Been listening to some podcasts on cults, and something I think it’s important to bear in mind if you’re one of those people who thinks all of Trump’s base will stick with him no matter what:
If cults really worked that way, there would be no ex-cult members.
If cults really worked that way, there would be no ex-cult members.
People do make it out. People realize how bad it is and escape. Maybe not a lot of them, but sometimes all it takes is a few.
Yeah, a lot of them will indeed stick with him no matter what. But he can’t afford to lose *any* of them.
Yeah, a lot of them will indeed stick with him no matter what. But he can’t afford to lose *any* of them.
So don’t count on them abandoning him because of any one scandal, no. But don’t be so sure that they’re all lost causes, because reality itself does not bear that out.
The last three years have proved how fully indoctrinated so many of them are, the strength of that indoctrination, and how far the GOP will go to enforce it. But it should also have proved that there are people who fall away at the margins, who get fed up and reject him.
He can’t afford to lose *any* of them. He needs to turn out everyone who voted for him in 2016, with very very slim margins. Only a few hundred thousand people in MI, WI, and PA have to decide that they’ve had enough and they’re either voting for Biden or not voting at all.
My irritation at people who are so certain of what they’re certain of, regardless of what they’re certain of, has been growing exponentially. Stop being so sure you know how this is going to go. Stop being so sure you know what people are going to do.
A lotta people in 2016 were very certain of a particular outcome and they ended up being extremely wrong.
By the way, no, I’m not saying focus limited resources on trying ti turn those people. I’m saying stop being so fucking certain of what you’re certain of.
Slight digression: Speaking as someone deeply interested in historical patterns of social change and the dynamics that drive them, I’m also not saying it’s a bad idea to theorize, to lay out potential scenarios and say “okay, with the variables in play, X might be possible”.
It’s recognizing that expansive range of possibilities that helps keep one humble in terms of what they feel is knowable.
Weird to bring up maybe but this is one of the things I love about the Outsider in the Dishonored games.
Weird to bring up maybe but this is one of the things I love about the Outsider in the Dishonored games.
He’s presented as a god who can see the future, but in fact that’s not what he is at all—he’s a god who can perceive a set of *possible* futures, but he can’t say which will happen. He can only note which variables might be determinative. People make their own choices.
We can talk about precedent and probabilities, and we can speak in terms of whether or not it’s likely that something will end up mattering. But we don’t *know*. And things might matter in ways we don’t expect.
“X won’t change the mind of anyone in Trump’s base”. Well, maybe, and you can say *probably* any given person’s mind won’t be changed by any given thing, but you don’t know which variables are in play in any given case, or which past events are still having a ripple effect.
If powerful indoctrination was always impenetrable, if no one’s mind is ever changeable, no one would ever leave a cult. Therefore all we can say is that any given event might change someone’s mind. You just don’t know.
