Donald Trump, his “Base,” and the Dunning-Kruger Effect
I recently wrote about the “Trial of the Century” that we are now entering. It is a trial of Hate versus Conscience. Many who read the article got caught up by the accompanying photo, one of the defendants’ box at the Nuremberg Trials. That, too, was another “Trial of the Century,” and just as in the one we face now it addresses the power of hate to snuff out at least deny conscience. But the point of my article was not to replay the script from 1946 but to note how different Hate and Conscience actually are, and how they are now manifesting all around us. One point I’d like to restate here is that, simply put, Hate cannot readily identify with, let alone deal with, Conscience. Conscience, on the other hand, can all-too-easily identify Hate, and can deal with it when moral outrage is provoked. That, you see, is a fundamental difference between them, and why, when perpetrators of Hate rise en masse to oppress others, it is typically the responses of many individuals whose bonds to one another are not formed out of some other form of hate but rather out of their individual consciences which will defeat that Hate’s oppression.
There is, however, another aspect to the current Trumpian dystopia that requires greater—and I’d say constant—examination and reexamination. This has to do with the ties that Trump has to his so-called “base,” and the adoration that the people in that “base” have to their Fürher. First, however, I think it is also worth remembering—and repeating from time to time—that Richard Nixon’s approval rating was somewhere around 27% on the day he boarded that helicopter, resigning the presidency and retiring to ignominy. That is to say that there is always a percentage of the population of any country that is liable to make decisions that to most of us seem to have been made without any reliance on reason or conscience. (As a former county jail chaplain I can tell you that one thing that pervades all places like the jails is that they are all monuments to lives filled with bad decisions.) Today, we are experiencing that American society as a whole is becoming more polarized, not only politically but along lines of hate and conscience. We are witnessing the marches and oppression by hate groups confronted by the seemingly nearly-spontaneous protests fueled by the moral outrage of thousands of individuals for whom such forms of oppression remain anathema. (I say that they seem nearly spontaneous based on how I have participated in efforts to gather non-violent people to action. It’s usually more difficult than it would appear.) People of conscience often understand what they are witnessing and they also understand that each one of them, in turn, must respond personally, even it will just be by voting their conscience. But understanding what actually motivates some of the “haters” who are not necessarily complete sociopaths is more difficult, but perhaps still useful.
The first part is to go back to something that has been reported for approximately two decades, the Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE). Good explanations of it on the internet are easy to find, as are articles such as this one describing Donald Trump as perhaps the most notable poster child for the DKE in recent memory. In short, people who lack something called “cognitive reflection” are more likely to see themselves are smarter or better or quicker or whatever than others who actually are better at analytic thinking. Donald Trump has spent countless hours in front of microphones and cameras assuring the world that he is the “master of the art of the deal,” or that he is “wicked smart,” or that he possesses a “world-class memory.” And despite all evidence to the contrary, his “base” believes Trump to be what he says he is. An article in Bloomberg from a little over a year ago picked up on the DKE and the Trumpian “self-fantasy disability,” noting its dangers. In other words, the farther one is to the low-cognitive-reflection end of the DKE spectrum, the more likely one is to believe that they are “top tier” in everything they do, ignoring or dismissing shortcomings or inabilities as “fake news.” The opposite goes for those who rely upon reflective thinking in their lives. Trump calls them, inappropriately, “elites.” They tend to undervalue their abilities and successes. It’s not humility, it’s an outgrowth of one’s ability to critically reflect on their own abilities, thoughts, and actions. From that it’s easy to see why so much has been written about Trump and the DKE in the press and online.
But then there’s the matter of his base. It’s pretty weird to sit back and consider that perhaps such a lot of people are overrepresented in the same fringe of the DKE spectrum that Trump himself occupies. Yet if an individual is separated from that group for an extended period (can’t get Fox News for a month, for example), there’s evidence to support the notion that some measure of cognitive reflection returns to many folks. But that still doesn’t satisfy the need to consider how an entire group of people can—as a group and perhaps only as a group—reflect the DKE spectrum in their unified thoughts and actions. I think it all comes down to the “group.” You see, some groups are formed relatively loosely and have weak bonds to their membership, while others collect followers behind walls they hope to be impregnable, walls meant to shut out external information and influences. All they need to know, all they need to believe comes from the inside. They live within echo chambers. The world outside those walls is populated by “others,” by those they cannot trust, those they suspect, those they think of as “enemies.”
If the messages inside an echo chamber reinforce the correctness, righteousness, and virtue of those who obediently adhere to the group’s teachings and dictums, then the group is likely to see itself—as a group—as potentially more correct, more righteous, more virtuous than it really is when compared to the world outside those walls. Reinforce the messages and repeat the lies often enough, and you’ve very likely put everyone near that that DKE fringe where reflective thinking is just another enemy. The basic requirement, however, is that everyone in the group must move and think as if in lock-step, never wavering from what the group dictates. Doubt and insecurity are gone, but so is individuality. Personal freedom is gone. And with that, so is personal conscience.
The bottom line is, then, that we’re dealing with a so-called “president” who can never be reached by reason or anything even close to that—he’s so “Dunning-Krugered” that he’s simply incompetent at even being incompetent, it seems, and that makes him less comical than dangerous because of the power of his (illegitimate) office. And his “base” has bought into that acquired mental malady—or predisposition, or mental illness. That will continue as long as the propaganda machinery is allowed to keep them on edge and fearful. They too, when they are acting as part of that “group,” are people who are just as Dunning-Krugered as their leader. Knowing this may not change the ultimate outcome of this nightmare, but knowing it might help the Resistance stay healthy. Pass it on…and vote.