Why is Donald Trump winning? (George Lakoff column)

[LuckyTheDog]

Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great rate that he seems likely to become the next Republican presidential nominee and perhaps the next president. Democrats have little understanding of why he is winning — and winning handily, and even many Republicans don’t see him as a Republican and are trying to stop him, but don’t know how. There are various theories: People are angry and he speaks to their anger. People don’t think much of Congress and want a non-politician. Both may be true. But why? What are the details? And Why Trump?

Many people are mystified. He seems to have come out of nowhere. His positions on issues don’t fit a common mold.

He likes Planned Parenthood, Social Security, and Medicare, which are not standard Republican positions. Republicans hate eminent domain (the taking of private property by the government) and love the Trans-Pacific Partnership (the TPP trade deal), but he has the opposite views on both. He is not religious and scorns religious practices, yet the evangelicals (that is, the white evangelicals) love him. He thinks health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, as well as military contractors, are making too much profit and wants to change that. He insults major voting groups, e.g., Latinos, when most Republicans are trying to court them. He wants to deport 11 million immigrants without papers and thinks he can. He wants to stop all Muslims from entering the country. What is going on?

The answer requires a bit of background not discussed in the media to date.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/why-is-trump-winning

[Arazi]

1. Important MUST READ article

especially if you want to understand Trumps appeal

BIG KICK and REC!!!!

[muntrv]

2. Always comes back to authoritarianism.

[WhiteTara]

3. great article but he doesn't say how to counter

Trump. Just how he is winning. Very depressing.

[Wednesdays]

4. NO one knows how to counter Trump at this point.

[WhiteTara]

5. We are in deep doo. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Point out the areas he's a loser in, especially in authoritarian terms

The multiple bankruptcies, for instance. Those show him failing, and then not taking personal responsibility for his failures.

Point out how he is laughed at so much. It's not that the rest of the world doesn't like him - he can withstand that, because he can paint it as "they fear me" - but that they don't take him seriously. He is not someone they could work or negotiate with. No-one outside the American Republican party thinks he's up to the job.

[WhiteTara]

9. Who seem to be out voting us lately.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Not in presidential election years

Not only did the Democrats win the presidency, they got more votes for the House of Representatives, and the Senate too (and more in the Senate in 2014, for that matter):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2014

The gerrymandering meant that the Democrats didn't take back the House.

[Amishman]

15. gerrymandering is not the whole picture

even with districts remapped to be truly neutral (as compact as possible) we could still win the popular vote and lose the House. Our base is very heavily concentrated in cities where we get a lot of 'wasted' votes. We have a lot of voters concentrated in city cores that have a general population that votes 80 or even 90% D. Rural regions that always go red still are usually only in the 60-70% range.

As long as there are districts and our base is so tightly geographically concentrated, we will be at a disadvantage in any race that is not statewide or nationwide.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Not the whole picture, but it does make it worse

In 1996, the total house votes were 48.2% for each party (to 1 decimal place). The Repubs won seats 227 to 206. In 1998, they won the votes 48.4% to 47.3%, and the seats 223 to 211. In 2000, they won 47.6% to 47.1%, and 221 seats to 212. But in 2012, The Dems won the vote 48.8% to 47.6%, but still lost seats by 201 to 234.

Where a close vote, with the Repubs 0 to 1% ahead, used to result in a Repub seat win by up to 20, a Dem win by over 1% now results in a Repub win by over 30. The unevenness has got worse.

[kwassa]

6. The authoritarianism derived from the strict father worldview.

Excellent article, by the way.

In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father's authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don't prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others -- who are responsible for themselves.


..........................................................

The strict father logic extends further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, Our Country above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above non-Whites, Christians above non-Christians, Straights above Gays.

[struggle4progress]

8. I really don't want to understand how they think, because if I did I'd be crazy too

[bemildred]

10. The Patriarchy strikes back. nt

[Darb]

12. Because Repube voters are ill-informed, racist pigs?

Maybe?

[Arazi]

13. pm kick! eom

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

14. It is a good article.

I posted a link to same article yesterday, except it was on Huffingtonpost.

[lpbk2713]

17. He tells ignorant mouth breathers what they want to hear.

What he says doesn't have to be factual. It just has
to strike a chord with their fear and hysteria.

[sendero]

19. How would that..

... make him any different than any presidential candidate?

[Quantess]

18. K & R

[pampango]

20. "In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate

authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father’s authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good."

The strict father logic extends further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, Our Country above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above Non-whites, Christians above non-Christians, Straights above Gays.

Pragmatic conservatives, on the other hand, may not have a religious orientation at all. Instead, they may care primarily about their own personal authority, not the authority of the church or Christ, or God. They want to be strict fathers in their own domains, with authority primarily over their own lives. Thus, a young, unmarried conservative — male or female —may want to have sex without worrying about marriage. They may need access to contraception, advice about sexually transmitted diseases, information about cervical cancer, and so on. And if a girl or woman becomes pregnant and there is no possibility or desire for marriage, abortion may be necessary. Trump is a pragmatic conservative, par excellence. And he knows that there are a lot of Republican voters who are like him in their pragmatism.

There are at least tens of millions of conservatives in America who share strict father morality and its moral hierarchy. Many of them are poor or middle class and many are white men who see themselves as superior to immigrants, non-whites, women, non-Christians, gays — and people who rely on public assistance. In other words, they are what liberals would call “bigots.” For many years, such bigotry has not been publicly acceptable, especially as more immigrants have arrived, as the country has become less white, as more women have become educated and moved into the workplace, and as gays have become more visible and gay marriage acceptable. As liberal anti-bigotry organizations have loudly pointed out and made a public issue of the un-American nature of such bigotry, those conservatives have felt more and more oppressed by what they call “political correctness” — public pressure against their views and against what they see as “free speech.” This has become exaggerated since 911, when anti-Muslim feelings became strong. The election of President Barack Hussein Obama created outrage among those conservatives, and they refused to see him as a legitimate American (as in the birther movement), much less as a legitimate authority, especially as his liberal views contradicted almost everything else they believe as conservatives.

Donald Trump expresses out loud everything they feel — with force, aggression, anger, and no shame. All they have to do is support and vote for Trump and they don’t even have to express their ‘politically incorrect’ views, since he does it for them and his victories make those views respectable. He is their champion. He gives them a sense of self-respect, authority, and the possibility of power. Whenever you hear the words “political correctness” remember this.

Great article about authoritarianism and its role in the conservative worldview.