Brilliant. The lesson Maurer draws here can be filed for the ages.
I would, however, qualify - or at least question - one small thing. The visceral reaction one has to the video is not because it implies that you, oh dreary member of the hoi polloi, are dumb. It certainly does communicate that. You can feel in your gut. I did. The visceral reaction to the laughter comes from the contempt it communicates for its target, accelerated by the pretense of respect.
Here's an illustration: if a bunch of NBA players who made a show of sponsoring the Special Olympics were shown on video to be mocking the skill and coordination levels of the people participating in the Special Olympics, our visceral enmity would derive from their contempt, not the fact that they are calling people klutzy. People call each other klutzy all the time. They call themselves klutzy. But they typically do so affectionately, or at least sympathetically. To pretend respect, when contempt is the actual relationship, is to invite a severe and punishing rupture of trust.
The extension of Maurer's observation to the opinion patterns of people regarding Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is brilliant. Sam Harris has a wonderful podcast where he talks about Trump's shamelessness. After saying how baffled he had been by the affection Trump commands, Harris explains that his "Eureka" moment came when he saw that Trump's shamelessness conveys - authentically! - his solidarity with the broken and ashamed part in each of us. He doesn't pretend to be a more moral person because... he doesn't think he is. Is there an American alive who can't see that Hillary Clinton considers herself more virtuous than the rest of us?
A final thought: people often wonder that nothing Trump did or said ever really laid him low, and that nothing could. They're wrong. Here's what could: video showing that Trump, despite his professed love for his supporters, has in truth neither respect for them nor concern for their welfare, that his displays of working class solidarity are an act, that he is, in short, a phony populist, a closet elitist. This would end Trump's reign, not a violation of the Emoluments Clause. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on where one stands politically, it's pretty evident that no such video is coming. Trump is authentic. In an age of collapsing trust that's an asset that genuinely means something to people.
Your confusion about Hillary Clinton is a little manufactured, right? Trump spent the campaign on the trail, meeting and talking to people. People who therefore trusted him. Hillary spent her campaign in the Hampton raising money from the most despised rich people on earth and krumping with Paul McCartney. The papers were full of this stuff: “Clinton blows away any other candidate in history for the amount of money she raised in August from Wall Street bankers!” Can’t imagine why people didn’t trust her to take their side over her donors.
She called about half the population deplorable, dismissing them as even worthy of representation. By itself that’s pretty much nothing, but then it became clear that her staff, the media, and much of the Democrat Party AGREED. That’s fatal.
And there’s the whole war-mongering thing. Wasn’t a good look. And the thing where she pretty clearly fixed the primaries before even a vote was cast. Like you’re saying, people don’t really care about lies, but they do care about fairness. It doesn’t matter if Hillary merely found a loophole in the primary voting system to let her more or less lock it up before anyone even had a chance to vote for Bernie: that loophole wasn’t fair. Now everyone hates you.
And to be fair: everyone ALWAYS hated Clinton. Read James Carville’s book about the 1992 election. He reported that during live broadcasts of a campaign stop, somewhere north of 50% of the viewers turned off their TVs when Hillary started a speech. She just wasn’t likable.
Anyway: great column. I hope he sticks around because “Boris” is a great name for both a Prime Minister and a moose. If he stays I’ll get a pet moose and the circle will be complete.
I'll be the quintessential comments-section kook, and agree with each individual fact presented (the content of the scandal IS weirdly narrow, the UK media ARE overly trashy, Boris Johnson DOES have a track record of being a lying scumbag, etc.) while disputing the overall conclusion. Rather than explaining why this scandal took off with psychology, I take inspiration from political science.
For instance, I like to look at economic fundamentals. I got pushback before for suggesting gas prices as a reason why McAuliffe lost in VA in November; now I'll point to inflation, especially energy prices, in Britain.
But the most important thing is just the agenda-setting power of the media. The UK media are almost covering this story like it was August's Afghanistan pullout. Take the last few weeks of newspaper front pages (https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cpml2v678pxt). Of the past 24 days of front pages, at least two thirds included party-related coverage and about half the time the parties and their fallout were the primary story!
Without the media pounding leaked photos and videos into people's heads, the parties would've been just a grace note in the cacophony of failure that is Britain's handling of Covid. In fact, The Times opened one week-in-review article with this paragraph...
> Boris Johnson celebrated his 56th birthday yesterday with a small gathering in the cabinet room. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and a group of aides sang him Happy Birthday before they tucked into a Union Jack cake.
...back on June 20, 2020 (via https://twitter.com/davies_will/status/1487339297606877190). Given that the newspaper of record casually reported the scandal's core a year and a half ago, and got minimal public response at the time, people presumably aren't outraged by the bare facts as such.
More likely what's happening is intra-elite competition exploiting the fact that Boris Johnson's completed his mission. He got the big majority in Parliament, Got Brexit Done, and absorbed a load of heat for deadly pandemic policy, so now's a good time to push his bullet-riddled carcass out of the PM's chair and slot in someone fresh.
Damn it, Jeff! This is the second column (post? what are these things called anyway?) that left me with the MF-ing "My Buddy" song stuck in my head. Talk about contempt for your supporters...
A great analysis. I have a lot of friends in the UK, and to a person, they all say that it's exactly as you wrote--the "relatability" of the scandal is what's killing Boris Johnson and will (in their view) ultimately take him down.
As for the Orange Asscactus, I don't think that anything can take him down because unlike Boris Johnson, he has a cult following. There is absolutely nothing that he says or does that will not be excused/defended/ignored by his supporters. Use info from a foreign government to get elected? No problem. Pay off an adult film star to avoid having embarrassing information come out during the campaign? No problem. Mock a disabled reporter? No problem. Use the Justice Department as his personal legal department? No problem. Try to blackmail a foreign government to force it to give him information on a political opponent? No problem. Minimize and/or ignore a global pandemic, leading to the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans? No problem. Incite an insurrection to overturn a legitimate election? No problem. The irony to me is that the one time he told the truth was when he said that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and he wouldn't lose a single voter. He's helping the increasingly radicalized and loony right wing "own the libs" and that's all that matters to them.
I'll leave you with this: If/when he wins again in 2024, thanks to voter suppression laws/gerrymandering combined with coverage from a media that seems eager to highlight President Biden's failures and/or shortcomings, he won't leave the White House voluntarily ever again, constitutional amendments be damned.
Brilliant. The lesson Maurer draws here can be filed for the ages.
I would, however, qualify - or at least question - one small thing. The visceral reaction one has to the video is not because it implies that you, oh dreary member of the hoi polloi, are dumb. It certainly does communicate that. You can feel in your gut. I did. The visceral reaction to the laughter comes from the contempt it communicates for its target, accelerated by the pretense of respect.
Here's an illustration: if a bunch of NBA players who made a show of sponsoring the Special Olympics were shown on video to be mocking the skill and coordination levels of the people participating in the Special Olympics, our visceral enmity would derive from their contempt, not the fact that they are calling people klutzy. People call each other klutzy all the time. They call themselves klutzy. But they typically do so affectionately, or at least sympathetically. To pretend respect, when contempt is the actual relationship, is to invite a severe and punishing rupture of trust.
The extension of Maurer's observation to the opinion patterns of people regarding Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is brilliant. Sam Harris has a wonderful podcast where he talks about Trump's shamelessness. After saying how baffled he had been by the affection Trump commands, Harris explains that his "Eureka" moment came when he saw that Trump's shamelessness conveys - authentically! - his solidarity with the broken and ashamed part in each of us. He doesn't pretend to be a more moral person because... he doesn't think he is. Is there an American alive who can't see that Hillary Clinton considers herself more virtuous than the rest of us?
A final thought: people often wonder that nothing Trump did or said ever really laid him low, and that nothing could. They're wrong. Here's what could: video showing that Trump, despite his professed love for his supporters, has in truth neither respect for them nor concern for their welfare, that his displays of working class solidarity are an act, that he is, in short, a phony populist, a closet elitist. This would end Trump's reign, not a violation of the Emoluments Clause. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on where one stands politically, it's pretty evident that no such video is coming. Trump is authentic. In an age of collapsing trust that's an asset that genuinely means something to people.
The thought I'm left with is, slap some red overalls on that guy and he has his costume for the next Halloween rager he throws.
Your confusion about Hillary Clinton is a little manufactured, right? Trump spent the campaign on the trail, meeting and talking to people. People who therefore trusted him. Hillary spent her campaign in the Hampton raising money from the most despised rich people on earth and krumping with Paul McCartney. The papers were full of this stuff: “Clinton blows away any other candidate in history for the amount of money she raised in August from Wall Street bankers!” Can’t imagine why people didn’t trust her to take their side over her donors.
She called about half the population deplorable, dismissing them as even worthy of representation. By itself that’s pretty much nothing, but then it became clear that her staff, the media, and much of the Democrat Party AGREED. That’s fatal.
And there’s the whole war-mongering thing. Wasn’t a good look. And the thing where she pretty clearly fixed the primaries before even a vote was cast. Like you’re saying, people don’t really care about lies, but they do care about fairness. It doesn’t matter if Hillary merely found a loophole in the primary voting system to let her more or less lock it up before anyone even had a chance to vote for Bernie: that loophole wasn’t fair. Now everyone hates you.
And to be fair: everyone ALWAYS hated Clinton. Read James Carville’s book about the 1992 election. He reported that during live broadcasts of a campaign stop, somewhere north of 50% of the viewers turned off their TVs when Hillary started a speech. She just wasn’t likable.
Anyway: great column. I hope he sticks around because “Boris” is a great name for both a Prime Minister and a moose. If he stays I’ll get a pet moose and the circle will be complete.
I'll be the quintessential comments-section kook, and agree with each individual fact presented (the content of the scandal IS weirdly narrow, the UK media ARE overly trashy, Boris Johnson DOES have a track record of being a lying scumbag, etc.) while disputing the overall conclusion. Rather than explaining why this scandal took off with psychology, I take inspiration from political science.
For instance, I like to look at economic fundamentals. I got pushback before for suggesting gas prices as a reason why McAuliffe lost in VA in November; now I'll point to inflation, especially energy prices, in Britain.
English newspapers highlighted energy prices yesterday by leading on them increasing (https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-the-papers-60238615) but that's just the latest reporting on a months-long shift. The British public was about 50/50 on whether the government was handling inflation badly in August, in September it flipped to a majority saying "Badly" and in the last few weeks that majority abruptly grew (https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/articles-reports/2022/02/03/conservative-voters-now-say-government-mishandling).
But the most important thing is just the agenda-setting power of the media. The UK media are almost covering this story like it was August's Afghanistan pullout. Take the last few weeks of newspaper front pages (https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cpml2v678pxt). Of the past 24 days of front pages, at least two thirds included party-related coverage and about half the time the parties and their fallout were the primary story!
Without the media pounding leaked photos and videos into people's heads, the parties would've been just a grace note in the cacophony of failure that is Britain's handling of Covid. In fact, The Times opened one week-in-review article with this paragraph...
> Boris Johnson celebrated his 56th birthday yesterday with a small gathering in the cabinet room. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and a group of aides sang him Happy Birthday before they tucked into a Union Jack cake.
...back on June 20, 2020 (via https://twitter.com/davies_will/status/1487339297606877190). Given that the newspaper of record casually reported the scandal's core a year and a half ago, and got minimal public response at the time, people presumably aren't outraged by the bare facts as such.
More likely what's happening is intra-elite competition exploiting the fact that Boris Johnson's completed his mission. He got the big majority in Parliament, Got Brexit Done, and absorbed a load of heat for deadly pandemic policy, so now's a good time to push his bullet-riddled carcass out of the PM's chair and slot in someone fresh.
Damn it, Jeff! This is the second column (post? what are these things called anyway?) that left me with the MF-ing "My Buddy" song stuck in my head. Talk about contempt for your supporters...
Gotta say, I prefer Ms. Stratton’s style to the Baghdad Bob/Orphan Annie mashup the Brandon admin trots out for us as press sec.
A great analysis. I have a lot of friends in the UK, and to a person, they all say that it's exactly as you wrote--the "relatability" of the scandal is what's killing Boris Johnson and will (in their view) ultimately take him down.
As for the Orange Asscactus, I don't think that anything can take him down because unlike Boris Johnson, he has a cult following. There is absolutely nothing that he says or does that will not be excused/defended/ignored by his supporters. Use info from a foreign government to get elected? No problem. Pay off an adult film star to avoid having embarrassing information come out during the campaign? No problem. Mock a disabled reporter? No problem. Use the Justice Department as his personal legal department? No problem. Try to blackmail a foreign government to force it to give him information on a political opponent? No problem. Minimize and/or ignore a global pandemic, leading to the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans? No problem. Incite an insurrection to overturn a legitimate election? No problem. The irony to me is that the one time he told the truth was when he said that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and he wouldn't lose a single voter. He's helping the increasingly radicalized and loony right wing "own the libs" and that's all that matters to them.
I'll leave you with this: If/when he wins again in 2024, thanks to voter suppression laws/gerrymandering combined with coverage from a media that seems eager to highlight President Biden's failures and/or shortcomings, he won't leave the White House voluntarily ever again, constitutional amendments be damned.