Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 2-Jul-18 World View -- Generational explanation of today's vitriolic divisiveness in America

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Generational explanation of today's vitriolic divisiveness in America
  
• Leon Festinger and Cognitive Dissonance
  
• The explanation: Commitment, disconfirmation and Cognitive Dissonance
  

****
**** Generational explanation of today's vitriolic divisiveness in America
****


Celebrity Kathy Griffin and her bloody Donald Trump head

My father was a Greek immigrant who was a fairly objective observer of
American society. When I was a kid, he once told me that in the 1930s
there had been so much violence by Communists and the left that he
hadn't thought that America would survive. Unfortunately, I didn't
ask him what he meant by that, although the comment obviously made an
impression on me since I remember it to this day.

The 1930s was America's last generational Crisis era, previous to the
current one. In the one before that, the 1860s, America was "engaged
in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

So today's vitriolic divisiveness is not unique to today, nor is it
unique to America. We're seeing it today in Europe, where the
European Union is being torn apart by issues such as Brexit and
immigration. It's fairly common in any country during a generational
Crisis era.

This week's mass shooting by Jarrod W. Ramos at the Capital Gazette
newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, has focused the public on the
vitriolic divisiveness. Ramos's motive apparently has nothing to do
with politics, although some in the mainstream media are blaming it on
various comments by president Donald Trump that could have incited
violence, especially his tweets about fake news, or his "punch him in
the face" remark during the 2016 campaign.

However, if Ramos was motivated by political incitement at all, it's
much more likely to have been the much more recent incitement by
Maxine Waters, specifically inciting her supporters to target Trump
officials and physically "push back on them!"

There's a "dog whistle" aspect to incitements to violence. If, like
Trump or Waters, you say something to incite violence by supporters
against opponents, then most people would consider your statement to
be a meaningless rant. But just as a dog whistle can only be heard by
a dog, your statement could serve as a "dog whistle" that would only
be heard by people who are moved to commit actual violence. And the
problem with inciting violence is that you can't control the result,
since you don't know how many dogs on either side are going to hear
that dog whistle and act on it with actual violence. In other words,
if Ramos was moved to act by political incitement, it might have been
the incitement by Trump during the campaign, or by Maxine Waters
during the last few days, or by numerous other people on the left who
are calling for various forms of confrontations and violence against
Trump supporters.

The mainstream media are pointing to various statements by Trump that
could have incited violence in the sense of a "dog whistle":

• At Trump rallies, saying of a heckler, "Get out" or "Get them
  out" or "Get him the hell out."
  
  
• Frequent references to CNN, NBC News, the NY Times and other
  mainstream media as "fake news," and a danger to democracy.
  
  
• “Get him out! Try not to hurt him. If you do, I’ll defend you in
  court," in March 2016.
  
  
• “You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in
  a place like this? They’d be carried out in a stretcher, folks. I’d
  like to punch him in the face, I tell ya." He was referring to a
  heckler at a a Las Vegas rally in February 2016.

On the other hand, I've seen far more serious incitements to violence
from the left, and I've written about them many times in the last ten
years, including the following:

• A 2006 Hollywood movie, "Death of a President," was a flop,
  but it depicted the assassination of George W. Bush, which was
  certainly the desire of the liberals in Hollywood.
  
  
• The left directed many extremely vitriolic towards the Tea Party.
  I thought it was appalling when supposedly professional journalists
  Anderson Cooper and David Gergen spent time laughing and giggling with
  each other like teenage girls when they referred to Tea Party members
  using the as "teabaggers." ( "Vile 'teabagging' jokes signal the deterioration of CNN and NBC news"
  )
  
  
• In 2009, close presidential Obama adviser James Hoffa, head of the
  Teamsters Union, called for violence and war against the Tea Party
  when he introduced President Obama at a rally by saying:
  "We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons
  of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong."
  Hoffa's call to violence was, in fact, heeded two weeks later by
  hundreds of members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
  members (ILWU) labor union, who violently attacked guards protecting a
  non-union grain terminal in the Port of Longview in Washington state.
  
  
• On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20
  children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff
  members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
  Just a few days earlier, Teamsters Union leader James Hoffa declared
  "civil war" on the country. Union thugs heeded his call in Wisconsin,
  because of a proposed labor
  law, and beat up people, destroyed property, and punched Fox
  commentator Steven Crowder in the face. Hoffa's incitement to
  violence, followed by actual violence, may well have been the "dog
  whistle" that motivated Adam Lanza to perform the Newtown massacre of
  20 children.
  
  
• After Black Lives Matter called for violence against white
  policemen, president Obama invited BLM to the White House, and praised
  them.
  
  
• Left-wing Antifa has been violently attacking conservative
  speakers on university campuses.
  
  
• Various celebrity figures have been inciting violence against
  Trump supporters. The most spectacular was Kathy Griffin posing with
  a bloody Trump head, shown at the top of this article.
  
  
• And of course the current poster child for extreme left-wing
  incitement to violence is Maxine Waters, screaming at the top of her
  lungs: “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a
  department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a
  crowd and you push back on them!”

I've been following this trend line since the George Bush
administration, and there has been a steady increase in left-wing
violence and incitement to violence for about 15 years, during the
Bush and Obama administrations, and long before Trump ran for
president.

The vitriolic divisiveness occurs on both the left and the right. But
violence and incitement to violence are almost entirely on the
left-wing side. USA Today and Washington Post and Hollywood Reporter (30-May-2017)

****
**** Leon Festinger and Cognitive Dissonance
****

I've been searching for years for an explanation for the growing
vitriolic divisiveness in America today, as well as in other countries,
and it suddenly occurred to me that the key to understanding it is a
book that I read decades ago.

The 1956 book When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger can be
purchased from online booksellers, or is available from https://archive.org/details/pdfy-eDNpDzTy_dR1b0iB as a free PDF.
I read this book decades ago, and it made an enormous impression on
me. I strongly urge everyone to read it.

First I'll describe the book's methodology and conclusions, and then
I'll explain how it applies to America today.

Festinger was interested in religious cults that predict the end of
the world on an explicit date, commit themselves fully to it by giving
up their families and belongings, and then have to face the world
again when the world doesn't end.

This is called "cognitive dissonance," when deeply held beliefs are
contradicted by incontrovertible facts.

Festinger found that people in such a situation do not simply give up
their beliefs because their beliefs were proved wrong. Instead, they
double down on the beliefs, and look for any way to justify them. In
the case of end world predictions, the most likely way is to believe
that God provided the world with a reprieve provided that the chosen
people begin to proselytize the new belief system. From this brief
description, you can get an idea of how this applies to the vitriolic
divisiveness in America today.

Festinger was aware of a religious sect that was predicting the end of
the world on a specific date. Two members of Festinger's team
infiltrated the religious sect. The predictions were based on
messages from extraterrestrials known as the "Guardians" that one cult
member, Mrs. Marian Keech, started receiving. The members of the sect
would be rescued by flying saucers and then, four days later, there
would be a huge flood drowning everyone left behind. The members of
the sect were highly committed to this belief: Many had given up their
families and all worldly belongings to join the other sect members in
a vigil in a member's home, waiting for the end.

The first disconfirmation came when the flying saucers didn't show up
at the predicted time. There were four wrenching days of waiting, as
the saucers failed to come at each newly predicted hour, as specified
by Mrs. Keech as she continued to receive "messages." The final and
biggest disconfirmation came after the four days were up, and the
world did not end.

Although the group were a private sect, what they were doing had
become known, and they received ridicule through the newspapers, and
they received visits by people who believed them and people who
ridiculed them. During the four-day wait, a couple of people, the
people who had joined most recently, left the group, but everyone else
stayed. Here's what happened:

<QUOTE>Chaotic though they may seem, the days immediately
preceding December 21 [the day that the floods were supposed to
appear] were at least loosely organized around a dominant theme --
cataclysm and salvation. By dawn on the 21st, however, this
semblance of organization had vanished as the members of the group
sought frantically to convince the world of their beliefs. In
succeeding days, they also made a series of desperate attempts to
erase their rankling dissonance by making prediction after
prediction in the hope that one would come true, and they
conducted a vain search for guidance from the
Guardians."<END QUOTE>

Another change of behavior was equally familiar in today's politically
divided world: Led by Mrs. Keech, the cult members began actively
proselytizing. They had previously kept information about the
cataclysm secret, "in order to prevent panic." But now they sought
out even the most skeptical nonbelievers, in order to convert them.
For example, one sarcastic commentator whom Mrs. Keech had repeatedly
refused to speak with suddenly was welcomed with open arms. In fact,
Mrs. Keech couldn't stop talking, as he recorded the interview, and
she answered all his questions in detail.

Another reporter who hosted a program on women's issues asked her to
comment, and she spoke at length on what's wrong with education, and
how the messages from the Guardians explained how to straighten it
out.

Hordes of reporters and visitors came to the house, resulting in an
"amiable, manic uproar."

<QUOTE>One further trend was noticeable on December 21. As
the day wore on, Mrs. Keech began to make more and more of the
importance of some recent news items. The morning newspapers
contained an article about an earthquake in Nevada that had
occurred about five days earlier, pointing out that if the quake
had happened in a populated area, the destruction would have been
enormous. Mrs. Keech showed the story excitedly to the members of
the group, emphasizing the fact that, indeed, cataclysms
[i]were happening.... Here, she declared, was evidence for the
validity of the prediction. This theme ... grew in importance in
response to further disaster news."<END QUOTE>[/i]

The next day, the group put out a press release saying that the
Guardians had postponed the cataclysm, "Due to the confusion which has
arisen from the prophecy we have decided to unite forces to complete
the prophecy." In other words, they were proselytizing in a press
release.

Festinger found that when deeply held beliefs are contradicted by
incontrovertible facts, the result is not to abandon the beliefs, but
to double down on them, with any possible explanation, even bizarre
fantastical explanations. This is the result of cognitive dissonance.

Festinger's book lists five conditions that lead to this "cognitive
dissonance" response to disconfirmation:

<QUOTE>"1. A belief must be held with deep conviction and it
must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer
does or how he behaves.

2. The person holding the belief must have committed himself to
it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some
important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more
important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to
undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.

3. The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently
concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally
refute the belief.

4. Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be
recognized by the individual holding the belief. ...

5. The individual believer must have social support. It is
unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of
dis-confirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the
believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can
support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained
and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade
nonmembers that the belief is correct."<END QUOTE>

These are Festinger's five conditions for the disconfirmation of a
belief in the end of the world by a religious cult. What has occurred
to me is that we can make slight adjustments to these conditions so
that they apply to political parties, and explain the divisiveness and
left-wing violence in America today. Leon Festinger, When Prophecy Fails and Psychology Today (22-May-2011) and IMDB

****
**** The explanation: Commitment, disconfirmation and Cognitive Dissonance
****

As I've said in the past, the survivors of World War II, the GI
Generation and the Silent Generation, did great things -- they created
the United Nations, World Bank, Green Revolution, World Health
Organization, International Monetary Fund, and so forth. They created
these organizations and managed them for decades with one purpose in
mind: That their children and grandchildren would never have to go
through anything so horrible as the Great Depression or World War II.

Throughout their lives, they worked together, even when they were on
opposite political sides, to protect America and the world from the
excesses that led to the Great Depression and World War II.

In the 1980s, the Republicans and the Democrats cooperated with each
other to change the Social Security system to make it a sounder
system. After that, they cooperated again to specify new rules to
control the budget deficit. And in 1996, Democratic President Bill
Clinton, saying that "the era of big government is over," cooperated
with the Republican congress to eliminate the welfare entitlement.

These politicians had deeply held beliefs that policies must apply the
lessons learned from the Great Depression and World War II. Democrats
and Republicans differed in some policies, but these differences were
minor compared to the shared beliefs of the WW II survivors.

These deeply held beliefs meet Festinger's five conditions, prior to
the point where the disconfirmation occurs.

As the generational Crisis era began in 2003, these WW II survivors
were rapidly disappearing, replaced by younger generations of people
with no shared deeply held beliefs. What deeply held beliefs did they
have? This requires more study, but young people do seem to have
rearranged themselves into groups, with each group having some deeply
held belief. Each of these groups meets Festinger's condition, except
for disconfirmation.

There is one major example of disconfirmation of a deeply held belief
that we've seen in modern times. Prior to November 8, 2016, almost
everyone in the country, Republican or Democrat, believed that Hillary
Clinton would win the presidential election.

Democrats were particularly deeply committed to this belief, and
supportive of one another in that belief. Many made financial
commitments, personal commitments, commitments to live in Washington,
and so forth.

The unexpected Trump victory caused a psychological crisis among a
minority of Democrats that looked very similar to the crisis that
Mrs. Keech and her cult suffered when the world didn't end. There was
a doubling down on beliefs and widespread proselytizing in some of the
most fantastical claims -- just as fantastical as claims that flying
saucers would be coming to save the earth. This explains the demands
for impeachment, the demands for a special prosecutor, the calls for
violence against Trump and his supporters, and so forth.

What I'm saying is that the concepts and principles that Leon
Festinger applied to small religious cults could also be applied to
larger political groups and political parties during a generational
Crisis era, when there's no unifying experience (like WW II). This is
a rich area for research, with results that could explain a great deal
that would help America's democracy at times like this. I've only
scratched the surface.

Finally, let me remind readers of the "Regeneracy" concept from
generational theory. A regeneracy event is one that creates civic
unity for the first time since the end of the preceding crisis war.
In 1861, the regeneracy event was the Battle of Bull Run. In 1941, it
was Pearl Harbor and then the Bataan Death March. It's impossible to
predict what the regeneracy event(s) will be this time -- perhaps a
major military defeat overseas, or perhaps a North Korean nuclear
missile landing in California. But whatever it is, it will unite
people in all political parties behind the president, as they fight to
preserve the country and its way of life.

Related Articles:

• Andrew Sullivan and the Gun Control Fantasy (26-Dec-2012)
  
  
• Left-wing union violence continues to increase in America (12-Dec-2012)
  
  
• Union longshoremen in Washington heed James Hoffa's call for violence (10-Sep-2011)
  
  
• American xenophobia on the Left and on the Right (07-Nov-2010)
  
  
• Vile 'teabagging' jokes signal the deterioration of CNN and NBC news (18-Apr-2009)
  
  
• Why is BBC so blantantly anti-American? - joke of the day (31-Mar-2005)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Jarrod W. Ramos, Capital Gazette,
Maxine Waters, Tea Party, Anderson Cooper, David Gergen,
James Hoffa, Teamsters Union,
International Longshore and Warehouse Union, ILWU,
Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown Connecticut, Adam Lanza,
Steven Crowder, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Kathy Griffin,
Leon Festinger, Cognitive Dissonance, When Prophecy Fails,
GI Generation, Silent Generation,
United Nations, World Bank, Green Revolution,
World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, IMF,
Battle of Bull Run, Pearl Harbor, Bataan Death March

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John J. Xenakis
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