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Trump is an adept politician with an innate sense of what will sell. A sense is finely tuned to a portion of the population many of us have not much in-common with so it's easy to miss how he is appealing.
I just listened to a rambling word salad from him on abortion. And yet he managed to give an answer that would be acceptable to both the radical pro-life, people who don't care about abortion and people who think it should be legal "in some cases" 1/
Trump's "base" isn't a monolith, that they seem to exist politically as a monolith is precisely the result of his skill in speaking to their feelings in a relatable and reasonable way ... despite the diversity of opinions in that group.
Trump fans don't have as much in common with each other as we sometimes think. The only real uniting theme is anti-intellectualism.
They were called "Know Nothings" because of the secrecy, but that name's other implications are not an accident. 2/
"anti-intellectual" isn't just a fancy way of saying stupid. Intellectualism can be
elitist, corrosive. Productive critique is possible. Such a critique could lead to a more authentic, inclusive (effective) practice in the sciences.
Of course, this isn't what Trump offers. Not an empowering "you can know! You CAN understand the world." but rather "the people who said you didn't know aren't worth respecting (even if they are right, heck BECAUSE they are right)" It's all emotional. 3/
More importantly his answer on abortion, rather than outline policy expressed the way republicans *feel* about abortion. He expressed religious righteousness, but also ambivalence "some women don't know they are pregnant at 5 weeks." He reaffirmed that "we are the good people" by pivoting to how Democrats are evil "HRC wants to rip the baby right out!"
This helps his audience regain a sense of moral clarity on an issue that can be morally difficult for them. 4/
People will know and love people who have had abortions-- people will have had abortions *themselves* and still be anti-choice. They know this isn't a simple issue. The stories about women nearly dying, the little girls forced to have their rapists babies disturb pro-lifers as much as anyone. But if they can imagine that the issue is less complex: if it's about "ripping the baby out at 8 months" the distress caused by the complexity of the issue is gone. It feels good to "know" you are right.
5/
Gotta be exhausting how Democrats keep making it complicated again.
Factually he said nothing. (Worse, he contradicted himself.) Emotionally? Ah! There he said much. He recognized the chaotic spectrum of feelings but then refocused those feelings as narrow white light, a laser-focused pure beam of righteous anger and of disgust. 5 weeks? 7 weeks? Heartbeats? Exceptions? Who knows. (who cares?) What really matters is: the other side is WRONG. We are the good people who know what is right. 6/6
/∞
∫ @futurebird
Yes, anti-intellectualism disempowers and divides.
Disparaging reason and evidence is an attack on reason and evidence as tools to criticise the powerful.
Disparaging any education not immediately useful to capitalism is an attack on education as a way out of the precarity that is also useful to capitalism.
@futurebird There we go, yes, exactly. It's something he has in common with other scammers--words that are there to evoke and manipulate emotions, not convey literal meaning.
@futurebird
So much of what he is selling is Control, to people who thought their place was fixed, knowable, and predictable, in a good way, and now find that society doesn't value them in the same way they were led to expect was their birthright.
@futurebird Stephen Colbert called this "truthiness" - the "truth" that you know in your gut as opposed to the facts that express the actual state of the physical world.
The UK isn't perfect, but when I came back to the US in the early 2010s, it was shocking to me how much every single news program seemed to rely on triggering a predictable emotional response in the viewer through keywords instead of providing facts.
This has only accelerated, and Trump capitalizes on it.
The technical name for the people they hate is "self-appointed experts".
@futurebird in Britain during the run up to the Brexit vote, the rallying call was "people have had enough of experts". Same anti intellectualism. Also,
the weight your expertise = weight of my opinion
Anti-intellectual is indeed not the same as stupid, far from it. I think a lot of people miss that anti-intellectualism is very common in tech circles, where it takes the form of contempt for the humanities and a worship of (rather than understanding of) science.
"We've solved human civilisation!" they say, ignoring the writers who tackled the problem centuries before and warned them of the mistakes they're making.
"We've built a machine god!" they say, ignoring the researchers who understand the thing well enough to explain to them that no, they haven't.
I've noticed that a lot of this sort of tech person is also a fan of Trump (or his equivalents in other countries.)
@passenger @futurebird I've noticed that as well - probably around the time that Marc Andreessen went from following me on Twitter to blocking me on Twitter.
Yeah, he's a really good example of it.
@passenger @futurebird
This was well written. Thank you for sharing!
They came to tech for the promise of easy solutions and simple answers. Authoritarians are selling the same product.
@passenger @futurebird Exhibit 1 is Hacker News comments.
@passenger John W Campbell? 100% woulda been a MAGA.
(it might be a good idea to skip around on the latter though, as far as stories or presenting better alternatives to the bad things goes it's definitely one of Lewis's less inspiring and more problematic works, but it's such a great allegory/caricature of the modern techbro mindset and where it leads us)
⧖ @passenger @futurebird Always worth mentioning “Anti-intellectualism in American Life," by Richard Hofstadter. Published in 1966 but still relevant.
@passenger @futurebird People are, understandably, defensive about attacks on education in the humanities.
I think an honest accounting of the role of the humanities in education would acknowledge there have been two sides to it:
1) Teaching students to bullshit;
2) Teaching students to recognize and counter bullshit.
Important as #2 is, it was always under threat of being overwhelmed by #1.