Thoughts on the political gaming of "the caravan"

By artappraiser on Tue, 10/30/2018 - 4:48am |

Twitter thread by a vox.com writer:

Good thread; the caravan hysteria is identity politics all the way down-> https://t.co/IonGyILYFn
— Christopher 'The Dead Walk' Federico (@ChrisPolPsych) October 30, 2018

URL:

https://twitter.com/drvox/status/1057105315907362816

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The victimology/persecuted minority angle sarcastically noted by Dana Millbank @ WashingtonPost.com, Oct. 29:

Hasn’t Trump suffered enough?

[....] But let us not lose sight of the real victim here: Donald Trump.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders hadn’t given a briefing in nearly a month, so she had a lot of time to build up grievances before Monday afternoon’s session. She emerged half an hour late with a scowl, and read a written statement containing the requisite denunciations of the attack in Pittsburgh and affirmations of Trump’s affection for Jews [....]

by artappraiser on Tue, 10/30/2018 - 5:07am

Jennifer Rubin, WaPo today, on how media should treat the caravan matter:

....

Each news outlet must decide which stories are most important. In this case, coverage has too often simply repeated the Trump-Fox hype rather than explain what is going on: Trump is creating a fake emergency, wasting taxpayer dollars now in deploying troops and serving it up as red meat to his base.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/10/30/how-to-cover-...

by AmericanDreamer on Tue, 10/30/2018 - 12:37pm

Fox "News" Shep Smith debunks Trump's migrant-caravan rhetoric: 'there is no invasion'

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith on Monday repudiated claims by President Donald Trump and his own network of the risks posed by a so-called caravan of migrants making its way toward the U.S. border.
‘There is no invasion. No one’s coming to get you. There’s nothing at all to worry about.’Shepard Smith

“Tomorrow the migrants, according to Fox News reporting, are more than two months away — if any of them actually come here,” Smith said on the air Monday. “But tomorrow is one week before the midterm election, which is what all of this is about.”

Jon Passantino ✔@passantino

Shep Smith on the migrant caravan: "There is no invasion. No one is coming to get you. There is nothing at all to worry about."

4:56 PM - Oct 29, 2018

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fox-news-shepard-smith-debunks-trumps-...

Of course, even pushing back on the migrant caravan matter and its purpose...keeps/puts the migrant caravan on the air, increasing its visibility.

If you believe, as I do, that the visual images of it that Fox will beam out non-stop for the next week, along with the visual images of the troops that are going to be deployed weeks before it even arrives at the border (if it does), are likely to have far more impact on election turnout and results than any words used on Fox to feed its viewers, then you might be excused for thinking of Smith's actions here as just sly and disingenuous.

To my knowledge he still has a job. I don't doubt that if they tried to fire him over this he would tell them why what he's doing actually does far more to reinforce than undercut the company line on this business, giving the reason I just gave above.

It's the heads we win, tails you lose tack. Rinse. Repeat. If it were easy to thwart it they wouldn't keep doing it.

I do not intend to or want to waste any more words on this tawdry matter. But...if someone else asks a question or says something in response, or if there is some newly outrageous development that seems to cry out for comment, I may well be tempted. And so it goes...

by AmericanDreamer on Tue, 10/30/2018 - 12:58pm

Great comment of your own, Dreamer, to add to the thread. I just reread the beginning of Roberts thread. And he's basically pointing out the similar, excerpt my underlining:

2. ... but this seems different. I don't believe ANYONE genuinely thinks it's a threat. Not really. The administration is acting out the theater of threat, obviously, but in this case, I think that's true of the base too, even if not always consciously.

3. The administration, RW elected officials, RW media, even just RW voters -- I don't think they CARE if it's a "real" threat, as an elitist empiricist like me might define "real." It is a symbol that defines their identity against their opponents, a weapon in the culture war.

4. It is "real" in that what it represents about their identity is real. It is a way for Trump & the right to act out their identity, together, intensifying those tribal bonds in the runup to the election. They know what role they're supposed to play ...

So I thought: here we are once again for the umpteenth time put in the spot of the GOP playbook of wedge issue/culture war to gin up the troops against the screaming masses of liberals who as if puppets with strings pulled object to their favorite wedgie at the time (Immigrants, Terry Shiavo, doesn't matter...it's an identity issue they need, that's what they'll get)

The point: this is not Trumpism! This is Newt Gingrich. Nothing new here. Newt came out and announced it in public only a short time ago: this election will hinge on Kavanaugh and The Caravan. He's blatant and we're suprised?

Just happens to synch with one of Trump's favorite topics, but it's not Trumpism

So an afterhought on the side issue of Shep Smith: he has objected to a lot of Trumpism and kept his job. But objecting to classic Newt Gingrich Contract with America culture wars, that might be more dangerous @ Fox? We'll see.

by artappraiser on Tue, 10/30/2018 - 2:04pm

Oy. Last week, bots were driving 60% of the Twitter conversation about the caravan. (And you can now track the bot activity on any news topic at https://t.co/GlXnBuVrS6.) @issielapowsky https://t.co/I9L1uE64pU
— Nicholas Thompson (@nxthompson) October 30, 2018

by artappraiser on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 12:25am

Thinking outside the vox bubble....

Roberts says in the 2nd tweet* of that thread:

"I don't believe ANYONE genuinely thinks it's a threat. Not really. The administration is acting out the theater of threat, obviously, but in this case, I think that's true of the base too, even if not always consciously."

Ha ha, who's afraid of a bunch of women and children, right?

What about working class parents, regardless of race, who might see them as competition for jobs, housing and social services and not just their own but those of their children as well. Doubt working class non-parent are all that welcoming either.

*Was not sure whether to embed tweet or just link, so just quoted it.

by EmmaZahn on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 7:52am

OMG, Emma!!! How I have missed your input!

Yes to your point. That is exactly what to be careful about with "overreach," especially from elite voices. Many people are just now getting used to being able to find a fucking job, when they couldn't before, but haven't gotten to the stage of figuring out how the heck to get employers pay a little more along the lines of supply and demand.

But this is precisely why I think it would be dangerous for Dems to get unfairly labeled as supporting completely open borders, which is what Trump is trying to do. It's very important that they get across that they are for new sensible immigration standards and that executing that to the preferences of the majority of the citizenry is something they are going to take seriously. And that it's not going to be easy, that it's going to be hard complicated work just like health care, especially in these times of lots of refugees. It's so important, it's causing a lot of problems everywhere in the world right now.

by artappraiser on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 8:18pm

Thank you for the compliment, art, but I haven't really had much input since I last posted here so you haven't missed any. :) Not really sure why I commented this time. Probably because Vox annoys me. I try to avoid it but I read this thread before checking who wrote it. And it did turn out worthwhile because after commenting I fell into a rabbit hole researching remittances. They are a substantial part of Guatemala's economy, equal to 2/3 of its exports, but only about 1/4 ends up in the lower deciles while most of the remainder goes to the top 3. That's a huge disincentive for wealthier Guatemalans to alter the status quo. They will likely encourage, if not outright finance, emigration as long as they continue to profit from remittances. Doubt a border wall will make a dent in those, at least not for a very long time given the number of Guatemalans already living here. And it is not just a Guatemala/USA problem. Remittances are a global issue. Not sure what the solution is. I am going to keep reading.

by EmmaZahn on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 4:29pm

Another angle is the pretty serious trend for the wealthy of Latin America to shelter money in pied-a-terre property in Miami and Manhattan (i.e. Kushner Trump kinda places. oh the irony? not, actually it's pretty straightforward, it's basically the Trump biz model!) rather than put it in their own countries. International money doing that is turning Manhattan into a ghost town, the skyline around Central Park is being radically altered as we comment here, with a ton of thin needle skyscraper condos on little spits of land being built, they are specifically targeting the ghost market. Thousands and thousands of new multi million dollar apartments, most of them empty most of the year.

by artappraiser on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 5:59pm

I'm thinking Eddie Murphy was onto something, but we're the wrong kind of white people sadly, no one giving us a condo.

by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 6:19pm

caught my eye after reading your comment; of course it's a "thing" we've all surmised from history, but interesting to see it in a recent psychology paper:

Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton, and colleagues have shown that distrust of an out-group is linked to anger and impulses toward violence. This is particularly true when a society faces economic hardship and people are led to see outsiders as competitors for their jobs.

from Op-ed by a psychiatrist @ NYTimes.com, Oct. 31

The Neuroscience of Hate Speech
Humans are social creatures who are easily influenced by the anger and rage that are everywhere these days.

this from that was also interesting as far as the whole tribal thing:

At the same time, politicians like Mr. Trump who stoke anger and fear in their supporters provoke a surge of stress hormones, like cortisol and norepinephrine, and engage the amygdala, the brain center for threat. One study, for example, that focused on “the processing of danger” showed that threatening language can directly activate the amygdala. This makes it hard for people to dial down their emotions and think before they act.

Mr. Trump has managed to convince his supporters that America is the victim and that we face an existential threat from imagined dangers like the migrant caravan and the “fake, fake disgusting news.”

by artappraiser on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 7:51pm

Current NYTimes headline story suggests Trump has decided to go all out class war on this:

Trump’s Nationalism Is Breaking Point for Some Suburban Voters, Risking GOP Coalition

Educated, prosperous white people repelled by President Trump’s strident language on race and gender are turning away from the Republican Party.
Rather than seeking to coax these voters back, Mr. Trump appears to have all but written them off in the final days of the campaign.

1h ago

Yes ironic for a billionaire who brags how he's more elite than the elites, but that's a real tired old story already. All he cares about is who he thinks his fans are. After all, the wealthy suburbanites were never watching The Apprentice.

by artappraiser on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 9:27pm

not what it first appears if you click all the way through:

This is tremendously powerful, Andy. https://t.co/uph8FhSLlx
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 1, 2018

by artappraiser on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 8:51pm

he's going rogue, crazytown in full force, no reins, all out call to the fan base, screw what GOP political ops think:

Yep. Rocks can be treated as firearms. https://t.co/DFBziY4VrN
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 1, 2018

Fact Check: A large share of the things President Trump just said on live television are not true.
— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) November 1, 2018

by artappraiser on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 10:19pm

Another day, another viral caravan hoax. I reported this to FB earlier today, when it had <10,000 shares. (It's a photo of a border detention center published by @HoustonChron in 2014, nothing to do with caravan.) Still up, and now at 33,000 shares. pic.twitter.com/jo5oT45gPT
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) November 3, 2018

Edit to add, reminded of this from Kristof's column about manipulation of tribal impulses the other day:

For example, a Yale professor, John Bargh, describes in his book, “Before You Know It,” a study in which liberal college students were asked to imagine their own deaths in detail. Afterward, their views shifted rightward.

In another experiment, students were first cautioned about a flu going around, and then asked a series of questions. Simply reminding people about the flu led some to be more negative about immigration.

So, no surprise, Fox News is worrying aloud about the caravan bringing disease for want of vaccination. One Fox News “expert” warned that the diseases might include smallpox. (The fact that smallpox was eradicated worldwide four decades ago suggests his level of expertise.)

I checked childhood vaccination rates for Honduras, where the caravan began. They are 97 percent, compared to 92 to 95 percent in the United States, according to the World Health Organization. No wonder the United States Centers for Disease Control believes that“the children arriving at U.S. borders pose little risk of spreading infectious diseases.”

So Republican candidates conjure monsters to terrify us on a predictable election cycle. In 2010, it was “death panels” and the “Ground Zero mosque.” Four years ago, it was Ebola and ISIS terrorists sneaking in from Mexico. Two years ago it was men using transgender rights to invade women’s bathrooms. Today it’s the caravan.

by artappraiser on Sat, 11/03/2018 - 2:48am

a debunking agitprop story is currently # 1 most popular @ The Weekly Standard!

Fact Check: Does This Image Show a "Mexican Official being Dragged by the Caravan"?

by artappraiser on Sat, 11/03/2018 - 2:54am

Very interesting that this was not the original GOP plan:

How Republicans’ grand 2018 tax ambitions shriveled down to a Halloween press release https://t.co/U33krbHKRD
— Damian Paletta (@damianpaletta) November 2, 2018

by artappraiser on Sat, 11/03/2018 - 8:21pm

In the end, Trump really doesn't really give a shit about any of this, deep down I suspect he doesn't give much of a shit whether GOP wins or not, in the end he's only doing all of it for the attention drawn to him. It just hit me now seeing this > Look at how he feels threatened by Oprah as a bigger celebrity who can draw a lot of attention when she helps a campaign:

Trump: “Oprah’s been down to Mar-a-Lago,” then claims he was on her last week of shows (he wasn’t), then insinuates they’re”trying to burn the tape.” (Which explains why the tape of the show he wasn’t on doesn’t exist!)
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 4, 2018

He'd probably actually like being impeached! It's really going to be no skin off his back to have Dems in Congress attacking him. It will just be more continued attention, the kind Oprah can't get.

The immigration thing as well as the tariff thing are just classics he uses that he knows the base likes. He can change that with whim if they no longer like it.

Makes me think that if Dems win Congress, constituents should make clear they want the priority to be attention to policy made by the adminstration over Trump follies, many of which are not real. He can troll and unnecessarily attract attention to himself while distracting from the minions while they execute GOP policies, that he can do

by artappraiser on Sun, 11/04/2018 - 6:47pm

Yup (found just now on twitter because "liked" by Maggie Haberman):

Oh. https://t.co/hT0bgqFpXZ
— Julie Davis (@juliehdavis) November 5, 2018

by artappraiser on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 6:39pm

danger danger warning warning, some other things on his mind, kindler gentler things, actually extra scary:

Trump, in interview with @ABC7, says the one regret he has from his first two years in office is his tone.

"I would like to have a much softer tone. I feel, to a certain extent, I have no choice. But maybe I do. And maybe I could’ve been softer from that standpoint."
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) November 5, 2018

by artappraiser on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 7:43pm

Thoughts on the political gaming of "the caravan"

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