Paul Krugman is of the opinion that social science can tell us useful things — if we are willing to look. That led to his most recent column that is a sobering explanation for the insanity on the Right:
I’m a huge believer in the usefulness of social science, especially studies that use comparisons across time and space to shed light on our current situation. So when the political scientist Henry Farrell suggested that I look at his field’s literature on cults of personality, I followed his advice. He recommended one paper in particular, by the New Zealand-based researcher Xavier Márquez; I found it revelatory.
“The Mechanisms of Cult Production” compares the behavior of political elites across a wide range of dictatorial regimes, from Caligula’s Rome to the Kim family’s North Korea, and finds striking similarities. Despite vast differences in culture and material circumstances, elites in all such regimes engage in pretty much the same behavior, especially what the paper dubs “loyalty signaling” and “flattery inflation.”
Loyalty signaling:
“Signaling is a concept originally drawn from economics; it says that people sometimes engage in costly, seemingly pointless behavior as a way to prove that they have attributes others value.
...signaling typically involves making absurd claims on behalf of the Leader and his agenda, often including “nauseating displays of loyalty.” ”
emphasis added
Signaling leads to the logical progression.
Flattery inflation:
“The Leader isn’t just brave and wise, he’s a perfect physical specimen, a brilliant health expert, a Nobel-level economic analyst, and more. The fact that he’s obviously none of these things only enhances the effectiveness of the flattery as a demonstration of loyalty.”
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Does all of this sound familiar? Of course it does, at least to anyone who has been tracking Fox News or the utterances of political figures like Lindsey Graham or Kevin McCarthy.
If you can’t understand why people somewhere to the far right of sanity are doing what they do, those two concepts explain it, as for example why millions of Americans are refusing to get vaccinated.
How did lifesaving vaccines become politicized? As Bloomberg’s Jonathan Bernstein suggests, today’s Republicans are always looking for ways to show that they’re more committed to the cause than their colleagues are — and given how far down the rabbit hole the party has already gone, the only way to do that is “nonsense and nihilism,” advocating crazy and destructive policies, like opposing vaccines.
That is, hostility to vaccines has become a form of loyalty signaling.
The immediate problem is how do we keep these people from taking us all over the cliff with them?
Krugman’s column is a critical first step: recognizing the problem. We are dealing with an irrational death cult. It’s still a bridge too far for too many. The mainstream media, the Manchins and Sinemas, the ‘sensible centrists’ are still heavily invested in the belief that we’re just divided by simple disagreements, and that we can find common ground somewhere between. The problem is, there’s no viable “halfway” once you’ve allowed them to stampede you over the cliff. They have learned nothing in the past four years — or even the last 6 months.
(If you are not reading Eric Boehlert on this at Press Run media, you really should consider subscribing. Check out The Murdoch Variant Spreads. See his latest on the DeSantis media fail in Florida.)
Resources
The Mechanisms of Cult Production looks to be well worth studying for insights into the cult of personality we’re dealing with, and the larger authoritarian movement of which it is a part. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:
This chapter argues that leader personality cults are typically produced by a specific set of mechanisms of flattery inflation. It describes how loyalty signaling, emotional amplification, and direct production mechanisms can combine, under specific circumstances, to transform ordinary flattery into full-blown practices of ruler worship. And it argues for attending to the specific conditions that make possible the operation of these mechanisms, showing how patronage relationships in particular provide fertile ground for the emergence of personality cults. Moreover, the chapter argues that both ancient and modern leader cults depend on similar mechanisms, despite clear differences in context and function. I illustrate the operation of these mechanisms with many modern examples and an extended disussion of one ancient example, the abortive cult of Caligula during the Roman Principate.
This is only one part of the problem. Authoritarian movements have two ingredients: leaders and followers.
The work of Professor Bob Altemeyer into right wing authoritarian personality types delineates what makes for the toxic leaders we find at the top of these movements, what they want, who they are and (just as important) what it is about their followers that locks them into the co-dependency of their relationship. He’s updated his work; it is available in several formats, some of them free.
If you remember John Dean, he knows how this works from the inside. His 2006 book Conservatives Without Conscience draws on Altemeyer’s work.
In Conservatives Without Conscience, John Dean places the conservative movement’s inner circle of leaders in the Republican Party under scrutiny. Dean finds their policies and mind- set to be fundamentally authoritarian, and as such, a danger to democracy. By examining the legacies of such old-line conservatives as J. Edgar Hoover, Spiro Agnew, and Phyllis Schlafly and of such current figures as Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, and leaders of the Religious Right, Dean presents an alarming record of abuses of power. His trenchant analysis of how conservatism has lost its bearings serves as a chilling warning and a stirring inspiration to safeguard constitutional principles.
If you want a quick intro to the concepts in Altemeyer’s work, Sara Robinson’s two series at Dave Neiwert’s Orcinus from 2006 are still excellent and as timely as ever. Start with Cracks in the Wall, Part 1, and continue with Part 2 and Part 3.
The second series expands on it: Tunnels and Bridges, Part I: Divide and Conquer. Plus Part II: Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself, Part III: A Bigger World, Part IV: Landing Zones, and A Short Detour.
Things have not gotten better since Dean’s book, obviously. The Republican Party has been on a downward march from the days of Nixon on. Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote in 2012 It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism. (The updated version changes the title slightly, replacing looks with was.)
Acrimony and hyperpartisanship have seeped into every part of the political process. Congress is deadlocked and its approval ratings are at record lows. America’s two main political parties have given up their traditions of compromise, endangering our very system of constitutional democracy. And one of these parties has taken on the role of insurgent outlier; the Republicans have become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and ardently opposed to the established social and economic policy regime.In It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress — and the United States — to the brink of institutional collapse. The first is the serious mismatch between our political parties, which have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act. Second, while both parties participate in tribal warfare, both sides are not equally culpable. The political system faces what the authors call ”asymmetric polarization,” with the Republican Party implacably refusing to allow anything that might help the Democrats politically, no matter the cost. With dysfunction rooted in long-term political trends, a coarsened political culture and a new partisan media, the authors conclude that there is no ”silver bullet”; reform that can solve everything. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring of the House and Senate, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public at large to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle. Until voters learn to act strategically to reward problem solving and punish obstruction, American democracy will remain in serious danger.
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Or, as they put it more directly: Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans are the Problem.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
Thinking about Cassandra
I admit to having a bad case of Cassandra Syndrome. It’s not like people haven’t seen what has been coming, as the resources linked above show — but getting listened to? Getting people to take action? It’s a lot like climate denialism. Upton Sinclair had a point: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
It’s also difficult when it threatens to push people out of their comfort zones, seems to attach blame to them, or otherwise asks them to make some kind of sacrifice.
One of our local TV stations broadcasts Svengoolie on Saturday nights. He features classic horror/monster/sci-fi movies, along with background info, jokes, skits, and terrible puns.
One of the standard tropes in many of those movies is the Cassandra character — the person who knows there is a monster lurking out there, but everyone calls him/her crazy and ignores their warnings. They may even be blamed for what’s happening. This continues until the bodies begin to pile up too high to be overlooked or explained away, or the monster appears in broad daylight — like Godzilla attacking Tokyo, or Trump cultists storming the Capitol.
We’re at that point in the movie now. Expect panic, running around, screaming, and even suicidally wrong responses as the inevitable becomes obvious. (There’s always somebody who insists on doing the wrong thing.)
Unlike the old films, we can’t be sure the heroes will triumph. We know the body count is going to keep rising — and just like how one movie can spawn sequels — the monsters among us are not going away, will be waiting to make a comeback, and the clean up will last for years or longer. (Centuries in the case of climate.)