BORN TO FOLLOW?: CURRENT MAGA GOP'ers - AMERICA'S LOST, WANDERING AND FLOUNDERING, OTHER-DIRECTED PERSONA

 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!

SHOULD DONALD TRUMP BE INCLUDED IN AMERICA'S OFFICIAL GROUP TO ATTEND QUEEN ELIZABETH’S STATE FUNERAL

The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally commenting on the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted. 

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Whether or not Donald Trump should be included in the official American contingent to Queen Elizabeth's state funeral is the sort of dilemma that helped destroy the Weimar Republic (Germany, 1920s) and assisted the rise of Adolph Hitler, i.e., a democracy faced with an anti-democracy antagonist (Hitler, Trump) who insists on his democratic-principle ‘rights’ to speak as he wants, although his words incite anti-democracy mob acts. 

The Weimar Republic's historically-proven, correct handling of the early Hitler would have been to keep him in prison for the full 5 years of his 1924 sentence for insurrection and treason… instead of letting him use democracy’s own principles to get out of prison after only 9 months…during which state-supported time and state expense, Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf”… which was a factor largely accountable for the murders and war-killings of about 60 million humans. Once free, Hitler climbed the political ladder supported by his Brown Shirt mob (‘MAGAs), who he later ‘cast aside’ (canceled, murdered, eradicated) when they became a political embarrassment. (MAGAs are now learning that lesson!)

Donald Trump. Trump has proved himself to be an “anti-democracy factor” and has been impeached for an attempted insurrection and failed coup (the "Jan6" 1921 event). 

Whether to include Donald Trump to attend Queen Elizabeth's state funeral as part of the official American contingent, is American democracy’s dilemma. Trump's presence at Elizabeth Regina’s state funeral would appear to be a cruel jibe at the good that Elizabeth symbolizes, and a joke on America itself. 

Trump should not be invited by the current American President to attend per traditional protocol -Trump flaunted, scoffed at, ignored, tainted, and rejected that sort of polite democratic tradition long ago.  (IMO, Trump should be ‘allowed’ to sit this one out, tune into the funeral from one of his 'shady' mansions, and wait for his indictment. Maybe harsh, but 'Jan6' and ‘Weimar’ …history, dammit.)

THE 'JAN6' INSURRECTION INVESTIGATIONS: DONALD TRUMP'S PLAN TO TAKE OVER THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT BEGAN WITH THE POSTAL SERVICE'S DESTRUCTION OF MAIL SORTING MACHINES AND THE PICK UP AND DESTRUCTION OF HUNDREDS OF LETTEDROP-OFF BOXES...FOLLOWED BY THE INSURRECTION ATTEMPT OF JANUARY 6, 2021...AND HERE WE ARE

The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's first term. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.                                                                                                                                                                                  -------------------

Donald Trump's multi-component conspiracy plan to hold onto power had many pieces that depended on key Trump-appointed role players, heading key government agencies, who were to enact new policies, or directly act, to obstruct and terminate the lawful transfer of power to a possibly new political administration outcome of the 2020 presidential election. If visibly legal means to stop the electoral process didn't work, then the plan was to have an insurrection grab of power by a pre-organized mob that would invade the halls of Congress and stop the January 6, 2021, Congressional formal 'certification' of the Electoral College Ballots.

The Jan6 insurrection plan seems to have been copied from one of Trump's rare book readings, and political heroes, Mein Kampf, written by Adolph Hitler during his 1923-24 imprisonment in Germany for treason and sedition attempt to overthrow Germany's democratic Weimar Republic.

Trump's attempt to take over the election process was (and remains) a well-imagined and dangerous plan whose structure and players remain in place because of the due process legal protections in the American Constitution. Memories of Weimar?

The continuation of the Trump presidency (in one form or another) depended on the success of several components and multiple players playing their part in a plan that depended on the coordination among many agencies and a bag load of key co-conspirators and emergency appointees. 

The Trump Plan was to compromise key government agencies such as the Dept of Homeland Security (DOJ and Secret Service head and agents), and other agencies - following a template of presidential replacement of department heads who would initiate agency changes although legitimate would nevertheless obstruct or call into question voting access and ballot certification across the country. As designed, the plan appeared to be within the legal powers of Trump's presidential authority. 

Trump's plan depended on cooperation (collusion) from compromised federal and state agencies and actors ...including Homeland Security, DOJ, Secret Service, and Congress itself; and also depending on the 'cooperation' (collusion) of state governors, attorneys general, legislators, etc. 

A key target in that plan was and remains the US Postal Service. Trump planned to defund the postal service in order to obstruct and slow down the November voting and election process by impairing the US Postal Service's capability to handle the flow and volume of postal items on election day. The plan apparently began with the May 16, 2020, appointment of Trump donor, Louis DeJoy. DeJoy began removing and destroying mail sorting machines and hundreds of postal drop-off boxes which Trump openly touted as his favored postal service measure designed to eventually lead to eliminating mail-in voting in as many states as possible. This program was apparently halted just before the election, but it was seen as too late by many...plus it was resumed after the election so that the slowdown to the election process will continue in magnified form for 2024.

Especially critical to the Plan were the quickly installed new heads of DHS, DOJ, the Secret Service,(and SS agents themselves), and other Trump appointees who (with some few exceptions) then were to play their assigned roles in a pre-planned 'strategy' of obstruction and delay of the Electoral College Count on January 6, 2021. 

The Jan6 House Select Investigation Committee is revealing more and more about Trump's plan to continue his presidency beyond January 20, 2021, through a multi-component conspiracy. 

Trump's role in the Plan was a key one....which was to incite a January 6 mob to 'invade' the Capitol building and stop the formal count of the Electoral College ballots after which Trump was to step up to declare a national emergency and with endorsement from his congressional loyalists he would continue as President...for...let's say, for an extended period of time to be determined., although starting out 'pro-tem'.

If the mob failed to 'remove' (incapacitate or kill ..." by hanging") VP Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then compromised secret service agents were to move ('kidnap', accidently kill?) Pence to an isolated, emergency (secret) location so then Trump's congressional proxies (eg McConnell, Gohmert, Gaetz, Grassley, Graham, etc) would/could legitimately stop the electoral ballot count, declare the ballots questionable and call for a re-election. Then Trump would hold an emergency televised appearance from the White House (where he anxiously cheered on the insurrection mob) to declare martial law...leading to the suspension of the electoral process.  

Trump would then announce from the White House, that evening, a plan worked out (beforehand?) with his congressional loyalists (and the Supreme Court?) to continue in office pro-tem perhaps in increments of 3 months...but once the plan was in operation, there would be every opportunity, certainly, the purpose, to make permanent the emergency suspension of the transfer of power.  

But the Proud Boys failed to achieve their part, the insurrection, and the Secret Service failed to get Pence into 'that' car, so the Electoral College count was formalized, and the transfer of the presidency occurred.  

This left a big (and dangerous) problem for the insurrectionists: EVIDENCE OF THE INSURRECTION PLAN HAD TO BE ERASED, AND EVIDENCE OF THE ERASURE ITSELF HAD TO BE COVERED UP IN HOPES THAT IT WOULD ALL DIE AWAY AFTER BIDEN TOOK OVER. (

IMO, this hope that 'it would all fade away and be forgotten, was a very reasonable assumption knowing the tendency of the media to forget everything after a standard news cycle - in this case not more than several weeks and certainly not six months, nor the year that it took for DHS to inform Congress that the Secret Service text messages around Jan 6, 2021, had been erased ('legitimately') during a transparent, though irregular, Jan 5-7, wipe of DHS computers and Secret Service agents' personal cell phones. This was carried out. But even though not 'uncovered' until more than a year later, The Jan6 Investigation Committee is energetically examining the intricate workings of Trump's Plan to illegally continue in office..

The Trump Insurrection Plan has sneaky-thinking, 'idea-men' Steve Bannon and Roger Stone written all over it. But it seems that Bannon, Stone, and the other co-conspirators didn't figure on the Jan6 Investigation Committee being enacted, being serious, being impartial...having integrity., and above all being loyal to the nation rather than to an individual. 

But Trump loyalists and insurrection planners then quickly reacted with another plan to neutralize the Jan6 House Select Investigation Committee - by attempting to seed the Jan6 Committee with pro-Trump members such as Jordan, Gaetz, etc. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly saw through that and took steps to select her own bi-partisan panel. who have carefully unstrung the ball of threads Trump and his u..and viola the curtains on the insurrection plan are being drawn aside with increasing speed...revealing a rotten core of insurrectionists and ungloving the fine handiwork of Bannon, Stone, and Trump himself (and others).

SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL TRAVESTIES HIMSELF FOR TRUMP, AGAIN - BY ENGINEERING A SENATE IMPEACHMENT ACQUITTAL

Former President Donald Trump recently escaped a second Senate impeachment trial conviction (February 13, 2021) mainly due to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell's cowardly and Machiavellian plotting motivated to curry future support from Trump and his facist, violent, neo-Nazi base. (BEWARE, McConnell, Trump has no reciprocal sense of loyalty and you will live in real fear of his transactional, fickle, chaotic, paranoid mind-set  that can impromptu-ly unleash his armed henchmen upon your soul, home and family!)

(Does an image of the Hitler's 1930's 'Brown Shirts' come to mind? It should - one of Trump's few reading materials as an adult were 'Mein Kampf'' and "My New Order (Hitler's speeches)" which Trump reportedly kept by his bedside (according to an ex-wife)!). 

So, even though Trump lost the election and voted out of office, America faces another four years of Trump's sniping attacks on our leaders and democratic systems. (Furthermore and sadly, it seems Mitch McConnell's political 'skills' and expertise lie in dark, Machiavellian obstruction.)

And, as far as the Democrats are concerned, Trump's proxy, McConnell, will continue obstructing President Biden's work to save America from the Pandemic and economic collapse ... both the result of Trump's incompetence, self-agrandizing policies and treasonous complicity with America's declared state enemies.

This blogger views Trump's continued effect on the forthcoming years with a mix of foreboding and morbid curiosity. 

Just how frequent and damaging to our democracy and with what forms will Trump's psychotic ways dump more chaos and confusion onto America?  The answer is very likely, 'often and smelly', as Trump's style is about everything.

And what about Mitch McConnell? Will McConnell receive his anticipated rewards for his lickspittle loyalty to Trump in engineering the Senate trial's 'Acquittal-by-default?', the failure to convict by lack of a quorum majority? 

One feels that McConnell will not be rewarded to the extent he expects. But McConnell will survive politically because even Trump knows his interests are best served with a live lapdog than a powerless junior senator replacing a McConnell let lapse by Trump's vindictive urges.

But, though Trump will let McConnell survive, it will be just 'survival' in mental pergatory. The next years will not be a bed of roses for McConnell. Trump must now see McConnell for the servile 'nothing' McConnell truly is. And Trump will beat on and defile McConnell with scorn like a moldy old drum because Trump now knows McConnell is his 'bitch'.

This blogger sees a self-resurrecting Trump rewarding McConnell's lickspittle boot polishing with deserved scorn, not so much for McConnell cravenly saving Trump from a Senate conviction but mostly for the minor lapses in McConnell's total loyalty and subservience in the last 5 years.

'BEWARE' Mitch McConnell ... despite your eager knee-scraping to lap up Trump's disrespect and treating you like the servile puppet you are, Trump will 'engineer' ways to belittle and besmirch you, to spite and spit on you ... just because.' Enjoy Trump's hell, Mitch.

AND... behind the Senate's failure to convict Trump of impeachable misconduct as president, Trump's treasonous self-agrandizing acts against the Republic, we must address the glaring question: 'how is it that McConnell is the most powerful senior senator in America?', although he is a prime example of America's 'leak in the dam' of our form of democracy because he 'represents' the 7th most impoverished state in the nation with one of the least-educated and small populations? 

How can McConnell play a leading role for America from the context of representing one of the most demographically and economically marginal state 'anomalies', his home state of Kentucky? From that context, it seems McConnell hasn't a clue about the needs and path forward to a modernized, multi-cultural America with new industries and more jobs.

The answer to why McConnell has disproportional influence is America's 'leak-in-the-democracy' construction - seniority and no-term-limit rules ... which are employed to insincere unpatriotic advantage by the former Confederate states, with their race-based gerrymandering and other means of voter suppression.

McConnell, as a Senator of one of America's most impoverished, uneducated and nationally supported small states, surely can't have a clue about the needs and path forward for a modernized, multi-cultural America. 

McConnell doesnt have the home-state context and personal outlook to help formulate solutions for a future America with new industries and more jobs. 

(Again, sadly, it seems McConnell's chief self-serving, self-preserving political 'skills' and expertise lie in dark, Machiavellian obstruction.)