Spencer Critchley

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Trump Promises Release From Civilization and Its Discontents

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One way of understanding how Trump’s die-hard base can believe his obvious and easily disproven lies—last night’s debate saw an “avalanche” of them, as fact-checker Daniel Dale said—is that the point is not persuasion, but permission.

Joseph Ratcliffe Skelton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Grendel by Joseph Ratcliffe Skelton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When people want to believe something, having a prominent person say it’s true gives them permission to believe it. It’s all the better when there are media outlets dedicated to backing him up. That’s profitable for them because they too are selling permission, not persuasion.

This holds even for the most hateful lies that Trump tells, such as his awful justifications for separating children from their immigrant parents. In fact, lies as dark as those can be even more attractive.

Freud identified the urge behind this attraction in his “Civilization and Its Discontents.” As he wrote, we are all born with the desire to love, but also to hate; to create, but also to destroy.

Civilization requires that we control our hateful, destructive impulses. But it takes work: work that can cause fatigue, frustration, and sometimes fury—as we see frequently in infants, and, more or less often, in adults too.

Trump, like hatred-driven demagogues before him, offers a release from civilization. There is a form of exultation in just letting go and surrendering to anger, aggression, or even sheer cruelty.

The more frustration, resentment, pain, or shame people have in their lives, the more the promise of such release can feel irresistible. We’re all susceptible to it to some degree, even if we only go so far as to indulge in a Twitter war.

Many of Trump’s supporters claim they stick with him in spite of his darkness. They say it’s because of some overriding policy goal. Many are fooling themselves.

Often, the policy claim fails to survive even cursory scrutiny. It’s clear that Trump has failed to deliver on the goal or is actually working against it.

But scrutiny is beside the point, as will be found by anyone offering contrary evidence. The point is not to find truth but to obscure it—even from oneself. What’s needed is not evidence, but an excuse.

It’s all too common: moralistic reasons have been used to justify history’s worst atrocities.

Few Trump supporters would be able to admit it—although the admission would be more a recognition of human nature than of any special evil in themselves—but they may be drawn to him not in spite of, but because of his darkness.

Persuasion? That’s to be avoided. The real goal is permission.

Trump Dead-Enders: What’s the Real Reason You’re Sticking With Him?

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The Temptation of Christ, by Ary Scheffer
The Temptation of Christ, by Ary Scheffer, via Wikimedia Commons

We keep hearing moral reasons for supporting an immoral president, led by opposition to abortion.

They’re excuses. None of them accounts for sticking with a corrupt, incompetent, racist autocrat who threatens public health, national security, and democracy itself.

Abortion? The abortion rate has been falling for decades and falls faster under Democrats. Why it falls faster under Democrats isn’t clear from the data, but if you want to reduce or stop abortions, you’re going in the wrong direction by voting Republican.

The economy? It does better under Democrats, including under Obama vs. Trump, who had slowed down the Obama recovery even before his pandemic bungle caused an economic catastrophe as well as a health one.

Law and order? Violent crime has been falling since the early 90s, including in “Democrat-run” cities, and the top domestic terror threat, by far, is from white nationalists.

And so on. You can still disagree with Democratic policies, of course, but none of the existential threats Democrats supposedly pose is real.

Meanwhile the truth is readily available — including from many of Trump’s senior staff and from Trump himself — unless you refuse to hear it.

So what’s the real reason for sticking with him?

Trump dead-enders need to ask themselves why they need an excuse at all. Might it just be that they like what the excuse excuses? Is the darkness the draw?

This is not to say that Trump supporters are evil — or at least any more evil than anyone else. It’s important not to assign evil to others without recognizing it in ourselves as well. That just provokes more evil, while helping it hide.

It’s human nature to have darkness within us: fear, shame, hatred, greed. Different people will surrender to that darkness under different conditions — especially if they find a leader who offers them license to do so. Trump is doing that now, for people who respond to his particular form of darkness.

It’s also human nature to invent excuses to conceal our dark urges, including from ourselves. Many of history’s worst atrocities have been committed in the name of righteousness.

So, is it really all about protecting the unborn? Or the economy? Or “law and order?“ None of those reasons survives scrutiny.

Maybe the scrutiny needs to turn inward.

As William James said:

Evil facts… are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

Patriots of Two Nations in the LA Times, Other Media

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Photo illustration: Patriots of Two Nations book cover with stack of newspapers

Patriots of Two Nations is showing up in the media — you can find some of my latest interviews at the McDavid Media site.

I spoke with Los Angeles Times staff writer Tyrone Beason for a July 28, 2020 News Analysis piece, “‘Something’s got to give’: Trump stirs old racial hatred, but this time feels different.”

Excerpt:

Trump’s critics should know that he and many other Americans hold a competing view of the country, said Spencer Critchley, former communications consultant for Barack Obama.

They simply don’t see America as inherently unfair and racist, Critchley said. They believe the U.S. possesses a distinct identity and noble traditions that must be fiercely defended, not challenged.

Given that outlook, no one should be surprised that Trump — who launched his 2016 campaign by disparaging Mexicans as rapists and murders, called NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem “sons of bitches” and refers to COVID-19 as the “Kung Flu” — resorts to the same formula of crude references and bigoted slights that helped previous presidential candidates curry favor with white voters, Critchley said.

“There’s this overlap between ethnic nationalism and racism,” said Critchley, author of the new book “Patriot of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next.” “It’s built into the foundation of the country, but he does have an instinctual sense of how to exploit it.”

What Trump fails to take seriously enough, Critchley said, is that successive generations of Americans have been denied the privileges and opportunities that make the country special. They love the country too, but they’ve been tormented by it instead of embraced.

The State of Our Union: It’s Being Sovietized

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Thoughts on the #SOTU:

1. A man who has repeatedly insulted and dishonored the military, who offers to rent them out to as if they were mercenaries, and who is recklessly sending more troops away to foreign battlefronts, shamelessly exploited a military family reunion for his own political ends. Of course he did. Because he understands, in a way his opponents don’t, that our culture now runs on emotional moments, and those moments don’t need to make any sense—sense is beside the point. They just need to deliver a jolt of entertainment. Neil Postman called it way back in 1985 in “Amusing Ourselves To Death:”

“Our Ministry of Culture is Huxleyan, not Orwellian. It does everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves.

“Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse.“

2. I feel real compassion for Rush Limbaugh for his cancer diagnosis. But you can feel compassion for someone and see them clearly at the same time. Limbaugh got rich harming his country. Like a modern day Father Charles Coughlin, he exploited the power of media to stoke ignorance, fear, and hatred, and their inevitable compound, bigotry.

He was a ringleader of the racist birther conspiracy. He described the modern NFL as looking like a game between Crips and Bloods. He insulted and belittled women, only gudgingly apologizing after calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” for days on end.

This quote from 2009 brings together Limbaugh’s major themes in the perfect symbolism of a white woman — an annoyingly independent one — kissing a black man’s grave:

“But now you got the Clintons back in the news cycle taking credit for all these wonderful things, Hillary’s over in Kenya kissing Obama’s grandfather’s grave and talking about whatever corruption she’s finding over there. Just a bunch of total BS. It’s all just a bunch of BS.”

He finishes the thought with this:

“There is no truth. And to the extent that they think you believe in truth, you are the target. You have to be disabused of that notion.”

It’s the essence of the right wing media bubble in all its resentment, paranoia, and profiteering (“Only we will tell you the truth”), captured in a few phrases by its poet laureate.

No wonder Trump gave Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, thereby inverting the meaning of that honor, like he has so much else.

Limbaugh helped create Trump.

3. And then there were the lies. Big, in a blizzard, Soviet-style. No this is not the best-ever economy; it’s performing well below levels set in multiple previous administrations — including the Obama administration. No, manufacturing is not coming back, it’s declining under Trump. No, his administration is not protecting coverage of pre-existing conditions, it’s attacking it in court, trying to have it declared un-Constitutional.

And on and on and on. The state of our union is that it is being Sovietized.

The Democrats’ Circular Firing Squad Is In Full Effect

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There’s nothing we Democrats like better than a fight — with each other.

Even now, when we face a threat analogous to a giant asteroid hurtling towards Earth, our response is to form a circular firing squad.

As we see with the current Bernie-Elizabeth battle. It has hurt both of them while helping Trump, by providing new themes for his attack ads:

“Bernie Sanders hates women!”

“Elizabeth Warren loves fat cats!”

Neither of these charges — originating, remember, with Democrats — is remotely likely to be true. But what does Trump care?

Truth is for chumps, not Trumps.

Am I arguing that the Democratic primary candidates shouldn’t criticize each other? Of course not. The point of a primary is debate.

But attacking the character of a candidate from your own party is both destructive and strategically stupid:

  • The odds are, and never more so than now with such a crowded field, that you are not going to be the nominee. If you damage the person who is, you are hurting your side’s cause in the general election.
  • You’re damaging your own cause, too. If and when you eventually have to praise the candidate you’re now attacking, your personal brand will take on a heavy admixture of “just another political hack.” (Hi there, Lindsey Graham.)
  • And although the conventional wisdom says candidates must show their “toughness” like this, that advice comes from consultants who should have learned better after losing so many elections. Democrats have a natural electoral advantage against a Republican Party that mostly serves the rich by exploiting the anger of rural whites. And yet, going back to the 1960’s, Democrats have managed to lose more than they win.

Yes, toughness can be good. But it falls flat when there’s too much show in the showing. Then the attacker looks the opposite of tough: fearful, reactive, and led — by circumstances, staff, and polls — instead of leading.

That’s the impression left by Elizabeth Warren’s charge that Bernie told her a woman is unlikely to be elected President.

It’s also the impression left by Bernie supporters, with what looks like his tacit approval, when they claim that the formerly Republican Warren is secretly in the pocket of the plutocrats she now goes after.

Neither claim is credible, and both do more harm than good, to both candidates, to Democrats overall, and, in this election, to democracy itself, which is under attack by the worst president in history — the giant asteroid.

Lately, we hear there’s a truce between the Sanders and Warren factions. A hopeful sign?

Nope. The point of the truce appears to be to enable both camps to train their fire on moderates like Biden and Buttigieg — or Steyer, Bloomberg, Klobuchar, or Yang, if and when any of those surges in the polls.

Again, should there be a vigorous debate of policy? Yes, yes, yes. But to claim, for example, that Joe Biden is against Social Security, as we hear now from the Sanders campaign?

Destructive and strategically stupid.

In citing Sanders and Warren, I don’t mean to suggest that it’s only progressives who join the circular firing squad. In this primary, moderates like Kamala Harris, Eric Swalwell, and even the usually Buddha-like Cory Booker resorted to friendly fire, before dropping out of the race. In the 2008 primary, Hillary Clinton (whose 2016 campaign I did some work for), engaged in some shameful attacks on fellow moderate Barack Obama (both of whose campaigns I worked for).

If the circular firing squad had somehow produced a record of success, volunteering for it might make some sense. But ask Hillary, Kamala, Eric, Cory, and the rest how well it worked for them. Then compare the records of happier warriors like Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Obama, and, in the current cycle, Biden, who have kept their eyes on the true prize.

Unlike with a real firing squad, no one is forced to serve on a political one. The candidates, and we their supporters, can simply decline the invitation to participate in mutually assured destruction.

Is it too much to ask?

UPDATE, Jan. 21, 2020: Just in the two days since this was posted we’ve seen two more volleys by the circular firing squad:

  • The Bernie Sanders campaign circulated an op-ed accusing Joe Biden of “corruption.” So if Biden becomes the nominee, as is entirely likely, the Trump campaign will be able to quote Bernie saying he’s corrupt. And Bernie (to be precise, his campaign) said it just before the impeachment trial, during which Trump will try to make the same claim. This was, as I argue above, destructive and strategically stupid. I’m glad to see Bernie has since apologized.
  • Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying “nobody likes” Bernie Sanders and that she couldn’t commit to endorsing him if he becomes the nominee. If he does, Trump will quote her saying Bernie “got nothing done” in Congress and that he’s “all baloney.” Hillary’s comments were destructive and stupid, too. I’m only sort of glad to see that Hillary has only sort of backpedaled.
Illustration of a circular firing squad aiming at the year 2020.