Why Donald’s Muslim Statement is Brilliant

Erik Erickson wrote of why Donald’s statement is brilliant:

Donald Trump just trumped all the Republican candidates for President.

The day after the mom jeans wearing squat to pee President came out to assure us that tolerance, gun control, and climate change would save us from ISIS, Donald Trump demanded we bar any muslims from entering this country and bar any American citizen who is muslim from re-entering the United States…

This is actually brilliant politics for the here and now. Immediately, every other Republican candidate except Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 100% rushed out to attack Donald Trump. He’s unhinged, hateful, etc. And the responses all amounted to “we must let muslims enter our country,” which sounds a whole lot like “we must allow all Mexicans in our country,” which everyone knows is blatantly untrue on both counts.

We do not have to do it, but the other candidates, unable to nuance their spittle, went all in with “no religious tests” and “yes we must do this because it is who we are.”

So, to put it another way, the day after the President failed to reassure a scared public following the second worst terrorist attack since 9/11 on domestic soil, Donald Trump not only got himself to the right of all the other candidates, but also got every single one of them save for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 100% to align themselves with Barack Obama.

It is brilliant for another reason. Those who support Donald’s position do so because of amygdala. They see a threat in Muslim immigration, their amygdala is triggering aversive stimulus, and that will drive them very strongly to support Donald. For them, this is triggering ancient neural pathways associated with survival. These are people who will fight through crowds and crawl over broken glass to support this idea specifically. Additionally, once they are given the option to support it, there is only one option to do so – voting for The Donald.

In contrast, the enemy’s cognitive motivation to oppose Donald is rabbitry. It is not due to strong amygdala aversion, but rather apathy. These are people who don’t care enough about the risks Muslim immigrants pose to take affirmative action, so they say, “Let them all in.” Since their cognitive motivation is borne of a rabbity desire to avoid conflict, these are not people who will fight to get to the polls to vote for Donald’s opposition. They would rather lay around snacking and playing video games.

These are people who might say they oppose Donald, but they are only doing it in public to be approved of, so as to avoid conflict. Few will show up to the polls and make a conscious effort to stop it, just like few are going out today to find a Trump rally and protest against it. These people really don’t care.

Those very few that do care and didn’t already oppose Donald will have numerous options to choose from when they get to the voting booth, since so many other candidates oppose Donald on this. So what little fraction of motivated opposition there is will be further fractionated among the many different candidates. Maybe Jeb gets a half-point, Carly gets a half-point, Lindsey gets a quarter-point, Kasich gets one point, Carson gets one, and Donald gets ten or fifteen points from their support, composed entirely of pissed off people who would kill someone to get to the polls and vote for Donald.

I suspect had Donald gone into the biological sciences, we would have a cure for cancer right now. The man is one of the most brilliant mechanists you will ever see. His grasp of complex systems and their manipulation is beyond measure.

There is another interesting facet of this, indicating a sea shift in the r/K balance. For decades now it has been liberals proposing rabbit ideas we didn’t like, but we didn’t have the drive to oppose them, so no matter how ridiculous they may have been, they passed. There were waiting periods for guns, sexual harassment laws at work, free birth control for everyone, healthcare, and even immigration. We endured them, and few among us had the motivation to protest, stop them, or even reverse them, so the slide toward liberalism seemed inexorable.

Now the worm has turned, and our side is the one proposing things the leftists howl at in sheer agony. Our side is the motivated side, and their side lacks the will to stop us. They hate it, they say it is un-American, but in the end their side appears powerless. Their side is now saddled with apathy as our side is getting geared up for battle, and it seems as if the entire tide has turned.

This would have happened anyway, eventually, given the spike in the conservative policy mood, the increasing unadjusted Misery Index, and the unstoppable apocalypse in the offing. But Donald’s negotiation strategy of asking for the sun and the moon on his first pass, and settling for the moon on his second, has radically altered public’s psychology, speeding things along. It is why I think we need to support Donald at this phase of the election more than ever, to both motivate everyone else from the establishment to drop out, and to let him work his magic on the nation’s opinions.

GOPocalypse cometh™