Authoritarians, Plutocrats, and the Fight for Racial Justice

On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump routinely lashed out at protesters brazen enough to disrupt his choreographed rallies. In Birmingham, Alabama, he shouted, “Get him out of here. Throw him out!” The next day he added, “Maybe he should have been roughed up.” In Burlington, Vermont, Trump ordered his security personnel to “Throw them out into the cold…Don’t give them their coats. No coats! Confiscate their coats.” In Las Vegas, Nevada, he told the crowd, “I’d like to punch him in the face” and reminisced about earlier days when demonstrators would be “carried out on stretchers.”

Trump’s belligerent stance toward dissent provides context for the National Football League’s decision last week: players on the field will now be required to stand during the national anthem. In adopting this restrictive policy, billionaire owners of professional sports franchises have chosen to serve as Trump’s newest security guards, responsible for keeping all reminders of today’s racial injustice and police brutality as far from the fifty-yard-line as possible. Not surprisingly, Trump was quick to publicly endorse the change: “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”

Such pronouncements from the most powerful person in the world are jaw-dropping. Yet Trump’s strongman antics haven’t actually changed very much from his days inflaming the crowds—“Lock her up! Lock her up!”—in Birmingham, Burlington, Las Vegas, and beyond. What is different now, however, is that President Trump sees the entire country—over three-hundred million strong—as his own gigantic arena. Those who share his intolerant, racist, and plutocratic agenda are always welcome to participate in his round-the-clock “Make America Great Again” soapbox performances. For anyone else, the gates are closed. The alternatives he offers range from disregard to demonization to deportation.

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The APA Speaks Out Against Gina Haspel

The journey to redemption is long and often tempest-tossed. But the American Psychological Association (APA) took another noteworthy step last week when CEO Arthur Evans Jr. sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressing concern over President Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Amid heated debate over whether Haspel is qualified or appropriate for the position, the public record is clear on two points: She was directly involved in the CIA’s black-site torture of war-on-terror detainees, as well as the subsequent destruction of videotaped evidence of that abuse.

APA’s opposition to Haspel is consistent with its stated mission of advancing psychology to benefit society, improve people’s lives, and promote human rights. Dozens of other organizations with similar commitments—including the Center for Victims of Torture, the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Physicians for Human Rights, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and Torture Abolition and Survivors Support International—have also weighed in strongly against the Haspel nomination.

For health professionals, this stance reflects a shared understanding: Torture is a barbaric assault on human dignity, and it is therefore intrinsically and profoundly psychological. For survivors, the demons of deep psychic wounds continue without end. Overwhelming feelings of helplessness, brokenness, and disconnection from other people are the direct result of having been subjected to agonizing abuse and humiliation at the hands of another human being. Haunting flashbacks and nightmares are abiding reminders that safety and solace are exceedingly difficult if not impossible to attain.

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The DCCC’s Mind Games and the Ballad of Roy Moore

It’s bad enough that the business-friendly Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and other establishment Democrats are aggressively tipping the scales in favor of their hand-picked “moderate” candidates in primary contests around the country. It’s even worse that they’ve now taken to defending this strategy by comparing unwelcome progressives to the likes of Roy Moore.

We learned this last point just last week, with the release of a secretly taped conversation between Levi Tillemann and Democratic Party bigwig Steny Hoyer. Tillemann is running for Congress in a Colorado primary against DCCC-backed corporate attorney Jason Crow. In their meeting, Hoyer tells Tillemann that he wants him to drop out of the race, that regardless the DCCC will continue shoveling money into Crow’s campaign coffers, and that the DCCC’s meddling is in order to prevent a Roy Moore scenario, where someone deemed unelectable in the general election was allowed to win the primary.

Hoyer’s invocation of Moore is offensive and worrisome. The former Alabama judge, who lost a special Senate election last December to Democrat Doug Jones, has justly earned his pariah status among those concerned about basic decency and democratic values. That’s not only because of well-documented allegations that he sexually molested young teenage girls. It’s also because he’s claimed that homosexual activity should be outlawed, Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to serve in Congress, and the US Constitution should be ignored in deference to the Ten Commandments.

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My Interview about POLITICAL MIND GAMES with Bill Newman of WHMP Radio

In late April I had the pleasure of being a guest on Bill Newman’s WHMP Radio Show. Bill and I spent 20 minutes discussing the political mind games that the super-rich and powerful use to advance their selfish agenda while betraying the common good. You can listen to the interview below, beginning at the 5:00-minute mark:



**POLITICAL MIND GAMES is available through IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other online outlets, and neighborhood bookstores.**

The 1%’s Mind Games: Psychology Gone Bad

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” — Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Manipulating Our Core Concerns

While millions of Americans grasp for lifelines amid the unforgiving currents of extreme inequality, multi-millionaires and billionaires comfortably ride the waves and add to their enormous wealth and power. The contrast is jarring to be sure, but it persists nonetheless because self-interested representatives of the 1% have become masters at using manipulative psychological appeals — I call them “mind games” — to defuse and misdirect our outrage. And when they succeed, we regrettably lose our bearings about what’s happening, what’s right, what’s possible, and what we must do.

Exploring this phenomenon as a psychologist, my research has led me to a focus on five concerns that are particularly influential in our daily lives: namely, issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority and helplessness. Each is associated with a basic question we routinely ask ourselves: Are we safe? Are we treated fairly? Who should we trust? Are we good enough? Can we control what happens to us?

For multiple reasons, these concerns are especially important in this context. First, singly and in combination, they’re essential lenses through which we personally interpret events, evaluate our circumstances, and decide what actions, if any, to take. Second, these five concerns extend from individuals to groups; as a result, they’re relevant in a very wide range of settings: our interpersonal relationships, family relationships, work relationships, community relationships, and political relationships in local, national, and international spheres. Third, these same concerns have the potential to undermine our capacity for careful and critical thinking because they’re frequently linked to hard-to-control emotions, including fear, anger, suspicion, contempt, and despair.

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POLITICAL MIND GAMES: My Appearance on Rob Kall’s Bottom Up Radio Show

I recently had the pleasure of appearing on the Bottom Up Radio Show hosted by Rob Kall of OpEdNews. Rob and I spent an hour in a wide-ranging discussion about my new book, POLITICAL MIND GAMES: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible. I’ve posted the YouTube video below. Various options for listening to the audio only are available here.

Watch the interview:

**POLITICAL MIND GAMES is available through IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other online outlets, and neighborhood bookstores.**

POLITICAL MIND GAMES: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible

Giant corporations are raking in record profits, while millions of Americans remain scarred by the Great Recession and a recovery that has left them behind. Mammoth defense contractors push for more of everything military, while programs for the poor are on life support. Global polluters are blocking effective responses to climate change, while the disenfranchised suffer disproportionately from environmental disasters and devastation. Influential voices ridicule those who are disadvantaged by prejudice, by discrimination, and by dwindling resources. All the while, our middle class is shrinking, imperiled, and insecure. This is not the America most of us want.

It’s really no secret that certain individuals and groups—the Koch brothers, Walmart heirs, some Wall Street CEOs, prominent politicians (many Republicans, and some Democrats too), big-business lobbyists, right-wing think tanks, Fox News—use their wealth and influence to pursue a self-serving agenda that betrays the common good. Indeed, they’ve been doing it since long before Donald J. Trump moved into the White House. But what often flies under the radar is the extent to which they rely on psychologically manipulative appeals to advance their narrow interests at the expense of the rest of us. Examples include “The dangers of global warming are overblown,” “Voter fraud is a rampant injustice,” “Workers protesting low wages are devious and dishonest,” “We’ve earned every dollar and deserve your praise, not criticism,” and “Everyone will be helpless if gun reformers have their way.”

In my new book, POLITICAL MIND GAMES: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible, I explain the psychology behind the success of today’s plutocrats in marketing their false claims—and what we can do to counter them. Offering a research-based framework, I show how the 1% exploit five fundamental concerns that govern our daily lives: issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. These concerns are soft targets for manipulation because each is linked to a basic question we ask ourselves as we try to make sense of the world around us. Consider:

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Facing History: My Reply to APA CEO Arthur Evans

In a recent Washington Post commentary, I made four points. First, psychologists played essential roles in the government-authorized torture and abuse of “war on terror” detainees. Second, the American Psychological Association (APA) facilitated this involvement — by secretly accommodating CIA and Defense Department interests; by contesting evidence of wrongdoing with deceptive public statements; and by repeatedly rebuffing calls for stronger anti-torture action. Third, to its credit APA has subsequently pursued difficult and meaningful reforms aimed at resetting its moral compass. And fourth, especially in this fraught political climate, the profession and APA must now vigilantly fend off efforts by self-interested parties committed to turning back the clock on this hard-won progress.

Given this combination of disturbing history and encouraging developments, I was disheartened to read a follow-up letter in the Washington Post from APA’s new CEO Arthur Evans Jr., responding to my essay. While commending the valuable work of psychologists in many spheres (I certainly agree), Evans held APA blameless, portraying the profession’s dark-side participation as solely that of “two rogue psychologists” — CIA contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. This narrative is profoundly and transparently false. The dreadful engagement of psychology and psychologists went much further, as revealed in numerous government and non-governmental reports, witness depositions, declassified memos, and other materials — including a comprehensive independent review that documented APA’s own institutional machinations.

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Fear, the NRA and Gun Industry’s Deadliest Weapon

School children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut; parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina; co-workers in San Bernardino, California; nightclub attendees in Orlando, Florida; and now concertgoers in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Each time, the horror of yet another mass shooting leaves us stunned, grief-stricken, and desperate for answers. But always lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce, is a modern-day Cerberus. Like that three-headed hound of Greek mythology that patrolled the gates of hell, the National Rifle Association, the firearms industry, and their bankrolled politicians obstruct every step toward gun reform, ominously warning that any restrictions will make us helpless to protect ourselves.

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From Outer Space, Three Guideposts for the Resistance

Later this summer, millions of Americans — from Oregon to South Carolina — will be looking skyward to witness a rare total solar eclipse as the moon briefly blots out the sun. Yet for so many in the United States, dark days aren’t really anything new. And they’re becoming all the more commonplace as Trump, Ryan, and McConnell advance a heartless agenda that dims the lights on pretty much everyone except the privileged few.

Fortunately, resistance groups have been working around the clock to blunt this ongoing assault on basic decency and the public good. They have a different reason to turn to the heavens: chronicles of aliens from outer space offer some valuable lessons about psychological challenges that lie ahead. Let’s consider three examples.

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