{"id":2591,"date":"2018-11-25T02:45:35","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T02:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/?p=2591"},"modified":"2018-11-26T21:43:44","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T21:43:44","slug":"how-trumps-followers-construct-alt-truth-from-lies-part-1-a-deep-story-for-shallow-deception-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/actualities\/how-trumps-followers-construct-alt-truth-from-lies-part-1-a-deep-story-for-shallow-deception-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How Trump\u2019s Followers Construct Alt-Truth from Lies, Part 1: A Deep Story for Shallow Deception"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first began to think about this topic early in the 2016 presidential campaign. At that time, no one took Donald Trump\u2019s run for office seriously. Most commentators didn\u2019t think even Trump <\/em>took his candidacy seriously. There was nothing extraordinary about him as a person. He was, as my father would have said, \u201cCommon as dirt<\/em>.\u201d He was crude, inarticulate, ignorant. He was a bully, a lecher, a braggart. He had no political experience at all; he had never run for office, held office, or studied politics. Moreover, he denigrated rather than cultivated the press, overplayed rather than underplayed his wealth, and made a point of insulting rather than seducing significant electoral groups. But most obviously, he lied. He lied continually to everyone about everything.<\/p>\n

A politician who lies\u2014how unusual! Trump\u2019s lying was about the only characteristic of his campaign that was conventional and expected. Trump\u2019s lying is quite mundane. Nevertheless, the question of why Trump\u2019s followers continue to support him despite his obvious, continual lying may be a critical one.<\/p>\n

Despite his continual, outrageous lies, Trump gained supporters, and his supporters stuck with him until the election, and what commentators call his \u201cbase\u201d continue to stick with him today. As a rhetorician, I was baffled by this phenomenon \u2014and in this I was not alone. Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and into Trump\u2019s presidency, commentators, bloggers, editors, and scholars tried to understand why his followers continued to support him despite his almost daily lies. Their explanations included references to confirmation bias, constructionist cognitive habits, mass delusion, and other causes and conditions. But, to my mind, the most insightful were those who assumed that his supporters knew very well he was lying. One of these, Dara Lind, writing for Vox<\/span>, said on September 27, 2016: \u201cHis supporters may not believe everything he says\u2014in fact, they often say they don\u2019t even think he believes everything he says. . . . The literal things he says matter less to them as facts than as signals that he\u2019s on their side<\/em>.\u201d1 <\/sup>By saying that what matters to his supporters is that Trump is \u201con their side\u201d here, Lind means that what matters to them most is not who he is but who he is not. She says that Trump supporters<\/p>\n

. . . believe in a “deep story” in which the politicians in charge now consistently put the needs of others \u2014 coastal elites, “welfare”-receiving African Americans, immigrants, and refugees \u2014 ahead of their [his supporters\u2019] own needs. They believe that . . . everything he says that upsets and provokes those people is more proof of how big a threat they find him<\/em>.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

So, Lind\u2019s view is that Trump\u2019s supporters accept him not because they believe his claims but because his outrageousness expresses their rejection of our world.<\/p>\n

Lind believes that the nature of Trump supporters\u2019 rejection of present reality is told in the \u201cdeep story\u201d they read beneath the surface of Trump\u2019s often confused and confusing words. If to us he often speaks mere gibberish, to his supporters, Trump is telling the truth, the \u201cdeep\u201d truth\u2014he\u2019s just not telling it literally. In an article in Contemporary Sociology<\/span>, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks this question: \u201cBut how does Trump, or any other charismatic leader, lay claim to being\u2014and get received as\u2014the messenger of a social group\u2019s deep story?\u201d Hochschild\u2019s answer: \u201cBy intuitively sensing and inhabiting a preexisting, recognizable cultural paradigm for conveying emotion<\/em>.\u201d3<\/sup> Hochschild describes this cultural paradigm, which he calls the \u201csecular rapture<\/em>,\u201d<\/p>\n

. . . as metaphorical thinking about real events on earth. Well-paid, union-protected, plentiful, secure blue and white collar jobs have come to an end. With laws allowing abortion and homosexual marriage, transgender people using their chosen bathroom, and a rise in the religiously unaffiliated, a former cultural world has also come to an end. In light of the shrinking proportion of whites in the American population, their demographic world is approaching an end, too.<\/em>4<\/sup><\/p>\n

For Lind and Hochschild, therefore, Trump\u2019s followers read his lies figuratively in relation to an apocalyptic vision they already accept\u2014one of a cherished order that has already fallen but they long to restore.<\/p>\n

When backed into a corner, Trump himself has reinforced the view that his lies are really tropes. For instance, when he claimed at a news conference that President Obama was the \u201cfounder of ISIS<\/em>,\u201d initially he reiterated several times that \u201cHe is the founder in the true sense<\/em>,\u201d but later he said that it was a \u201cjoke.\u201d Similarly, when he said, \u201cRussia, if you\u2019re listening, I hope you\u2019re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing<\/em>,\u201d when first pressed about it he said, \u201cI hope they do<\/em>\u201d find the emails; but he later said to Fox News, “Obviously I was being sarcastic, and a lot of people really smiled and laughed. It was said in a sarcastic manner, obviously<\/em>.”5<\/sup> Trump very often claims that his lies are only sarcastic remarks.<\/p>\n

Yet Anna North believes that \u201cIt\u2019s possible that Mr. Trump does not know what sarcasm is<\/em>,\u201d6<\/sup> and he probably doesn\u2019t intend to be sarcastic. More importantly, his supporters probably don\u2019t take his lies as sarcasm, but as plain truth that sophisticates just don\u2019t \u201cget.\u201d Linguist John Haiman distinguishes \u201cplain speaking\u201d from \u201cunplain speaking,\u201d and he writes that “plain speaking” is saying exactly what’s on your mind. Haiman uses Forrest Gump as an example. There is no subtext or implied meaning to Gump\u2019s words. “Unplain speaking,” in contrast, is an entire category including politeness, metaphor and sarcasm. Haiman says “its hallmark is what you say isn’t what you really think<\/em>.” In an interview, Haiman said that “\u2019People say about Donald Trump that he says it like it is. . . .\u2019 His words are simple, his praise or scorn is unambiguous, and he shows little delicacy or politeness. \u2018Sarcasm and irony are not his big thing<\/em>.\u2019\u201d7 <\/sup>In other words, Haiman believes, to his followers Trump speaks quite plainly about the world he perceives.<\/p>\n

Russian scholar Anna Gornostayeva examines the pervasive use of irony throughout the campaign by candidates and entertainers, especially Trump, for whom, she says, \u201cirony is an inherent trait in his style of speech<\/em>.\u201d8 <\/sup>Gornostayeva points out, however, that \u201cIronic utterances may be intended as well as unintended. If the author did not try to convey an ironic message but the addressee found one, this utterance contains unintended irony<\/em>.\u201d9<\/sup> Gornostayeva goes on to says that unintended irony is the result of an audience\u2019s interpretation of an utterance through one genre when it should be interpreted through another. I believe that Trump\u2019s followers do hear his speech as ironic and \u201cdeep,\u201d but that this irony, for the most part, is unintentional, and that reading it as intentional is the result of a genre mistake. But what genre is it that his supporters are imposing on Trump\u2019s political words that would allow them to hear them as comforting, harmlessly ironic, profoundly \u201cdeep\u201d lies? Neal Gabler has described one of these possible genres:<\/p>\n

There is [a] . . . terrifying explanation as to why the truth doesn\u2019t seem to matter [to Trump\u2019s supporters]. It has less to do with Trump . . . than it has to do with infotainment \u2014 with the idea that a lot of information isn\u2019t primarily about education or elevation, where truth matters, but entertainment, where it doesn\u2019t<\/em>.10<\/sup><\/p>\n

This kind of irony is similar to what Dana Cloud described in her study of \u201creality television\u201d as the \u201cirony bribe\u201d:<\/p>\n

The irony bribe corresponds to the paradoxical epistemology of reality television; viewers can regard the program as \u201creal\u201d and \u201cnot-real\u201d and therefore worth viewing and worthless at the same time. . . . [The] irony bribe wins viewers to participation in an ideological discourse by tempting them not only with the fantasy . . . but also with the pleasures of [others\u2019] reaction against [viewers\u2019] taking the fantasy seriously<\/em>.11<\/sup><\/p>\n

Trump was a reality TV host before he was a presidential candidate, so it\u2019s not too far-fetched to suggest that his followers simply continue to interpret him as a candidate in the same way they interpreted him as a reality television host\u2014especially when he speaks from unconventional platforms like Twitter. And it is also not too far-fetched to suggest that his followers take pleasure in making the rest of us squirm by making us think they take him literally. Yet it\u2019s doubtful that Trump intends this because it\u2019s doubtful that Trump himself understands that different genres have different performative functions. For instance, he seemed genuinely surprised that after he tweeted that he was banning transgender Americans from serving in the military, the generals did nothing because they never received an official directive.13<\/sup> So, if Trump\u2019s followers confuse the genre expectations of reality TV with those of political discourse, Trump probably isn\u2019t intending them to. Nevertheless, although such a theory might account for his supporters taking the occasional tweet or offhand remark as ironic, it can\u2019t account for his followers\u2019 existential fervor for his presidency. Moreover, it doesn\u2019t address the \u201cdeep story\u201d referred to by Lind and Hochschild, the greater context in which his followers embed Trump\u2019s every remark.<\/p>\n

Commentators describe Trump as a leader who thinks he is telling the truth but who in fact lies constantly to followers, followers who know he lies but believe he does so intentionally in order to ironically convey the \u201cdeep\u201d truth that they understand but others do not. Perhaps such extraordinary acts of interpretation require an extraordinary theory to account for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first began to think about this topic early in the 2016 presidential campaign. At that time, no one took Donald Trump\u2019s run for office seriously. Most commentators didn\u2019t think even Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":2588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,49,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualities","category-media","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2592,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions\/2592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}