Monday, August 22, 2016

Why Trump may win

You may chortle at Michael Rosenblum's prediction. But even if he's wrong about the next president, he is -- in a deeper sense -- absolutely goddamned 100 percent right. Take the words below, stir in the name "Roger Stone," top it off with the concept "spectacular dirty trick," and you will understand why I still predict a Trump victory.

(As longtime readers know: I always predict the worst. Presume the worst and all of your surprises will be happy ones.)

Rosenblum:
Donald Trump is going to be elected president.

The American people voted for him a long time ago.

They voted for him when The History Channel went from showing documentaries about the Second World War to Pawn Stars and Swamp People.

They voted for him when The Discovery Channel went from showing Lost Treasures of the Yangtze Valley to Naked and Afraid.

They voted for him when The Learning Channel moved from something you could learn from to My 600 Pound Life.

They voted for him when CBS went from airing Harvest of Shame to airing Big Brother.

These networks didn't make these programming changes by accident. They were responding to what the American people actually wanted. And what they wanted was Naked and Afraid and Duck Dynasty.

The polls may show that Donald Trump is losing to Hillary Clinton, but don't you believe those polls. When the AC Nielsen Company selects a new Nielsen family, they disregard the new family's results for the first three months. The reason: when they feel they are being monitored, people lie about what they are watching. In the first three months, knowing they are being watched, they will tune into PBS. But over time they get tired of pretending. Then it is back to The Kardashians.

The same goes for people who are being asked by pollsters for whom they are voting. They will not say Donald Trump. It is too embarrassing. But the truth is, they like Trump. He is just like their favorite shows on TV.

Mindless entertainment.
There is one possible flaw in this argument. Rosenblum is right about that "three month rule" involving Nielsen families, but the very fact that people feel obligated to lie about their viewing habits indicates that they still have some vestiges of a social conscience. A voice within whispers: "You really should be a better person than this." It's the classic battle of Id vs. Superego.

The gravity of a presidential choice may force people to act like a Nielsen family within those first three months.

I like chocolate milk shakes more than I like healthy salads. When impulse takes over, when the Cannon Id overpowers the Cannon Superego, I go for the shake every time. But I know which is better.

On the other hand: Knowing which is better may not suffice.

I don't think that my fellow citizens have stopped caring about what's good for them, but I do think that they've become very skilled at playing the Rationalization Game.

Let's go back to my milk shake metaphor. After about five minutes of research, most of you could come up with a pseudo-scientific argument as to why a chocolate milk shake is actually healthier than a salad. (I'll start you out: "Chocolate is said to ward off heart disease; dairy products provide calcium...") The argument need not be grounded in scientific research, and it need not have the endorsement of the majority of nutritionists. The argument needs only to be just persuasive enough. As long as the argument has a superficial sprinkling of scientific patter, casuistry will win the day: You'll order the shake.

(Hell. I want one now.)

L. Ron Hubbard believed that tobacco use cures lung cancer. Being a master of casuistry, he was able to mount a fairly involved argument to that effect. As long as you can convince yourself that the establishers of Established Opinion are engaged in a conspiracy to deprive you of what you crave, anything becomes possible.

And that's why a garish, impulsive, unstable con artist like Donald Trump may win.

Rationalization defeats rationality.

11 comments:

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Mr. Cannon seems to assume that the USA is actually a democracy.

Execpt for a handful of renegades such as Flynn, our national security establishment (NSE hereafter) has made it clear that they prefer President Clinton to President Trump.

Hence, Trump can win only if Putin's hackers and other operatives are better than the NSE's hackers and other operatives--otherwise, the unaccountable vote-counting computers will say "CLINTON WINS", whether or not she actually wins.

Putin's gremlins might be better, but who won the Cold War?

Gus said...

Ivory Bill, you and I are on the same page on this. I suspected two years ago that Clinton was the selection of the NSE this time around. I'm more sure each passing day. Trump loosing will most likely create some civil unrest and some extremists will probably try to take some sort of action. Which will only play further into the hands of the NSE. I think Joseph might not realize that our scenario is actually the worst case scenario, in that, it would probably prove once and for all that votes are not really counted and that voting really is a fruitless exercise (at least at the national level). Though I suppose not necessarily, since it is possible that the majority of Americans are sane and thoughtful. I'm not optimistic though.

b said...

For many, the election is like the wrestling. This is how well Trump performs. And here. After watching those videos, I became even more of the opinion that Trump is likely to whup Clinton's arse in the TV debates.

Bob Harrison said...

Come on, guys. I'm not buying it. Enemy of the State was a movie. (I have skin in the NSA, btw so you can view me as disinformation if that helps.)

Joseph Cannon said...

Bob, I do NOT view you that way. But maybe you can answer a question that has been on my mind for a while: If anyone on Team Trump has been in communication with folks overseas, do you think that the NSA would have a record of it? I understand that minimization would require the censorship of the American side of that dialogue, but not if a crime were involved.

Let us suppose (for the sake of argument) that the crime was the engineering of a 9/11-scale act of domestic terrorism. On one side of the conversation is someone with a foreign accent talking about "another big wedding." And on the other side, you have someone who says: "Not just a BIG wedding. The BIGGEST. Just so you know, it's gonna be YUUUUUGE. No one puts on a big wedding like me, believe me."

You think the lads and lasses at Fort Meade would have a recording of that conversation?

Gus said...

Bob, we're not talking about NSA, if that helps. NSA is a tool of the national security establishment. No one believes that all people in such agencies are part of a huge conspiracy to turn the USA into a fascist state (well, okay, maybe not "no one", but probably no one here). NSE was just Ivory Bill's shortening of national security establishment. I have no doubt that the vast majority of NSA employees are just doing their jobs and probably think they are making the US safer (and probably are, in many ways). I just think that the people that appear to run our country don't really run our country. I think fascism is a by product of what the people who actually run our country want (basically a new feudalism). I think presidential elections have been fixed for a long time, but I don't think NSA or any other government agency is responsible for the fixing.....at least not more than peripherally. I could easily be wrong......though if that means Trump would have a shot at being President, I hope I'm not.

Missy Vixen said...

Conspiracy theorists are special.

In every one of your scenarios, you forget one thing...majority America elected a black man to the Oval Office. Twice.

Yes, Robin Leach and soap operas primed the nation for reality TV, the racist conmen who now run the Republican Party and presidential candidate Trump. But only the less intelligent denizens of White America are following that piper.

After Clinton, it took the combined efforts of the Supreme Court, 9/11 and the Iraq war to get and keep a Republican in the Oval Office. Obama voters are the nation's majority now and they will not be voting for the candidate who thinks broadcasting his reality program from the White House is a great idea.

Gus said...

No, I didn't forget that. I did notice how he continued the policies of the Bush administration almost as if there was no difference (well, actually he doubled down on some of those polices). He was just as much the national security establishment candidate as Clinton is. Now, on domestic issues he was miles better than the alternatives, so I can certainly grant him that. Clinton is no doubt miles ahead of Trump in just about every way. I will vote, most likely for Clinton, just to keep that psychopath Trump from getting anywhere near the nuclear launch codes, even though I think the voting system is rigged......and even if it isn't, do genuine men or women of the people get to run for President? I don't think so. But go ahead and use "conspiracy theorist" as a derogatory term if you like. I don't claim absolute certainty about my claims. Most of the time I hope I'm wrong, but paying close attention to how our government operates makes me concerned that I'm right.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

May the Ascended Madoka grant that Missy will be correct.

Bob Harrison said...

Joe-- I always operate on the assumption that everything I have used that involved electronic communication was recorded, if not monitored. The monitoring is actually the key element. Until Skynet comes on-line, it's going to be at least one order of magnitude impossible to analyze every conversation in real-time (that's why the recording of the Boston bomber brothers surfaced two days after the fact and why they were not stopped). I think it is possible for plotters to get away with code talking but they will have to hop it through quite a few servers since I'd bet the main routes are very closely monitored. Back in the 60s I went to school with electronic intercept operators (they were called ditty-boppers back then); they had an extremely high suicide rate because the stress level was so high. From I was told, air traffic controller high, so the point I'm making is that good analysts are very hard to find and train and keep. Of course, I only know the edges, but the edges always look burned and frayed. One of tRump's enablers might be up to something but he'd have to have at least six degrees of separation to avoid being detected.
I hear what you're saying folks about the Military-Industrial-Complex and I believe they have tried and will continue to try to influence the outcome of elections (Diebold? Ohio? hmmmm) but I don't believe they can reverse the trends on this particular election since the GOPers nominated animate diarrhea as their candidate. Prople might notice if Clinton was up 10 in the exit polls then lost by 10.

Missy Vixen said...

"...do genuine men or women of the people get to run for President?"

No, they don't because the system is rigged so that only the wealthy and/or connected can get the financing to run a billion dollar campaign for president.

Inequality made rampant by Reagan's "trickle-down" policies is the foundation of what's wrong with America.