This is an 8-minute piece of audio from Sam Harris explaining Trump's appeal. It's maybe the most underrated explanation for why Trump won 63 millions votes in 2016, 70 million votes a week ago.
Let me dispense some important bits of context, since I can feel the eye rolls. To wit:
- "I understand Trump's appeal: white people are racist."
- "We shouldn't normalize Trump's appeal. In fact, understanding—truly getting—Trump's appeal is an info hazard"
- Fuck Sam Harris in the neck
To all that I say: do you. It's a free country, and you're valid in what you feel. But if you are interested, or if my acknowledging your concerns creates some trust, I recommend you give it a listen. It's 8 minutes.
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== Assuming you've now listened ==
Let's talk about shame. I've been thinking a lot about it. It's an unpleasant, self-conscious emotion "typically associated with a negative evaluation of the self; withdrawal motivations; and feelings of distress, exposure, mistrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness." I think we can agree that it's among the most powerful and shitty-feeling of emotions, and as highly evolved mechanisms for behavior change, the more powerful and shitty the more drastic the resulting behavior. Shame creates a roiling cognitive dissonance that demands resolution.
This here emotion *slaps roof of car* truly fucks people up.
I think shaming can be valid. People do shameful things, and ought to feel bad for doing them. In 7th grade, I was uninvited to my friend group's afternoon play dates because I was a truly insufferable asshole. I felt a wave of shame. I cried in the car with my mom on the way home. I remember the times I've been shamed to an almost exquisite level of detail. I'm sure many of you know precisely what I'm talking about.
That's why when I heard Sam's explanation, it slotted into my head as true.
Me and some of my libertarianish ideas have been attacked—validly so, I welcome the challenge. But it's the shame that stands out as, well... problematic. I've been called racist from a perch of arrogance, been called misogynistic for no more than liking a tweet that says that sex differences exist. There's a yawning distance between my childhood group of friends over politics. I've gotten it from some folks I really trust and with whom I have a lot of shared history.
(I am not throwing a pity-party. I relish sharpening ideas. I view the things I've experienced as profoundly character developing.)
But I am remarking how, to me, shame is too often too ready a weapon. In my experience, shame leads to positive behavior change only between people in close community, with context, and done with utmost compassion. "What you did affected me. Here's how I saw it. Here's how it hurt me." The positive behavior change typically follows from connecting what you did as harmful to those you care about. It's in this sense that shame "works" (although the utility of using shame as a route to behavior change I find highly suspect.)
In my—vastly limited—experience with politics, I've received shame exclusively from left-liberals. It's often self-righteousness; I can feel the monopoly on rectitude. Now, I've not lived amongst the shame-chucking religious right, or grown up Catholic, etc. The left didn't invent shame. I'm only speaking from my lived experience, and to what seems manifestly true these two presidential cycles.
I also acknowledge that this psychodynamic only partially explains Trump's appeal. There really are "deplorable" racists whites, or one-issue voters, etc.
But I bet money on Trump's victory not because I want him to be president. I find Sam's characterization of him to be spot on; Trump is amoral, ugly, malicious, deeply wounded from however his parents fucked him up. And I doubt the man has read the constitution. But I thought Trump would win because I found the poll's incapable of modeling accurately, again, an electorate touched so profoundly by shame. I can't find the article or podcast episode, but Nate Silver basically just added uncertainty to polls to correct for Trump's 2016 overperformance, instead of actively upgrading his support. I get that it's almost an insuperable problem—trying to find out, through polling, how much people distrust pollsters—so evidence of the shame theory is hard to get after. But with vote totals now in, Trump was a Pfizer vaccine announcement away from getting the few tens of thousands of votes that would've given him the election. It was not the blowout modeled.
And I think it wasn't a blowout—but a grade A barnstormer—because so many people feel withering shame.
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This presentation is incomplete. It hasn't touched on Trump's performance in office, the shameful acts of individual Republican congressman, the electorate. And as hippie, free-love-and-psychic healing, small government conservative types like myself are a rare breed, this whole exercise might be simply self-indulgent. Really, it's likely that it wasn't shame but race that was the biggest mover; that the majority of Trump voters aren't motivated by shame. But I thought to offer it as a token for our pending truth and reconciliation.
And by the way, slightly off topic: the best thing so far about Biden winning is seeing my broader social network happy. The anxiety lifting, the relief is palpable. That's a very good thing.
Two words nullify this argument: Why now? "American exceptionalism" is a concept going back to de Tocqueville. The American ideal has always been to be better, to strive, to improve, to be one's best self, to live one's best life. Sam Harris' message is that Trump is popular because those pesky liberals are telling the Right that they need to do that thing the First Lady is telling them to do therefore voting Trump is like undoing your belt after a Friday night at Claim Jumper. But why now? Why has this electorate never responded to nah go ahead and suck we'll all suck together before? Reagan sure as shit wasn't the "let yourself go" president. He was all about the "city on the Hill." "Make America WTFEver Again" that's the idea, right? Here's an alternative theory: Right now? Right now we've got adult children who will not make more than their parents. Odds are legit against it. Let's look at that another way. Boomer? Life is great - except your children are being cheated. Millennial? Life is a fuckbucket and it's probably your parents' fault. And yeah - on the one hand you've got "stop mining coal. Stop driving gas guzzlers. Eat your vegetables. Stop contributing to global warming. Stop harassing gays. Stop harassing jews. Stop harassing muslims." But fuckin' hell man until Lee Atwater BOTH SIDES SAID THAT SHIT. And while the Democrats have been pissing away the birthright lamentably, while regretting that unions are no longer economically viable, the Republicans have been burning down the middle class with a goddamn flamethrower. So yeah - there's only one side that actually wants to improve the country anymore while the other wants to ban muslims. But try and tell me that Trump couldn't say "real men do 30 pushups before breakfast and real women sew masks for America" and get a bunch of ripped dudes wearing homemade masks under their MAGA hats. Republicans have, until now, paid lip service to the idea that they were trying to make America better for everyone. Trump is the first person who is actively, obviously, decisively working to make things worse for half of it. On a relative scale he's a more successful leader than Republicans have seen since '88: neither Bush made any real attempt to inspire, fuckin' Sr. couldn't do better than "a thousand points of light" and "read my lips no new taxes j/k" while Jr. was at "your patriotic duty is to go shopping." At least Trump understands that if you can make the lives of the darkies worse, you are raising the relative standards of the crackers. Trump is the demagogue he is because his every statement is six microns this side of the n-word. The coded language stopped working for the people whose lives stopped working. So they went hard into hate. Shame? Naah fuck that. Shame is a motivator. Shame caused you introspection and allowed you to improve. That's the function of shame. Shame is disagreement between your perception of your behavior and your chosen society's perception of your behavior. It is a sociological mechanism of conformity. Nobody is voting Trump because he doesn't make people feel shame, they're voting for Trump because owning the libs is a viable strategy for people who consider life a zero-sum game.
The church I grew up in excommunicated a mother and her children because she divorced her husband for sexually assaulting all four of their children including an infant and a mentally handicapped 3rd grader. He teaches sunday school now, lives in his parents basement goes to church every sunday. She, and her kids that are still alive, live in poverty. That's christianty.
I have trouble with statements like this. Then again, I'm remarking on the direction from where I've experienced weaponized shame—the left—and generalizing. It's helpful, if also reductive. So here we are with our generalizations making us feel better about ourselves. Trump supporters are by and large moral degenerates, and they know it.
Oh, we will be sacrificing Nate Silver on a bipartisan altar of poopoo'ing for a loooooong time. I think Sam's right about this. The only thing I'd correct is that Trump doesn't judge his supporters publicly. I fully believe Michael Cohen when he says that Trump is consciously playing his base for schmucks. (Edit: Maybe) the most damaging thing in american political culture right now is the absolutism, on top of (or because of?) the polarization. Racism is either non-existent, or everyone is racist. Or all white people, at least. Choose one or the other, and it's a "one strike and you're out" rule for the other side of the aisle. Being wrong shouldn't be a death sentence, but conversely, people need to be more open to accepting and admitting that they're wrong. It's all a terrible set of positive feedback loops. Complicated issues are best understood on an infinite dimensional spectrum, but the human brain's natural tendency is binary classification of everything. Unfortunate. So. Does supporting Trump automatically make someone a racist? I dunno. At the very least, it is a form of complicity in enabling the spread of racial tension. I've had it explained to me that Trump's economic policies somehow make up for this, but I've never heard a person of color make the argument. Well, besides 50-cent bitching about Biden potentially raising his taxes the other day (it didn't go well for him). I don't think any economic policies are worth Trump's inclinations to shred the social fabric of this country along racial lines. And I genuinely don't understand how "power of the individual!" libertarians can support an aspiring autocrat hellbent on consolidating power into the executive. Maybe we should teach history better? To be clear, I'm not accusing you of this particular issue, but we definitely have a collective problem recognizing fascism. But I digress. Anyway, if we all more often approached a good-faith discussion or debate with people we disagreed with, I think we could see a social healing to a degree that most thought was no longer possible. Again, there has been one particular person doing his best to prevent this; Actively sowing division to mobilize his base of support, knowingly deceiving, modeling dangerous rhetoric, abdicating facts and science, AND LIVING THE ALL CAPS LIFESTYLE, BAYBEH. Hopefully his microphone shrinks enough that we can return to a more reasonable style of interacting. Might have to wreck a few tech giants, though. Fbook and tweeter.com have removed the humanity from our interactions. My profile picture is way easier to punch in the face than my face IRL, I think. Still punchable, though. It's true that I don't know how to approach a discussion with dyed-in-the-wool Trumpies without coming across as "sanctimonious". Humor, self-deprecation (I've always been so shitty at this, oh wait, hahah, I'm making a joke! Update: It was received as a bad joke, so I'm self-deprecating again), and forgiveness are all on the menu. Forgiveness is only meal-prepped, though, I'm not ready to serve that shit yet. I'm not convinced that Trump-ist politics is a problem that can be solved, honestly. But I'm still gonna try, because if I just sit on my hands, I'll hate myself forever.
I can't imagine why the strength of an argument would depend on the color of the person who makes it. Aren't we supposed to judge people by the content of their character? approximate transcriptI've had it explained to me that Trump's economic policies somehow make up for this, but I've never heard a person of color make the argument.
I think his policies have been by and large have been policies that were far better than that of previous Democratic or Republican administrations so I go by the consequences. I mean he hasn't produced the right rhetoric but the fact is that unemployment among low-income people, black, hispanic included, is a level that is far lower than it's been in decades. The economy is booming in a way that no one had predicted, people like Paul Krugman were saying that when Trump gets in the economy is gonna tank; no the economy hit new highs.
If we don't judge people, how do we decide who deserves our admiration? I don't see why an accusation of racism would be untestable. If someone characterizes an entire race of people by saying "they steal, they're dishonest" or they "live like a bunch of dogs" that would seem consistent with the dictionary definition of a belief that "racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race." The African-American vote traditionally skews strongly Democratic. Rather than comparing parties it would be more fair to compare Trump to another Republican candidate who doesn't have racist baggage. Or we could compare how African-Americans voted for Trump in 2016 versus 2020 after seeing him operate for four years. Other people have expressed disapproval of the Black Lives Matter movement, associating it with "hate." But at protests today, it is difficult to distinguish legitimate activists from the mob actors who burn and loot. The demonstrations are peppered with hate speech, profanity, and guys with sagging pants that show their underwear. Even if the BLM activists aren’t the ones participating in the boorish language and dress, neither are they condemning it.it's important to point out why very few Black people actually voted for Donald Trump
The baby boomers who drove the success of the civil rights movement want to get behind Black Lives Matter, but the group’s confrontational and divisive tactics make it difficult. In the 1960s, activists confronted white mobs and police with dignity and decorum, sometimes dressing in church clothes and kneeling in prayer during protests to make a clear distinction between who was evil and who was good.
As in, "Sam isn't listened to around here"? Or as in you find him unacceptable?
As in, 'Any discussion of ideas that Sam Harris has discussed or promoted is instantly destroyed by constant accusations of racism or anti-muslim bigotry.' I'd love to just discuss the things that Harris finds interesting and talks about but that's wrongthink these days.