The Start of a Discourse on the Collusive Cognitive Dysfunction of a Nation…
Jose: As it takes two to tango, the other half of the weak-minded easily persuaded 70 million or so Trump voters, is Trump himself. It would be a great paper to research and discover who the man is: the equivalent of a black magician, i.e. he defies ordinary, logical analysis and yet sucks in an enormous following.
Yvonne: I think the general consensus is that he’s of quite low intelligence and therefore suffers from Dunning-Kruger Syndrome. He readily appeals to those of similar cognitive dysfunction, who elevated him to his position, and so serves as validation of their limited scope and abilities, in their own eyes.
Jose: Of all the people so diagnosed (informally) it does not seem that any of them could have mesmerized such a large portion of humanity. What is it about this individual that is so magnetic?
Yvonne: What was it about Jim Jones? Or Charlie Manson? Both were of average/low intelligence and therefore had an inflated, unsubstantiated and unreasonable estimation of their own abilities, or Dunning-Kruger affect. Their desperate narcissistic false confidence and frantic, insistent need to believe in their own superiority, not to mention their bullying demands that everyone in their sphere of influence believe the same, overwhelms vulnerable people — prior abuse victims, conditioned, other-identified authoritarians, Evangelicals or others whose cognitive abilities have been invalidated, disabled or undermined. There are a lot of other-identified, vulnerable people out there. Intellectually and emotionally walking wounded.
That said, desperate narcissistic demands for what is called ‘narcissistic supply’ — others’ adulation and attention — is mesmerizing, compelling by its own sheer weight of focus and compulsion. It’s not magic. It’s cognitive dysfunction and the attraction that holds for fellow sufferers, hungry for validation and exaltation. No small force, the entropy of the voracious ego….
Jose: Nice detailed explanation. Trump’s effects, though, apply to tens of millions of voters and many millions more non-voters rather than a handful or a few hundred, as in Jim Jones or Charles Manson. Trump also inspired Bolsonaro as well as other despots around the world in addition to US Americans, thereby affecting hundreds of millions.
Yvonne: Yes. True. But I submit: Neither Jones nor Manson had the so called ‘Bully Pulpit’ — Undeniably the most powerful, far-reaching podium in the world. Yet, within their limited range of possibility, both Jones and Manson influenced people who you’d have thought would have been well immune to their ‘charms.’ Manson had an avid following among hippie Hollywood actors and New Age wannabee ‘mystics,’ and Jones mesmerized, entrained and brought into his fold scientists and researchers from the University of Berkeley. When asked why, as Jones sexually abused their young child and delivered multiple humiliations on the adults, usually sexual, draped in Christian cant, didn’t he and his wife save themselves and their child and pull away, one such Berkeley scientist quietly said, “Because by then we were already too compromised.”
Once the pit into which one has have fallen gets too deep, it’s psychologically nearly impossible to admit you were wrong. You’ve already paid too much — in honour, self-respect, rectitude, integrity, family safety and, in some cases, as in Trump’s, Jim Jones’ and Manson’s ‘congregations,’ actual lives.
