Et tu, Oprah?
Almost as soon as the Trump win had occurred, I began noticing that, among former Trump opposers left and right, it was shaking down into two camps: the optimists and the pessimists. The optimists were saying some version of “wait and see.” The pessimists were saying that the political apocalypse was coming soon or was already here.
The question of what causes a person to fall into each group could provide prodigious fodder for several doctoral dissertations in political science. Although I don’t know the answer, my guess is that it’s some combination of the person’s degree of liberalism versus leftism, as well as general personality traits on the optimism/pessimism continuum, whether the person belongs to a group that is likely to feel especially threatened (for example, Muslims) and/or is close to a member of such a group, as well as how open the person might be to changing his/her mind about something.
Oprah Winfrey turns out to be in the first camp, falling among the optimists:
The TV host tweeted on Thursday a picture of Donald Trump at the White House with President Barack Obama with the caption ‘Everybody take a deep breath! Hope lives.’
She also told Entertainment Tonight that seeing President Obama and President-elect Trump together had ‘given her hope’.
Predictably, some of Oprah’s fellow celebrities do not like her for this, and refuse to share her sentiments. Some responses that are rather typical:
Celebrities have turned against Oprah Winfrey after she expressed hope in the wake of the election…
Heather Matarazzo wrote: ‘Oprah, you can take a deep breath and hold it while the rest of us literally fight for our lives right now. #smh.’
Grace & Frankie’s June Diane Raphael also urged Oprah not to ‘normalize this man’.
‘Minority children are already being targeted,’ she tweeted.
One leftist approach is starting to shape up, and it will be (as one might have expected) to attribute every bigoted act that occurs in America during the Trump years (and some that don’t; see this) to Trump.
Has the number of such acts actually increased? I don’t know; maybe yes, maybe no. However, it stands to reason that they may have. Most of the people at this blog are aware that there is cause for concern that the more bigoted wing of the alt-right (and its hangers-on) will feel greatly empowered by Trump’s win. And when you’re talking about school children, there’s also a kind of imitative fallout from some of Trump’s own worst behavior and/or speech, and it stands to reason it would bear some fruit (I’m talking about things like kids threatening to grab a girl by the you-know-what). I’m sure schools will crack down hard on the latter sort of behavior, if such things occur, and I’m equally sure that the left will make hay of any incident it can.
This would be the same left that seems unable (actually, unwilling) to connect the dots on—just to take one example—the increase in crime in many urban black neighborhoods known as “the Ferguson effect,” and to connect it to the left’s own behavior:
When officers disengage, the result is not a boon for black lives, as the Black Lives Matter movement would predict. Rather, criminals become emboldened, leading to this year’s bloodbath, whose victims have been almost exclusively black and, far too often, children and innocent bystanders.
Oprah is not alone among former Hillary-supporters in trying to inject a post-Trump note of patience and guarded optimism. But there are others who either are unable at this point to join her (I’ve already discussed them here), or (among the more activist and leftist) who have an investment in continuing to fan the flames of discord.
Listen to this interview by Oprah of Trump in 1988. They go way back.
When asked about the ’88 election notice that all the candidates are doing wonderfully. Is that a politician or a businessman covering his bases?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b8Q9e8i_pE
Good for Oprah, to choose not to declare that the sky is falling. (Not yet, anyway.)
I agree, Neo, that for the next few years, every bigoted event will be blamed on Trump. But this is nothing new; during 2000-2008, an awful lot got blamed on GWB that had nothing to do with him. (James Taranto and Glenn Reynolds, as I recall, had fun with the headline “We blame George W. Bush” for the most outlandish things.)
I believe Reagan got blamed for a lot of stuff too.
We will see if the new President has a thicker skin than his predecessor. (Admittedly, that’s a low bar to clear.)
“One leftist approach is starting to shape up, and it will be (as one might have expected) to attribute every bigoted act that occurs in America during the Trump years (and some that don’t; see this) to Trump.”
[snip]
“. . . there are others who either are unable at this point to join her . . . , or (among the more activist and leftist) who have an investment in continuing to fan the flames of discord.” [Neo]
As Scott Adams points out, this appears o be cognitive dissonance at work—an attempt to justify one’s prior belief even in a world where actual events fail to support it. In other words, these are people who can’t (or refuse) to utter the three most difficult words in the English language: “I was wrong.”
Scott Adams on cognitive dissonance:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153080448451/the-cognitive-dissonance-cluster-bomb
T:
No, it’s is NOT cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance would occur if Trump had been president for about two years, let’s say, and had been a successful, “presidential,” and fair guy, and things were going well, and they still were fearful and negative.
It is way way too early to accuse them of cognitive dissonance for failing to say “I was wrong about who Trump is.” We don’t know who he is. What’s going on now is less than a week of appointments and interviews, nothing more.
I am encouraged, but remember that I am conservative and that I never was a NeverTrumper, so it’s really rather easy for me to be hopeful and encouraged. However, I am watching him and my hopefulness could change back again. More importantly, it is completely understandable that people in the liberal camp wouldn’t say they had been wrong about him at this point. It would actually be rather absurd for them to make such a 180-flip at this point, so soon, when he hasn’t even taken office yet.
Now, the thing to say “I was wrong” about was if someone had said a Trump win was impossible. They were wrong about that. But nothing else is clear at this point.
I don’t claim to understand what the “alt-right”, which apparently had a number commenting here so worked up, is; or what “it”, if any kind of definite pronoun can even be applied, wants.
What alarms many seems to be the “back in your face” stance of some.
So with that in mind, I will assert this unequivocally, as I have myself already been noting it for years, now:
The traditional right has been hamstrung, under one interpretation, when dealing with the left, by its own principles of civility and its reluctance to hit back it a tit for tat fashion.
Those of us who grew up watching the 1960s radicals murderously acting out, and wondered why our parents and grandparents didn’t just declare an all out war of extermination on them, may have experienced a sense of deja vu the last few years. Especially, given the rhetoric and the recycling of old Maoist personalities like Bill Ayers back into prominence.
When general social cohesion and any moral consensus has been virtually obliterated, and the principles of morality themselves rendered moot (relationally speaking) by self-declared moral nihilists whose only and self-declared aim is to shape the world as they would have it “by any means necessary”, the question naturally and inevitably arises: Why not just shoot back, and get it over? What are we trying to preserve with this ridiculous song and dance routine anyway?
So the question is: what do you really want, and value?
If the answer is economic freedom and being personally unencumbered by social demands imposed for the sake of bringing justice socially to a Nature devoid of it, your path is one path. If your aim is however a richly upholstered, sensuously and emotionally luxuriating and supportive life-world, where there is a place for everyone and everyone is in his place, your way is a different way.
I don’t think these aims can be reconciled.
“We don’t know who he is.” [Neo @ 12:50]
You are correct, we don’t yet know who he is, but their actions evince that they think that they do know who he is.
Calls for assassination, impeachment even before his inauguration (there were several discussions about this before Nov. 8th), secession, public protests/riots simply because they did not get their way, petitions to encourage pledged electoral college delegates to violate their pledge, etc..
IMO these are people who, in an infantile way, cling to a force-fed campaign narrative that Hillary should have been inevitably and ineluctably the next president. Reality has proven that belief wrong and they refuse to accept and are unable to say that.
A small quibble: if I understand Adams correctly, the cognitive dissonance he refers to isn’t between “I think Trump bad” and “Trump isn’t that bad”. (I agree with you that two years might be a reasonable time frame to adopt the second point.)
Rather, it’s between “I am a smart person and therefore see Trump as a dangerous monster” and “Many (other) smart people see Trump as not monstrous but an acceptable president.”
Adams proposes two possible options for such a person to deal with that dissonance:
(1) Maybe I’m wrong about Trump obviously being a dangerous monster (i.e., I wasn’t as smart as I thought); or
(2) Those other smart people really do see him as a dangerous monster and prefer dangerous monsters (i.e., those people are evil).
IOW, the dissonance isn’t about Trump himself, but concerns those who voted for him.
I’m quite far from convinced that Adams’ analysis is correct and do think it overly simplfied, but I think that is his contention.
CBI:
Either way, it’s the same thing: too early.
Cognitive dissonance only comes into play when the evidence is clear. There is no clear evidence yet as to what Trump is about, so why would/should a person think he/she had been wrong about him? Remember, a mind is a difficult thing to change.
These people are only experiencing the very first, very early stirrings of the pull of cognitive dissonance. The evidence so far is relatively easy to cast off and discount, so there is very little dissonance. The dissonance comes as evidence of wrongness in a person’s previous position accrues.
Adams is guilty of the opposite (but related) problem: confirmation bias.
T:
As I’ve explained many times before, I’m not talking about extremists who riot and destroy property, or who call for his assassination. Those are not run-of-the-mill Hillary voters who I’ve described in my fairly lengthy posts about those who fear Trump.
“among former Trump opposers left and right, it was shaking down into two camps: the optimists and the pessimists.” neo
To the degree that Trump fulfills his promises, to that degree will the optimists move into the pessimist camp. There is no way to address the challenges that face America, that both liberals and conservatives will find acceptable. The differences are irreconcilable because the principles each side supports are mutually exclusionary.
The ‘collective’ impulse resides on both the right and left but currently dominates the left. Collectivism, whether on the right or left cannot tolerate individual liberty. We see this when someone goes “off the reservation”, such as Oprah’s latest very slight straying from leftist orthodoxy.
It cannot tolerate it because it seeks to create a society where none are too poor, which requires that none be too rich. That cannot be achieved without unjustly stealing from the productive. Collectivism thus relies upon theft and in doing so it rests upon an unjustifiable foundation. And unjustifiable foundations are unsustainable foundations.
Collectivism is unsustainable given that it inherently opposes the individual achievement that reflects reality’s “unequal sharing of blessings”.
Collectivism’s unsustainability requires it proceed ever further into the tyranny of the unproductive over the productive and, as that is inherently counter-productive, it requires ever more coercion to sustain itself.
Thus it cannot tolerate a line, such as individual rights, beyond which it cannot pass. It justifies this by deeming it to be for the ‘greater good’ and labeling dissent as motivated by evil.
The irony is literally biblical; a collectivism motivated by compassion that also deny’s individual responsibility, must evolve into and result in a tyranny that crushes the individual. But as the individual’s “unequal sharing of blessings” is civilization’s engine of progress, that crushing of the individual results in an “equal sharing of misery” and the end of progress.
Liberals, sold upon a secular dogma that offers itself as a spiritual substitute for religious belief cannot accept that collectivism is a dead end. As, having in principle also rejected belief in submission to the will of God, i.e. “not my will but thine be done”… to accept that collectivism is a dead end leaves them with nothing to believe in, which means having to accept nihilism’s ultimate end product; suicide.
“There is a pathway that seems right to a man, but in the end, it’s a road to death.” Proverbs 14:12 – ISV
In the end, those on the left, to one degree or another, oppose conforming to reality’s “order of creation”, especially those aspects of human nature and those aspects of external reality that result in humanity’s “unequal sharing of blessings”.
And ultimately, opposing conforming to reality’s “order of creation” is rebellion against God.
Neo,
I stand corrected. Perhaps I was writing with too broad a brush. My specific reference (as you can see from the text was those people who are rioting. I fully realize and agree that they are a small minority of Clinton voters, but, as you know, they are the ones that get all the press. (/sarc At least the MSM is bi-partisan in this regard. /sarc off)
I have seen many progressive screeds against Trump’s election. These are the “True Believers” who will never accept anything that Trump does, even if it can be demonstrated to be good for the country.
But there are others who, while they accept the election results, are predicting a financial collapse. Such as this piece by David Stockman:
http://www.theetfbully.com/2016/11/one-mans-opinion-the-jig-is-up-americas-voters-just-fired-their-ruling-elites/
If that happens, Trump could be another Herbert Hoover.
As to cognitive dissonance, I can well remember after Obama was elected seeing Austan Goolsbee on Larry Kudlow’s TV show claiming that the Democrats needed to change all the horrible economic policies put in place by……….Ronald Reagan. I have seen Goolsbee on the telly many times since he left the Obama administration where he was an economic adviser. He still blames Reagan (though only obliquely) for our financial malaise. That is cognitive dissonance.
I hope I’m wrong, but my tea leaves tell me that this is going to be four years of Trump Derangement Syndrome accentuated by continuing senseless violence, constant attacks from the MSM/academia/Hollywood, and minimal progress in governance because of the continuing and massive road blocks set up by the left.
The Republicans need to get behind Trump and push back as well, and reach out to all the Trump voters to badger their representatives in Congress to support the Trump agenda items. Only continuing strong push back will negate the power of the progressives to block real progress.
One should never forget that a great many of the so-called “hate-crimes” forever alluded to by the left turn out later to have been hoaxes, yet no-one on the left remembers the sheer number of fabricated reports.
Even the riots are synthetic beasts — funded by Soros, no doubt.
Bus fleets have been videoed all over the nation — wherever and whenever a ‘riot’ breaks out.
Comey ought to pursue Soros for these outrages.
Don’t worry about girls getting grabbed or groped, Neo. The schools, public and private, are busily addressing gender dysphoria in its variegated forms, even at the kindergarten level.
See https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/12/transgender-conformity.
First Things is a Catholic journal described as conservative. even (gasp) neoconservative.
Frog:
What does gender dysphoria have to do with getting grabbed or groped?
It’s not a joke, you know. It happens.
J.J., Stockman has been warning of collapse for years.
Brian E., yep. I linked that as a bit of humor. My sense of humor is warped, of course. On the other hand He might be right this time. 🙂
Strangely, the media seems to have found precious few, if any, examples of the Trump inspired hate crimes, hate speech, bigotry, or misogyny that they chirp about so much. It is almost laughable how they repeatedly trot out the graffiti on the wall that touts white power, and a swastika. Almost makes you think there are precious few examples for them to use.
Confession. I bridle a bit whenever I see the terms “white power” or “white supremacist” thrown pejoratively at people who have actually committed no offense other than state unapproved views. Every since the late ’60s, at least we have been bombarded with terms like “Black Power”, “The Black Liberation Party”, “The Black Panthers”, and most recently “Black Lives Matter” (but, don’t ever suggest that “all lives matter”). Then there is the parading of the Mexican flag during street demonstrations, and a whole set of rhetoric that accompanies those events. Yet the very people who suffer an attack of the vapors over certain terms, think the others are just great expressions of solidarity, or something. So, why the surprise at a little mild push back? Not violence–of course, just a little statement of solidarity by folks who feel marginalized and even demonized. Maybe it is true that the election of Trump has made some people feel that they have regained the freedom to express themselves, just as protected classes have enjoyed of late. If they do so, peacefully, maybe this will actually clear the air by emphasizing the idea that if you want to be treated with respect, it is a two way street. I know it is a foolish thought, but there it is.