In 2014 POLITUSIC offered a political theory that the act of assigning blame is a core difference between the development of right wing vs left wing ideology.
Two years later, the 2016 republican and democratic conventions support this theory. What’s newly unsettling this summer, however, is how blame has reached a new intensity within die-hard republican circles. We’re not alone in the belief that what’s seen in Trumpism and its followers is dangerous.
And dangerous is not hyperbole.
Having witnessed 8 days of opposing definitions of America, patriotism, freedom, and even reality, many of us are looking to the sky and asking, “How did America get to this point?”
In this post we’ll ignore the references to “the silent majority” that Donald J. Trump adopted; we’ll leave it to you to research those implications and decide for yourself. We’ve also already written about how conservatism rises and falls like a sine wave whenever it feels the world is leaving it behind – and how it always fails because by definition conservative movements are too stubborn. When it comes to the long-term view, we’ve even covered how History requires groups like the Tea Party (or Trumpists) in order to achieve lasting progressive change – always the opposite of what the shouting groups desire.
That leaves us to spend some words on the core trigger. The marketing methodology that ultimately separates conservative decision making and behaviors from progressive: republican blame vs democratic bewilderment. The seeds that grow gridlock.
How extreme political ideologies develop and ultimately become ruled by emotion.
The right wing revels in blaming “main stream media” for just about everything. Ironically, the “blame the media” meme began in media: Rush Limbaugh convincing his audience to listen exclusively to him. The goal was to build loyalty and boost ratings. It’s a simple and effective formula for talk show hosts and dictators alike. It is the foundation of right-wing media marketing: don’t trust anyone but me…. sounds like a certain candidate’s stump speech, doesn’t it?
When Rush Limbaugh first took to the microphone he started pointing fingers and never stopped. Today, I have yet to find a right-wing website, radio or television show that does not incessantly do the same.
In theory, news has one purpose: tell the viewer what happened, and if possible why. Conservative “news” adds a level: assign blame – explicit blame for every possible illness and irkness of their audience. Why is news. Blame is political.
“Gas prices are high, and it’s Obama’s fault.” Blame is easier than giving facts about the global oil market, refinery processes or shut downs, and transportation issues that all combine to detail why gas prices are higher that week. Conservative radio is like bad psychotherapy: people feel better in the moment if they can blame someone, but in the long run they never grow or heal – because they don’t learn.
Some right-wing media programs follow this business model so aggressively that they run out of problems to report. To keep their patients on the couch, they create entirely new reasons to feel jilted in order to maintain viewer loyalty. On any given day it’s not hard to find a right-wing story somewhere featuring a cover up of a cover up: unprovable “news” designed specifically to create paranoia and a factless reasoning paradigm.
The left is no better. It just takes an alternate route.
On the other end of the political spectrum, when Rachel Maddow first took to the microphone she was astonished by the actions of the GOP and she’s been flabbergasted ever since. “Can you believe this? I’m amazed no one else is covering this!”
The left doesn’t tend to invent facts like the right, but they are perfectly comfortable omitting what’s inconvenient. Usually the omissions are the complete circumstances that led up to the action about which they are bewildered… hence enhancing the bewilderment. It’s a good marketing formula as well.
Joe Blows from both sides of the political aisle have been bombarded by their respective media outlets with these tribe-creating triggers: blame from right-wing media, and bewilderment from left-wing media. As with most issues related to how a human processes information, basic triggers are where it all starts: a simple emotion trigger that cements into the synapses with prolonged exposure.
Cable news, most severely right-wing radio and blogs, are sociological shock collars. They train the collective brain through pain and suffering (or in this case, convincing the audience that they are, in fact, suffering… even if they don’t know it). Say the name, “Hillary Clinton” enough times while simultaneously showing the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi in flames and the brain makes permanent connections between those two concepts. That’s how the brain works, and that’s why they can’t let it go. It’s hardwired.
The brain isn’t smart. The sooner people understand that the sooner we’ll start taking information access and diversity in education more seriously. Anyone who disagrees need only look at North Korea as the modern, paradigmatic example of how deep-seeded belief can be completely outside reality if the only information the collective brain is allowed access is fabricated to create that belief.
Both right and left wing “beliefs” exist at least somewhat outside objective reality, but being bewildered is very different than assigning blame for what ails (or Ailes) an audience. The manner in which people react to each is the marker. At the intersection of Decision and Engagement one turns right and one turns left: Blame creates an enemy and anger – the mob charges toward it. Bewilderment creates distaste and separation – the mob moves away from it.
Assigning blame as the republican emotional trigger.
When repeated enough times, blame triggers anger. When repeated too often and with righteous vigor, it breeds contempt.
In large part, this is why the Republican Party has been dubbed the political party of emotion and discontent. Contempt and discontent are the ties that bind the party factions together, and that’s what we all saw at the 2016 Republican National Convention. We saw pockets of discontent during town hall meetings in previous election cycles, but the 2016 “Lock her up” election brought it to the national stage.
The look in a person’s eyes and the volatility of a crowd’s reaction to a leader intensify when anger mutates into contempt. Contempt is when the world gets ugly. Contempt makes people want to abolish, block, sucker punch, and round up.
Sharing bewilderment as the democratic emotional trigger.
Bewilderment creates, “I just cannot understand that no matter how hard I try“. It creates separation. This attitude is easily translated from the outside as elitism. At its worst bewilderment can mutate into disgust – which is also dangerous – but like the smell of a sewer, disgust tends to make a person avoid and object rather than destroy it as does contempt. This natural desire to avoid the subject is why democrats have failed miserably at engaging moderate republicans, and even facilitated the transition of Tea Party anger into full blown Trumpism.
At the 2016 DNC, democrats pointed to Trump and “what has happened to the GOP” with a clear sense of bewilderment. I think Steve Schmidt labeled it “appalled”, and pointed out that when convention speakers were attacking the other side, the faces of the RNC crowd showed hate, while the DNC were appalled. The former causes a mob to charge, the latter to turn away and ostracize.
Normally, being appalled by something motivates a separation or fall back – a distancing. But a divided GOP has created an opportunity for the Democratic Party. For the first time in a long while, at the 2016 DNC the democrats tried to engage real Reagan republicans who aren’t comfortable with the GOP’s recent digression. In their current state of Trumpism bewilderment, however, I doubt democrats will allow themselves to get too close to the modern right wing – that’s more like looking at lions in an enclosure. They do, however, appear willing to duck into the petting zoo in hopes of rescuing a few moderate elephants. Time will tell if this outreach will create a new coalition for Hillary and Senate democrats.
What happens to American politics now?
Polls swing hourly, meaningless tweets rule the news cycle, and 70-ish% of Americans who are not too lazy to vote are permanently dug into their own tribal political camps.
Conservative and progressive brains literally process the same incoming information in different areas of their brains. When brains are wired differently… well, then this brain falls short of solutions. When benchmarks and criteria are different – realities are different. If we can’t even agree on basic facts… where do we even start?
Beats me. I’m bewildered.
Published: by | Updated: 08-01-2016 08:53:48
