Political MIND GAMES MIND GAMES
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Political Political MIND GAMES MIND MIND GAMES HOW the1 % manipulate our understanding of what’s happening, what’s right, and what’s possible ROY EIDELSON Political MIND GAMES Political MIND GAMES How the 1% manipulate our understanding of what’s happening, what’s right, and what’s possible ROY EIDELSON GREEN HALL BOOKS Copyright © 2018 by Roy J. Eidelson Published in the United States by Green Hall Books. Green Hall Books 1 Union Avenue, PO Box 2877 Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004 All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-9998237-0-5 paperback ISBN 978-0-9998237-1-2 eBook Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931708 Cover and book design by Sarah Eidelson. Copyediting and indexing by Grace Duggan. Printed in the United States of America. In this book, I hold certain government ofcials and other individuals, corporations, and groups responsible for misrepresenting the truth and causing grave harm. These assertions constitute my opinions based on the facts that I set forth in the text. For Judy, Josh, Ben, and Sarah CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE | 1 AMERICA’S PLUTOCRATS Who They Are and How They Succeed CHAPTER TWO | 23 VULNERABILITY MIND GAMES Exploiting Our Fears and Insecurities CHAPTER THREE | 55 INJUSTICE MIND GAMES Hijacking Our Beliefs about Right and Wrong CHAPTER FOUR | 87 DISTRUST MIND GAMES Misdirecting Our Doubts and Suspicions CHAPTER FIVE | 119 SUPERIORITY MIND GAMES Enticing Us with Praise and Pretensions CHAPTER SIX | 151 HELPLESSNESS MIND GAMES Manipulating Our Perceptions of What’s Possible CHAPTER SEVEN | 185 COUNTERING THE MIND GAMES Building a Better Society ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 205 NOTES | 207 INDEX | 279 1 AMERICA’S PLUTOCRATS WHO THEY ARE AND HOW THEY SUCCEED “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” —ANONYMOUS Smooth-talking con artists are familiar f gures in American folklore. The well-dressed hustler arrives in an unsuspecting town. He pitches some miracle cure or get-rich-quick scheme, door to door or from atop a soapbox. Then, before his custom- ers realize they’ve been duped, he steals away in search of his next mark. It’s a risky vocation, one that demands quick feet, a keen understanding of human nature, and a talent for telling tales that both arouse and reassure. But when it comes to prof ting of people’s hopes and fears, golden-tongued peddlers like these are mere gnats in a land of giants. By far the most successful purveyors of lucrative lies and false promises can be found among the denizens of America’s palatial estates, corporate boardrooms, and corridors 2 | POLITICAL MIND GAMES of political power. And unlike their small-time counterparts, they’re rarely on the run—despite the misery and despair they leave in their wake. How is it that these super-sized hucksters are able to accu- mulate ever-greater wealth and infuence—at everyone else’s expense—without provoking a broad backlash? As the pages ahead will show, they accomplish this by using manipulative psychological appeals that target fve fundamental questions in our individual and collective lives: Are we safe? Are we treated fairly? Who should we trust? Are we good enough? Can we control what happens to us? These “mind games” are carefully designed to defuse and misdirect our outrage. When they’re efective, we lose our bearings about what’s gone wrong, who’s to blame, and how we can turn things around. The disingenuous claims of fat-cat profteers took on even greater signifcance with the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States. On the campaign trail, the country’s premier hustler ofered voters a wagonload of beguiling accounts and assurances while breaking almost every rule of evidence, logic, and propriety. He sought to persuade not through rational argument, analysis, and truth-telling, but rather by manipulating our imperfect reasoning and our unreasoning emotions. The same strategic ploys that brought him to the White House certainly fourished during his frst year in ofce. But perspective is important here, because Trump’s propaganda playbook isn’t really anything new. In vari- ous guises, it’s been around for a long time—even if most Americans haven’t seen his level of mastery in their life- times, especially with the stakes so high. Ultimately, then, this political moment brings to the fore a clear and com- pelling message: We can’t wait any longer to confront and debunk the destructive mind games of the country’s million- aire and billionaire snake-oil vendors. And that’s what this book is about. AMERICA'S PLUTOCRATS | 3 FACTS ON THE GROUND: AMERICA’S EXTREME INEQUALITY Let’s begin with an inescapable truth. We live in a country where extraordinary wealth is concentrated in remarkably few hands. The fnancial assets of the richest 1% of Americans equal those of the bottom 90% of all U.S. households com- bined.1 The Walton family alone, heirs to the Walmart fortune, has more wealth than the bottom 40% of all Americans, a group comprised of nearly 50 million families.2 And top exec- utives of S&P 500 companies each receive, on average, over $10 million in annual compensation, making roughly as much in a single day as their typical employees earn in a full year.3 Research shows that such extreme inequality between rich and poor—now at historic levels in the United States—is a driving force behind many of society’s most profound and corrosive ills. These disparities are associated with diminished levels of physical health, mental health, educational achieve- ment, social mobility, trust, community life, and economic growth. They’re also linked to heightened levels of infant mor- tality, obesity, crime, violence, drug abuse, and incarceration.4 The ugly realities of extreme inequality are visible almost everywhere we look. Giant corporations are raking in record profts, 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 needy are on life support. Global polluters are blocking efective responses to climate change, while the poor sufer disproportionately from environ- mental disasters and devastation. Infuential 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. At the same time, the American public favors greater eco- nomic equality. Polls reveal that most of us recognize that the income gap between “haves” and “have nots” has been steadily rising, that our economic system unjustly rewards the wealthy, 4 | POLITICAL MIND GAMES that large corporations have too much infuence, and that hard work doesn’t guarantee an escape from poverty.5 Even so, researchers have found that most Americans still signifcantly underestimate the magnitude of the disparities between rich and poor in this country.6 The adverse consequences of our enormous economic divide are magnifed even further by another crucial fact: There are striking diferences in policy preferences between the super-rich and the rest of us. Compared to the extraordi- narily wealthy, most Americans are much stronger supporters of a higher minimum wage, labor unions to strengthen work- ers' rights, a more progressive tax structure, higher taxes for high-income earners and corporations, afordable health cov- erage for everyone, government initiatives to decrease unem- ployment, and a stronger social welfare safety net for those facing adversity.7 PLUTOCRATS, THE PREDATORY CLASS, AND THE 1% One might think that this popular vision of the good society would win out and Congress would enact policies to support it.8 But that’s not happening because tremendous wealth and political power go hand-in-hand in the United States today. As a result, a small number of individuals and groups have unprecedented sway over our daily lives and our collective destiny. They set the priorities of our elected ofcials.9 They exert infuence over the mainstream media regarding which narratives are promoted and which are obscured.10 And, as we’ll shortly see, through their psychological mind games they manipulate the public’s understanding of what’s happening, what’s right, and what’s possible. This unhealthy and undemocratic arrangement is the defning feature of a plutocracy—a society and government controlled by the super-rich, directly and indirectly. With their massive economic and political resources, plutocrats pursue the further accumulation of wealth and power while AMERICA'S PLUTOCRATS | 5 undermining the common good. As plutocratsˇ fortunes mul- tiply, the struggles and desperate circumstances faced by so many are ignored and grow worse. Almost 250 years ago, in 1776, economist and philosopher Adam Smith described it this way: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the mas- ters of mankind.”11 But “plutocrats” is just one term for these avaricious defend- ers of concentrated wealth and power. Other names also ft the bill. For example, economist James Galbraith has aptly described them as the “predatory class”: Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is nei- ther benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclu- sive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature—a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class.