by Roger Kimball
I should clear up one thing straight away. I do not believe that Joe Biden is guilty of magical thinking. Magical thinking, though specious, is a form of thinking. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Joe Biden is not guilty of thinking of any kind, ergo, Joe Biden is not guilty of magical thinking. Quod erat demonstrandum.
But Biden’s supporters? Well, that is another matter altogether. There you see a wild efflorescence of magical thinking.
What is magical thinking? It is the irrational belief, rampant among primitive peoples and those exposed to too many woke college seminars, that our thoughts influence or ‘constitute’ reality.
In the present case, we see Biden’s supporters telling us, and through telling us, telling themselves, that their candidate is ahead in the polls and is therefore likely to win the election in November.
They omit to say that their polls are fantasy polls: that they are of registered, not likely, voters, that they oversample Democrats or suburban women, that they fail to factor in the phenomenon of the shy Trump voter, who fully intends to vote for the President but is not happy about advertising it to random pollsters.
Among some architects of this fantasy, there is a strategy. The idea is that by claiming something is true one can influence opinion, at least at the margins, and up the odds of its becoming true. In itself, this is not irrational. If you hear something often enough, not only do you remember it, you also begin to believe it.
That, anyway, is the theory. How does it work in practice? Pretty patchily, I’d say, and for confirmation I offer the spectacle of the late evening of November 8, 2016. Remember all those shattered faces at the Javits Center, home of the Hillary victory party that never was? There they were, etched with grief, moist-eyed, mute or maundering, sown with an incredulity that had not yet degenerated into rage. You saw something similar among the talking heads at CNN, MSNBC and the other major dispensers of Democratic propaganda. This couldn’t be happening. Recall the sad/funny footage of Ben Rhodes that night. It was a grief observed. ‘I, I can’t even…I c-can’t…I, I mean I c-can’t…I c-can’t put it into words…I don’t know what the words are…’
I could help, Ben. The words were: ‘Hillary lost, Donald Trump won.’
It’s actually quite simple. Most people think, rightly, that politicians as a tribe tend to be cynical and corrupt manipulators of the public. But what the Australian philosopher David Stove said about philosophers applies to politicians too: ‘They are hardly ever cynical manipulators of their readers’ minds. They do not produce delusions in others, without first being subject to them themselves.’
By the time that October 2016 rolled around, I was confident that — barring some unforeseen catastrophe — Trump was going to win. I watched as he crisscrossed the country, drawing ten, twenty, thirty thousand fans to his rallies day in and day out. I took on board his performance at these events: seemingly casual and off-the-cuff but forcefully hammering home a menu of important points about immigration, taxes, judges, the US military, international trade and foreign policy. Most of the polls continued to place Hillary way ahead until, suddenly, she lost, around about 9 p.m. on election night.
How could this have happened? I don’t mean how could Hillary have lost — she ran a terrible campaign, was hugely unappealing personally and she was lazy. (For his part, Trump was a dynamo, always on the move, always before the public, never missing a chance to mix it up with the media or his opponents.) What’s harder to understand is the origin of the Dems’ magical thinking — a form of fantasy that is at least as powerful a force in 2020 as it was in 2016. I think there are two main sources of the delusion. One is the habit of credulity that is a by-product of all utopian thought. The Democrats have mutated into the party of nowhere, so it is not surprising that they prefer pleasing fantasy to sobering reality.
The other is the attack on objective truth that, in various ways, has been the gospel proclaimed by fancy professors for the past several decades. Students are everywhere taught to be suspicious of truth, to proclaim the relativity of values. This is a brain-addling teaching, but one that you would have to look far and wide to find a place it hadn’t reached.
For the sake of this country, I hope this is true… again. There is absolutely no practical reason Trump should not win, only if propaganda is more powerful than truth.
One of the ways Biden supporters become magical thinkers is by demonizing every other thought but their approved thoughts.
They put up with no debate, no opposing opinions in the media, no approved entertainers who oppose their opinions, either.
Pretty soon they honestly believe theirs is the only valid opinion when what it had become was their only approved opinion.
@Nan G:
Sounds like the way authoritarian regimes choose their dictators.
The type of magical thinking that turned Greece into a finacial power house of the EU.
The 15 million dollar minimum wage promised by Biden on Friday we are not all Joes kid people.
They can tell landlords they cant collect rent or evict but he will have the money to pay property taxes and do needed repairs.
After 47 years Joe will try to keep a promise made to voters.
@kitt: Hell, YEAH! I’m voting for Biden and getting a job!
Roger Kimbal:
Nope. That’s not what magical thinking is. There’s a proper definition, which is as follows:
In fact, thoughts do influence reality, to the extent that thought precedes human action. You have an intention to do a thing first, and then the action to make it so follows. Everything we do or create begins as a thought or mental impulse.
Polls are not examples of magical thinking. Polls are a sampling of people’s intentions at a point in time preceding their future actions—in this case, their future actions in a voting booth. To the extent that they’re random and contain a large enough sample to be statistically significant, they do provide an accurate indication of what is likely to happen.
Weather vanes really do tell you which way the wind is blowing.
Propaganda will only work on people who don’t know the truth from the beginning of the onslaught.
Problem is, too many people substitute feelings over facts. Those are the ones who are easy, even willing, prey.
The author needs to go one step beyond
https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/34-years-ago-a-kgb-defector-described-america-today
We are entering Stage 3.
We need to remember who was actively working to push the most absurd Russian disinformation.
Magical thinking is demonstrated by the “Cargo Cults” of the South Pacific following WW II. Persons on the islands, having for several years received vast amounts of goods from quonset huts occupied by U S Servicemen, believed that if they built more quonset huts, more goods would appear. They had no notion of the great War in which those Servicemen were involved. But they liked the goods.
But the goods did not come.
So goods and services come from electing Democrats. So vote Democratic. Unfortunately the folks paying the taxes have other ideas. No more free stuff.
Oops.
@Greg:
IF they actually sample “The People”.
We know they do not, so your highly partisan results and inclination to support them are not proof of some Biden support that clearly does not exist.
The Dems have manufactured polls and Cult-member endorsements.
The weather is clearly going for Trump. He’ll win both the Popular Vote and the EC.