Trump’s Word Association Game
I happened to be reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman while the coup attempt of January 6th 2021 occurred. Not literally during the coup attempt, as I was glued to Twitter trying to find any piece of information, but over the past few weeks. I don’t agree with everything in the book, but there is a lot in that book I think relates to why things happened the way it did.
For those of you who do not believe Trump incited violence, then you should read chapter 4 on how we quickly modify our behavior based on simple words. He leads with the example of presenting you two words:
Bananas
Vomit
I have a vivid image in my head when I read those words, and I assume you probably did to. Other examples included a study that used terms about the elderly and Florida, and students then walking more slowly and cautiously. Or if I talk about the word EAT, and ask you to fill in the gap on the word SO_P you probably thought of SOUP instead of SOAP. The point is, we can be unknowingly influenced in subtle ways by the language we are exposed to.
I think you know where I’m going with this.
What would happen to 1000s of people who just minutes before started to hear words like “fight,” “trial by combat,” “kick their asses?” Those words over several speeches from different people. Then at the end told “go to the capital.”
This point probably largely applies to those that showed up to protest, then got caught up in the coup. I’m not excusing them in any way. They got to that point by denying reality. There were also those that were clearly plotting this coup attempt and brought weapons to potentially kill or take hostages.
My argument is that Trump and his associates knowingly used violent language and imagery to prime them up so that they would cause chaos. We already know Trump’s main tactics are to produce chaos and distraction. He has used it throughout his presidency. Like any good TV show, every time you use some time of ploy the next time it has to be even bigger. We got the end result on the 6th.
