Allen Frances -- Twilight of American sanity
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The basic points in Frances's argument are: (1) Trump is not crazy;
he is a high functioning individual.  (2) We U.S. citizens and
voters are crazy or dysfunctional for electing him.  (3) There are
several things wrong or broken in the electoral system in the U.S.
that brought about this result; and they will cause results in the
future that will be as bad or worse.

Frances describes some underlying economic and social problems that
enabled Trump's election and that he was able to exploit: (1) Many
families and workers in the U.S. are suffering from job loss and
economic hardship.  Paraphrasing Anthony Scaramucci (on "Real time
with Bill Maher"), many families are now "desperational", whereas
they used to be aspirational.  Formerly they had aspirations and
hopes and expectations that their children would grow up to improve
their economic situation, whereas now they are in despair about
their children's future and their own current situation.  (2)
Economic inequity and stratification in the U.S. is bad and is
getting worse.  Too much of our wealth is owned by too few people.
Access to jobs, wages, education, and other advantages is skewed
heavily in favor of the rich and powerful. (3) Terror and terrorism
and crime are fears that are all too easily exploitable in the U.S.

Frances describes some of the characteristics that he believes too
many Trump voters have: (1) They exhibit an authoritarian
personality: they demand control over others; they too readily
acceed to the control of authority figures; the feel uncomfortable
in ambiguous and loosely structured situations; they demand
clear-cut and simple solutions to problems, even those problems that
are complex.  (2) The have over-confidence in authority figures and
in their own abilities; they have over-confidence in their own
opinions and in the opinions of those whom they trust.  (3) They
exhibit high degrees of misogyny: they do not feel comfortable when
women are in power or when they are in the company of powerful
women.  (4) The claim is that they are often racist, although in the
U.S.  we have plenty of people with racist leanings all over the
political spectrum.  It is all too easy to exploit their racist
attitudes and to direct those negative feelings against members of
non-white individual and groups.  (5) A high percentage of them
exhibit social conservatism and many of them are very highly
socially conservative.  A politician, especially one as cynical as
Trump, can exploit this by promising anything he believes will get
him their votes and some popularity.  (6) Libertarianism --
Republican voters have been trained to have a knee-jerk reaction
against government regulation and interference, even when it
improves the quality of their lives.  (7) A loose attitude toward
the truth.  People will believe what they want to hear.  This is a
likely problem throughout the political spectrum.  (8) Their news
source is Fox News, which is notoriously right-wing.

Trump is not diagnosable in terms of the DSM (Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual).  He is not impaired; he is a high functioning
and successful individual.  He is a miscreant, possibly even a
criminal.  He does not need help and counselling.  He needs to be
stopped.  And, he is not trainable; he cannot be taught or guided to
behave better.

We can't blame Trump, or rather, it does no good to blame Trump.
Doing so has not, does not, and will not change his behavior.  This
is *our* problem.  It's our politics, our electoral system, and is
we citizens who have this problem and who are the problem and who
brought Trump and the politicians who support him to power.  Those
are what we need to change.

Trump is an entertainer.  And, for those who want to be entertained,
he is good at it.  Many who are entertainers and actors, while
they are entertaining or acting, do not worry much about the truth.
Unfortunately, Trump is almost always attempting to entertain and to
put on a show.  So, he *never* worries over-much about the truth.

Trump does *fake* populism: he only promises to return control to
the common man and to citizens.  Since elected, he has done much to
give control of our government to those who are already rich and
powerful, and who we can expect to use their positions in government
to acquire more wealth and power.  That certainly seems to be what
Trump is doing for himself, so why should be expect anything
different from those whom he appoints?

Believing in conspiracy theories is not a sign of insanity.  It may
even indicate a wise tactical or strategic move.  And, it does not
matter whether Trump actually believes some of the outlandish claims
that he spouts.  Those "beliefs" and conspiracy theories have the
same effect either way.  Because he succeeds with the stories and
claims he makes, whether true or false, whether they are bizarre and
conspiratorial or not does not matter much if at all.

Trump is a more or less normal person, an unethical one willing to
to whatever provides gains for him, who uses paranoid styles of
thought and communication to attain his goals.  (Cf. Richard
Hofstadter: "The paranoid style in American politics")

What makes this even worse is that we now live in a system and
environment that amplifies conspiracy theories and delusional
beliefs, in part because they are more entertaining and so many of
us seem to have a need to be entertained so much of the time.

Trump's beliefs in conspiracies and his willingness to believe what
seems, to some of us, to be delusions makes sense, given that he
worked in "reality" TV, where entertainment and the ability to
attract and hold attention is valued over truth.  Many entertainers
do not worry over-much about truth and accuracy.

An un-intimidated, vocal, free press is one of our best defenses
against a world that promotes delusions and conspiracies.  So, it
makes sense that Trump would make war against the press and that he
would, as he has threatened to do, wage war against libel
protections.

It may even be that Trump is having an enjoyable time saying and
"tweeting" things that seem bizarre to most rational people.  Trump
likely enjoys being able to upset liberals and making them
uncontrollably jerk and react and twitch.  Who could believe, he
might feel, that you could do that for so long and still have fun.

All this is happening at a time when there is extreme polarization
between the two political parties in the U.S., and when those
political differences seem to have such dramatic consequences.
Frances claims that most "normal" Republicans today would have fit
comfortably in the extremist John Birch Society of the 1960's.
Given these extreme differences between party positions on important
issues, many Republican voters feel that they have no choice but to
support their party.

Our elections and our political system is heavily stacked against
Democrats and for Republicans.  According to Frances, in spite of
the fact that Democrats have won the popular vote in all but one
Presidential election since 1988, Republicans now have the White
House, have control of both branches of Congress, and have won
two-thirds of state governorships and two-thirds of state
legislatures.  How?  (1) The Electoral College and winner-take-all
state-by-state elections reduce the influence of those in states
where a large majority vote Democratic.  We witnessed this in the
last Presidential election where the popular vote and the Electoral
College decided two different outcomes.  In particular, the
Electoral College gives more weight to voters in low population
states than to those in states with larger populations.  (2) The
apportionment of U.S.  Senators favors those in low population
states, in some cases, dramatically.  Compare Wyoming and
California, for example.  (3) The Electoral College gives more votes
to low population states, which currently skews results toward
Republicans.  (4) Gerrymandering of Congressional voting districts
has made the U.S.  House of Representatives non-representative of
the population as a whole.  The U.S. Senate already favors low
population states; so to also tilt the U.S. House of Representatives
in that direction is egregious.  (5) The influence of big money and
corporate money is very heavy in our elections; and since
Republicans are willing, for the most part, to serve those big money
interests more servilely than Democrats, the influence of big money
in our elections favors Republicans.  There is no way for a
political party in the U.S. to support working class and low income,
or even middle class voters and still win the money competition.
And, any political system where politicians must compete for money
and contributions is going to be a corrupt system.

Politics and psychology are currently a bad mix in our country (the
U.S.).  Trump knows how to use delusions, fears, class antagonisms,
and conspiracy theories to attract crowds and support and votes.  We
need to find ways to defeat that.

Working class and middle class people are actually better served by
Democratic politicians that by Republican ones.  But, Republicans
understand the psychology of working class voters better, and know
how to use and capitalize on that knowledge and are willing to
exploit it.

After all the complaining about President Trump one might think that
impeachment would provide a solution.  It won't.  A President Mike
Pence might seem more acceptable, but he would likely actually be
more effective a implementing an extreme right-wing agenda and
enacting and implementing it.  Much more of the answer lies in us,
and in our ability to fix how we select national leaders and
politicians.

Much of the book is concerned with the delusions, illusions,
ignorance, and bad decisions of the U.S. voting public.  Frances has
interesting things to say about why we are that way.  Some of those
reasons have to do with the kinds of errors and biases that have
been described by Daniel Kahneman in his book "Thinking, Fast and
Slow".

Frances explains many of these issues, and more, clearly in
"Twilight of American sanity".

03/01/2018

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