People are too scared about the present to worry about what might happen in the future.

We are in the middle of a global pandemic.  As of this morning, 4.3 million Americans have Covid-19 and 149,774 Americans have died from Covid-19.  

People are afraid.  And they are very unhappy that Trump and his tribe have decided to ignore reality.  According to the latest polling average from FiveThirtyEight, Trump's disapproval rate is currently 55.8%, with some polls showing it as high as 61%. 

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

More notably, only 32% of Americans, a new low, support his strategy for handling Covid-19.  (Bice, 2020)

What strategy?  The only strategy I see is more lies and distractions.  Same song, different verse.

While the rest of us worry about the present, Trump is trying to scare us with his version of the future by running a silly over-the-top commercial about cities without police.  

Since 70% of us live in the present this strategy is doomed to fail. 

But interestingly it may also change minds - in the opposite direction from what Trump is hoping for.  That's because research shows that one of the few ways to persuade someone to change their mind is to present them with absurd claims about their current beliefs.  Apparently it makes people question whether those beliefs were valid to begin with.  (Ariely, 2017)

Bice, A. (2020, July 26)  Poll: Support for Trump’s handling of coronavirus pandemic hits new low.  politico.com.  Retrieved July 27, 2020, from  https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/26/support-for-trumps-coronavirus-strategy-dips-381509

Ariely, D. (2017, November 9)  Dan Ariely on How to Soften Extreme Views.  wsj.com.  Retrieved July 27, 2020, from  https://www.wsj.com/articles/dan-ariely-on-how-to-soften-extreme-views-1510249012

All rich people care about is one-upping their friends.

H.L. Mencken once defined wealth as "any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband."

We call this positional concerns. 

The need to belong to the tribe is an anthropological imperative.  To put it simply, those that belonged to a tribe stood a better chance of surviving.  Even more so if they had a particular talent that pushed them to the top of the tribal hierarchy.

This hasn't changed.

So when rich people tell you that if you raise taxes for the rich they won't work as hard, they are lying.  Because taxes are irrelevant to their motivation.  They will still want to one up their friends to prove how superior they are.

And they won't be moving from NYC to Newark anytime soon.

#MakeBillionairesPay

If your friends don't wear masks, you won't either.

We all belong to a variety of tribes that influence our behavior. The closer the association we have with the tribe, the more likely we are to follow their cues.  

A study published in The American Journal of Health, found that if your friends are overweight, so are you.  That's because we change our habits to mirror those of our friends, even if we are unaware that we are doing it. (Junge, 2011) 

Remember the last time you went to dinner with friends?  Did someone order a drink?  If they did, did everyone else?  What about dessert?

 

Research also tells us that 60% of us care deeply about belonging to the tribe and that people like others who are similar to themselves.

So not wearing a mask becomes a way to affiliate with the group regardless of potential consequences.

How sad is that?

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Junge, C. (2011, May 24)  How your friends make you fat - the social network of weight.  harvard.edu.  Retrieved March 3, 2020, from  https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-your-friends-make-you-fat%E2%80%94the-social-network-of-weight-201105242666

Trump's scary word du jour? Fascism.

If there is one thing that Trump understands, it's that words matter.  So it's no coincidence that he is currently flailing about trying to find all the best words ;-) to push when his approval rating has dropped to 38%. (Lardieri, 2020)

In the fall of 2019 that word was socialism.  At the time I blogged about the fact that many people had no idea what the word actually meant, but were against it.  Even then it was obvious that we were dealing with a generational divide as 70% of Millennials and 64% of Gen Z said they would support a socialist candidate.  You can check out the comments from my Gen Z students here...

http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2019/10/what-is-socialism.html

Now that we are in a global pandemic, healthcare for all is suddenly seeming like a very good idea and crying out against socialism is a very bad strategy.  So Trump needs a new scary word.

On July 3rd, he tried out "new far-left fascism."  Unfortunately that doesn't make any sense at all.   Fascism is by definition a right wing movement.  Just ask Wikipedia who defines it as "a form of far-right authoritarian ultranationalism  characterized by dictorial power, and forcible suppression of opposition..." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism.  

Hmm.  Authoritarian, ultranationalism, dictorial power, and forcible suppression of the opposition.  Who do we know who personifies all these things?  It sure sounds like Trump is describing his own actions, not the opposition's.   So will people realize that?   

Or will they just be afraid of a word that they can't be bothered to look up in a dictionary?

Lardieri, A. (2020, July 6)  Trump’s Approval Drops as Partisan Divide Hits All-Time High, Poll Finds.  usnews.com.  Retrieved July 7, 2020, from https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-07-06/trumps-approval-drops-as-partisan-divide-hits-all-time-high-poll-finds