Make America Sane Again

Don't ask me how it's done. But it does seem clear to me that there was a time when most people tuned into three mainstream networks and listened to Walter Cronkite together.

This meant that there was room for disagreement and differing interpretations, but we all began in the same place. Same facts, same editorializing. We were anchored there, as the cognitive psychologists say. When you're anchored, you don't wander very far. So in the end we were pretty close together -- and the GOP and Democratic voters could talk, party -- even intermarry. It was a civil time for most.

Then the proliferation of cable. We thought it might well bring a diversity of points of view, hoping that it would enrich the discourse with more minority and extreme ideas. The old model (shown a century ago by Hotelling) made us converge on the center in our perspectives. The new model would allow each of us to choose from among many and varied news sources, broadening and diversifiying our thinking.

Except that is not what happened.

It turned out that the old three-network-centrist model was not the binding constraint. What constrains us is... us. Start with our incapacity to process varied and diverse points of view. So most people settled on one cable news network, one narrow sliver of a perspective, and started to think like a Panda bear eats -- bamboo shoots for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Further, we faced other cognitive constraints -- for example, we remember best what is vivid and recent (two well studied biases) -- cable networks knew that to capture and keep us in their market share they needed to up the ante, and make their narrative the most compelling, the most fiery, the most dramatic -- the most combustible. Martial music and banner headlines touted a small narrow sampling of the violence on the planet and called it "terrorism" -- and this sold their bill of good to our most primal fears, and that became the new theme: EVERYONE IS COMING TO GET YOU!

And look at where we are. The RNC is now the Hang 'Em High Party, calling for lawlessness (they want to arrest, try, and execute Clinton in a kangaroo court of their own, and they want to their gun-toting Pinkertons to kill with impunity anyone who keeps them up at night). The Left is better, but also narrowly focused -- for them the Wall Street Banksters are after their homes, white cops are after their friends, Christians are peering into their bedrooms.

Fear is the new currency.

We've been afraid before, but in the past, cool heads had a chance to prevail, perhaps because we shared a media. But now, there is a lunatic calling Hillary Clinton a treasonous crook shouting his message day and night on one "newscast" while on another Trump is being called out for a rapist and a thief. If either are true, we do hope the judicial system finds them guilty. But that no longer matters, because today the average Joe thinks he knows the truth before investigation -- his need for visceral stimulation has been met day and night by a noxious, narrow media voice that seeks to keep him in a trance, and this requires that he never take a deep breath and ask, Wait, what? Can that be true?

If you point out that there is another point of view -- watch out! People defending their little house on the prairie from Injuns are not in the mood to listen.  There's a whole lot of shooting going on but not much else.

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http://people.bath.ac.uk/ecsjgs/Teaching/Industrial%20Organisation/Papers/Hotelling%20-%20Stability%20in%20Competition.pdf

The true meaning of the Trump political brand

The GOP platform is brutal, regressive, and terrifying -- one position after another appears to be the work of medieval churchmen -- and the GOP establishment is responsible for allowing it to happen, if not initiating much of it.

Yet -- and this seems to be less obvious to many -- until now, the GOP establishment was actually at the gate holding off the barbarians.

You heard me. The GOP establishment, as awful as they are, were holding off something worse.

As this picture unfolds many are showing that they do remember some of their history lessons. Many are aware of the fascistic dangers of this uprising. Many are not oblivious to the very successful demagoguery that has characterized the rise of Donald Trump.

Yet too few seem to have noticed that Donald Trump is not himself a medievalist. He has not invested himself in a lifetime of bigotry, repression and hate. Donald Trump is not out of The Crucible. He is not Ibsen's Brand. He has not devoted a lifetime to righteousness, much less hate. He would have found Sir Gawain's quest to take the punishment for his minor sin of hubris absurd. Further, Trump does not have the resume of a despot. He was not rejected from Art School, not raised by a poor, single mother in poverty, not scoffed at for having off-kilter revolutionary ideas. Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and it is now platinum.

Trump is not, at heart, a demagogue. He is not a hater, a moralizer, a revolutionary, or even a racist. If this movement burns the place to the ground, Trump has much more to lose than gain (unless he has shorted the entire Dow Jones Index).

Trump is a con man, a salesmen, and -- it is becoming increasingly clear -- a marketing genius. He is a businessman, and this campaign has been his marketing campaign. What Donald Trump has done is NOT bring his own brand of hate to the people and fueled a populist uproar with racist, ethnic language.

What Donald Trump has done is revealed something FAR WORSE.

Trump has HELD A MIRROR UP TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. He is a brand marketer -- he looked around and said "what political brand will win the White House?" and what he discovered -- and implemented sociopathically (he is THAT, and sociopaths shape shift well by their nature) -- is what he found out among us.

Trump is winning and winning big because he is the only candidate to transform his brand into the public's image of itself. This is not God creating man in his own image. This is a would-be God who created his own image as a crystal clear reflection of what he saw in man.

And that is very frightening. Trump is a sociopathic, empty vessel, reflecting back what we want to hear so as to maximize his gains.

What Trump has shown us is that nearly half of us are homicidal racists. That half of us will cheer on violence, even killing, of people in the streets. That half of us are emotionally moved by the idea that The State should be armed by a militarized police force that is absolutely above the law. That the civil liberties of people take a back seat to law and order and safety -- and the gut feelings of the mob.

What Trump has shown us is NOT that, like the impoverished and frightened Germans of 1933 who were taken in by a true demagogue, Americans are equally gullible, that the Good German can be remade here.

What Trump has shown us is that when a sociopathic brand marketer holds a mirror up to the American people, the reflection that he sees is brutally ugly, violent and hateful.

The leaders of the GOP establishment have long been craven, and their cowardice and their abandonment of duty -- so many are not in Cleveland fighting for their country, now that it is not profitable for them to do so -- is tragic. The GOP establishment has long been willing to play along with the racist haters in code, but they never wanted it to come to the surface. Explicitly, racism and hate and violations of civil liberties have not been in the GOP platform, and now that it has become explicit, they do not want to be sullied by any of it.

It turns out that Jeb! and Kasich and Fiorina and Rubio ... and Romney (I will pass on Cruz as he seems to be the real demagogue) WERE HOLDING THE BARBARIANS OFF AT THE GATES. Now that they have forsaken us and turned their backs on the Trump-infested RNC, a marketing genius has mirrored our soul and the reflection is monstrous.

It is not right to say that Trump is a hateful demagogue who has fooled the simple and fearful into following him to Hell.

It is not right to say that the GOP has created Trump by promoting the explicit fomentation of evil.

More tragically, a sociopathic marketing genius took our pulse and discovered that one of the biggest American brands ever to be created in the political arena, a brand that merely reflects who we already are, is HATE.