For Consideration, By Those Who Still Can

[Valjean]

I feel no connection whatsoever to such people. I just read on another thread where one candidly admitted after reading a summary of Trump's mishandling of the pandemic that he didn't care how incompetent Trump was. His actual words were, "How does it feel to know that none of us Trump supporters will ever care? Or ever think twice about your posts in the future even if you were right?"

True Believers won't admit they're wrong. Facts roll right off their backs.
Trump himself has admitted, in the wake of the self isolation orders, that measures to make voting easier could undermine the Republican party.
Trump says Republicans would ‘never’ be elected again if it was easier to vote

 

[Revoltingest]

I agree. I think the rumors one heard back in 2016 that Trump plays "four dimensional chess" were slight exaggerations. I'm pretty sure he was the toddler who had trouble identifying which end of his sandbox bucket to point upwards when filling it.

No exaggeration, but it's.....
Four dimensional pigeon chess.

 

[Valjean]

I doubt everyone was all that clear on it in 1951. Especially as social psychology was not a common concept in those days. And if it really were so well understood, why are so many of us still falling for it, today? Religious cults in the U.S. have been using this model, successfully, for many decades since 1951. And the republican party has been using it since "W's" campaign for governor in 1994 (thanks to that "genius" Karl Rove). So apparently it's not that well understood after all.

There was a lot of interest in political psychology and how it all happened in the immediate post war period. 1951 also saw the publication of Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism and, a few years later, Milton Mayer's fascinating They Thought They Were Free.

 

[Valjean]

No exaggeration, but it's.....
Four dimensional pigeon chess.

Pigeons might have an advantage here. They're used to navigating in multiple dimensions.

 

[PureX]

I'm skeptical. It's hard to picture Trump mastering anything. He strikes me more as an accidental authoritarian; scatterbrained, impressionable and impulsive; managed -- as best they can -- by White House staff and associates.​

Trump is just a mascot who plays "Richie Rich" on TV. He's good at it, though, because the ignorance, greed, and unabashed selfishness that he projects is in fact the fuel that drives the party behind him, and the supporters that support him.

 

[Revoltingest]

Pigeons might have an advantage here. They're used to navigating in multiple dimensions.

As any fan of Mike Tyson Mysteries knows,
pigeons have a relationship with dark magic.

 

[Howard Is]

Two other excellent sources of information and analysis on the mentality in question are:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Letters and Papers from Prison"

Robert Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians"

This is a classic from 1960

Crowds and Power - Wikipedia

Here is a PDF summary

Crowds and Power Summary, Review PDF

Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power could stake a solid claim to having achieved the same for the recurrent battle between individuality and the urge to lose ourselves in crowds. Probing a deeply ingrained human instinct, he takes readers from prehistoric packs of hunter-gatherers to the emergence of global religions like Islam and Christianity and the nation-state.

These book summarys help explain the paradox of why individual humans – so proud of their own uniqueness – seek refuge in the group.