Trump, & not seeing luck

I’ve long been puzzled by Donald Trump’s popularity – until the thought occurred to me, that one key to this perhaps lies in the TV show Deal or No Deal.

My befuddlement has not been that Trump is a right-wing git: history tells us that these often win support in hard times. Instead, it’s that his popularity grew after he insulted John McCain, even among the sort of people who usually revere war veterans.

George Lakoff takes us a step towards understanding this:

“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing”…Consider Trump’s statement that John McCain is not a war hero. The reasoning: McCain got shot down. Heroes are winners. They defeat big bad guys. They don’t get shot down. People who get shot down, beaten up, and stuck in a cage are losers, not winners.

This overlooks a fact which many of us think important – that the difference between “winning” and “losing” is often due to luck. McCain was a “loser” because he had the bad luck to be shot down in Vietnam. But that ill-luck should not detract from his character. As Kant said:

A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes…Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a step motherly nature, this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose—if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the good will were left (not, of course, as a mere wish but as the summoning of all means insofar as they are in our control)—then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself.

This is where Deal or No Deal enters. That show demonstrates that people fail to distinguish between luck and merit; they have “strategies” even for what is a game of pure luck. To this mentality, Trump’s insult to McCain makes sense; he is indeed a loser. By the same token, Trump is a “winner” even though his wealth is due not to business acumen – he’d probably be even richer if he’d simply invested in tracker funds – but to the good fortune of the 70s property boom, a rich father and generous bankruptcy laws. His talents, such as they are, consist in self-promotion and for “using the government as a hired thug to take other people’s property.”

It’s not just uneducated hill-billies who conflate luck and merit. For one thing, the US is not the only country in which an oddly-coiffed cunt from a wealthy family has achieved undeserved political popularity. And for another, experiments at universities in Barcelona and Singapore have found that even otherwise bright students are willing to pay people for a fictitious "expertise" in predicting the toss of a coin.

Sadly, though, the failure to distinguish between luck and merit doesn’t just help explain the hopefully brief and futile rise of a demagogue. It has longer-lasting pernicious effects. The narcissistic fiction of the rich that they owe their success to merit rather than to a lucky accident of being born in the right country leads to opposition to redistributive taxation. And supporters of immigration controls fail to see that the difference between ourselves and poor Mexicans or Syrians is due mainly to accidents of birth. In these, senses,as well as in their deference to the “well-born” Trump and Johnson, voters seem to think it right that people’s fates should be settled by where they were born.

Ironically, therefore, the failure of capitalism has led to the rise not of socialist attitudes but of feudalist ones.

Comments

[Hidari]

Incidentally it would be more alliteratively pleasing to describe the Trumpster as a Queerly Coiffed Cunt. Perhaps we can get this trending on Twitter.

[Matt Moore]

Undoubtedly, most of the people touting their strategies on Deal or No Deal are irrational.

But the existence of such people means that there is an optimal strategy for the rational. If one can imitate an insanely confident competitor, one can win better offer from the banker.

[droog]

The argument raised in the post is OK, but it makes assumptions about McCain's actions and his character that are too kind. One could argue McCain is another 3rd generation impulsive brat who paradoxically has risen higher than his ancestors whilst simultaneously scorching the family name. In fact, someone already argued precisely that, way back in 2008. Even the dreaded incident that led to his capture seems to be merely the worst of several cases of reckless flying. Jet airplanes costs money and John McCain ran quite a bill.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/make-believe-maverick-20081016

McCain's error was being a blowhard in the cockpit of a plane instead of in the safety of the US-based real estate speculation.

[botogol]

a rather unexpected C-bomb in the middle of all that. Are you OK, Chris?

[rogerh]

I rather hope he wins. Then he and his mates can stick it to the American people good and hard so they might finally learn that they truly do have The Best Democracy Money can Buy.

[aragon]

Who are the cheerleaders of the neo-feudalism, who are the advocates of open boarders, who advocate the Laffer curve?

I give you Economists lackeys of the rich, the supporters of the ultimate winners in the birth lottery...

The reason whey everything needs to be pitched in terms of economic interests, is that Economists can be relied upon to know which side, their bread is buttered on.

"Economists where put on the earth to make Alchemists look good."
The West Wing.

It is not just an accident of birth, but a better functioning society that makes the west a better place to live, Saudi Arabia hit the jackpot in resource terms, but we refer to the 'Oil Curse'

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9686.html
"Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil."

[aragon]

The quote should be "Astrologists" not "Alchemists" from the Chief of staff early in the series and refers to predictions of the future.

We may be all human beings, but we can't all live on the same small island in the Atlantic.

The West has better governance, why can't we export this? It is not as if the bar is very high.

But the rich appear not care about the lot of the rest of the population, this is most apparent in the Middle East, and Africa.

The Chinese miracle is a desire of the elite to stay in power, as is democracy in the west.

But increasingly the elites pursue their self-interests to the exclusion of wider society. Enlightened self-interest is a busted flush.

Now they wish to import the problems of the third world into the West. After all Society and Culture don't matter we are all exchangeable automatons to service the rich.

How ironic is the dawning robot age with mechanical slaves to serve the human population, when that is how the rich have always regarded the rest of the population, and how inconvenient when it may threaten their special status.

In the UK we had the Civil war, the Reformation etc, we may have been to easy on the Nobility unlike the French in their revolution.

The western political elite and economists certainly made a pigs ear of Russia, after the rise of Yeltsin.

So much for my world view...

[chris]

@ botogol - I'm tip-top, thanks for asking. I just couldn't think of a better word for the pair, and still can't.

[Pro Cynic]

It's strange that I feel more put out by 'undeserved political popularity' than any other phrase in this post. I don't think his popularity is 'undeserved'.

[JRH]

Rogerh:

"The Best Democracy Money can Buy" - indeed one of Trump's better pronouncements was he has admitted in the past he has bought politicians of both sides and he knows how it works ..

[Keith]

Very disturbing. lots of people are too irrational to see a con man when he is in front of them telling them about his big dick. Also this is the result of projection. Lots of not very rational or ethical people responding to some one on the basis he shares their bigotry. Regardless of the evidence that he is totally inconsistent when pressed about his past opinions and future intentions. So no one can be sure what he really thinks or would do in power. On the other hand all the other candidates are dire reactionaries just slightly more conventional.

[Kaleberg]

It could be worse. At least its the toss of a coin. Look at the fatalistic game Candyland that very young children often play. The winner is determined when the cards are shuffled and all the rest is sham.

[fledermaus]

of course the problem is that these same 1%-ers warning about the dangers of Trump have been feeding Americans the line that "The rich are rich because they're smarter and worked harder"

It is hard them qualify it with "except for that guy"