Why Do Trump Supporters Ignore His Lies and Broken Promises?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Donald Trump acknowledges supporters at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center April 29, 2017 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Rick Shenkman writes that we love our own opinions because we love ourselves. And if those opinions conflict with the facts? We'll choose our own opinions.Alex Wong/GettyOpinionMexicoIvankaBannonKellyanne
This article first appeared on the History News Network.
Why don't Trump voters seem to care that their president is frequently caught telling lies?
To answer this question I want to start with a story.
Not long after the Watergate burglary, the Republicans held their national convention in Miami to nominate Nixon for reelection. After he gave his acceptance speech, delegates and supporters in the hall were allowed to meet the president, who stood on stage as people, one by one, passed by to shake his hand.
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In the long line that immediately formed was a young man, all of seventeen years of age, from New Jersey. He had come to Miami without a ticket to the convention, but he had managed to wangle one that afternoon.
"Mr. President, I'm a Democrat," the young man said when he got his turn. "But I am supporting you."
Nixon looked a little flummoxed. Even though he was courting Democrats, he apparently wasn't expecting to be shaking hands with one at this point in the proceedings of the Republican convention.
That fall the young man went off to Vassar College, a bastion of liberalism. There he encountered students who despised Nixon. As the Watergate crisis unfolded they repeatedly piled argument upon argument based on well established facts showing that Nixon was lying and covering up.
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Related: Robert Reich : How Trump Lies About His Many Lies
Can you guess what happened? By this point it should not come as a surprise that the young man continued backing Nixon. In defiance of the school consensus, he stuck with Nixon through 1972 and 1973. Active in local New Jersey politics, he joined a pro-Nixon group, the local chapter of the Committee to Save the Presidency. He quickly was elected its vice president.
Through the Watergate hearings, the Saturday Night Massacre (in which Nixon abused his power to have special prosecutor Archibald Cox fired), and all the rest, he stood by Nixon. Not until June 1974—little more than two months before Nixon resigned—did he finally become convinced that Nixon had been lying.
For years afterward that young man wondered why he had been so slow to face the truth. It haunted him. I should know. The seventeen-year-old student was me. The media had done their job. I had kept up on the news and watched the Watergate hearings attentively. And still I stuck with Nixon?
We shouldn't be surprised to learn that people don't like to face facts when those facts contravene their opinions. It's right there in the most hallowed papers produced by the Founding Fathers, the Federalist Papers.
In "Federalist No. 10," the most celebrated of all the essays, James Madison observes:
As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, [man's] opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves.
In other words, we love our own opinions because we love ourselves. And if those opinions conflict with the facts? We'll choose our own opinions.
But Madison did not quite grasp the mechanism in play here. As Harvard's Daniel Gilbert points out, we think we are right and others are wrong not because we love our own opinions but because we want to be right.
Studies show that people who think they are right all the time do better in life. They suffer from less stress and enjoy better health. This is a critical factor in what he calls our psychological immune system.
Furthermore, we don't hold all of our opinions with equal fervor. We make distinctions. We hold some opinions more dearly than others.
Psychologist Elliot Aronson demonstrated this in a famous study. Aronson recruited students—all women—to join a purportedly hot discussion group that promised to delve into the mysteries of sex. But before they could join they had to undergo an initiation rite.
For some, the rite was fairly innocuous. They had to read aloud a list of words with a sexual connotation, such as prostitute, virgin and petting. The others went through a much more difficult rite. They had to say aloud in a public setting a dozen obscene words, including fuck, cock and screw.
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This was in the 1950s. You can imagine how mortifying this was. Following their initiation, all of the women were allowed to join the discussion, which was already in progress. But when they did, they discovered this wasn't the fun and somewhat daring group they had been led to expect. The subject wasn't human sexuality, it was lower-order animal sexuality.
And the other participants (confederates of the researcher) were dull. They spoke in a halting fashion and muttered. You could barely follow the conversation. What had promised to be an interesting experience turned out to be a deadly boring one.
Afterward, the students were asked if they liked the group. Which ones would you guess said they did? It wasn't the women who had gone through the easy initiation. It was the ones who had been required to read swear words out loud, an experience that had left them embarrassed.
You would think the ones who went through the more troublesome initiation rite would be more upset and therefore more likely to denounce the group. They had a legitimate grievance. They had been conned into joining a group that wasn't what it was cracked up to be.
Instead, they defended it. The explanation is really quite simple. Unlike the other young women who had gone through the easy initiation rite, they had gone through something of an ordeal. They couldn't just write off the experience with an Oh Well. Saying swear words aloud in a public setting had been traumatic.
At the end of the experiment they faced a classic moment of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, they believed themselves to be smart. On the other, they knew that joining the group had been dumb.
This left them in a tough spot. They could either admit to themselves that they weren't as smart as they thought they were, or they could maintain that the group actually lived up to its billing. How would you respond?
What Elliot Aronson's study proved was that cognitive dissonance isn't an equal opportunity phenomenon. Contrary to James Madison, we are not likely to defend all of our own opinions in the face of the facts. We are only likely to insist on our opinions when they involve our own feelings of self-worth.
When a decision we make is a referendum on our status as a good and smart person, we are much more inclined to justify it. (The analysis is known as Justification Theory.)
Under which circumstance is that likely to happen? When our holding an opinion comes at a cost, as mine did when I defended Nixon at liberal Vassar. As psychologist Carol Tavris puts it, the "more effort we put into something that turns out to be useless or harmful or just plain boring," the more we have to reduce the dissonance we feel— our conviction that we're smart and the reality that we "just put a whole lot of time, money, and effort into something that isn't worth it."
The way we do that is by doubling down, defending our original decision to the hilt. That's what I did at Vassar. After a time the fight I was waging for Nixon wasn't about Nixon at all; it was about me.
It's no mystery, then, why voters postponed the day of reckoning as long as they could after the Watergate burglary. They couldn't abandon Nixon without indicting themselves. The election had ostensibly been a referendum on Nixon.
But once people decided to support him, it was a referendum on them too. For them, Watergate wasn't really about Nixon at all. It was about them. The more they defended Nixon, the more of a stake they had in his survival.
Politics is always about the voters. It's about how they feel. That is so obvious I hesitate to say it. But it's easy to forget.
When a politician is about to go on camera, what does he do? He straightens his tie and combs his hair. The assumption he makes—and that we often make—is that an on-camera appearance is about the candidate.
Actually, it's not. It's not about how he performs or looks or talks. It's not about how articulate he is. It's about how the people on the other end of the camera feel in his presence. Does he make them feel dumb or smart? Does he leave them feeling optimistic or pessimistic?
Whether every hair on his head is in place or whether he chooses his syntax right does not really matter.
What this research suggests is that the darts thrown at Trump for his lies are hitting his voters as well as him. The polls are a referendum on them now, not just him.
We shouldn't be surprised that they're reluctant to call him out on his lies. That would be like admitting they themselves had been duped. Who wants to admit that?
Rick Shenkman is the publisher of the History News Network and the author of Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics, from which this article was adapted.
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Interesting piece which makes brings up some solid points.
Trump voters today are doubling down on supporting Trump no matter what the costs, as this election is also a referendum on them.
It comes down to pride. It's human nature where it is hard for some to admit they are wrong from time to time.
Because supporting this is the alternative:
Struggle sessions on the street, attacking an old man. It's like progressives are trying to bring back their totalitarian glory days.
Just for the record...when were progressive ever totalitarian?
From the very beginning with their embrace of eugenics to keep the "unfit" from breeding. Nazis and progressives shared space in the same journals about how to limit the inferior from having children.
Watch the first video and you can see the young progressives auditioning to be red guards. I notice that didn't bother you.
You DO realize that all of that happened while Trump is in office right?
Ooooooohhhhhhh..... Okay.
So you're fine with cross-burning and lynching's by racists, to hell with the US Constitution.... got it.
You're okay with telling women what they can do with their bodies, to hell with the US Constitution.... got it.
As far as the protests and riots of today.... your fine with the wholesale slaughter of black men by police To hell with the US Constitution..... got it.
Boy Sean, now I can see why you are lock step with Trump. I'll never have to ask you again.
I truly pity those who will never admit when they are wrong - their brains are encased in concrete.
I've made plenty of mistakes, here on NT and NV. When I'm wrong, I admit it. That's why I'm very careful to post data and links a good chunk of the time, and those links come from respected sources because I hate to admit being wrong as much as the next person.
I am data driven, and if presented with additional data that conflicts with my own, I go looking for tie-breakers to sort it out.
How are things there this morning Buzz?
if I am confronted with credible evidence that could possibly refute and dispute my already established opinion, I want to read the opposing information so as I can make an educated decision with the most context so as I can
make the most educated decision possible, thus, why some, might be so critical, about my thinking
As do I. Anyone who says they never make a mistake are liars, as every human makes a mistake at some point.
I don't have a problem admitting to making mistakes. And I have been known to make a mistake trying to correct a prior mistake.
I made a mistake trying to correct a mistake that wasn't actually a mistake, so, the way I look at it, it was a mistake, to
believe I made a mistake, so I plan on never being mistaken about making a mistake, ever again,
If you give me that post now, I can have it shortened and pressed by Thursday..... ;^P
I think you are mistaken...
Rat Bastard!
LOL!!!!! I misspelled a word. When I noticed the mistake, I apologized for the mistake and corrected the spelling. And I kind of joked it around.
Only to be told shortly after that I had still misspelled the word trying to correct my prior misspelling of the word. Making two mistakes trying to spell the same word.
I will have to stop typing after my eyes have gone to sleep.
Like I said at the time, you never goof, so you were due. Besides, it was so cute, I still smile about it.
LOL! Thanks Sister. You are right, I was due. And I am glad that it made you smile, and still does. I still can't believe that I misspelled the word twice !
A/noon Raven...Hmmm yes spelling..When I am on here and reading posts etc it is quite funny because for a split second I think they have spelt that wrong..Then I realise it is the American way of spelling, not ours...Especially "cancelled" gets me everytime...I probably confuse many on here as well with my spelling...Oh well... it all makes the world go around...Stay safe over there...
Hi shona,
Yes, the different ways words are spelled, and often have different meanings, can make it difficult.
The word I misspelled was a word that I have spelled hundreds if not more times, and why I suddenly misspelled it not once, but, twice, was really crazy.
Gidday..Just put it down to "brain fade"..covers everything and anything...Off topic..Is Enoch still around?? Not seen anything from him for ages and as I have been among the missing alot was not sure if anything has happened to him. Hope not..
Hi shona,
Yes, Enoch is still with us. He has been very busy with the COVID-19 spreading as much as it has been. Him being a Chaplain I am sure that he has been helping with those who are in the hospitals and the families of those who have passed on. He pops in here when he can. We do miss him, but, understand his need to do what he is called to do at a time like this.
Absolutely..If there were more people like him in the world, just maybe it would not be in such a mess..Thank you for the info..Have a good evening over there..
That's good to hear. I've been wondering about Enoch.
Hi Pat,
We keep in touch. He is really busy doing his best to help where he can.
Hi shona,
Indeed, there could be many more like our dear Enoch it would be a much better world.
You're welcome for the update. Take care and be safe.
Good plan Iggy. I have made a mistake when I thought a word I typed was misspelled and I corrected it. Only to find out that what I thought was misspelled was not misspelled, and when I corrected what I thought was misspelled, I found that the word I thought was misspelled in the first place was the correct spelling after all. So then I had to correct the word that I thought was the correct spelling back to the word I thought was misspelled. It can be very confusing at times.
if I'm not mistaken, this, is exactly what I stated, so, we'd both be mistaken, if there was actually something at stake, then you would have to drive it through my heart till it ached , but, I like me steaks done well, and by well done , I reefer to done well to my liking, which I rarely find large or small, till like Goldie Lox, I find the medium rare to be for that which I dare to care the most for, if I'm not mistaken, again
Looks like neither of us are mistaken about how we like our stakes. I like mine medium rare as well. But, I am not good with a hammer. 'Cuz I can be mistaken about where/what I hit with it.
You've heard the one about the vegetarian vampire who was killed by driving a steak through his heart?
No...I don't think I've heard that one. But then, I could be mistaken. (grin)
Should that be "misteaken"?
You may be right. I am likely mistaken.
Arthritic? "Mist achin' "?
Mist achin..... Is that when driving in the fog causes car crashes?
After all that fun and games I thought I would put my 20 cents in.
I have, too, made mistakes on NT and NV. I admit when I'm wrong for the most part, but sometimes I get cantankerous and double down on the stoopid. It's just so much easier to admit a mistake than have to justify the continuing stupidity.
Good one!
Things here are pretty well back to normal - there have been no new virus cases for a few months save for a couple of imported ones, and being super careful there are still some mask and distancing restrictions in certain places but otherwise everything is back to normal - all stores, restaurants, factories and schools are open and movie thieatres opened a little while ago. So the economy here is up and running. I'm speaking of where I live, in the city-state of Chongqing, which has a population almost as many as all of Canada.
Glad to hear things are good for you Buzz.....
Hope they are for you as well, and all my friends on NT.
Probably at the same time the right stops claiming that progressive are demon spawn out to destroy America.
So the short answer..... not anytime soon Greg.
[deleted]
"lighten up, Francis"
is a movie quote, cause some have been spotted, showing true "Stripes" , that Mr. Ed wasn't actually a Zebra.
Do you not agree with the examples set forth in this seed, or is it agreed, that persons don't wish to admit when they are wrong, and sometimes, even when given ample proof, they still prefer to leave the Tr\uth, quite aloof?
Please ask a moderator to clear you up on how to apply or what is considered a direct or indirect derogatory reference.
While your at it..... can you point out what was derogatory about the sentence? I was talking to you just as I would be talking to one of my neighbors over a beer.
"Don't call me by name. Second request."
If he can't call you by your name, what is he supposed to call you?
So, calling you by your name is a derogatory reference ? "Greg" is offensive, ha ha ha ha ha, maybe change your name ?
I know what name I would call him by, but now, I guess I cannot
Be nice Pat.....
These are trying times..... I know.
Now....now.... Let's leave the man alone, go drink our Maalox with a double-bourbon chaser and get ready to watch the RNC.....
Well Greg, if we're not supposed to call you Greg, what are we supposed to call you?
Shhhhhhhhh!
The member formally known as Greg?
I hope they have enough crayons on hand.
I have a selection of suitable names that I'd be more than happy to share.
Mr. Jones?
What if we threw in a genuflect and a couple of salutes to go with it?
Hey Greg, if you screen name isn't Greg WTF should you be called? I was going to make a list but they would be considered personal attacks. I guess we will have to just call you "an uniformed, unrepentant sheep." I can face social and political realities can you? You seem to ignore the social issues in America today. While excusing an absolute pig for a president. You don't see how his policies will only "make America great" for an extremely limited group ( trump and his cronies). I for one am against cronyism and political leaders who blatantly lie to my face. You seem to be ok with it.
All that while being "Okay" with the deaths of 180,000 Americans from Covid. If [deleted] won't hold Trump accountable for that, why would they hold him accountable for anything else?
It's like bouncing marbles off a sidewalk.....
Here's the implications of Bidenism on a city wide scale:
This is a public letter from Greg Goodman (co President of Portalnd Downtown Development Group) to the Mayor and City Council:
" If you know a retail or office broker, give them a call and ask them how many clients they have are trying to leave. The number is like nothing I have seen in 42 years of doing business in downtown.
Their departure has absolutely nothing to do with Black Life’s Matter movement (which has been a positive) but does have most everything to do with the lawlessness you are endorsing downtown. You are doing an excellent of enabling people who don’t know or care about George Floyd to ransack our city at the expense of the people you are trying to help. Think how many jobs have been lost by people of color in our city, not through protest, but from vandalism. I would make the case that your actions have hurt those you have intended to help.
I would encourage each of you to walk around downtown Portland in the morning. Name the time and I will give you a tour. You aren’t sweeping the streets, needles are all over the place, garbage cans are broken and left open, glass from car windows that have been broken out is all over the streets, parks are strewn with litter (their fountains turned off) weeds are taller than the plants in the planter boxes, graffiti is on sculptures, etc. You are willfully neglecting your duties as elected officials to keep our city safe and clean."
That's true... but love of oneself should include refusing to submit one's mind to another''s domination.
We need an explanation that allows, or even requires, that submission.
If we consider Trumpism as a religious sect (rather than a political movement), then it all becomes clear.
Donald Trump is The Prophet, in a sect. The Prophet Speaks The Word. The Word is Truth. Adepts of the sect prove the depth of their devotion to The Prophet by proclaiming their belief in the Word of The Prophet. The highest proof of their devotion is achieved by denying the evidence of their own eyes, in favor of The Word of the Prophet.
What's important here is that the adept has every reason to deny reality. Within the sect, prestige is not earned with facts and logic. Prestige is earned by repeating The Word of The Prophet. Denying reality increases prestige.
Trump's Cult like following, cannot be denied, irregardless of how many times he has provenly LIED
Religious Blind Following, seems to be an excellent explanation and example.
I see your point.
To add to your point, I'm recalling some Heinlein from my youth where he said being religious is often a form of conceit.
"Our hymns are loaded with arrogance-self-congratulations on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us, what hell everybody else would catch come Judgement Day. The faith in which I was brought up assured me that I was better than other people; because I was saved, they were damned…. That entitled us to look down on outsiders."
I see this being directly applicable to Trump supporters.
I wonder how many of Trumps ultra religious cult like groups will commit group suicide if Trump loses the election?
Or how many of Trumps armed militias will declare war on the American people if he loses like Trump has threatened?
I wonder when Progressives will live in reality? It's not Trump supporters wreaking havoc in American cities and it's not the last Republican Presidential nominee telling Joe Biden to not concede under any circumstances.
The Democrats have refused to accept every election they've lost this century. Fix your own house before you case stones.
It fits very neatly.
Very good analysis, Bob. All you have to do to understand this cult-like worship is to look at Jim Jones, David Koresh, and that fella with the comet obsession. Of their followers, those who didn't awake, all died.
I worry about their reaction to a possible Trump defeat. Violence would not be surprising, either against others or against themselves.
I don't have a solution, Bob. I don't think anyone does. Well, except for voting the Coward in Chief out of office in November
For sure. If America is to survive, Trump - and the whole Republican "service to the ultra-rich" Party - must be crushed at the polls. Not just in 2020, but again and again, until they understand that they must serve all the people.
His base is still the low information, hard core, right wing Republican, who choose to worship a "daddy" figure as an authoritarian leader and refuse to hear anything said against their "daddy". ANYTHING that tries to break into that hard core shell is not going to work, no matter how much he lies or what horrible thing he does. These voters will vote Republican no matter what anyone says, they cannot be saved from themselves. It is literally impossible.
180,000 dead Americans from Covid isn't even enough to make them care about the rest of America.