Chinks in the Groupthink Armor: Is Trump’s Death Grip on the GOP Loosening?

Since Election 2016, Ye Olde Blogge has found that there are four psychological findings that help us understand American politics and predict election outcomes and political behavior: (1) Personality disorders and characteristics to predict Trump and GOP politicians; (2) Mass psychosis to explain MAGA; (3) Behavioral economics to predict elections; and (4) Groupthink to explain the increasingly disastrous and immoral decisions by the Republican Party.

Today, we’ll focus on groupthink for reasons that will become obvious if they aren’t already.

Trump’s federal indictment has for the first time shown some chinks in the groupthink armor that the GOP erected around Trump. There are some “moderate” Republicans who are willing to say publicly that what Trump did was very bad, but we’ll vote for him anyway. And, by moderate I mean Republicans that still want to fleece the middle class and transfer the nation’s wealth to the one percent, keep us all as wage slaves, sacrifice the world’s climate so that the one or two hundred billionaire class can try and become five hundred billionaires before it all comes tumbling down, and render the Democratic Party the regional neutered second-class party that has just enough of a chance of winning that they can still hang their hat on the liberal democracy coatrack as opposed to the “normal” Republicans who want us all to live in Cancer Alley, drink Flint water, use Texas utilities, get a Florida education, and live in slumlord rental housing in a single-party, pseudo-democratic oligarchy like they have in Russia.

Groupthink

Ye Olde Blogge has a long rich history of writing about groupthink. There are many excellent posts that manage to convey its history, basic tenets, and applications with some modicum of intelligibility in spite of my oft mangled syntax. Try the ones that have been sprinkled throughout this post! But, here are the basics for those with limited time.

Groupthink is a decision making process that occurs when bodies of decision makers value cohesion and conformity higher than anything else. The group systematically narrows it choices and the facts it is basing its choices on by discouraging dissent from the developing consensus. Choices made in such circumstances become increasingly disastrous and immoral. Think Enron, Bay of Pigs, Invasion of Iraq and other famous poor choices. Let us know in the comments of others that you know about.

According to Janis Irving, who originated the idea, the symptoms of groupthink are:

INVULNERABILITY.  The group entertains delusions of invulnerability. You might say that they are perfect, kinda like our ex-Narcissist-in-Chief thinks he’s perfect and since he has to destroy anyone who might pick the thin veneer of schlocky gold paint covering his festering pile of inner doubt and emptiness those that surround him adopt the same point-of-view.

Look at the cast of Republican assholes that now populate local, state, and federal elected offices. They literally grew up believing several pieces of Republican dogma to be true:

• Racist dog whistles are true. Welfare queens. Shiftless takers. Liberals promoting minorities ahead of the hardworking deserving white Christian. All of that crap.
• Trickle down economics works. None of Reagan or Poppy’s cabinets and advisors believed that it could possibly work. Reagan may have, but more than likely, he just didn’t care. Poppy was smart enough not to, but he used to be an abortion supporter and sold his soul to sit in Reagan’s lap and purr sweet soothing nothings in his ear just so he could hold higher political office. But, the current crop of Republican politicians who grew up in that era actually believe it. Most of them have been pushed aside by the MAGA crowd who are so many wind-up toys waiting to pointed in a direction and let go.
• Abortion is bad and needs to be banned. Worse, they think it is a winning message. They think they have the majority here even though it led to resounding defeats in 2022.

No one in the Republican Party will say out loud that they lost every election since 2016 fair and square. They will say it was stolen. And, it don’t matter what they believe. If they aren’t willing to voice dissent.

RATIONALE. Those folks swilling martinis in their cuntry clubs being all smug about how hard they worked to earn daddy’s money or those out sweating on the streets with their Honk if Jesus hates fags signs have REASONS why openly supporting unpopular policies and culture war issues be floating their electoral boats to the docks of office rather than plunging them over the falls of electoral loss. And, those reasons are dog whistled and open racism, scapegoating trans Americans, and voter suppression. Anyone who says otherwise if from the devil or a RINO or worse.

MORALITY. Morality is synonymous with the hypocrisy emanating from the mouth holes of their politicians and supporters. They embody the belief that if I’m good, then everything I do must be good — a page out of the Puritan hymnal where god shows their love of you through how rich the wealth transferred from the American middle class has made you. These are the same moral geniuses who believe outlawing safe legal abortion is somehow good. They seem to think that it is good to condemn women to a lifetime of poverty (single motherhood) and dying in back alley abortions. They seem to forget that the god they profess to believe in doesn’t so much as punish all as they forgive all.

STEREOTYPES. This one is straight out of every ass of the Freedumb Crackus: Victims of groupthink hold stereotypes views of the leaders of enemy groups:  they are so evil that genuine attempts at negotiating differences with them are unwarranted, or they are too stupid or too weak to deal effectively with whatever attempts the in-group makes to defeat their purposes, no matter how risky the attempts are. Seriously. If you didn’t get a chill after reading that exact description of our current Republican office holders written in 1973 by Irving Janus, then you ain’t been listening to them — Good for you, I say. Wish I could ignore the ignorant crackers, but they are like a car wreck. Please note, that the too ignorant to counter their blatant attempt to gut our democracy and milk the middle class dry describes their attitude towards their voters.

PRESSURE. Anyone who strays from the party line gets immediately shat upon by them what do. Hello Liz Cheney. It don’t take but a moment of indiscretion to get the howling monkeys of the Interwebs to descend upon your social media account and sending you all kinds of Valentines to your email and phone inbox. How many of the Republicans have we heard from over the past half dozen years or so in private saying that they really hate Trump and wish he would go away, but can’t do anything because the one thing America needs right now is them in office doing whatever it is Trump wants them to do, which is loot the middle class and turn us into an oligarchy. See morality above.

SELF-CENSORSHIP. Do we even need to say anything about this? No one talks about a future in which America is no longer a liberal democracy but a thoroughly corrupt oligarchy and what that will condemn humanity to.

UNANIMITY. If everyone believes that everyone else agrees with the purported views of the group, then they’re less likely to speak up. This kind of unanimity takes on two forms (from, Groupthink or Group Cluster… Explaining the Modern GOP):

• Normative conformity is a form of social influence in which group members will mouth the beliefs and ideas of the group and go through the motions of the behaviors but not actually internalize them. Dissenters or questioners must engage in normative conformity or be ousted from the party. Can you imagine a worse hell? Think of all of the gay, black, or kind Republicans.
• Informational conformity is a form of social influence in which group members come to accept the beliefs, ideas, and behaviors of the group as true. They drink the Kool-Aid and become their sincerely held beliefs.
• The problem is that you can’t tell them apart from their public facing behaviors and statements.

MINDGUARDS. The Ol’ Pussy Grabber has crew of henchpeople who will put pressure and outright punish dissent within the ranks. He’s got an army of volunteers who will rain hell upon the heads of anyone who crosses him. They all live in fear of these folks.

Chinks in the Groupthink Armor

Now, we hear some “main” stream Republicans who are voicing some concern that Trump’s attempt to hide classified documents and defy a subpoena are just a bridge too far.

The mud wrestler, Chris Christie, has appointed himself the ring leader by howling about Trump’s incompetence and how much he has cost the party, three elections. He still wants to loot the middle class at the expense of the climate because god forbid a 100 billionaire be denied the opportunity to become a 500 billionaire in their lifetime. Otherwise, how else are we gonna know god loves America best?

Asa Hutchinson, the fell who thinks he’s going to stagger in Bill Clinton’s footsteps — no not in using his power and prestige to seduce and otherwise sexually abuse women, at least that I know of — but to become president. Stop laughing. It may not be real. I mean, I’m starting to think that the elebenty billion candidates that the Republicans have are essentially a conspiracy to get Trump the nomination. Anywho, he’s won’t sign the “loyalty pledge” — what is this Catch-22? — swearing he will support the nominee, like some common Trump.

The one or two senators who are talking openly about not supporting Trump, mostly by talking about who else they’re supporting. There’s Todd Young of Indiana who says he supports whoever can beat Trump. We’ll see how long that lasts. Everyone else gets mushy and lukewarm from there.

The death grip that Trump has on the party may be loosening. The death grip that the oligarchy wannabes has, isn’t. Don’t forget that. They may eventually dump Trump, they still want the open corruption and enrichment that comes with oligarchy at the expense of the rest of us.

Image Attribution

“Orangutan Strangling Borneo Hunter” by angus mcdiarmid is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.