The Perched Eye blog is 14 years old, from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ... the styles and directions of American politics and culture, with an occasional comment on the impact of new technologies. Our observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.
Classical sociological psychology has a descriptor for a personality type that seems to characterize Donald Trump’s MAGA wildly, often destructive, anti-democratic supporters (as was Hitler’s Nazi Germany adepts).
This ‘’type’ is the “Other Directed Persona” (ODP, aka “Outer-Directed”), (The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, 1950, Riesman, Denny, and Glazer. (A portion of every population is from birth, Other Directed, now an acknowledged psychological type (APA) …and propensity.)
The Other Directed Person seeks life direction from an external, especially a charismatic source, as contrasted to the Inner Directed Persona (IDP), who has an inner, independent core of ethics and guiding principles.
In the words of David Brooks (The Crowd Pleaser, NYTimes, Feb 9, 2012):
“The other-directed person is attuned to what other people want him to be. The other-directed person is …pliable and yearns for acceptance. [In other words, vulnerable perhaps to a fault of being too easily influenced…so desperate is the need to feel less lonely]
The other-directed personality type emerges in a service or information age economy. In this sort of economy, most workers are not working with physical things; they are manipulating people. The other-directed person becomes adept at pleasing others, at selling him or herself. The other-directed personality type emerges in a service or information age economy. In this sort of economy, most workers are not working with physical things; they are manipulating people. The other-directed person becomes adept at pleasing others, at selling him or herself."
Trumpists are, deep down, easily manipulated, easily led…even to purposes not in their real interests, and eager to follow…even to self-harm and disaster for them and theirs. For these reasons, the ODP represents an immense danger to their object of worship as well as to themselves.
The Other Directed Persona is a problem for society, especially for a society that claims it is democratic…because the Other Directed lacks independent thought, preferring to have a pre-packaged path of thinking to be followed without having to go through the effort of figuring out ones own truth.
America’s respecters of democracy need to carefully watch Donald Trump and his Other Directed minions, the MAGAs!
Trump’s followers did not spring up spontaneously with his arrival on the political scene. Nor did they appear just in the past 50 years. ‘Trumpists’ are of a ‘type’ who have existed probably since humans climbed down from the trees.
The ODP seems to have been born just to wait in the wings for a leader to appear who is willing, and able, to hoist a flag and wave a carrot in front of them, the Other Directed horde.
The Other Directed Persona is like a dumb Mule blindly trudging after the proverbial ‘dangling carrot.’
The MAGA supporters of Donald Trump are ODP ‘mules’, and Trump is aptly both the orange carrot and the false leader.
The pre-packaged ‘carrot’ is usually, and most effectively, an appeal to the base emotions of the ODP in the form of a set of slogans anchored by a written ‘screed’, often a book or a set of written down recollections of a leaders declarations during an afterward sacredly-held pilgrimage (‘jihad’).
Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (1925–26, Munich, Bavaria, Germany) is perhaps the most notorious such ODP Carrot, ‘mule captivating’, screed in the past several centuries.
Earlier examples of such mass-movement tomes are the “Qur’an” (‘Koran’, eng.), the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (610–632 CE, Mecca and Medina, West Arabian Penninsula).
And, of equal significance to the Qur-an are the much earlier Christian and Gnostic“Gospels” attributed to Jesus of Nazareth by his disciples (Holy Bible, 1st-3rd c. CE Gospels, Greek-Hebrew origin canonical and apocryphal texts;) and then as later translated, the 1610–1617 King James Bible. (Also meriting mention are the recovered Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts containing both canonical and apocryphal content.)
In the last millennium, the Christian Bible has guided perhaps the most influential and militarily powerful mass movement in history — but it has been both a positive and often a not-so-positive factor…as it has also provided rationales for political oppression, wars of aggression, and punitive atrocities.
Notably, the Trumpist mass movement currently claims the Christian Bible as its guiding light to ‘make America great again’ (MAGA)’. (As it was claimed by Adolph Hitler for Nazi Germany’s right to expansion.)
Seemingly, a percentage of every randomly selected population group is from birth, Other Directed…America, be watchful!
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