The newspapers, and any number of writers, do a good job spelling all this out.
I have this frustrated feeling that doing this misses the point that is driving the dynamic. One of the good things that Paxton emphasizes about what drives fascist movements from the ground up is the determined rejection of thought in favor of feeling. Hannah Arendt goes on at length to get the same thing across. I envision it (with some discomfort about misfits of the metaphor) as being like a social counterpart to berserking, or (even less apt) elephants going into musth. It’s not even “rage” per se, but something about as destructive, only chosen. I see the various repubs that make communities with the dems, and speak as if they hope this will “accomplish” some “change”. For the Bannon-followers, I feel like I know exactly what this looks like. It is the various subcategories of hated ones self-identifying, and sewing on their sleeves a marker of “establishment characters”. Bannon preaches to the mob: “You see; they’re scared! We have them on the run. If you’ll just push a little harder we can corner them, and we’ll give them the beating of their lives. Imagine how powerful you will feel. They’ll want you to stop, and they won’t be faking it, but they won’t be able to make you stop. Won’t that be the best feeling you ever had? You’ll be able to feel, finally, that you actually exist.” (Bannon doesn’t put in the final line; I put that in.) I guess I don’t want to argue against the things people are trying to do (Michael Luttig, various Cheneys, and whoever). The voting block that can cause the calamity is certainly a coalition of non-identical groups. If we think there are categories of Spontaneous Racists and Stimulated Racists (to borrow a term from spectroscopy), the part of the voting bloc that is made up of the spontaneous ones may not be all that large; maybe 20%? Not as large as the evangelicals (35–40%?, with some overlap). There presumably are some genuinely out-to-lunch types, and maybe one can imagine that talking has some place with them, which could be enough to move the margin of this winner-take-all event we are stuck with. And then the ones that can think enough to be strategically greedy or hoarding, but not circumspect enough to have every cared or understood how the society they suck from actually functions. _Maybe_ talking could have some effect with them. I have thought, too, since some NYT article by a guy from Bucks county PA going home, and thinking that the trump voters actively wanted “the trump vibe; the meanness, bullying and name-calling, etc.” that this is an expression of a certain component of nihilism. Whoever wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now was very good. Kurtz’s line in one of the soliloquays: “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be completely free? Free from the judgments of others; even of yourself?” There is a core of nihilism in that freedom. What would it feel like to go punch somebody for no particular reason, except that I felt like it? Burn whatever some people mean by “the bonds of human affection” that “include us in humanity”. Yes, I sort of understand (and this probably is important) that whoever I hit will now know he has to fear me, and he may even dislike or hate me, and it may be irreversible. But if he can’t do anything to me, why do I care? In fact, if he wants to and still can’t, even better: that will give me that experience of power that I imagine must be so nice to feel, but that if it is, I certainly don’t feel now. It’s not as simple a category as all that, because they are willing to do this only if they believe they are members in the mob. Whether that’s community or just a release from the requirements of either responsibility or courage I can’t say. But I do think that, in the U.S., a crucial conversion that Arendt articulates, from a mere mass into a mob, has now been achieved, and the mob is awake and self-aware as a mob. It took a sociopath to go charging out across the minefield that normal people are too chicken to venture into, to show how far out the actual shooting-boundary is, beyond where they had drawn back before. But now that the boundary has been identified, that’s public information, and the others don’t need to be sociopaths to use it. It changes the problem, because there are a lot more of them than of the true sociopaths. I agree, we would like to first get through the next week without an acute disaster. But the system organization has passed through a re-arrangement by now. I would like to know what a program looks like to reverse that, without having to go through the whole Hodgkin-Huxley circuit of the society’s destroying itself before there is enough exhaustion to try for a reset. Since, under the conditions that are likely by that time, it’s not clear what kind of “reset” might even be available. Eric > On Oct 31, 2024, at 4:59 AM, Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com> wrote: > > To help prevent such a disaster, let's do our best to help people imagine > what the world would look like if Trump wins. > > For example, Trump has said that one of his priorities would be to throw off > the occupying army of invading immigrants and criminals. Ask people to think > about how this occupying force is currently ruining people's lives. I suspect > that very few people have any experience of such a noxious invading force. > Most people find their lives relatively peaceful. But if Trump begins to > implement his plan to throw off this occupying force, the streets would be > full of armed deportation agents chasing down the evil occupying forces. > Gunfights would erupt between the deportation agents and immigrants running > for their lives. Many of us would be caught in the crossfire--or holed up at > home trying to avoid the bullets. Ask people to imagine such a world and to > compare it to the relatively peaceful world we now occupy. Ask them if that > is really what we want and if that is what we will be voting for next Tuesday. > > -- Russ Abbott > Professor Emeritus, Computer Science > California State University, Los Angeles > > > On Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 11:48 PM Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net> wrote: > Here in Europe most people are indeed worried that the candidate who is a > convicted felon and wears orange makeup will become president again. Have his > fans all forgotten he mainly played golf, praised dictators and created tax > cuts for the superrich? But there is also a bit of hope that a woman will > stop him this time. > > A hundred years ago there was already a group in America that hated Blacks > and immigrants. As Timothy Egan writes in his book "A Fever in the Heartland: > The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them" > one of the Ku Klux Klan leaders was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. > Stephenson. He was eventually brought down by a woman, Madge Oberholtzer, who > would reveal his cruelties, and whose testimony stopped the Klan. When Europe > fell into darkness, America was able to stop the con man. I hope it can do it > again. > https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558306/a-fever-in-the-heartland-by-timothy-egan/ > > -J. > > > -------- Original message -------- > From: Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com> > Date: 10/30/24 10:54 PM (GMT+01:00) > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Evolutionary transitions between egalitarian and > despotic societies > > Hi, Jochen, > > Not sarcastic. It was to show the exploratory nature of such models. I do > believe that the most mysterious feature of charisma is the behavior of the > charasmees. However this election turns out, almost half the country is > about to willingly offer up it's political autonomy to a potential dictator. > Whatever my faults, I try, try, TRY not to do sarcasm. I do wonder if we > could build models that explore under what circumstances it is better for > everybody to do SOMETHING then to take the time to pool information and do > the right thing. > > In general evolutionary history has no actual power to constrain our present > behavior. Our behavior is constrainted by present events and present > behavioral repertoire. > > Nick > > On Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 2:37 PM Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net> wrote: > In her book "The Social Instinct" Nichola Raihani mentions in chapter 17 the > article "An evolutionary model explaining the Neolithic transition from > egalitarianism to leadership and despotism" from Simon T. Powers as a model > how despotic regimes and dominance hierarchies have evolved in early human > societies. > https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2014.1349 > > It reminds me of our recent discussion triggered by Nick's (sarcastic?) > proposal to explain parts of the MAGA movement in terms of evolutionary > psychology. Simon T. Powers is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the > University of Sterling > https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/2013555 > > A more recent article from him about "Modelling transitions between > egalitarian, dynamic leader and absolutist power structures" can be found here > https://www.stir.ac.uk/research/hub/publication/2041639 > > -J. > > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > > > -- > Nicholas S. 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