Sunking Trump

“Donald’s transition, marked by disastrous cabinet picks and ethics breaches, show us that a second Trump administration is preparing for a full-on assault on our American institutions.”

– Dr. Mary L. Trump


https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l-726mFxhWw

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FXde-HtlqqA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xouCZdxD8M

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF4gCFbiTx0&t=30s

LIVE: Investigative Journalist gives URGENT WARNING on Trump Transition | The Weekend Show

MeidasTouch
on Dec 29, 2024  The Weekend Show
Pulitzer Prize winning-investigative reporter and Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, David Cay Johnston, joins Anthony Davis to discuss the incoming Trump regime and its expected disruption to the world order, his economic malpractice and the cultural shift towards authoritarianism - only on The Weekend Show.

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LIVE: Investigative Journalist gives NEW WARNING on Trump Transition | The Weekend Show
01- 05-25
MeidasTouch
 The Weekend Show
Professor David Cay Johnston returns to The Weekend Show to discuss how media coverage of Trump needs to change in light of the raised temperature, terrorism and threats of mass deportation - and the risks to democracy by a complicit corporate media.


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Senator Bernie Sanders Final Address to the US - Never Forget

Soak Disko
Jan 3, 2025  #unitedhealthcare #berniesanders #elonmusk
In his final speech of 2024, Bernie Sanders the Independent from Vermont gives a chilling warning regarding the state of current US politics and the economic peril we are walking into. Act now and support legislation that is creating a new middle class of regular people working paycheck to paycheck.

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The Psychology Behind What Makes Authoritarianism Appealing
Behind the multiple factors that contribute to the appeal of authoritarianism.
Posted December 29, 2023 |  Reviewed by Tyler Woods

Key points
Authoritarianism emphasizes security versus instability, conformity, and loyal obedience to leaders.
Anger—related to financial, social or emotional suffering—is a powerful catalyst for authoritarianism.
The denial and displacement of anger is one contribution to embracing authoritarianism.
We’re living in a time of growing appeal for authoritarian leadership, at home and abroad. For those who crave democracy and freedom, this attraction can be extremely challenging to understand. What is it that makes a person want to have fewer freedoms, less choice, and pay tribute to conformity above individuality? The answer to this question is complex.

Authoritarianism entails an emphasis on three core values that are offered as a solution to the aroused sense of threat (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). Specifically, it values:

The importance of security versus instability (often seen as the impact of foreigners and immigrants).
Conformity to preserve traditions and the idealized past (a time perceived as being peaceful.
The need for loyal obedience to strong leaders who will protect the group. It also rests on the security achieved by having the “right” group in leadership.
The Authoritarian Personality, published in 1950 was the first comprehensive exploration of the origins of authoritarianism as well as personality factors propelling it. (Adorno, 2019). However, even this treatise emphasized that personality features associated with authoritarianism did not necessarily lead to its manifestation. Rather, they might emerge under certain social-historical conditions.

123rf Stock Photo/Icemanj
Authoritariansim definedSource: 123rf Stock Photo/Icemanj

Emotions and authoritarianism
Anger is a powerful catalyst for authoritarianism, particularly anger that derives from genuine financial, social, or emotional suffering and the associated sense of victimhood. This is especially the case with those who have “trait anger,” a personality dynamic that entails a powerful tendency toward hostility and even aggression. Studies suggest that those with such anger are more prone to favor authoritarianism (Milburn, Niwa, & Patterson, 2013).

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On its surface, feelings of anger, rather than fear associated with threat, are the dominant emotions that boost authoritarianism (Vasilopoulos, Marcus, Valentino, et. al., 2019). In tone and content, authoritarian leaders intensify these feelings in their audience in order to evoke their support. Such communication is meant to escalate the feelings of threat that bolster anger and stem from underlying feelings of powerlessness and victimization. Authoritarians follow a key principle in marketing—identify a problem, create negative emotions, and offer a solution to the problem.

Authoritarian leaders, in turn, create fear and anger by identifying certain groups—whether identified by their politics, religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or nationality—as being responsible for their suffering.

Anger directs our attention outward and, in doing so, constricts our openness for the self-reflection that is essential for increased awareness and understanding of our feelings and desires. Additionally, higher levels of anger blind us to the kind of flexible thinking essential for problem-solving.

Staying with anger supports a sense of victimhood, which only further supports feelings of powerlessness and anger. These feelings further engender the desire to associate with a leader perceived as strong.

Distortions of thinking
Certain distortions of thinking are associated with authoritarian attitudes. For example, one study found that individuals scoring high on right-wing authoritarianism were less likely than those scoring low to revise their beliefs when provided with new information (Sinclair, Stanley, & Seli, 2020).

Dichotomous thinking is associated authoritarianism, as it entails rigidity in thinking that has no room to consider the “grays” in life. Thinking only in “black and white” greatly diminishes critical thinking. Further, this tendency supports the idealization of a leader, which ignores those details about him that may seem to contradict the idealization. Such selective attention is coupled with a suppression of anxiety regarding such discrepancies.

This pattern of thinking is also involved in viewing outgroups as being “other.” It leads to being wed to the image of the other created in one’s mind rather than being open to exploring their uniqueness and shared humanity. Authoritarian leaders reinforce such thinking in broad summary statements that diminish their humanity—such as calling them vermin—and, most importantly, by attributing the suffering of followers to these groups.

Denial and displacement
All too often, the anger that makes authoritarianism appealing stems from hurt and suffering associated with childhood wounds that have not been sufficiently acknowledged, grieved, or mourned. I’ve observed this in my work with clients. While most of them have not been drawn into authoritarianism, this dynamic is very much present in those who have pursued it.

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Some describe their childhood as “normal” or even “wonderful,” even when their stories unfold to indicate neglect or even physical or verbal abuse. Some minimize the impact of their experiences. “It wasn’t like I got hit with a 2x4!” “He made me a better man with his ‘tough love’ and ridicule” and other comments such as “But I knew he loved me” are just a few examples of how they dealt with underlying emotional suffering.

Such suppression is a resolution to the overwhelming feelings aroused by childhood trauma or neglect. When children experience suffering at the hands of a parent, they experience sadness, anxiety, powerlessness, fear, devaluation, hurt, isolation, and anger. It is intensely frightening to be angry at a parent on whom one depends for life—love, food, clothing, and shelter. So, instead, they blame themselves in the form of guilt and shame. Additionally, idealizing a parent may be a resolution associated with suppression.

However, suppressed feelings don’t just disappear. They may be triggered and surface as an adult, in the form of displacement, finding other targets unrelated to the original source of their anger—in relationships with partners, friends, and their children. Suppression may also become the fuel for authoritarianism.

A negative worldview
The appeal of authoritarianism also stems from the belief that the social world is an inherently dangerous, unstable, unpredictable, and threatening place (Osborne, Costello, Duckitt, et. al., 2023). This perspective fuels the drive, ensuring collective security and stability through the coercive maintenance of the traditional social order. And, according to these authors, it is this dangerous worldview, acquired through early experience and socialization, that is further influenced by personality traits that predispose an individual to social conformity.

Fear of freedom
In 1941, psychoanalyst Eric Fromm wrote the now classic book Escape From Freedom. It highlights the appeal of authoritarianism as deriving from our fear of being alone—and the inherent anxiety in recognizing that we are alone in our choices and responsible for them. However, as stated by Rollo May, anxiety is not an emotion to flee from (May, 2019). Rather, it is an inherent part of us that aids in developing a healthy personality.

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Political factors
It cannot be argued that democracy, in its current state, does not have many flaws. As such, it should be emphasized that the appeal of authoritarianism may also be grounded in the hardships that are perceived to result from these flaws.

Misinformation
We both benefit and suffer from the impact of the internet and social media. The fact that misinformation can proliferate on both can easily cause confusion and mistrust, ultimately, the threat and anger that fuel authoritarianism. This places the burden of information presented on these platforms on the consumers. It requires pausing for reflection that includes critical and flexible thinking when evaluating the veracity of such information.

The appeal of authoritarianism is rooted in a variety of complex emotional, psychological, social, and political factors. Taking time to reflect on these is essential for embracing our humanity—for those drawn to authoritarianism as well as for those trying to understand its appeal.

References

Norris, P. and Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press.

Adorno, T. (2019). The Authoritarian Personality. New York, NY: Verso.

Milburn, M., Niwa, M. and Patterson, M. (2013). Authoritarianism, anger, and hostile attribution bias: a test of affect displacement. Political Psychology, Vol. 35 (2), 225-243

Vasilopoulos P, Marcus G, Valentino N, Foucault M. (2015). Fear, anger, and voting for the far right: Evidence from the November 13, 2015 Paris terror attacks. Polit. Psychol., 40(4):679–704.

Sinclair, A., Stanley, M., and Paul, and Seli, P., (2020). Closed-minded cognition: right-wing authoritarianism is negatively related to belief updating following prediction error. Psychon Bull Rev.; 27(6):1348-1361. --10.3758/s13423-020-01767-y

Osborne, D., Costello, T., Duckitt, J., et. al. (2023). The psychological causes of societal consequences of authoritarianism. Nature Reviews Psychology, Vol. 2, 220-232

May, R. (Reissued edition, 2015). The meaning of anxiety. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company

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Politics
Burnout Nation: Why Americans Are Tuning Out Politics
The neuroscience of political burnout.
Posted December 19, 2024 |  Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

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Key points
American politicians and major news media have found an ally in fear.
Political burnout stems from fear-based news, digital bubbles, and an "us vs. them" outlook.
Fear drives us to consume political news, but too much fear leads to exhaustion and learned helplessness.
Source: Midjourney AI art generator
Source: Midjourney AI art generator
“I am definitely not following the news anymore,” one patient told me when I asked about her political news consumption in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

This conversation happened around the time I talked with a local TV channel about why we saw fewer political yard signs during this year’s election season, compared with past ones.

I am a psychiatrist who studies and treats fear and anxiety. One of my main mental health recommendations to my patients during the 2016 and 2020 election cycles was to reduce their political news consumption. I also tried to convince them that the five hours a day they spent watching cable news was only leaving them helpless and terrified.

Over the past couple of years, though, I have noticed a change: Many of my patients say they either have tuned out or are too exhausted to do more than a brief read of political news or watch one hour of their favorite political show.

Research supports my clinical experience: A Pew research study from 2020 showed that 66 percent of Americans were worn out by political stress. Interestingly, those who are not following the news feel that same news fatigue at an even higher percentage of 73 percent. In 2023, eight out of 10 Americans described U.S. politics with negative words like “divisive,” “corrupt,” “messy,” and “polarized.”

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In my view, three major factors have led Americans to exhaustion and burnout with U.S. politics.

1. The politics of fear
In my 2023 book, AFRAID: Understanding the Purpose of Fear, and Harnessing the Power of Anxiety, I discuss how American politicians and major news media have found an ally in fear: a very strong emotion that can be used to grab our attention, keeping us in the tribal dividing lines and making us follow, click, tap, watch, and donate.

Over the past few decades, many people have felt a strong push for tribalism, an “us vs. them” way of seeing the world, turning Americans against one another. This has led to a point where we are not just in disagreement with each other. We hate, cancel, block, and attack those who disagree with us.

2. People live in information bubbles
It can feel like Fox News and MSNBC commentators are talking about Americas from two different planets. The same is true when it comes to social media feeds. Many people are part of social media communities that are closed to the world outside their homes and familiar social circles. Based on people’s political views and what they search for or watch and read, social media algorithms feed them content where everybody talks and thinks alike. If you hear about the other side, it is only about their worst attributes and behavior.

The disconnect is so wide that people are not even able to comprehend the thinking of those from other perspectives and find their logic or political beliefs unfathomable.

Many Americans have gotten to the point of believing that the other half of Americans are, at best, unintelligent and stupid; and at worst, immoral and evil.

3. People’s political opinions have become their identities
There was a time in American politics when two politicians or two neighbors could disagree but still believe that the other person was fundamentally good.

Over time, and more so since the early 2000s, this ability to connect despite political beliefs has decreased.

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The majority of both Democrats and Republicans said in a 2022 Pew Research survey that someone’s political ideas are an indicator of their morality and character.

This 2022 Pew survey also shows that partisan animosity extends to judgments about character: 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats said they believe members of the opposing party are more “immoral” than other Americans.

This is evident in day-to-day conversations of members of both political parties: “How can I be friends with someone who wants to kill babies?” or “How can I talk to someone who is OK with women dying in a corner of a clinic parking lot?” We can no longer see someone’s political affiliation in the context of their humanity at large.

What psychology and neuroscience say
Fear as a deeply ingrained survival mechanism takes priority over other brain functions.

Fear guides your memories, feelings, attention, and thoughts, and can cause you to keep watching, scrolling, and reading to monitor this perceived threat. Positive or neutral news could then become uninteresting because it is not important in your survival response. That has been the key to a person’s deep engagement with the fear-based political news.

But too much fear does not keep someone engaged forever. That is because of another survival mechanism—what’s called “learned helplessness.”

In 1967, American psychologist Martin Seligman exposed two groups of dogs to painful shocks. Dogs in group 1 could stop the shock by pressing a lever, which they quickly learned to do. But the dogs in group 2 learned that they could not control when the shock starts and stops.

Then, both groups were placed in a box divided into two halves by a small barrier, and shock was applied to only one side of the box. Dogs in group 1—who had learned how to stop the shocks in the earlier experiment—quickly learned to jump over the barrier to the shock-free side. But dogs in group 2 did not even attempt to do so. They had learned there was no point in trying.

This experiment has been replicated in different forms with other animals and humans with the same conclusion: When people feel they cannot control the painful or scary situation, they just give up. During such experiences, the brain’s fear region—called the amygdala—is hyperactive. Meanwhile, emotion-regulating brain areas like the prefrontal cortex decrease in activity under these circumstances.

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Learned helplessness also means the brain mechanisms commonly involved in regulating anxiety and depression don’t function as well.

When working with patients who have suffered from long periods of intense anxiety, fear, trauma, and exhaustion, I see learned helplessness showing up in the form of depression, loss of motivation, fatigue, and lack of engagement with the world around them.

The COVID-19 pandemic, more than a decade of intense political stress, polarizing social media, and wars across the world, as well as public disillusionment with U.S. politics and media, have led, I believe, to many people experiencing burnout and learned helplessness.

If you feel politically exhausted, you are not the problem. Feel free to tune out from the noise.

A version of this post appears on The Conversation.

References

Simon Shaykhet. Are there fewer political yard signs this year? We asked voters for their thoughts. WXYZ News. October 23, 2024.

Arash Javanbakht. If anxiety is in my brain, why is my heart pounding? A psychiatrist explains the neuroscience and physiology of fear. The Conversation. September 5, 2023.

Arash Javanbakht. Trump, the politics of fear and racism: How our brains can be manipulated to tribalism. The Conversation. June 2, 2020.

Arash Javanbakht. The Matrix is already here: Social media promised to connect us, but left us isolated, scared and tribal. The Conversation. November 12, 2020.

Patrick Gavin. Matthews book: O’Neill, Reagan bond. Politico. September 30, 2013.

Arash Javanbakht, Linda Saab. The science of fright: Why we love to be scared. The Conversation. October 26, 2017.

Julianna Rittenberg. OPINION: Political burnout is hurting our generation. The New Political.

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Politics
The Psychology of Left-Wing Authoritarianism
Insights from recent psychological research.
Posted June 12, 2024 |  Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

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Key points
We know much more about right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) than about left-wing authoritarianism (LWA).
Research shows that LWA includes a desire to overturn systems and intolerance of other views.
Research shows LWA to be characterized by mental inflexibility, prejudiced beliefs, and holding grievances.
Tumisu/Pixabay
Source: Tumisu/Pixabay
"Authoritarian" is a word used casually and commonly in today’s media, politics, and law. Yet, the concept is not well understood by the public.

At its core, authoritarianism is a characteristic of both a person and a regime. As a psychologist, I am much better positioned to comment on authoritarianism as a description of a person; however, many of the qualities of authoritarian persons are shared by governments or regimes as well.

Historically, authoritarianism is thought of as an extreme on the continuum from conservative to liberal. More recent thought argues that right and left have their own distinct versions of the characteristic. A recent survey of university faculty shows some of the negative impacts of both ends of the authoritarian spectrum, ranging from support for censorship by administration to self-censorship due to fear of extremist (mis)use of one’s work.

Decades of psychological science have been devoted to right-wing authoritarian (RWA) beliefs. RWA has many elements: Folks high in the attitudes tend to embrace “traditional” family values, hierarchy, and the status quo, among other social values. They also tend to be supportive of aggression and prejudice in many forms. We know a great deal about its relevance in the legal, political, and healthcare arenas, among others.

We know far less about its counterpart: Left-wing authoritarianism (LWA).

Left-Wing Attitudes: What Are We Really Talking About?
LWA attitudes are characterized by favoring punishment of those who dissent from group opinion, desiring to overturn existing hierarchies, expecting everyone to hold the same left-wing views, believing there is only one correct moral perspective, focusing solely on one’s own norms and boundaries, and needing rigid certainty. In other words, people high in LWA may struggle with skills like perspective taking, flexible thinking, and engaging with others of varying moral or personal beliefs systems.

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Using this broad LWA description as a backdrop, one team of researchers developed a measure of LWA. They found that LWA comprises three types of beliefs:

Antihierarchical Aggression: Desiring forceful overturning of existing systems.
Anti-conventionalism: Belief in moral absolutes and intolerance of other viewpoints.
Top-Down Censorship: Using group power to suppress conservative or dissenting ideas.
Who Tends to Fall Into the LWA Camp?
The science is emerging well to answer this question. For example, compared to people higher in RWA, evidence exists that individuals high in LWA are more emotionally reactive.

A team of American and Dutch researchers carried out 12 studies across 74,000 people worldwide. They concluded that high LWA persons tended to:

See threats in multiple aspects of everyday life.
Believe the world is a just and fair place.
Demand others be politically correct.
Hold prejudiced views of African American and Jewish persons.
Show mental inflexibility.
Personality findings are also intriguing. One study showed that the anti-hierarchical aggression aspect of LWA is positively related to narcissism and psychopathy. The attitude was also unrelated to altruism and social justice motivations.

Also, a pair of researchers used machine learning to study LWA. A focus of this study was to assess a variety of associated characteristics. Multiple aspects of LWA were linked with:

Finding joy in the suffering of political partisans.
Positive feelings about autocracy.
Dehumanizing political partisans.
A need for chaos.
Belief that leadership is broken down.
Low institutional trust.
Support of violent protests.
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Is Left-Wing Authoritarianism Harmful?
Extremism of any flavor can do harm. But the truth is the science on this question is fairly limited. One recent study reviewed current LWA literature. Rather than overt interpersonal violence, this review highlights more subtle forms of harm and social control among LWA movements. For example, studies highlight strategies such as bullying or shunning those of differing viewpoints, as well as pushing LWA attitudes through censorship of others. These interpersonal rebuffs may be rooted in seeing threats everywhere and dogmatic adherence to one's ideology.

Interestingly, the same study showed that LWA may be driven by being emotionally reactive and holding grievances against others. LWA is also linked with signs of mental distress, such as symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Another European study of social media users addressed how LWA may be specifically linked with perceived grievance and prejudice. LWA relates to the tendency to see sexism and White privilege in everyday life, as well as holding negative views of men. These patterns are nearly the exact opposite of existing evidence on RWA.

Finally, in the context of politics, high LWA individuals are likely to endorse violent protest beliefs and behaviors.

GDJ/Pixabay
George OrwellSource: GDJ/Pixabay
Where Do We Go From Here?
“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.” —George Orwell

The limited existing science aligns with Orwell’s pessimism: LWA shows possible links with dark personality traits, poorer mental health, subtle interpersonal discrimination and violence, and social-emotional reactivity.

One thing we can do is draw lessons from addressing hate-motivated behavior. As we treat insidious RWA-related behavior, we can apply psychology, education, policy and other solutions to mitigate potential damage inflicted by LWA. This certainly seems a fruitful next step in LWA science.

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About the Author
Robert J. Cramer, Ph.D.
Robert J. Cramer, Ph.D., is the Belk Endowed Professor in Health Research within the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

Online: Robert J. Cramer Faculty Page, Twitter