Hall of Mirrors

 

When the Internet is used as an instrument of “affirmation, repetition, and contagion,” it is deadly to promote an alternate reality in its hall of mirrors. 

 After Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump’s culpability seemed abundantly clear.  During momentary “weakness” even political insiders who had publicly supported Trump such as Mitch McConnell expressed that view.  But that was then.  Since, the pro-Trump propaganda machine has kept its shoulder to the wheel and behold, today most Republicans still believe the election was “stolen,” and at least half believe that Trump bears no responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Also since then Republican State legislators have gone to work, to “make elections fair” and to “stop voter fraud.”  Indeed, this disenfranchises minorities which would seem to be the major issue.    As important, it gives subliminal credence to the unfounded claim of voter fraud and a kind of legitimacy to Jan. 6, at least in the minds of the True Believers,

How can this be when our very own eyes and all evidence refute both points? 

I have referenced before the pioneering work of Gustave Le Bon and his 1895 classic The Crowd; A Study of the Popular Mind.  I read this in college and never forgot it. I still have my old paperback edition, with all my original notes and underlinings; strange to look through it some sixty years later in an effort to understand today.

This was written even before radio.  I can only imagine what Le Bon would say about the Internet, other that it merely magnifies the ease in which an obvious falsehood can seize the popular mind, an alternate reality taking on the trappings of the truth.  Read the words of this man talking to us from 1895 and decide for yourself how these beliefs can possibly be. 

This is an excerpt from Le Bon’s work with some passages truncated just to get to the heart of the matter:

When…it is proposed to imbue the mind of a crowd with ideas and beliefs…the leaders have recourse to different expedients. The principal of them are three in number and clearly defined--affirmation, repetition, and contagion. Their action is somewhat slow, but its effects, once produced, are very lasting.

Affirmation pure and simple, kept free of all reasoning and all proof, is one of the surest means of making an idea enter the mind of crowds. The conciser an affirmation is, the more destitute of every appearance of proof and demonstration, the more weight it carries….

Affirmation, however, has no real influence unless it be constantly repeated, and so far as possible in the same terms. It was Napoleon, I believe, who said that there is only one figure in rhetoric of serious importance, namely, repetition. The thing affirmed comes by repetition to fix itself in the mind in such a way that it is accepted in the end as a demonstrated truth.

The influence of repetition on crowds is comprehensible when the power is seen which it exercises on the most enlightened minds. This power is due to the fact that the repeated statement is embedded in the long run in those profound regions of our unconscious selves in which the motives of our actions are forged. At the end of a certain time we have forgotten who is the author of the repeated assertion, and we finish by believing it….

When an affirmation has been sufficiently repeated and there is unanimity in this repetition...what is called a current of opinion is formed and the powerful mechanism of contagion intervenes. Ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes….Contagion is so powerful that it forces upon individuals not only certain opinions, but certain modes of feeling as well….The opinions and beliefs of crowds are specially propagated by contagion, but never by reasoning...

Show Us The Figures, Rick

By now Rick Perry's opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal is making some waves. In many ways I agree with you, Rick, particularly about simplifying the tax code. But that does not mean a simple graduated tax structure has to be thrown out (in favor of the regressive flat tax) and it does not mean one has to entirely do away with capital gains taxation (usually the realm of the wealthy, so that, too, is another regressive move) or does it mean that a carefully thought out, and fair, inheritance tax shouldn't be retained (concentration of wealth doesn't enhance the American dream, it erodes it). And I'm all for responsibly addressing the twin Swords of Damocles that loom in our future, Medicare and Social Security. I'm even for a balanced budget, but not via Constitutional Amendment (imagine having to raise $$ in a crisis with congressional bickering stalling the process, not to mention transitional issues).

So while I agree with many of the feel-good measures, Rick, how does your op-ed piece constitute a "plan?" Show us the figures, Rick -- how many jobs evolve from massive tax cuts and would those jobs materialize anyhow with the next business cycle? Where is the evidence? Or, is this merely an ideological belief?

And that is my problem in accepting your "plan" as a serious one. Furthermore, Rick, you were not the first Republican candidate with a flat tax agenda. Cain beat you to the Texas punch and Gingrich now says he's for an optional flat tax rate of 15%, which beats yours by five percent. By your own logic, that ought to create even more jobs! And Romney now says he's always been for a flat tax. Sounds like a game of Texas Hold 'em. Are all you Republican candidates in? -- place your bets.

There is a pioneering book of social psychology you should read, Rick: Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd; A Study of the Popular Mind. Hard to believe it was written in 1895 as your true-believer words "tax cut" could have been used by Le Bon as an example. Think of them in the context of a passage I underlined as a student: "The power of words is bound up with the images they evoke, and is quite independent of their real significance. Words whose sense is the most ill-defined are sometimes those that possess the most influence...Yet it is certain that a truly magical power is attached to those short syllables" [e.g. tax cut] "as they contained the solution to all problems. They synthesize the most diverse unconscious aspirations and the hope of their realization. Reason and arguments are incapable of combating certain words and formulas. They are uttered with solemnity...and as soon as they have been pronounced an expression of respect is visible on every countenance, and all heads bowed. By many they are considered as natural forces, as supernatural powers. They evoke grandiose and vague images in men's minds, but this very vagueness that wraps them in obscurity augments their mysterious power."

"Tax cut" is the holy grail for supply-siders -- a "mysterious power" indeed when it comes to resulting in more jobs. As Le Bon further says, those unexamined words "become vain sounds, whose principal utility is to relieve the person who employs them of the obligation of thinking." And, that seems to be the new "democracy" of the so-called "debates." As the late preeminent science fiction writer Isaac Asimov said in Newsweek (21 January 1980): “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” (Hat tip, The Big Picture)