Mr. Trump said in Twitter messages Tuesday that Gulf Arab leaders cited Qatar as a source of funding for extremism during his trip to the region last month, before a diplomatic rupture this week that holds implications for regional cooperation.
He tweeted: “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar – look!”
The Benefits of Getting Comfortable With Uncertainty
“My experience suggests,” Noesner told Holmes, “that in the overwhelming majority of these cases, people are confused and ambivalent. Part of them wants to die, part of them wants to live. Part of them wants to surrender, part of them doesn’t want to surrender.” And good negotiators, Noesner says, are “people who can dwell fairly effectively in the areas of gray, in the uncertainties and ambiguities of life.”
.. Noesner thinks Koresh was of two minds about surrendering, and Holmes suggests that if the FBI had been more cognizant of that, it might not have rushed to attack the compound.
.. I think comes from [the social psychologist] Travis Proulx, that there is a sort of unified theory of uncertainty that can explain all kinds of different things—willpower depletion, the way people tend to defend their beliefs when they’re thinking about death, all these things.
.. his construct is the need for closure, which is our need for definite answers over confusion and ambiguity.
.. We need to establish order after experiencing disorder, and yes, it’s driven by the need for closure.
.. There was a Nazi psychologist who was saying—this is Erik Jaentsch in 1938—he was saying a healthy personality is characterized by certainty and order and an unhealthy personality is characterized by a tolerance for ambiguity. Extremism of any kind is characterized by a very high need for closure and a distaste for ambiguity.
.. After the war there was a psychologist, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, and she basically reversed Jaentsch. She suggested that actually it’s the intolerance for ambiguity that characterizes the unhealthy mind.
.. There has been some suggestion that there are certain professions where you have to deal with ambiguity under a high degree of stress and one of them is negotiation. There’s a lot of literature that says business negotiations require dealing with ambiguity under pressure, which is going to naturally raise everyone’s need for closure. So Kruglanski says, look, one way to combat this is just hire people who are low in need for closure.
.. If I can put my past into a story, then [I feel like] I was more in control of it than maybe I was. And also if it’s a story than [I think] I can predict where it’s going more than I can. I think that’s a very comforting idea, to be able to say, “I know where I’m going,”
.. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Are you sure? I think part of that neatening of the past is about control and the comfort of being able to predict where you’re going.
.. fiction lowers people’s need for closure, and thinking about multicultural experiences that you’ve had lowers people’s need for closure.
Donald Trump broke the conservative media
“If in 96 days Trump loses this election, I am pointing the finger directly at people like [House Speaker] Paul Ryan and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and John McCain and John Kasich and Ted Cruz — if he won’t endorse — and Jeb Bush and everybody else that made promises they’re not keeping,” Hannity exclaimed, later threatening to endorse Ryan’s far-right primary challenger.
.. In fact, throughout the election season, it has appeared that Republicans have fielded more attacks from their supposed friends on the right than their political opponents on the left.
.. “The analogy that I think of is somebody who has a baby alligator in their bathtub and they keep feeding it and taking care of it,” said Charlie Sykes, a popular conservative talk show host in Wisconsin. “And it’s really cute when it’s a baby alligator — until it becomes a grown-up alligator and comes out and starts biting you.”
.. three key forces: Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Matt Drudge.
.. Simultaneously, the conservative news media sought to lock in its audience by characterizing the mainstream press as an industry comprising dishonest liberals — something with which the GOP was more than happy to go along.
.. “What it became, essentially, was they were preaching this is the only place you can get news. This is the only place you can trust. All other media outlets are lying to you. So you need to come to us,”
.. To avoid being called a RINO (Republican in name only), a Republican would have to take a hardline conservative position on nearly every issue. If, say, they were to hold conservative positions on 90% of the issues, the conservative press would focus on the 10% where there was disagreement.
.. only one candidate could be conservative enough to support for president: Cruz.
.. But something went awry. The most aggressive right-wing members of the conservative press — the members who constantly lambasted certain Republicans for not toeing the hard-right line on every issue — got behind perhaps the most unlikely candidate of all: Donald Trump.
.. “We have reached the bizarro-world point where, for all intents and purposes, conservatives are RINOs,” said John Ziegler, a nationally syndicated conservative talk show host who called Andrew Breitbart a friend. “There is no place now for real conservatives. We’ve also reached the point, I say, we’ve left the gravitational pull of the rational Earth, where we are now in a situation where facts don’t matter, truth doesn’t matter, logic doesn’t matter.”
.. “You look at someone who a few cycles might have been derided as a right-wing lunatic, now they aren’t conservative enough,”
.. he believed some conservative pundits were “just drawn to Trump’s style more than policies.”
.. “I think that some of them just like Trump and were willing to cut him some slack on his shifting of positions because he’s a fighter and they like that,”
.. Ratings may have also played a role, according to conservative talkers who refused to jump aboard the Trump train.
.. Hannity in particular has faced criticism from some colleagues in the conservative-media sphere who allege he has been too cozy with Trump. Ziegler, the conservative radio host, said there’s “there’s no question” a “monetary element” drove coverage overall.
.. “Hannity is desperate for every ratings crumb on the Fox News Channel. … It’s all about ratings,” he said. “Hannity is not particularly talented, he’s not a smart guy — he used to just be a Republican talking points talk show host who happened to be in the right place at the right time. So he’s very vulnerable at any time.
.. while there are other outlets that belong to the conservative media apparatus, they lack the influence of the hard right. The National Review or Weekly Standard might earn the eyeballs of elites in Washington, but those in the heartland seem to prefer the style of the more aggressive pro-Trump outlets.
.. That has left conservatives who oppose Trump in a tricky position when trying to get their message to supporters. No longer can Ryan or Cruz turn to Hannity for a softball interview. They can’t work with Breitbart or rely on Drudge to help with their legislative agenda.
These Republicans have effectively been exiled from the conservative news media
.. “We have taught conservatives for many years to trust nothing other than what they hear in conservative media. Yet the conservative media has now proven to be untrustworthy.”
The political aftermath of financial crises: Going to extremes
.. Our first main finding is that politics takes a hard right turn following financial crises. On average, far-right votes increase by about a third in the five years following systemic banking distress, as shown in Figure 1. This pattern is visible in the data both before and after WWII and is robust when controlling for economic conditions and different voting systems. The gains of extreme right-wing parties were particularly pronounced after the global crises of the 1920s/1930s and after 2008... The second key finding is that governing becomes more difficult after financial crises. Government majorities shrink and parliaments tend to fragment, confirming the findings of Mian et al (2012)... Parliaments become more fractionalised and the number of parties rises (lower panel). All this is bad news for effective governance in the post-crisis period – at a time when decisive political action may be most needed... How persistent are these effects? We find that the first five years are critical and most effects slowly taper out afterwards. A decade after the crisis hits, most political outcome variables are no longer significantly different from the historical mean... This raises the question – why are financial crises different? One explanation is that financial crises may be perceived as endogenous, ‘inexcusable’ problems resulting from policy failures, moral hazard and favouritism. In contrast, non-financial crises could be seen as ‘excusable’ events, triggered by exogenous shocks (e.g. oil prices, wars). A second potential explanation is that financial crises may have social repercussions that are not observable after non-financial recessions. For example, it is possible that the disputes between creditors and debtors are uglier or that inequality rises more strongly. Lastly, financial crises typically involve bailouts for the financial sector and these are highly unpopular, which may result in greater political dissatisfaction... The typical political reaction to financial crises is as follows: votes for far-right parties increase strongly, government majorities shrink, the fractionalisation of parliaments rises and the overall number of parties represented in parliament jumps. These developments likely hinder crisis resolution and contribute to political gridlock. The resulting policy uncertainty may contribute to the much-debated slow economic recoveries from financial crises.In the light of modern history, political radicalisation, declining government majorities and increasing street protests appear to be the hallmark of financial crises. As a consequence, regulators and central bankers carry a big responsibility for political stability when overseeing financial markets. Preventing financial crises also means reducing the probability of a political disaster.