Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths- And How We Can Stop!
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Republican moderates, Democratic moderates, and most Independents.
This is typically the largest group of voters and it decides most elections.
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Moderates generally are not the energized party bases. In many ways they
are comfortable with the “establishment” and don’t like a lot of intense polit-
ical conflict. In this election, Moderates went in four directions, some into
each of the four split groups.
In my analysis the Moderate candidate in this fundamentally two- party
system was Hillary Clinton in 2016. The majority of the country voted for
her by almost 3 million votes more than Trump. They remained Moderate.
Double Negatives
Double Negatives is the term given by the Identity Crisis researchers to those
voters who had equally unfavorable views of both Clinton and Trump. I
believe that this is because of the effect of Trump’s intense emotional split-
ting or dividing of groups as he attacked Clinton and other targets in almost
every one of his public announcements or Twitter commentaries.
The effect of emotional splitting is that it triggers an equally distaste-
ful feeling about both people, even though one (the HCP) is usually acting
extremely badly while the other (the Target of Blame) is being fairly normal
or simply defending himself or herself. The result of repeatedly hearing very
bad things about a normal person from a very badly behaving HCP is that
both are perceived as equally very bad. I’ve seen this over and over again,
in high- conflict divorcing families, workplace conflicts, and legal disputes.
People turn away from both the HCP and their Target of Blame.
By consistently attacking Clinton about having a private email server
when she was Secretary of State (a potentially illegal set- up because of the
risk of releasing government secrets, but this didn’t happen, and she was
cleared), Trump was able to make her seem involved in a scandal and dis-
honest. This turned out to be a fantasy crisis. Ironically, she was unable to
pin any one scandal on him, because there were so many and she didn’t
effectively focus on one the way he did.
In an early October YouGov poll, almost 80 percent of respondents said
that they had “heard a lot” about the Clinton email story—more than any
other story about Clinton or Trump. (For example, only 51% said they
had heard a lot about Trump’s calling Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy.”). . .
Meanwhile, no single idea or theme dominated perceptions of Trump.234
In this election, more double- negative voters were Republican: 45 per-
cent to 35 percent Democrat. “Trump did better among those with unfavor-
able views of both candidates. They appeared to be holding their nose and
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voting their partisanship. ”235 Those double- negative Moderate Republicans
voted with the Loyalists. Most of the double- negative Moderate Democrats
stayed put and voted for Clinton. But some voted against both and went
with the Resisters by voting for third- party candidates, and some went with
the Dropouts and did not vote at all.
Independent Voters
Independent voters are a growing part of the electorate and generally are
Moderates. However, 75 percent of these voters lean toward one party or
the other, while the remaining 25 percent are likely to drop out and not vote
at all.236 If they mostly vote with their parties, then why do they register as
Independents? Surveys and interviews have shown that they basically “don’t
like political parties,” “are tired of the fighting between both the Republican
and Democratic political parties,” and “ . . . think that there is a need for bal-
ance and compromise, and so . . . [they are] independent[s]. ”237
In my view, they essentially don’t like the fighting and therefore fit my cat-
egory of emotionally- mild Moderates. In 2016, 68 percent of Independents
who lean Republican voted for Trump, and 65 percent of Independents who
lean Democratic voted for Clinton. But as pollsters have noticed, “The char-
acteristic anger and vitriol of partisan politics are turning them away from
party membership. . . . In the wake of the 2016 election, we see mounting evi-
dence of this connection between political dissatisfaction and independent
identification. ”238
RESISTERS
Resisters can be the riled- up opponents of an HCP politician and they can
be on the left or on the right, and sometimes both. But they also often attack
the Moderates, which helps allow the HCP to be elected. In the case of
Hitler, they were the Communists who often fought against the Social Dem-
ocrats (the Moderate establishment), which weakened the Social Democrats
and helped them lose power. In the case of Stalin’s drive for collectivization
in the Soviet Union, they were the small capitalist farmers who hid grain and
equipment and mostly operated in the shadows. In Putin’s Russia, they were
the street protesters and others opposed to his policies. Every HCP inspires
a resistance because of their extreme positions and extreme emotions.
In the 2016 election, Bernie Sanders represented the Resisters fight-
ing against the Democratic establishment by running in the Democratic
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primaries against Hillary Clinton. However, he insisted that he remained an
Independent. “Throughout the campaign, Sanders touted his independence,
vowed to take on the political establishment, and railed against the Demo-
cratic National Committee. ”239
Clinton criticized Sanders for focusing on a few issues (free higher edu-
cation, healthcare for all, and attacking big banks) with simplistic answers,
while she had position papers and knowledge on just about every possible
issue that could be raised.
On the other hand, Sanders’ criticisms of Clinton and the Democratic
Party were emotionally engaging to many of his followers. She became a
Target of Blame for Sanders in an emotional way that mirrored Trump’s
attacks on her, although during most of the campaign Sanders and Clinton
remained friendly.
However, late in the primaries, the release of emails hacked from the
Democratic Party office revealed behind- the- scenes manipulations that
added to the Resisters’ anger at the establishment. As the primary campaign
intensified, Sanders’ followers’ once generally favorable opinions of Clinton
deteriorated significantly.
By the general election, after Sanders swung his support to Clinton, only
79 percent of his supporters voted for her, an estimated 12 percent voted
for Trump, and the remainder continued resisting and voted for small third
parties, or dropped out and didn’t vote at all.240
With Sanders’ more emotional relationship with his followers and his
focus on simple, us- against- them anti- establishme
nt messages, one wonders
whether he might have been able to actually win the general election if he
had been the Democratic candidate rather than Clinton. Sanders seemed to
demonstrate the importance of an emotional bond with his followers, but
without the emotional hostility toward Targets of Blame that Trump displayed.
DROPOUTS
In this election, the largest group of potential voters were the Dropouts at
39 percent. Dropouts have many reasons (or excuses) for not voting. I have
often heard from those who believe there’s no real difference between the
parties or the candidates, or they are really busy, or they can’t really get away
from work on election day (even when they’re self- employed).
One of the more recent reasons may be new “voter suppression” laws
in several states that limit hours and locations and require limited forms of
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identification for voting. However, although such laws appear targeted at
minority populations, such as African- Americans and Native Americans,
these new laws do not appear to have changed the historical trend away from
voting.
However, African- Americans did vote less in 2016 for the first time in
twenty years, even in states that had no changes in voter laws. Millennials
and Generation X (18- to 35-year- olds) turned out more voters in 2016
than 2012, but still slightly less than 50 percent. 241
A Fantasy Crisis Triad Overreach?
To help his party win the midterm congressional election in November
2018, Trump aggressively pursued the idea that a caravan of barefoot refu-
gees from Central America was an “invasion of our country.” He made the
unfounded claim that it included “Middle Easterners” who were likely ter-
rorists. So he ordered the Army to defend the border.242
More than 5,000 active- duty military troops will deploy to the southern
border by the end of this week, Defense Department officials said on
Monday. . . . But the caravan, which has shrunk from 7,000 people to less
than 3,500, is still weeks away from reaching the United States. 243
It is not insignificant that immediately after the election, Trump stopped
talking about this threat.
“Now that the political utility of troops on the southern border to face a
fictitious caravan invasion threat is over,” said Adm. James G. Stavridis, a
former commander of the military’s Southern Command, “let’s hope the
president will stand down the troops so they can be with their families—
especially over the holidays. ”244
It seemed that this fantasy crisis became obvious to a significant portion
of the country, with the “fictitious caravan invasion” being openly discussed
in major media outlets. In addition, the issue of immigration appears to be
shifting all together in the eyes of the public, as revealed in November 2018.
On Election Day, a stunning 54 percent of those who voted said immi-
grants “strengthen our country.” Mr. Trump’s party lost the national pop-
ular vote by seven points, but he lost the debate over whether immigrants
are a strength or a burden by 20 points. Mr. Trump got more than half of
Republicans to believe immigrants were a burden, but three quarters of
Democrats and a large majority of independents concluded that America
gains from immigration.245
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When reality sets in enough, an HCP’s fantasy crises seem to lose their
power. But of course, with the use of high- emotion media, they often can
keep covering up reality with more Fantasy Crisis Triads.
High- Emotion Media
When Trump campaigned for office, his way of speaking was far more emo-
tional than all the other candidates, Democrat or Republican. This caught
the attention of the Director of Content at dictionary.com, who said this about the words the presidential candidates were using during 2016:
“Bernie [Sanders] and Hillary [Clinton] tend to use concrete language,”
she explained, “whereas the Republican contenders—with the possible
exception of Kasich—tend to use descriptive language. I think that’s partly
why Trump’s speech is so resonant with his supporters: he’s speaking to
them on an emotional plane. ”246
This fits very well with the theory of this book—that potentially high-
conflict politicians use language that goes under everyone’s radar and emo-
tionally triggers them. Logically, none of these fantasy crises make any sense.
But they make sense to narcissists, sociopaths, and high- conflict personalities
who want to identify as many people as possible as villains so that voters view
them as heroes by comparison. All of this works only on the emotional plane.
Trump also used emotional repetition in the names he chose to call
people. He openly laughed and said he was adding a name to each of his
opponents, just as Newt Gingrich taught Republican congressional candi-
dates in the 1990s (see Chapter 4).
What he didn’t say openly (and may or may not have even realized him-
self) was that he was tagging them with an emotional label. Our brains can’t
resist absorbing such labels, even without conscious processing. This is
an extremely simple and emotional way to promote sales that advertisers
learned decades ago but that most politicians are unwilling to use.
Also, these emotions triggered each voting group’s own type of emo-
tional responses; for instance, Loyalists might have felt joy, Resisters anger,
Moderates fear and frustration, and Dropouts helplessness and/or avoid-
ance. This further created division among all of these groups. “How can they
(Loyalists, Resisters, Moderates, Dropouts) be so (stupid, overreactive, pow-
erless, indifferent)?”
Furthermore, this emotional repetition was in isolation for many of
Trump’s followers who only got their news from Trump- favorable sources,
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such as Fox News. One analysis of Trump’s electoral success clearly con-
cluded that those who got their news from television and not from news-
paper subscriptions were more susceptible to his emotional, but false,
messages.
The findings cover more than 1,000 mainstream news publications in
more than 2,900 counties out of 3,100 nationwide from every state except
Alaska, which does not hold elections at the county level.
The results show a clear correlation between low subscription rates and
Trump’s success in the 2016 election, both against Hillary Clinton and
when compared to Romney in 2012. Those links were statistically signif-
icant even when accounting for other factors that likely influenced voter
choices, such as college education and employment, suggesting that the
decline of local media sources by itself may have played a role in the elec-
tion results. POLITICO’s analysis suggests that Trump did, indeed, do
worse ov
erall in places where independent media could check his claims.247
Trump also directly attacked the media from the start of his campaign
and trained his followers to do so too. At his rallies, he placed the media
in a compact area where he could point at reporters and have the crowd
jeer them. In this manner, he was able to cast doubt on their reporting, and
he quickly adopted the phrase “fake news” when others reported accurately
about him.
Rather than attempt to put news media out of business, as we have seen
that other Wannabe Kings have done in other countries, Trump found great
success in constantly criticizing them. Social media was also an important
key to his success, but it was not necessarily the biggest factor. By using
Twitter, Trump was able to communicate directly with his followers, but
having his tweets emotionally repeated on cable and network television was
far more important.
It’s also clear—as the economists Levi Boxell, Matthew Gentzkow and
Jesse Shapiro wrote in these pages last year—that among older white
Americans, the core demographic where first the primaries and then the
general election were decided, television still far outstrips the internet as
the most important source of news. And indeed, the three economists
noted, for all the talk about Breitbart’s influence and Russian meddling
and dark web advertising, Trump only improved on Mitt Romney’s show-
ing among Americans who don’t use the internet, and he “actually lost
support among internet- using voters.” In a sense, you could argue, all
those tweets mattered mainly because they kept being quoted on TV.248
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To put the power of the high- emotion media into perspective, the elec-
tion researchers just mentioned reached three conclusions that really stood
out to me:
1. The 2016 election was not really about economic anger or change.
People were doing economically better than during the prior eight
years when they elected an African- American president two times.
The state of the economy helped Clinton win a majority of the
national vote.
2. It really was about personality—the personality of the candidate and