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| Trump: chip off the old block |
I
met Lakoff a few years back and asked him about how to frame issues in the
education debate. We spent two hours talking. He left a lasting lesson with me:
liberals think that people are persuaded by facts; conservatives persuade with
narratives, not facts.
In
this important article,
he explains the reason for Trump’s success: Trump is the Father, the strong
authoritarian father who will protect us and keep us safe from all threats.
“In the 1900s, as part of my research in the cognitive and brain sciences, I undertook to answer a question in my field: How do the various policy positions of conservatives and progressives hang together?
Take
conservatism: What does being against abortion have to do with being for owning
guns? What does owning guns have to do with denying the reality of global
warming? How does being anti-government fit with wanting a stronger military?
How can you be pro-life and for the death penalty? Progressives have the
opposite views. How do their views hang together?
The
answer came from a realization that we tend to understand the nation
metaphorically in family terms: We have founding fathers. We send our sons and
daughters to war. We have homeland security.
The
conservative and progressive worldviews dividing our country can most readily
be understood in terms of moral worldviews that are encapsulated in two very
different common forms of family life: The Nurturant Parent family
(progressive) and the Strict Father family (conservative).
What
do social issues and the politics have to do with the family? We are first
governed in our families, and so we grow up understanding governing
institutions in terms of the governing systems of families.
In
the strict father family, father knows best.
He
knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children
and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right.
Many
conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father’s authority, and
are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his
children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that,
to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what
feels good.
Through
physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong,
and able to prosper in the external world.
What
if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore
cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in
conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and
the rich as deserving their wealth.
Responsibility
is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you
become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are
responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves.
Winning and Insulting
As
the legendary Green Bay Packers coach, Vince Lombardi, said, “Winning
isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” In a world governed by personal
responsibility and discipline, those who win deserve to win.
Why
does Donald Trump publicly insult other candidates and political leaders
mercilessly? Quite simply, because he knows he can win an onstage TV insult
game.
In
strict conservative eyes, that makes him a formidable winning candidate who
deserves to be a winning candidate. Electoral competition is seen as a battle.
Insults that stick are seen as victories — deserved victories.”