Psychoanalytic Insights into Social, Political, and Organizational Dynamics

Understanding the Age of Trump

Seth Allcorn, Howard Stein

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000423174
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Commerce
• Sous-sujet: Leadership

This fascinating interdisciplinary work explores U.S. politics since 2015 and offers psychodynamic insights into the unconscious undercurrents of contemporary culture and politics in the United States.

Allcorn and Stein expertly lead readers up the steep learning curve of understanding the Trump era by exploring seven key elements of recent political dynamics. Using the complementary psychodynamic models of object relations, Group Relations and Karen Horney's tripartite theory, this book makes sense of the Age of Trump and its chaotic world of alternate facts, conspiracy theories, reality TV politics, hoax pandemics, and the sweeping chaos of life in the United States. This sense-making relies on two triangulations. The first represents the complex systemic political scene. The second uses three psychoanalytic theories to understand social, political, and organizational dynamics. This book is a key resource for helping readers know and understand ourselves, our fellow citizens, colleagues, family, friends and what Trump and his followers call "them" such as liberals and foreign immigrants, as well as both the larger polarized social and political context in the United States today. The book also provides concrete examples of how these discoveries can be operationalized both in organizations and at the level of national government and leadership.

This book is an essential reading for students in organizational behavior including leadership and how governments operate, as well as behavioral health professionals consulting or offering therapy to organizations.

1Introduction

This is a book about recent times (2015–2020). To begin we must acknowledge that there are countless explanations and theories that attempt to account for Trump, his followers, his relationship with them, and his self-labeled Age of Trump. Given this rich buffet of often competing attempts to explain all this, our approach, which uses a triangulation-within-triangulation approach (Figure 1.1), requires a systemic examination of the relatedness of the many political and psychosocial elements of this period. This in-depth perspective offers the possibility of making sense of the many relationships within the complex milieu of the Age of Trump.

Figure 1.1 Triangulation of the Age of Trump

This book is about the triangulation of Trump, his narcissism, and his autocratic behavior relative to a second set of triangulated elements: his followers, his loyal sycophantic enablers, and his adherence to far-right ideological perspectives. We find that Trump is a narcissist¹ and an autocrat – a would-be dictator like those he admires around the world.^2,3 This tendency to be an autocrat and authoritarian follows from his experience as a developer who is in absolute control of his privately owned company and brand along with the banks and private investors that finance his projects. He can do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, and with whom he desires including throwing anyone he chooses under the metaphoric bus – “You're fired.” It is also the case that Trump is supported by loyal followers who are not offended by the idea of him shooting someone on a street in downtown New York City or for that matter separating infants and children from their mothers and parents and placing them in cages. These actions are intended to “signal” you are not welcome here. Trump's actions are enabled by those who work directly and indirectly for him (submit to his authority) who formulate means and methods to implement his decisions which are informed by far-right ideologies and the desire to bond with special interest groups.

Our contribution to making sense of all of this, the triangulation, has as its central focus the political context in which the elements of the triangles arise. We first provide an overview of this context before briefly exploring the six elements of the triangulation discussed throughout this book and provide a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book.

The Political Context

Anyone trying to provide a comprehensive overview of the social and political events during the last half of the second decade of the twenty-first century is on a fool's errand in that the sheer volume of lies, chaos, dysfunction, and toxicity will no doubt keep historians occupied for decades to come. To be expected will be the emergence of a fact-based narrative that is rejected by the right which will generate its own counter-narrative to justify its ideology and actions in defense of Trump. This inevitability underscores the political and social polarization present today.⁴ We here humbly touch upon only some of the contextual elements to ground our use of the triangulation approach to sensemaking.

Ideological Rigidity

The Republican brand, the Grand Old Party (GOP), has been subjected to what some term a hostile takeover becoming what is now sometimes referred to as the Party of Trump (POT). Some conservative thought leaders of the past have dropped their membership in the GOP (registering as independents), and while remaining conservatives, they are now sometimes referred to as Never-Trumpers and perhaps participate in the anti-Trump Lincoln Project or similar groups that opposed Trump's reelection.

The groundwork for this outcome was laid in the reaction on the right to Barak Obama's election as president. This led to an immediate meeting by the GOP leaders to limit and undermine President Obama (Hell No!) hopefully reducing him to a one-term presidency as Mitch McConnell declared.

One major outcome of the response to Obama's election was the rise of the Tea Party, the emergence of Libertarianism, and the eventual creation of the Freedom Caucus. The Tea Party members advocate for a rigid adherence to political ideology on the right emphasizing libertarian principles such as minimal government intervention into the functioning of society and the lives of citizens. Illustrative of this is a 2010 Rand Paul interview with Rachel Maddow where he said he would have tried to change Title II of the Civil Rights Act that legally prohibits private businesses from racial discrimination, for example restaurants, because it violates the first amendment although he himself would not recommend discrimination. Ronald Reagan's go-to sound bite was that the government is not the solution; it is the problem that was operationalized as deregulation that helped to create the need for a massive savings and loan bailout under Reagan and an even more massive financial system bailout under the Bush/Cheney administration.⁵

The rigid and preferably unquestioned adherence to an ideology streamlines thinking providing a basis for mottos and sound bites and seduces adherents into believing it is the answer to all problems such as tax cuts as a universal cure-all. Ideologies are sometimes said to be a solution in search of a problem. They are at the minimum a method of unifying believers (brand identification) to pursue a cause which at an extreme can create social and political polarization and chaos. “We are right. You are wrong.”

Brand Loyalty

Red state versus blue state, left versus right, urban versus rural, black versus white, old versus young, religious and less so, and special interest wedge issues that split the electorate such as pro-life versus pro-choice are examples where these social and political divisions create the basis for a concept like brand loyalty. These are some of the more notable realities of the contemporary political context.

Ideological purity is in some sense the brand of the Freedom Caucus and the Tea Party that was at one time referred to as neo-confederate having arisen in the southern states. Today the Republican Party is composed of the right and far-right libertarians and Trump loyalists. They have led the effort to move what is sometimes referred to as the former Republican Party further and further to the right while rejecting some former ideological boilerplate such as free trade. Politicians who would normally be considered mainstream conservatives (speakers of the house John Boehner and Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor) as well as many conservative thought leaders such as George Will, Bill Kristol, Joe Scarborough, and Max Boot moved aside, opted out of the party, or were defeated in primaries.⁶ The Tea Party, Trump, and the far-right, consistent with conservative ideology and values, strive to limit the size of the federal government, reduce regulation, cut government spending, and lower the national debt while opposing tax increases, excluding immigrants, and opposing abortion and gay marriage. Social programs and safety nets remain under attack as do foreign entanglements and participation in the United Nations and World Health Organization (WHO). To be noted these directions of movement are currently being pursued more energetically. However, also to be noted, many of the actions of the “right” today do not necessarily fit with what was formally thought of as traditional conservative values such as the use of tariffs versus free trade.

In sum the remarkably high approval ratings Trump has among those who identify as Republicans and with him is noteworthy in terms of the Trump brand appeal for this segment of voters. This branding and self-promotion are pursued by putting his name on everything from buildings, airplanes, products, and books to letters announcing government payouts to people during the pandemic recession.

Mobilized and Organized Special Interest Groups

The emergence of special interest groups left and right is an important feature in American politics (see www.hud.gov for a list of special interest groups). Groups like the Sierra Club and the National Rifle Association are prominent examples and at a more fundamental level so are what might be thought of as on the right movements opposed to: abortion (Americans United for Life, National Right to Life Committee); anti-LGBTQ (American Family Association, Liberty Counsel); and immigration framed as pro-white nationalism (Center for Immigration Studies, Federation for American Immigration Reform). These groups appear to be mobilized around fears of losing guns, degradation of marriage between a man and a woman, and being displaced by black and brown races which was a theme of the torchlight parade in Charlottesville 2017 that included neo-Nazis and opposition to Jews.

Fear is an organizing principle for these groups with the fearful and dependent seeking leaders to save them by delivering them security and safety and protecting their ideologies, values, and systems of belief. A second organizer that these groups often share among their members and among similar groups is a sense of grievance that they are dismissed, looked down on, and considered to be uneducated and uninformed by “liberals,” a word hurled as an insult. These grievances and the accompanying anger, discussed in Chapter 13, have been held for decades. They have been mobilized by Trump who promises to and often does pursue their interests in return for their loyalty to him.

Fear, anger, and grievance, it may be appreciated, form part of the foundation of the social and political polarization so visible today as the United States moves into the third decade of the twenty-first century. Polarization is our fourth and last foundational perspective for describing the political context in Figure 1.1.

Polarization in the United States

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their book How Democracies Die⁴ suggest democracies that die do so quietly. They slowly almost out of awareness decline. They also point out that this vulnerability is being exploited today by would-be autocrats who understand democracy can be used against itself.⁷ They do not have to dislodge, defeat, or revolt against democracy; all they need to do is slowly co-opt it by compromising the information available to voters (propaganda), limiting those who can vote, removing or limiting rivals by any means available, manipulating the media and voting to get representatives that support them elected, and packing the judicial system with their appointees creating a loss of accountability.

These dynamics in the United States are fueled by fissures in our society, and anger and fear toward anyone who is not like “us” or does not agree with “us.” These fissures promote intolerance and hostility about many aspects of American society and governance at the national, state, and local levels.⁸ These fissures are not new. They have, however, been exploited to political advantage by Trump where his followers (voters) are highly motivated to protect, to the exclusion of other points of view, their interests, and often single-issue interests.

Alienation plays an important role in creating polarization. Alienation speaks to feeling cut off from oneself, others, organizations, communities, and even one's countries (“take my country back” is a common phrase). These feelings of being isolated and alone are especially profound when they pertain to what one holds as cherished values and beliefs. Many people especially in rural areas feel as though they are strangers in their own land.⁹ They feel marginalized and that their views about abortion, gay marriage, race, and guns are ridiculed by the national media.

This is made even more possible by corporate-controlled news and social networking media that is being exploited to create polarization for profit.¹⁰ Hate, anger, and fear are being mobilized on the right (to a lesser extent on the left) in the service of furthering the embrace of an ideology and an autocratic leader who said, “Only I can save you.”

There has developed a breakdown of mutual toleration where respect for the political legitimacy of the opposition has been lost. The opposing side, progressives, and liberals are the enemy to be guarded against and preferably vanquished. There exists concern now (Fall 2020) that the results of a “fair” election will not perhaps be possible and the results not honored. This is underscored by a 2014 Pew Research study (pewresearch.org). The study found that the distrust that the Republicans and Democrats in Congress hold for each other is a mirror of our society. Liberals and conservatives live near their fellow partisans with whom they agree, and they are unhappy if their children marry some...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figure
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Permissions
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory in Making Sense of the Age of Trump
• PART I Trump the Man, the President
• PART II Charismatic Leaders and Their Sycophants
• PART III The Power of Ideologies
• PART IV The Followers of Trump
• Index