Posted by Jay Livingston
Why do they love Trump? I often lean to the psychological explanation that many of the Trumpistas are voting with their emotions. It’s not about policy. It’s not about what might be best for their own lives or the country. They like Trump because he gives voice to their thoughts and feelings, especially thoughts and feelings that are unacceptable in the current cultural orthodoxy. Trump expresses their many resentments – against cultural elites, against economic elites, against immigrants, against the poor – especially the Black and Hispanic poor – against government.
I’m not quite ready to abandon that view, but Mark* at the blog West Coast Stat View (here) has a simpler explanation. Voting for Trump is rational. It is realistic – that is, it is consistent with reality. Mark doesn’t explicitly use the term “bounded rationality,” but he’s getting at something similar. A decision may seem irrational to others (“What was he thinking?”); we ourselves may find it irrational looking back on it (“What was I thinking?”). But at the time, it made sense given the available information and our ability to process that information. The problem was not with our rationality but with the boundaries that limited what we could see. It was consistent with our reality.
The important question in voting then is “Which reality?” And the answer Mark gives for Trump voters is: “the reality of Fox News.”
The tile of Mark’s post is “Explaining Trump in Four Words,” and the four words are, “Republicans believe Fox News.”
Here is Mark’s summary of that reality:
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A few hours after the The West Coast Stat View post appeared, Trump told an interviewer, “You have radical Islamic terrorists probably all over the place, we’re allowing them to come in by the thousands and thousands.” A dozen Pinocchios or Pants-on-Fire ratings from fact-checkers won’t matter. Those thousands of terrorists streaming in to the US are a reality for Trump and for his followers.
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* I’m not on a first name basis with Mark. I don’t know him at all. But I’ve searched WestCoastStatView and cannot find his full name or that of his co-blogger Joseph. Which is too bad because they run an excellent blog.
2 comments:
You’ve gotten the format wrong for your list. The post was about beliefs Republicans hold that make it rational to vote for Trump. So to turn it back, you should have made a list of fanciful things Democrats believe that make it rational for them to vote for Hillary or Bernie or whoever. “Copsof are racists just looking for a chance to kill innocent Black people,” or something along those lines. Instead, except for the first item, you’ve written another a list of conservative beliefs, in this case conservative beliefs about liberals.
Is the list I copied accurate about Fox/Rebublican beliefs? I don’t watch enough Fox News to be certain, and I don’t have systematic data about Fox, but I would bet that these are consistent with what Fox presents. As for Republicans’ beliefs, it is highly accurate. Surveys find that a majority of Republicans don’t believe that global warming is real (the percent has risen 19 points since 2014, but it’s still less than half). Surveys also show that Republicans believe Obama does not love America (Rudy Giuliani told them so), that Obama was born outside the US (another prominent Republican – can’t remember which guy it was – made a HUGE effort to promote this one), that the 2008 election was rigged (familiar ring to that one too), and so on.
Palko.
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