Chroniclers of the far right in America have consistently noted that it has always been bound up with affinity scams, snake-oil sales, pyramid schemes, and other forms of crude grift: (2/n)https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/08/how-scam-that-angered-trump-reveals-right-wings-inner-workings/ …
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Some conservative commentators, such as Jonah Goldberg, have noted this critically themselves: (3/n)https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/right-wing-scam-machine-jonah-goldberg/ …
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With stuff like Trump's fixation on hydroxychloroquine, a deeper element potentially comes into play: a propensity for magical thinking.
@ProfEricOliver +@thomasjwood provide an interesting pol-psych treatment of this in 'Enchanted America': (4/n)https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo28752049.html …Show this thread -
As Oliver & Wood note, magical/intuitive thinking predicts all kinds of things we see in evidence in Trump's politics: nationalism & authoritarianism, conspiratorial thinking, and a disregard for scientific reasoning and expertise in favor of gut feelings. (5/n)
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We've seen this magical/intuitive style in Trump for a long time: (6/n)https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/27/politics/washington-post-trump-gut/index.html …
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So, what we are probably seeing here is a mutually-reinforcing intersection between Trump's enduring traits (whose expression is disinhibited by power, no less) and a niche political culture that has co-evolved with a range of scams. (7/7)
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My assumption is that he is throwing pasta at the wall so if one thing happens to stick he can claim we should have listened to him all along.
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Anyone criticising the huge problems with said study will be dismissed as a “hater” who “can’t deal with Trump being right” and “would rather have seen millions die”. Same for any negative studies. His HQL will be made to seem like a win at least to his base whatever the reality.
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I think this thing is being hyped for some reason...perhaps because things are crumbling around him, Trump is desperately flailing at anything that has the remotest chance of making him the hero of this debacle of a federal response.
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