Remember this guy?
That's a still from a video taken outside a Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona in 2016. The big guy's name is Zack Fisher. Some of his tattoos contain symbols that white supremacists use to communicate with each other.
If you pause the video 55 seconds in, you can spot a tattooed number “43” under the arm of the muscular fellow, later identified as Zack Fisher; this just happens to be a favorite symbol of a small but spirited organization called the Supreme White Alliance. You can probably guess what sort of group it is.
My reason for bringing him up today is to discuss a topic I've been mentioning here recently; which is that we need to stop and ponder the significance of how self-identifying conservatives have apparently been found to have larger amygdala than other people. And the amygdala is the part of the brain that is activated by emotions, such as fear.
When you sense danger is present, your amygdala wants to automatically activate the fight-or-flight response immediately. However, at the same time, your frontal lobes are processing the information to determine if danger really is present and the most logical response to it.
When the threat is mild or moderate, the frontal lobes override the amygdala, and you respond in the most rational, appropriate way. However, when the threat is strong, the amygdala acts quickly. It may overpower the frontal lobes, automatically triggering the fight-or-flight response.
The fight-or-flight response was appropriate for early humans because of threats of physical harm. Today, there are far fewer physical threats, but there are a lot of psychological threats caused by the pressures and stresses of modern life.
When stress makes you feel strong anger, aggression, or fear, the fight-or-flight response is activated. It often results in a sudden, illogical, and irrational overreaction to the situation. You may even regret your reaction later.
This explains a lot of right-wing, or "conservative" behaviour. I don't think that crime is out of control. I'm a left-winger. I'm a socialist. That's how I self-identify. If you call me a "pinko" I'd have to agree with you. So, again, I don't think we need more and more cops and prisons and "hard-time" for convicted criminals. That's just the way I roll. I'm not afraid of alternative sexualities. I'm not worried that I'll succumb to the "gay agenda" because I don't care about this alleged agenda. I'm not afraid of other cultures. I'm interested in them.
So let me bring back this Zack Fisher character. He's a Trump supporter. He's a white supremacist. He (laughably) feels that only white people can be made fun of in the "libtard"-dominated culture that he believes he's fighting against:
He apparently spends a lot of time thinking about White Chicks, a Wayans Brothers “comedy” from 2004 in which two of the Wayanses play rogue FBI agents who go undercover as, well, white chicks.
People make movies about us and do we get mad? Like White Chicks? If there was a movie called Black Chicks, it would be a huge race thing. … We couldn’t do that, no way, they’d be like, “this is so racist.” And yet they can make a movie making fun of white people.
And what a widely celebrated film it is! Richard Roeper declared it “the worst movie of the year,” while Roger Ebert informed his readers that “it took an act of the will to keep me in the theater.” It’s got a Rotten Tomatoes score of 13%, ranking it lower than Wild Hogs, The Love Guru, and Hot Tub Time Machine 2.
I just wish people could get over what happened back in the day, to Mexico or Blacks. That was back in the past, people don’t get over it and it sucks. I forgive and forget. A lot of people don’t.
Dude, you haven’t even gotten over “White Chicks!”
Again, look at the guy: He's a big, strong, good-looking guy. But (as a "conservative") he probably has a larger "fight-or-flight" section of his brain than regular people and political lefties have. So while he's big enough and strong enough not to feel terrified when he encounters a couple of Latinos coming towards him on the sidewalk in the middle of the day, he probably is mistrustful of them.
And he spends all day, every day, like this. He's afraid of people who are "different" from him. He's afraid of losing what he imagines is his "culture." Perhaps he was a victim of some childhood trauma. Sufferings in childhood (and, supposedly, sufferings experienced by recent ancestors) can have physical effects on brain structure. So Mr. Fisher might look strong and badass now, but his brain wiring might have been altered by something in his past. (Or, he was just born that way.)
Before continuing on in that vein, I also want to point out that it might be the case that he's also stupid. People of normal intelligence and with greater control over their "fight or flight" instincts learn the rules of the society they've been born into and figure out how to get along fairly easily. Fearful, stupid individuals, ... well, it's a different story with them:
A self-described conservative will (in general) labour mightily to try to understand the world they've been dropped into. This will be tend to be more difficult for them than for normal people because (as I said) conservatives tend to be less intelligent, have less ability to empathize (and thereby read the signals for proper behaviour) and (for whatever reasons) will be more fearful and defensive towards the outside world. Once they have achieved a grasp of the rules of the game they will hold fast to these rules with all their might. Capitalism is the dominant paradigm? Then capitalism it is. No matter what. And everyone who questions or rejects it is an enemy. They've been brought up in a particular religion? Then that religion is the truth and that's the end of the story. (Such devotion can provide a lot of comfort to such people.) And on it goes; they adhere to traditional gender stereotypes and sexual mores. With cultural pursuits, they'll tend to flock in large numbers to things that represent this most crude understanding of the society they live in. Things such as professional wrestling wherein cartoonish representations of gender ideals, the conflict between "good" and "evil," and etc., portray conventional values but with an acknowledgement of the overall stupidity of its fan base.
So you see, to understand the Trump phenomenon, you have to understand the mass psychology of his supporters. They have a shaky grasp of reality. Which is always under threat. They're afraid of new things. The unknown. They see the world as a more threatening place than bleeding-hear leftists see it. So, when there's great social change, they feel threatened. When their simplistic and error-filled philosophies are challenged, it's traumatizing. And when neo-liberal economic policies make life more stressful and competitive, they respond by punching down.
This is the raw material of fascism. Such people are always with us. In the 1960's and 1970's they were doing well enough so that they even tolerated Women's Liberation or Affirmative Action. It takes grim economic conditions to make fascism politically viable. Sadly, liberal dipshits who grovel at the feet of the Democratic Party leadership, or the Liberal Party of Canada, who refuse to see the reality of what their stupid political choices produces will continue to drag us into the abyss. And they will blame occasional cries for sanity and human decency from genuine leftists as being divisive, and deride us for being selfish "purists."
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