Trump's testing out a new campaign strategy: horror politics

[Nevilledog]

https://www.salon.com/2024/05/17/testing-out-a-new-campaign-strategy-horror/

No paywall link
https://web.archive.org/web/20240517102718/https://www.salon.com/2024/05/17/testing-out-a-new-campaign-strategy-horror/

Donald Trump and his propagandists are masters of the politics of pain and horror. They intimately know the MAGA people and their pain points, anxieties, wants, and insecurities. In that way, Trump and his agents are like a real-life version of horror movie monsters.

Contrary to what too many centrists and liberal progressives and orthodox leftist types fail to understand, politics and political decision-making are fundamentally about emotions. Rationality and purely material concerns are often secondary. Trump and his agents understand this dynamic as they use powerful emotional appeals to great effect to advance their reactionary and fascist movement to end multiracial pluralistic democracy.

In my chronicling of Donald Trump’s fundraising emails and his larger media and communications strategy, I recently highlighted a series of emails from the aspiring dictator that used ghoulish and horrific language. In that essay, I observed that Trump and his propagandists had hit a new low. That new low has quickly gone even lower. In a series of fundraising emails sent last week, Trump wallowed further in the politics of pain, paranoia, and horror.

In a fundraising email about his hush-money trial in New York that was sent out last Wednesday, Trump announced: “THAT FILTHY JUDGE WANTS ME RIPPED TO SHREDS!”

*snip*

[Blue Owl]

1. Dump is a one-man horror spectacle

[wnylib]

2. I've been saying this for a long time. The way to reach a MAGA

Is NOT through facts and rational discussion because emotions are what drive their attachment to Trump. Address their emotions, not facts.

Ask what they are afraid of, what they hate, what they love and why. That will sometimes open them to reason. Just naming and discussing their fears out loud to someone who will listen can have a calming effect. Ask questions that divert them from emotional reactions and that make them think. Don't get caught up in your own emotional reactions to their irrationality. Don't tell them what is factual. Instead, ask them questions that make them think beyond their knee jerk emotions.

Don't expect logical, rational answers to your questions. They are not geared that way - yet. You are planting doubts about their emotional commitment to Trump and MAGA spin. Their fears run deep and will not go away quickly. When they say what they are afraid of, ask why they have that fear. Sometimes that will reveal past experiences as a child or adult that they never overcame or healed from. Your questions can up them see the difference between past personal and present larger issues.

Trying to reason with an emotionally locked person gets nowhere other than frustrating you. The emotions need to be dealt with first.

[edisdead]

3. Blech!

Trump and the propagandists are doing all of this terrible stuff….. IF ONLY THE DEMS WOULDN’T FAIL TO UNDERSTAND!!!!!

Listen, if people can’t stop after the first sentence and realize that the trump party are horrible fucking people…. There is NOTHNG that dems and people on the left are going to be able to say or do to convince them otherwise. We can try, but itlf people want to believe lies over truth then the alternative is we start lying to people? I don’t think so. Unfortunately at some point the old adage is true. Elections have consequences. If we lose because America is too god damned dumb to not put a fucking traitor and his party in power, we will get what we deserve. I certainly am not going to have guilt over that nor will I pin it on the democratic party.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Jesus Keyrist. How many times do I have to say it? This is not new.

This is how the white suburban communities are all over Florida. They're bullies. If they want to shut you up, they will find a way to get in your face.