(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The only thing we have to fear is fear itself [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2022-07-25 In this post I am asking for help from the hive mind. Being a physical scientist, politics is mysterious to me. I’ll first describe the problem, then state the question, and ask you for your ideas. The Problem: 70 million Americans voted for a would-be dictator in the 2020 election. Does that scare you? It scares me. Many contributors on this site have said that they refuse to try to understand these people; a completely natural feeling. But not helpful, because 70 million voters are not going to fade away. If they don’t vote for Trump in 2024, they’ll vote for someone worse. We need to try to understand the 70 million Trump voters; not so that we can empathize with them, not to forgive them, rather to defeat them. Just be clear, when I say “understand”, I mean in the way that Eisenhower tried to understand Rommel before the D-Day landings, in the way Grant tried to understand Lee before the Wilderness Campaign, or the way any leader tries to extract every bit of intelligence possible about the enemy. We need to know: Their available resources Their goals But most importantly, their motivation Those 70 million voters are standing in the way of a single payer medical system. Those 70 million voters are standing in the way of action on global warming. Those 70 million voters wanted a would-be dictator rather than a civilized democracy. Why are they standing in the way? We are going to concentrate here on their motivation. A number of studies have shown that Trump supporters are NOT motivated by economic worries. They say that they are against socialism. But that’s just a dogwhistle. Check out this highly respected research: “Time to Kill the Zombie Argument: Another Study Shows Trump Won Because of Racial Anxieties — Not Economic Distress” https://theintercept.com/2018/09/18/2016-election-race-class-trump/ In May 2017 The Atlantic magazine and Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, published the results of a joint analysis of post-election survey data. “Beyond Economics: Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump” https://www.prri.org/research/white-working-class-attitudes-economy-trade-immigration-election-donald-trump/ in January 2018 a study concluded that “…racism and sexism attitudes were strongly associated with vote choice in 2016, even after accounting for partisanship, ideology, and other standard factors.” http://people.umass.edu/schaffne/schaffner_et_al_PSQ_accepted.pdf In April 2018, Stanford University political scientist Diana Mutz published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that observed how “living in an area with a high median income positively predicted Republican vote choice to a greater extent in 2016,” The conclusion of these studies is that the motivation of Trump supporters is not economic, but CULTURAL FEAR. They fear that their world - where white males were at the top and white females were in second place, followed by everyone else - is caving in around them. Fear robs the mind of logical thought. It’s great if you’re living in the jungle and you have to jump quickly away from a snake. But when you’re living in a complex society, where clear thought is the only path to good decisions, fear creates the mob. Think of Trumpers like a drowning person. In lifesaving classes, the instructors say that it is critical for the lifesaver to remember that the victim is panicked. Rational thought has vacated. You, the lifesaver, need to know that the victim will climb on your shoulders, climb on to your head, climb on to anything that is not water. Telling the drowning person not to panic is worse than useless. Nobody should waste time explaining to the Trumpers that logically they would be better off voting Democratic. The question is: How, in general, does one deal with people who are driven by fear? And, is there any way to apply that knowledge to 70 million paranoid voters, or at least to peel off a million or so? Given that Trump supporters are driven by fear, how do we use that knowledge to help progressives win? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/25/2112573/-The-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-fear-itself Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/