Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump, and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up. Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics.
Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world.
People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.
It’s boys and girls, all things nice and puppy dog tails. And it’s not more than that.
It’s a setup with all the things that are – claimed to be – admirable in the one group and yep, I’m one of them! Everyone who disagrees with me is puppy dog tailes. And that’s it. There is no more here.
It’s a nursery rhyme to run the world by.
Pseudo bollocks. And what sort of personality are most politicians? Ego drive wankers who look after number one – walking examples of Mr Dunning and Mr Kruger with a good line in bullshit..
‘People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth.’
You mean people like you, George??
«People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.»
This is the category that includes guardian columnists, trans activists, critical race theorists, global boiling obsessives etc. etc. etc.
Moonbat is always good for a laugh. They could title all his articles “Why Don’t Those Damn Proles Know Their Place?” and it would work 99% of the time.
tl;dr: Orange Man Bad…
Hang on a minute, I thought Trump supporters are all impoverished rust belt dwelling simpletons?
George who on the basis of known incorrect data called those who disagree with him barbarians.
Bb, no you’ve completely misjudged the wonderful Mr Monbiot, who is surely one of the most empathetic persons on earth. Since he started telling us we all had to live in mud huts, freeze to death and live for a short while until we drop dead on insects and dandelions, he has decided to set an example by adopting just such a lifestyle. His butler assures me he only popped into the Bacchanalia to see if his aged aunt who washes the dishes there had recovered from her long covid and wouldn’t touch the food or drink the wine in a million years.
People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world.
– empathy : I am always impressed by the reasoned and pleasant demeanour of those on pro Hamas marches, the tolerance and understanding on display. You could say the same on XR, IB and JSO demonstrations – real understanding of the thousands who can’t get to work, to hospital appointments and so on – exemplary stuff
– intimacy: I suppose a load of men who falsely claim to be women wanting to see a load of actual women in an environment like a changing room could be labelled ‘intimate’ but it wouldn’t be the first word that comes to mind
– self- acceptance: The first thing I do when I feel accepting of myself is declare myself to be another gender or self- mutilate
– open to challenge and change: I am constantly impressed by the willingness of Climate change advocates to accept data which challenges the idea we need to revert back to some kind of medieval lifestyle. Those environmental protestors are simply paragons of free thought and open debate
– interested in universal rights and equality,: Absolutely true, they never use terms like ‘White Supremacy’ , ‘The patriarchy’ or ‘CiS’ which set up false paradigms and their empathy for Blue Collar Whites, especially White men is legendary
– protective of other people and the living world: Well he has a point here. They’ll happily step to the ramparts for members of ‘The religion of peace’ who run gangs grooming poor girls for sexual exploitation and they love putting cross dressing perverts into schools to demonstrate their perversion – so in that sense they ‘protect people’
So it’s hard to demur from his assessment in truth….
“People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.”
How does that fit with research thats shown that people on the Left are more mentally unstable than people on the Right?
As ever, the Left projects. What its got it says its opponent has.
I see George has finally solved the mystery of why American voters don’t want their country to be an impoverished Afro-Latin shithole run by demented paedophile kleptocrats.
It’s because they’re bigots.
“To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him.”
No, that isn’t the problem at all. That’s really not that difficult. It’s about job security, keeping more of your money, not allowing so many immigrants in, and that people don’t trust either the democrats or most of the careerist/nepo baby republicans to do this.
And if you want to stop Trump getting in, you deal with that stuff. But somehow I doubt that George would want to.
VP – very well put, but y’see normal Americans who believe in God and want their families not to be victimised or replaced by hordes of low IQ migrants have “extrinsic” values, which means they read the Daily Mail.
George reads The Guardian, so he has “intrinsic” values, which means he’s better than us.
When a society valorises status, money, power and dominance, it is bound to generate frustration. It is mathematically impossible for everyone to be number one. The more the economic elites grab, the more everyone else must lose.
George tells Mrs Monbiot this every night, but she still has a headache.
Trump might well win again – God help us if he does. If so, his victory will be due not only to the racial resentment of ageing white men, or to his weaponisation of culture wars or to algorithms and echo chambers, important as these factors are. It will also be the result of values embedded so deeply that we forget they are there.
When Trump wins his third presidential election in a row, not only does that mean you’re racist and somehow Mark Zuckerberg is rigging the election for Trump, but also you hate flowers, kitties and sparkly love hearts.
George is very smart and it’s Science, bigots.
$2 a gallon gas
1% inflation
3% mortgages
energy independence
real wages for people without a college degree rising at the fastest rate in decades
the lowest unemployment rate for black and Hispanic people in U.S. history
thousands of fewer fentanyl deaths every year
millions of fewer illegal aliens
Hmm, I guess it must be that extrinsic thingy after all
The same aspect of Trump Derangement Syndrome afflicts most people I meet who are “gravely concerned about America”. They are all worried about Trump’s personal characteristics: his ego, vulgarity, lack of empathy, manner of speech, sexism, and behaviour on Twitter.
OK, so you wouldn’t like to meet the guy. I might even be with you there.
But not a word about his record. The fact that as soon as he left office, American forces scrambled to gift the Taliban a bajillion dollars-worth of hi-tech kit in Afghanistan; that a massive hot shooting war broke out in Europe; that Iran re-started its nuclear shenanigans and also upped its influence such that we now have daily atrocities in the Middle East; that China became more belligerent and the invasion of Taiwan is now a near-certainty, etc, etc. And these are just the things that threaten me and my children. America also got poorer and more violent.
Still, what an inadequate individual, eh?
More reasons to dislike Donald Trump # 2153.
Reasons to dislike George Monbiot?
Come on! Let’s here some good ones.
I’ll set the ball rolling.
He looks like he dresses from Oxfam.
What is missed about Trump, is he is an proxy, through him is expressed and vocalised the anger and frustration of 70 + million people who are sidelined, ignored , treated by contempt by an out of control ruling elite. And most important – he will not be silenced.
Steve
I only saw what Tim transcribed – that’ll teach me!!
I particularly enjoyed this:
If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalise and internalise it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values. This, in turn, permits an even crueller and more grasping political system to develop.
So a system which bans people from seeing dying relatives during a pandemic under pain of imprisonment is ‘humane’? A system where a two year old boy starves to death waiting for civil servants to stop Working from home and come out and check on his wellbeing is a model of humanity?
Paradoxically his claim has a kernel of truth. Having seen the total inadequacy of the left wing establishment and public sector I have become angry that this human equivalent of a giant vampire like tapeworm are allowed to continue unabated and that I am on the hook for paying them in perpetuity – so maybe he has a point?
If, by contrast, people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterised by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end.
Which country does he have in mind here – can’t be many of the EU ones based on my last trip to France – maybe Scandinavia? North Korea?
Ever since Ronald Reagan came to power, on a platform that ensured society became sharply divided into “winners” and “losers”, and ever more people, lacking public provision, were allowed to fall through the cracks, US politics has become fertile soil for extrinsic values. As Democratic presidents, following Reagan, embraced most of the principles of neoliberalism, the ratchet was scarcely reversed
The notion that any of these presidents post Reagan were in any sense ‘liberal’ is one for the birds. I think Reagan will have been dead for 20 years and he suffered from declining mental health for the last decade of his life.
For well over a century, the US, more than most nations, has worshipped extrinsic values: the American dream is a dream of acquiring wealth, spending it conspicuously and escaping the constraints of other people’s needs and demands. It is accompanied, in politics and in popular culture, by toxic myths about failure and success: wealth is the goal, regardless of how it is acquired.
This could be applied to almost any country in the world. Even North Korea, which has massive restraints on advertising and keeps its populace enslaved still sees those that manage to escape it want to embrace freedom, even if it proves ‘illusory’.
The ubiquity of advertising, the commercialisation of society and the rise of consumerism, alongside the media’s obsession with fame and fashion, reinforce this story. The marketing of insecurity, especially about physical appearance, and the manufacture of unfulfilled wants, dig holes in our psyches that we might try to fill with money, fame or power. For decades, the dominant cultural themes in the US – and in many other nations – have functioned as an almost perfect incubator of extrinsic values.
People used to have something else – religion (indeed many Muslims still do) – it was systematically diminished deliberately by people like Monbiot, with the result that people are lost and rootless and will believe in almost anything.
The entire article reads like something you might read in a student paper. If I were a Guardian shareholder I’d want my money back
VP – Paradoxically his claim has a kernel of truth. Having seen the total inadequacy of the left wing establishment and public sector I have become angry that this human equivalent of a giant vampire like tapeworm are allowed to continue unabated and that I am on the hook for paying them in perpetuity – so maybe he has a point?
The good news is they wildly overplayed their hand during the Scamdemic.
It’s been a real “masks off” experience for perhaps 25% of the population (people with critical thinking skills), literally and figuratively.
The band is still playing, but fewer and fewer are still listening. This is going to manifest itself in some interesting times ahead, because the ‘British’ government has no plans to stop making outrageous demands of an increasingly hostile and fucked-off public.
I think that the real answer is far simpler. Trump is the only US politician that actually represents the interests of the US and it’s people. His Make America Great Again slogan isn’t just a slogan, he actually means it. The media have created a cartoon caricature villain that is nothing remotely like him. The morons that only see this version are bound to be baffled by his popularity.
Moonbat projecting again. Nothing to see here, move along.
As far I’m concerned, Monbiot’s opinions just make him some sort of dago.
Northern European culture, status is acquired by being a giver not a taker. Why we respect the bloke buys his round & despise the freeloader. The North American natives, from which Americans have derived a surprising amount of their culture, had much the same attitude. See potlatch. And to be a giver, it is necessary to gain the means to give. So the cultural imperative is towards self reliance, liberty & independence. Trumpism. Yep. Extrinsit
As demonstrated by his dubious offspring, Biden belongs to the other culture. Scrabbling for handouts, then squireling it away amidst denials, with his hand outstretched for more. If Monbiot chooses to self identify with the sub-races & other mendicant intrinsic takers, so be it. You can’t get away from the bottom 10% of the American heap still being better off than 90% of the rest of the world. And Americans did that by their own efforts long before Creapy Joe. Trump is the real America. Biden & the Dem progressives a dubious stain in American underwear.