Saturday, June 17, 2017

Trump Supporters, Narrative Dysphoria, and destroying the Enemy. A demonstration of how Trump suppoters experience cognitive dissonance and believe that harming Democrats is the solution to all societal ills.

Authors Note: The following article presumes a working understanding of the Narrativist Framework on the part of the reader. If you are new to this material then the relevant concepts from the Narrativist Framework have been linked the first time they appear in the article.



So I came across an interesting article that is a fascinating example of someone who is a mid-compaction (neither particularly high but certainly not really low) Narrativist trying to process all the Narrative dysphoria they are experiencing as a result of Donald Trump/Republicans slowly outing themselves as hollow conmen. The GOP Congress Better Get It's Act Together, Or It's Sunk. The entire article is for the most part a badly formatted polemic blaming the Republican Party for the Narrative dysphoria the author is experiencing, and further threatening a massive retaliatory compaction cycle. I decided to examine some portions of this article in depth with an eye towards both illustrating Narrative dysphoria as well as the authors unusually frank admittance of a concept I call "Victory by Destruction of the Enemy" when he flatly declares that his expectation is for the GOP to do only things that hurt Democrats because hurting Democrats is both what they were elected to do as well as the key to success.

First off let us start out with the opening paragraphs of this article because even as badly written as this article is the opening at least does a good job of setting the tone.


Kurt Schlichter posted:

“Everything’s fine,” smiled Captain Paul Ryan smarmily as he steered the Titanic into an iceberg. “Now, let me get back to shafting our own voting base via my incomprehensible determination to cancel the tax deductions that Republicans use instead of cutting handouts to Democrat-voting freeloaders!”

We are sailing toward disaster in 2018 and no one seems to want to acknowledge it. Let’s look at the facts and evidence.

Data Point One: We scraped by in a couple of House special elections so far, including Punchy McSlugahack’s in Montana, but that Daily Kos reader-funded-12-year old non-resident Democrat dork is going to beat the charisma-free Republican in the Georgia 6 race next week. Our enemy is motivated and smells blood.

Data Point Two: Because she is a droning non-performer, Theresa May took a 24 point advantage and turned it into a loss in Britain.

Data Point Three: Our GOP Republican legislators are droning non-performers who have a 10 point disadvantage going into 2018.



The theme underlying these opening paragraphs is that the author is experiencing quite a bit of Narrative dysphoria because of the contradictions between what her Inner narrative is telling her should be happening now that Trump is in power and the reality of what is happening now that Trump is in power. In fact in just 8 sentences this author references seven separate sources of Narrative dysphoria that are obviously causing her stress. (In point of fact the opening of this article is barely more than a list of sources of Narrative dysphoria with barely any attempt to relate them to each other.) Let us take a moment to briefly examine each of these sources.

  • “Now, let me get back to shafting our own voting base via my incomprehensible determination to cancel the tax deductions that Republicans use instead of cutting handouts to Democrat-voting freeloaders!”: Paul Ryan's actions will hurt Republicans and Democrats and that puzzles this Narrativist. Narrativists can only conceptualize improving society by harming their Enemy (a theme this author shall return to later in this article) so the fact that Ryan's actions will harm both Democrats and Republicans disagrees with the expectations generated by the Inner narrative, thus Narrative dysphoria is experienced.
  • ["i]We scraped by in a couple of House special elections so far[/i]": Now that the country has risen up and elected the champion of the people the GOP should be crushing every single election.
  • " including Punchy McSlugahack’s in Montana": Behaving like a brazen thug and being rewarded for it is something that this Narrativist is certain only the Enemy would do. Seeing it come from his own side (which is supposed to be made up only of pure-hearted "good guys") is clearly disconcerting.
  • "but that Daily Kos reader-funded-12-year old non-resident Democrat dork is going to beat the charisma-free Republican in the Georgia 6 race next week.": Weak intellectuals are not supposed to defeat manly/heroic good guys, even if they are "charisma free".
  • " Because she is a droning non-performer, Theresa May took a 24 point advantage and turned it into a loss in Britain.": Narrativists will almost instinctively flock to and support Narrativist leaders no matter where in the world those leaders are or what group they represent- see for example the rights strange love affair with Vladimir Putin. (Putin knows how to appeal to Narrativists) Seeing even a foreign leader who is associated with Narrativism take such an unexpected defeat is a source of Narrative dysphoria in this case.
  • "Our GOP Republican legislators are droning non-performers who have a 10 point disadvantage going into 2018.": Now that Trump has won and the GOP controls all three branches we should be being ushered into a glowing Conservative utopia. (As seen on the documentary Leave it to Beaver.) Instead deadlock has continued and little has changed despite all the power in the hands of the Republican party at the oment.


From here on out the article is more or less just pure lashing out at Narrative dysphoria. None of these bits are particularly worth diving deeply into (although you can see other portions of the Narrativist Framework at play here there are better examples to use to illustrate them) so I will simply quote a couple examples.


[Bracketed comments are mine.]

Kurt Schlichter posted:

“But stuff is getting done!” the GOP leadership insists, which might be true but is definitely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if “stuff is getting done” if your voters don’t know it and support you. Now, when Paul Ryan talks directly to us on Hugh Hewitt's show or elsewhere, he actually makes sense. He explains his strategy, so we can sigh “Oh, there’s a reason for all this and a coherent plan. Phew.” But then Ryan says something unbelievably stupid along the lines of, “As Speaker, my job is to pass legislation, not to go out and sell our agenda to voters.” No, that’s a steaming pile of Harry Reid.

....


Stop failing. Start doing what we sent you to do and letting us in on the plan. Let us see you are intent on winning and you’ll start to rebuild the confidence your incompetence has shattered.


....


You must get the President’s agenda passed, but, at the same time, you must keep us in the loop. See, we don’t trust you. You haven’t earned our trust. We know you hate the idea that we are going to hold you accountable for what you do and fail to do and you don’t like it. Too bad. Because now we’re watching, so you better communicate with us to explain what we see and why it’s not surrender or failure. As the hep kidz say, we’re woke. [Note the threatened compaction cycle here.]


....


So stop wasting time and effort cavorting with the Democrats about their fake Trump/Russia obsession. Those crusty senators with their “We must uncover the truth about these questions” nonsense need to stop. We all know the truth. It’s all a liberal lie.

Cut our taxes, like the GOP promised.

Rebuild our military, like the GOP promised.

Fix infrastructure (wisely), like the GOP promised.

Build a wall, like the GOP promised. [The wall with Mexico is a physical manifestation of the Bypass of Perfect Safety which is why Narrativists cling to it so much.]

Kill Obamacare, like the GOP promised.


....


The Democrats are out there recruiting military vets – there’s one jerky liberal everyone finds annoying in every big unit, and that’s who they pick. They’ll preen and pose and get elected and then salute General Pelosi and vote as ordered on every item of Democrat soldier-shafting liberal hackery. That’s the threat – are you ready for it? You need to spend some time and effort on candidate selection and grooming; you need to make sure that in every district our money is on a winner. Are you doing that? Who is doing that? Why do none of us know about how you are doing that?


Finally we come to the end of the article and probably the best demonstration of the Narrativism benchmark of "Victory by Destruction of the Enemy" that I have yet found. I will first quote the relevant portion of the Narrativist Framework and then quote the article's much more succinct summation of my ideas.

Narrativist Framework posted:


Victory by Destruction of the Enemy: All Narrativist models for changing society involve destruction of an identified "other", and nothing else. "If we just got rid of X, everything would be fine." When I was a conspiracy theorist, I believed that simply eliminating the globalists and getting out of humanity's way would basically fix everything. When I was a David Icke-loving UFO nut, merely destroying the Reptilians and their agents would have resulted in humanity raising its vibration to a heavenly level and fix everything. When I was a fundamentalist, I believed that converting (or destroying) all the unbelievers would fix every problem on Earth. Objectivists believe that getting rid of all regulations would result in the emergence of a new golden age of prosperity for all. For racists, crime and social ills would disappear if we just stopped coddling blacks or illegal immigrants (or killed them all).

No thought is given to actual policy or the reality of a given situation. Much like all Narrativist battle plans boil down to "fight big, fight hard", all Narrativist strategies for fixing society's ills boil down to "destroy the other". Nothing is planned beyond that. There is no "what do we do when we win?" because that question is pointless. If they win, they have already won, you see? They believe that the simple non-existence of whoever or whatever they chose as their enemy would result in a natural order emerging or reasserting itself and harmony would ensue.

In short, the one weird trick that will give them everything they want is always "destroy the enemy". And the way to destroy the enemy is always in a big battle.

(Italics in original)

Kurt Schlichter posted:

And we need to stop jamming our own voters in the name of some arbitrary, D.C. think tank g-generated conception of good policy. Good policy is what wins. How about not imposing anything upon us that hurts the GOP base? You see, you're there to represent Republicans. Some goofs and wusscons have the idea that you're there to represent all voters, but that's nonsense.

You are there to represent the people who voted for you, not the liberal whiners and welfare cheats who didn't and who hate you and us. So we're not going to close off deductions that help Republicans and we're not going to increase taxes on Republicans and we're not gonna do other things that hurt Republicans. We're going to hurt Democrats.

That's called politics. Try it. It’s amazingly effective.

If you do, we win. If the economy is cranking in November 2018 and health insurance premiums are under control – and they will be if you keep your promises – then you’re fine. Otherwise, you’re gone.

As demonstrated above this Narrativist can only conceive of advancing his agenda by harming those he deems to have lost a struggle against his side. There is no "Do good things for Republicans" step in the above, rather the above author is operating from the logic of "If the Democrats are harmed then Republicans are helped by default and if we harm the Democrats enough then the economy will boom. There isn't any thought given to how harming Democrats will help Republicans, it is simply accepted as a patently obvious truth that Republicans/society benefits when Democrats are harmed. Note how there isn't any thought given to how to harm Democrats, it is simply accepted that if they are harmed then it is good for Republicans.

Or to put it another way the above quotation is just a really angry way of saying "Lottery in June, Corn be heavy soon." (Assuming of course that only a particular group of people were drawing folded pieces of paper out of hat.)

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