I used to have a colleague who got all of his information from Fox News. Whenever we got into a political disagreement (which wasn’t frequent), he would make some claim to me, and I would show it was wrong. It never changed his reliance on Fox. This isn’t just an issue with Fox—I have the same exchange with people who repeat things from Raw Story, various youtube channels, Mother Jones, all sorts of dodgy sites about nutrition, their fanatical Facebook group, and so many others.
What’s striking about all these cases is that, even in cases when they get shown that their source of information has lied to them, they don’t abandon the source.
They don’t abandon the source because they are engaged in motivated reasoning, in which they begin with beliefs, and then look for data that supports those beliefs. Motivated reasoning is our fallback way of reasoning; it’s deeply embedded even in how we perceive. And so the issue is what is our motivation: we might be motivated to believe that our in-group is good and the out-group is bad, and then we only notice and value data that supports those two beliefs (and engage in motivism when necessary).
That’s what’s happening with Trump’s saying that “he is the chosen one.”
He’s talking about the trade war with China, and, at a certain point, he looks up at the sky and says, “I am the chosen one.”
What did he mean?
He might have meant that he thinks he is the Second Coming of Jesus, the King of Israel, and actually God. While there are people who say Trump is chosen by God to be President, the people who argue that’s what he was claiming (especially in light of his retweeting someone making that claim) are on very shaky ground. I think that’s the least reasonable reading of what he was doing.
Others argue that he is just a troll, and they mean that as a compliment. He’s engaged in a trade war, they argue, that has merit (especially given China’s long violation of basic principles regarding intellectual property, which he mentions). Trump’s saying he’s the chosen one, and looking to the sky is just good TV, as he knows it will make “the libs” foam at the mouth. I suspect that’s true.
Let’s assume that’s the right reading—that Trump was just engaged in good TV, and doesn’t think he’s God–that still doesn’t make what he did okay. What he said is that all the other Presidents have screwed it up, and he sees himself as the only President since Nixon to have the right relationship to China. I don’t think he really thinks he’s the Second Coming, but I do think he believes (as do many of his followers) that he is the only one to get it right. That’s call the fallacy of “universal genius.” It’s arrogant. Either he believes that–that he is the only person to get it right since Nixon opened relations with China–or he’s lying.
Great TV happens when you make extreme claims. So, perhaps, Trump was lying, and he doesn’t think he’s getting a better deal. That should trouble his supporters, since it means he isn’t really engaged in arguing with anyone who disagrees with him.
I think he meant it. I think everything about Trump says he sees himself as a universal genius who is the only one who knows the right answer, and who gets great deals through brinksmanship. He meant what he said when he presented himself as the only President who could get a good deal with China. Better than Reagan, better than Bush. He thinks he can reject what everyone else recommends as a good strategy in favor of his gut instinct. That strikes me as arrogant.
I mentioned a colleague who only got his information from Fox, Limbaugh, and various other right-wing sources, and I mentioned that his information was always wrong. One of our disagreements involved whether Obama had claimed to have ended global warming. My colleague said he had, and I sent my colleague the clip in question, and even he had to admit Obama had said no such thing. “But,” this colleague said, “he was arrogant.”
There are two ways to think about that response. One is that my colleague cares about the arrogance of political figures and would be offended by any arrogant political figure. The second is that he was engaged in motivated reasoning, and just needed to find some reason to continue to think what Obama said was bad; he only objects to arrogance if it’s out-group.
He supports Trump.
So, he doesn’t care about arrogance. He never cared about arrogance. He was just looking for reasons to support his hate of Obama.
Our political world is really just that bitch eating crackers like she owns the place.
Personally, I think Trump even making a joke that he is the Chosen One is blasphemy, especially considering the earlier tweets, but I don’t think he actually believes he’s God. It’s still blasphemy, though. I think interpreting him as saying he thinks he’s God is just that bitch eating crackers; so was my colleague’s perpetual outrage about everything Obama did (including arguing that Michelle Obama dishonored the position of First Lady by wearing a sleeveless dress, but he had no issues with Melania).
There are two ways we get ourselves out of the bitch eating crackers world of politics: when we hear the call of the pleasures of outrage about some out-group political figure, we can ask ourselves whether we would be equally outraged were it an in-group political figure.
If not, if we would find explanations, rationalizations, exceptions for an in-group member who did the same thing, then we are not outraged on principle about the behavior. We’re just hating on the out-group. We’re just settling deep in the pleasures of outrage.
Second, we can ask whether we are getting information from sources that would tell us if the out-group behavior wasn’t that bad or that there are plenty of in-group members engaged in the same behavior. If we only get information from sources that tell us how awful the out-group is, or inoculates us against their arguments, then we’re still not actually engaged in reasonable assessment of our political options, but just rolling around in our outrage about Them.
We can work ourselves into a foaming sweat as to whether Trump sees himself as God, or whether libs are idiots for thinking he did.
Or, perhaps, could we argue about Trump’s trade war with China?