democratic voter turnout.”
.. Such a blitzkrieg strategy makes no sense, of course. If there is one thing that is guaranteed to get Democrats to the polls, it is the sight of Trump going around the country for the next three and half weeks inciting bigotry and racial hatred, launching personal attacks on his opponents, and generally acting like a deranged person. But, as my colleague Ryan Lizza pointed out on Wednesday, there is reason to believe that Trump’s true motivation is no longer winning: it is finding someone to blame for his upcoming defeat.
.. This is reality. You know it, they know it, and pretty much the whole world knows it. The establishment and their media neighbors wield control over this nation through means that are very well known. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, rapist, xenophobe, and morally deformed. They will attack you. They will slander you. They will seek to destroy your career and your family. They will seek to destroy everything about you, including your reputation. They will lie, lie, lie, and then again they will do worse than that.
Why People Fall for Charismatic Leaders
A new book explores how fear, uncertainty, and group psychology lead people to believe leaders who say false things.
.. You write that cults often draw people of above-average intelligence. Why is that?.. a lot of the people who hold some of these beliefs including being easily easily persuaded by charismatic leaders or pulled into cults are actually very intelligent... I think what happens with people who fall into cults and also conspiracy theories, it has more to do with feelings of powerlessness, and especially if you’re very very stressed, you can really be much more susceptible to these ideas. In that way, it’s not as much about your intelligence as it is about your circumstances and feeling like you’ve lost control in some way... the two most strong predictions of who supports Trump were not having a college degree and people who feel voiceless and powerless. So that voiceless and powerless trait looks like it aligns with both supporting Trump and being prone to believing in conspiracy theories... One of the big things for him is that he’s positioned himself as an outsider and being on the fringes. That actually helps him build up his charisma and his identity as a charismatic leader because it creates a very strong sense of him being able to come in and create a totally different order and a revolution. But it also allows him to create a very strong us-versus-them narrative.. once you create a sense of a “them,” you reinforce a strong “us.” And when you reinforce a very strong “us,” a lot of group psychology will sort of kick up. There’s a lot of conformity, there’s a lot of not questioning things because other people seem to be going along with it. It’s harder for individuals who are part of groups to make independent judgments and decisions... Being less specific makes it harder to disagree with them?.. I once heard a speech by Wayne LaPierre, the director of the NRA. And you could insert almost any cause into that speech, because he almost never actually used the word gun... You probably heard if you listened to the VP debate when the moderator said to Pence, “but you know the most recent incidents were all done by American citizens, how do you account for that?” and he ducked that question and went right back to very loaded emotional words — “tragedies occurring to families.”So what he does is deflect attention away from the data onto these base emotions, and then they tell you, “we’re the only ones who can save you.”.. But I would say that Hillary Clinton and also Tim Kaine … both of them have a tendency to try to bring up facts. Tim Kaine especially [at the debate] kept doing that, and you can see how to another scientist like me, that’s extremely refreshing. On the other hand, it comes across as being very flat, and people constantly complain that neither of them is convincing or persuasive or energetic or attractive in the way they talk. And you could see that [in the most recent debate], and that is a difficulty that scientists have in how to get their message across in a way that persuades people while still being true... The point is, those fears that these charismatic leaders arouse are often committed to permanent indelible memory, and they become extremely hard to dislodge, and they are easy to evoke simply by making people scared again. So all that Trump has to do is say “these immigrants are going to kill you,” and his entire message about immigration becomes immediately recalled... It requires a lot more effort to use the reasoning part of the brain. The default is to use the faster parts of the brain. So if you’re in a state of stress or there are too many facts coming at you or too much information, the default mode is to say, “I can’t handle all that stuff, it’s too much, or it’s too frightening, or it’s too complicated. I’m gonna default to the more rapid acting part of the brain, and make immediate decisions.”.. It requires a lot more effort to use the reasoning part of the brain. The default is to use the faster parts of the brain. So if you’re in a state of stress or there are too many facts coming at you or too much information, the default mode is to say, “I can’t handle all that stuff, it’s too much, or it’s too frightening, or it’s too complicated. I’m gonna default to the more rapid acting part of the brain, and make immediate decisions.”.. One of the things you find with the conspiracy theory is that they’re actually very, very fluid. If you’re actually able to disprove one of their tenets, they don’t say, “Oh, guess we were wrong.” They immediately move to another reason to support their original fear... How likely is it really that the groups of people who have been identified as the ones conspiring would really be able to all come together and do this? Someone like Andrew Wakefield’s argument is that every single scientist in every single government agency and the pharmaceutical industry, they’re all together in this conspiracy against him. That just feels very unlikely... [Dealing with someone who believes a conspiracy theory,] you can take their arguments and sort of present them in a very unemotional way, and a very bland way, over and over and over, and just repeat weakened versions of the argument in a flat manner. And that has actually been shown to be somewhat effective in getting people out of the grasp of a charismatic leader or a conspiracy theory... The other thing is, you can engage people on the level of, what are your values? What do you really want? For vaccines, it’s, “I want my child to be safe.” When you get them to rehearse their values, you actually can see a reduction in their willingness to believe crazy ideas… “This is dangerous,” say, “Compared to what?”
Vladimir Putin is bringing back the 1930s
Undermining the West’s confident sense of itself is important to Putin’s implementation of his ideology of Eurasianism. It holds that Russia’s security and greatness depend on what Ben Judah calls a “geographically ordained empire” that “looks east to Tashkent, not west to Paris.”
.. Writing in the British journal Standpoint, Judah reports that Russian television relentlessly presents “a dangerous, angry wonderland”: “Russia is special, Russia is under attack, Russia swarms with traitors, Russia was betrayed in 1991, Russia was glorious under Stalin’s steady hand.” This justifies gigantic military, intelligence and police establishments steeped in Eurasianist tracts published by the Russian General Staff.
.. Lilia Shevtsova says Putin is simultaneously imposing a domestic revolution of cultural conservatism, converting Russia into a revanchist power and “forging an anti-Western International
.. “the underlying goal” of Putin’s domestic disinformation is less to persuade than “to engender cynicism”: “When people stop trusting any institutions or having any firmly held values, they can easily accept a conspiratorial vision of the world.”
.. In inward-turning, distracted America, the role of Charles Lindbergh is played by a presidential candidate smitten by Putin and too ignorant to know the pedigree of his slogan “America First.”
Birther Nation: Alive and Well
Whatever Trump said yesterday, his supporters know he’s privately agreed with them all along.
MIAMI—Many of Donald Trump’s supporters at his raucous rally here Friday night still believe President Obama was born in Kenya. “I know it in my heart,” said Pedro Almeyda, an elevator engineer. Others still aren’t sure. “He doesn’t show love for this country, but who knows?” asked Carmen Suarez, a retired nurse
.. Clinton has not run ads or focused her speeches on his flip-flops, in part because she fears voters will assume he really believes the position they agree with.
.. Birthers like Fermin Vazquez, a disabled veteran from nearby Coral Gables, suggested that Trump is now fibbing to tamp down the media frenzy, even though he secretly believes Obama is a foreigner. “He knows the truth, but he’s got to follow the rules to get elected,” Vazquez said.
.. Marlon Montero, a student and Trump volunteer, never believed the birther falsehoods, and he’s convinced Trump never believed them either. He suggested the innuendo that worked in the Republican primary was no longer working, so Trump is wisely dropping it. “When you’re running for president, you need media attention, and Mr. Trump got it when he needed it,” Montero said. “He knows what he’s doing.”
.. Both birthers (who were often well-versed in Internet conspiracy theories about Obama’s Kenyan half-brother) and non-birthers (who tended to grin and roll their eyes about those theories) agreed that Democrats nervous about Clinton’s recent poll numbers concocted the latest media storm over the president’s roots. And neither group seemed to be persuaded or bothered by Trump’s eleventh-hour conversion.
.. “Obama’s a communist. His mother and father were communists. For sure he was born in Kenya,” Almeyda said. “I guess Trump had to say he wasn’t, for politics. But remember, it was Trump who asked for Obama’s birth certificate. He knows.”
.. Millie Cagol, a housewife in Coral Gables, said Trump is a provocateur, not a racist, describing the initial birth certificate demand as a combination of savvy politics and due diligence. Now that the political winds have shifted, and the due diligence is long done, Cagol figures Trump is free to tell the truth. “He just did it to get attention and stir people up. And I think he likes to see things on paper,” Cagol said. “Anyway, he’s moving on.”
..“I wasn’t there when he was born,” Lazano said. “But I’ll tell you this: I know for a fact that he’s a Muslim.”