I made a grievous error in not noting, at the outset of the first part of this piece, that I was discussing only an earlier part of Roman history. I will try and undo that error now.
The Gracchi and the Revolution
I know that this is repetitive, but Success simply introduces a whole new series of challenges and demands for new energies, approaches and fresh tactics. The complexity of the fresh necessities brought about by the advent of triumph usually places the country in some new peril, on the verge of new precipices it hasn’t prepared itself for by its history or experience. All history conceals big blanks in its narrative. Success implies novel difficulties and requires the imaginative and structural resourcefulness to meet them. Success causes some people to pause and rest and relax their exertions, but in fact, rapid a new growth is needed to forestall either retarding discord or outright decline. Success focuses on one area of our environment, one area of endeavor, and related areas of effort, while others, if not addressed, may cause us to lose what we've won. Victory almost always has very unexpected and unfortunate consequences for the victors for which they have no remedies.
The victory of Rome in the Punic War cut like a chain saw through the whole fabric of the society. There was a flood of new wealth from the conquered provinces, which displaced in part the older economy, which was based on the peasant farmers who formed the main base of Rome’s military forces. Corn, the farmer; s chief crop was now being imported, although its impact on the economy was minimal, More important, the long period of conscription to which the farmer was subject meant that he had no one to maintain or improve or even hold his property when he was abroad. He won Rome; s victories only to return to a ruined home. There was no one and no agency for him to approach for redress.
The base of Rome’s military power had been, in Rome’s early years, the small farmer. He was important, not for his growing corn (a staple in Greece) or even for cultivating the land, but because he was the fundament of the armed forces. Military service was a requirement of every landed citizen, and he was expected for pay for its expense out of his own pocket. When they were not out fighting war, the small peasant farmer was taxed directly, but he had an economic link to the Senate in that it was the Senate that gave out parcels of land for farming, the land having been annexed as a result of wars. It was part of that very complicated client/benefactor relationship that characterized early Roman politics.
The rich aristocracies, and the equites, the equestrians who had served as Roman cavalry who also had money, were looking around for safe investments. When the small farmer couldn’t be lured back to his old digs, the rich began to invest in large estates which they ran by means of slave labor, which was in abundance, thanks to hundreds of thousands of fresh captives, and which had the effect of supplanting free labor. So the farm now became the estate, which had become a form of capitalist enterprise. Small farmers weren’t ingenious enough to switch to new crops, and they began to drift to the big cities where they became part of the urban uprooted and poor.
All of this threatened Rome’s traditional system of military recruitment, and the wiser among the aristocrats began to be worried. One of these was Tiberius Gracchus, the date of his reforms about 133 BC. His grandfather had died in the Punic War, his father was distinguished, and his mother Cornelia was the daughter of Scipio Africanus. His family couldn’t have been more outstanding. Tiberius had saved an army in Spain and fought gallantly against Carthage. When he returned from the war in Spain, he saw that the urban poor in Rome were seething with discontent, and he felt this was due to the large estates worked by gangs of brutalized slaves. When a Slave War broke out in Sicily that took three years of hard fighting to suppress, Tiberius thought that these evils were the result of the Senate=s monopoly on power and the existence of the large estates. He was also worried about the low morale in the army and the danger posed to the traditional policy of conscription by the diminishing numbers of small farmers. Farming was now performed by gangs of brutalized slaves, using a ghastly plantation system that used chain gangs to cultivate the land. The existence of the slaves was horrible, and there were increasing slave revolts that were put down with the utmost savagery. Everyone knew that reform was needed.
The drama began when Tiberius was elected tribune in 134 BC. He had served with the army in Spain where it had performed poorly. Tiberius started his reforms because he wanted to bolster Rome’s military and its national security. In the old days any landowner was obliged to serve in the Roman Army. Now you had fewer landowners and more and more tenants and slaves did not serve in the army.
Tiberius felt that the cure to this evil of excess slaves was to restore free labor, to rehabilitate the status of the old Roman farmer, citizen-soldier. To do this, Tiberius wanted a new allotment system for the land,, giving free men enough property so that they could join the army. He saw that one way to get rid of the swelling slave proletariat was a system of emigration – to found colonies for them in places like Capua and Carthage. He tried to restore an old law that allowed any landowner only 300 acres with another 150 acres per child, the total not to exceed 600 acres. The state or domain land was to be broken up into lots of 18 acres. Since this meant the land was being taken away from the oligarchy, it resisted. A Senate stooge, tribune Marcus Octavius vetoed the new laws. In response, Tiberius suspended all public business. Octavius continued the veto, and, and without referring to the Senate, as was customary, Tiberius appealed directly to the Assembly of the People and in a high handed fashion, Tiberius had the assembly vote to remove Octavius from office, and the new law was carried. (His action had a precedent in Flaminius a century earlier, and was not illegal, but it created bitter hatred.
Clique and narrow minded politics played a part in other ways. Tiberius had wanted to give the franchise to the Italian allies since they had played a decisive part in defeating Carthage, but to the old oligarchs, Italy was to be ruled by them; it alone was to enjoy predominance and the old families were entirely opposed to sharing power with the provinces. The wall between rulers and subjects was not to be breached. This not only was short sighted, it would prove to be disastrous.
Tiberius set up a land allotment commission, and the Senate tried to deny it any funding. Tiberius’s tactic was to use the huge treasure from the recently dead king of Perganum, who left his estate to Rome, to fund the new commission and fund the establishment of colonies. This move worked to weaken the Senate’s hold over the direction of foreign affairs, and its members began to spread the rumor that Tiberius was lusting after absolute power. He wasn’t.
When Tiberius attempted to run again for Tribune, the Senate repaired to a certain Publius Scipio Nasica, clearly a thug, who had gangs of followers armed with table legs. They begin the slaughter of Tiberius and his followers. Tiberius was struck down on the slope of the capital and his corpse and those of three hundred followers were thrown into the Tiber, their floating corpses visible. Thus died the plan that would have prevented the utter ruin of the small farmer class of Italy. Also it was an ominous omen. It was the first time in 400 years that blood had been spilled in a matter of civil disagreement. Up until that time Romans had exhibited a marked respect for public law which they felt should be obeyed with reverence.
T set up a land allotment commission, and the senate tried to deny it any funding. T’s tactic was to use the huge treasure from the recently dead king of Perganum, who left his estate to Rome, to fund the new commission and fund the colonies. This move worked to weaken the senate’s hold over the direction of foreign affairs, and its members began to spread the rumor that Tiberius was lusting after absolute power.
The next chapter unfolded in 123 BC when T’s brother, Gaius, was elected tribune. (Remember, the tribune is an office of the plebs, the common people, not the aristocrats.) Of the two brothers, G was the truly gifted one. Thanks to slavery, and the truly unspeakable suffering of the slaves, there had been savage revolts, more savagely repressed. By an early law, the rich landowners were required to employ a number of free men along with slaves, but that was ignored over time. The rich landowners saw any shift in the ownership of land as coming at their expense and benefiting the agricultural proletariat. A comprehensive and regular program of using slaves to colonize had fallen into disuse by 177 BC. There was no new territory for settlement in Italy except that which the oligarchy now blindly clung to, loath to loosen its grip.
Gaius had been one of the first three land commissioners. He knew the senate sought his life and appeared in public with 3,000 followers. He knew that he would be killed if he didn’t become indispensable to the people, and this meant presenting new plans and wider reforms. He proposed the Perganum treasures be dispersed among the new landholders for tools and supplies and stock.
The danger for Gaius lay not only with the malign designs of the Senate, but the instability of his power base, the Assembly, incapable of intelligent or focused action, at the mercy of every transitory and unsound passions or prejudices, and ruled by a mob spirit, fickle, stupid, avaricious. Gaius was superior to his brother in capacity, talent and character. He had a ferocious energy, but a lovable nature. He masked his hatred of the rich by a compulsory reserve. He did not proceed any further with land redistribution. He realized his survival lay in his reelection as tribune. He began with colonization, sending six thousand slaves to colonize Carthage. He attempted to restrict capital punishment. He established a program to provide Rome’s urban poor with cheap wheat, subsidized by the government, which the oligarchs saw as blatant socialism.
Gaius cleverly instituted a class war between the old, landed oligarchy and the equites, the equestrians who had served as Roman cavalry, who had become the hustling capitalist class -- wealthy merchants and speculators who conducted the financial transactions of the empire, families who had an estate of 20,000 dollars. Some were landowners although none were as rich as the old landed aristocracy. The conquered cities of Asia had been granted some status, but Gaius cancelled it and he put the collection of Asian taxes up for auction and the equites became the tax farmers for the region. Taxes on Asian nations were a crushing burden, but the equites were rivals for national power, and this enterprise vastly increased it. Members of the senate were not allowed to handle financial matters for fear it would corrupt their judgment. It did. So a lethal rift had opened between the oligarchs and the new capitalists. The equestrian order had become a compact, effective mass united on the solid basis of material interests, gaining in influence at the expense of the old aristocracy.
Like Tiberius, Gaius was for bestowing the franchise on the Italian allies, another cause for oligarch irritation.
Then Gaius enacted another master stroke. The courts had been in the hands of the senate, and many of the tax collectors were addicts of bribes and since the court juries were of the same class, convictions were few or lenient. G now turned the courts over to the equites, and both jurors and justices came from the equestrian order. By its control of the courts, it was almost equal in power to the old aristocratic order. Tension mounted.
The power of Gaius rested on his being re-elected tribune. He was basically remaking the constitution of the republic and he hated the aristocracy for what it had done to his brother, and he clearly had an appetite, an ambition to be an absolute despot. Mommsen points out he had no desire to put Rome on a democratic basis, believing it could be better governed if power were left in the hands of one man. Mommsen said an absolute monarchy was a great misfortune for a country but less a misfortune than an absolute oligarchy. (Remember that the United States is no longer a “democracy” but an “oligarchy.”
When Gaius went to work to enfranchise the allies, the Italians, the Senate set out to ruin him. They put out another tribune, Marcus Livius Drusus, a kind of Huey Long or Trump, who simply gained the favor of the people by promising them more extravagant benefits than Gaius, and the public, being what it is, turned to Drusus. Drusus got new laws carried while Gaius was in Africa founding his colony, and the people declined to reelect him when he tried to be elected for a third time. Many did not like his attempt to restore Carthage and the senate proposed a law to prevent the settlement there. He had not been a tribune since Dec. 10, 122, and he want on the day of voting to the Capitol attended by a crowd of armed partisans to thwart the veto.
Crowds are fickle. “Gaius's plans to extend rights to non-Roman Italians were eventually vetoed by another Tribune. A substantial proportion of the Roman poor, protective of their privileged Roman citizenship, turned against Gaius. With Gaius's support from the people weakened, the consul Lucius Opimius was able to crush the Gracchan movement by force. A mob was raised to assassinate Gaius. Knowing his death was imminent he committed suicide on the Aventine hill in 121 BC. All of his reforms were undermined except for the grain laws. Three thousand supporters were subsequently arrested and put to death in the proscriptions that followed.” ) Wikipedia.
The Gracchi were the first to touch the dynamite of land reform. But the struggle here was how to transform what had been a city state that had outgrown its ability to manage itself into a world empire. The effort failed.
We see in these events, the age old struggle of knowledge pitted against dullness of mind, keen perceptions that simply deflect from another’s inadequacy of understanding, the embracing of current advantage over the foresight that might have acted to improve and uplift the whole. We are still imprisoned by those who promise everything and end by doing nothing. In America these days, the public is hardly aware of true merit. The despair of not attaining your aims, or having them undermined by the ignorant, acts to weaken our efforts to obtain them, but the struggle is worth doing, and we continue it as long as our stamina lasts.
“I have done and don’t it no better, than the fault has been me, not in the subject,” said Hazlitt.
One reason commentators on Roman history have not looked kindly upon the Gracchi and the Populares is, as I am aware, that their story ultimately culminates in the Caesars, Julius and Augustus/Octavian. While, compared to their adversaries, they were generous victors that avoided the bloody proscriptions of Sulla and Marcus Antonius, they could do so because (although somewhat mistakenly it turned out in case of Julius Caesar), they were so completely triumphant that no one could dare rise up against them. The real crime (that led to the more obvious crime of copious bloodletting) of the Optimates was not so much a lack of generosity as their inherent weakness.
Maybe a Caesar is a better alternative to a rabble rouser. But I am no more favorably disposed towards a man who should hypocritically call himself just the first citizen than those who would presume to style themselves the best men. I certainly don't want to see a Caesar, even a generous one, rise to power in this country.
Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | 11 January 2016 at 07:21 PM
Mr. Trump is using techniques borrowed from Tony Robbins and Norman Vincent Peale to hypnotize the nation. And he makes them laugh. From the state that elected Arnold governor, the only qualities that actually count become obvious:
1. Who has the most Tigger-like energy
2. Who has the most celebrity / brand with highest name recognition and favor
3. Who is the most entertaining, and makes you smile every time they open their mouth.
Trump guested on McMahon's WWE, he ran The Apprentice like pro wrestling for five years. Based on these criteria, the contest is not even close. Trump sweeps the Repub nomination and wipes out either Clinton or Sanders. 80% chance.
Also note Mr. Trump has been complaining America is not respected because its armed forces are underfunded (!) and do not assert themselves as much as they could. (Apparently having 20 aircraft carriers against Russia's 4 makes us weak.)
History echoes. Given a strongman president arguably more powerful than Nixon, and a stalled/crashing global economy; optionally using Caesar or Il Duce for extrapolation, if you wish; what happens next in 2017-2018?
Posted by: Imagine | 11 January 2016 at 08:52 PM
The "imperial era" of Pax Americana now [truly] begins...
Posted by: YT | 11 January 2016 at 11:35 PM
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/heres-what-blind-prophet-baba-vanga-predicted-for-2016-and-beyond-its-not-good/news-story/6adaca964c9bde14e21103ee7d4fbc1d
The last POTUS...
Thus the "imperial age" beckons.
Posted by: YT | 12 January 2016 at 01:55 AM
Excellent comments.
I do not want to see a Caesar either.
Richard Sale
Posted by: Richard Sale | 12 January 2016 at 09:00 AM
Who is Tony Robbins?
Trump reminds me more of Morton Downey.
Richard Sale
Posted by: Richard Sale | 12 January 2016 at 09:03 AM
Thanks much for this history! And the so-called "Marian Reforms"?
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 12 January 2016 at 09:30 AM
Mr. Sale,
He meant the famed coach Anthony Robbins.
Posted by: YT | 12 January 2016 at 11:10 AM
Richard,
I think you bring up some very interesting points yet I think the comparison of current political changes is only partially apt though the warning very timely. It took more than a century for Rome to finally destroy Carthage and in doing so eliminate the then existing power that was truly an existential threat. But Carthage also destroyed not just the standing armies of Rome (more than once) those men killed, especially in the second Punic war, were a generation (or two) of the middle and lower middle classes (to use today’s terms). The economic devastation of the remainders of those classes only came at the later end of the last war. Our economic decline of the middle classes is being brought about by different social forces not loss in combat in a victorious war.
“We are still imprisoned by those who promise everything and end by doing nothing. In America these days, the public is hardly aware of true merit.” I couldn’t agree more. In this land of college graduates we have a multitude of credentials and not much in the way of learned thought. The fight for political power we are likely to see though will not begin with the beating of a Senator inside the Capital, but a multitude of self-created “crisis” affecting the very processes of basic governance. The current list runs along the line of: water (California’s continuing woes; Flint Michigan’s lead problem), health care (a collapse in affordable health Insurance after the enactment of Obamacare), pensions (Illinois, Detroit and a growing list of other municipalities), affordable college level education and job opportunity (no one even mentions technical training now), immigration, gun ownership rights, etc..When enough self-created crisis have been “resolved” (with a lessening of local controls and further enhancement of executive or unelected powers) or come into existence at once, then the pressure to answer the calls for changes to the Constitution will exist. It is there that the fundamental change in America and a free people will take place.
Posted by: Fred | 12 January 2016 at 11:37 AM
WRC,
I always worry if we have already crossed that bridge.
Politically speaking, Marian reforms shifted the responsibility for maintaining Roman armies to the generals rather than individuals. On the one hand, this meant that the smallholders were no longer burdened with having to support their military service (the problems that instigated the social problems RS was talking about), but it also meant that they were now personally loyal to their generals rather than the Roman state.
The weight of individual political leaders at the top of US political pyramid has been increasing, regardless of their party affiliation: Reagan, Clinton, and Obama have all become bigger than their respective parties in their appeal to the masses. While to say that this is new would be a lie, it bothers me to hear people talk as if the Democrats are Obama's people and the Republicans are Obama's enemies. Both parties had some collective identity independent of the White House even during FDR's presidency--such times are no more. And with this personalized politics comes the politics of exclusion, where the other side is completely and thoroughly rejected--again, increasingly from both sides.
What bugs me about Trump is not that he is a crass two bit wannabe fascist: I think he is much better politician than that. He is a real prospective Caesar (or a Pompey, or a Crassus--all the Triumvirs share the same set of characteristics), someone who is neither an Optimas or a Popularis but with connections to both, with personal resources that frees him from being bound to any interest other than himself, with a genuine skill at mobilizing masses, and who, rightly or wrongly, is looked at as having actual commonsense solutions to very genuine problems of the society, and who would casually do away with the republican system more or less in the name of these solutions...which would be welcomed by many because the system has become increasingly dysfunctional. If Trump is indeed a problem, he should be taken seriously and genuinely feared...and we should worry about those problems he proposes to solve even more.
Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | 12 January 2016 at 11:38 AM
"Zip It!!". Good catch. Both use anti-discussion. But Downey flamed out briefly, whereas Trump has had decades to perfect his art.
Ehn, I guess the advantages of actually talking about the pros and cons of what to do are overrated. We need an ACTION hero. Like Rambo.
["rambo": Japanese for gratuitous, excessive, mindless violence]
In all cases, America will receive what it deserves. May God be merciful.
Posted by: Imagine | 12 January 2016 at 04:56 PM
Agree. The real bitch comes in assuming simple Manichean solutions to complex problems. This often leads to xenophobia, persecution, then fascism.
Posted by: Imagine | 12 January 2016 at 05:05 PM
or SULLA?
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 13 January 2016 at 07:15 AM
Or Marius? But I doubt it. Both Sulla and Marius were firmly partisans of their respective (and established) factions, made little effort to broaden their supporters beyond them, and burned all bridges by treating the other faction brutally.
The Triumvirs, on the other hand, were not firmly beholden to any faction: all three jumped between the factions and recruited their supporters broadly. They didn't really need to, because they were reliant on their own resources and could afford to pursue their agendas more freely. While they often still treated their enemies brutally, if and when they could (I always thought of Caesar as shedding crocodile tears--irony very much intended--when he was presented with Pompey's head by the Egyptians, for, had Pompey lived, Caesar undoubtedly had to execute him one way or another. Egyptians made his task easier and made themselves a convenient scapegoat), their enemies were no longer obvious "factional" enemies but were personal rivals.
If we are to continue with the Roman analogy, I could see, say, Paul Ryan becoming a modern Sulla (or, perhaps Tom Delay, in an era already past) and Hillary Clinton as another Marius. But I think Trump is a modern day triumvir--maybe Crassus rather than Caesar?
Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | 13 January 2016 at 12:00 PM
YT
Tony Robbins is the "life success coach"
motivator. Perhaps not unlike Peale's
power of positive thinking mantra?
Posted by: steveg | 13 January 2016 at 01:11 PM
All this is interesting.
As something of a side point, it doesn't have much to do with success in the 3rd Punic War, which changed little. If there was any chain saw, it cut through the fabric of Roman society 70 years earlier. Rome had already brought most Carthaginian allies under her influence in 201 BC at the end of the 2nd Punic war, contemporaneous with the solidification of Roman influence in mainland Greece, and the decline, partly under Roman pressure, of the Hellenistic monarchies, who were no longer strong enough to resist the pretensions of Roman legates.
The wars of the 140s just made it all final, bringing annexations of territory that had been Roman clients for decades. If anything, the wars of the 140s were themselves a response to the unrest in Italy. "If there was only some place we could establish these restive Italians - Aha! what if we cooked up a reason to raze Carthage and make it a veterans colony."
Posted by: falcone | 13 January 2016 at 02:10 PM
steveg
Tony Robbins is also the author of such books as ULTIMATE POWER and was known for having his students walk across hot coals to prove they could control their minds over their bodies. He was also tight with the Clintons.
Posted by: optimax | 13 January 2016 at 07:44 PM
Thanks, Steveg.
But what's your point?
Appreciate your Sentiment tho...
Posted by: YT | 13 January 2016 at 08:25 PM
nope, extremely sophisticated use of language for quasi-hypnotic purposes, without need for "trace", partially codified as "Neural-Linguistic Programming" and/or "Persuasion Engineering". On a mass basis. The entire stadium leaves with a "seminar high". Obama and Bill Clinton were quite good at this, but Trump has substantially more practice and is world-class. It's what demagogues have. Fifth-level "charm" spell from the old D&D game...
Posted by: Imagine | 13 January 2016 at 08:55 PM
kao_hsien_chih,
Isn't the more important fact not the individual personalities but the trend the Roman precedent sets of defeating an existential threat only to have the domestic parties (to use the modern term) begin to look at each other not as political opponents but as enemies with all the implies?
Posted by: Fred | 13 January 2016 at 10:01 PM
I think the analogy still fits: unlike Rome, we don't have a Carthage now. There is no Hannibal sitting across the Potomac. Whatever existential threats against us that existed were eliminated one way or another, by 1991 at the latest.
While there are dangerous threats or rivals, whether IS, Iran, North Korea, or even Russia and China, none of them is "exitential" the way USSR or Nazi Germany were. The closest thing that the Romans had, perhaps, was the Arsacid Parthia--a real rival empire and a powerful enemy, but not something that could march on Rome. While foreign affairs and military adventures abroad might be still dangerous (and Rome's rivals were quite dangerous also well into the Triumvirate...as shown at Carrhae and elsewhere), they are secondary in import to capturing power domestically--indeed, they are the means through which one ascends politically at home.
Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | 14 January 2016 at 01:09 AM
Richard,
on the other hand Trump still is the only candidate who came close to an honest answer when he was asked whether he would spy on Israel:
"I would certainly not want to do it ... But I have to say this. We're being spied on by everybody. And it's terrible what is going on in that whole thing. We find out that we're being spied on by them. And they're being spied -- everything is out ... would say that I would leave open possibilities of doing whatever it takes to make our country very, very strong and to make our country great again.”
Despite Trump's vulgarity, egotism and other character flaws, such talk is at least refreshing. It probably is also deceptive.
I think Scott Adams series on Trump is illuminating and worth some pondering:
"My prediction months ago that Trump’s persuasion skills would set off a swarm of competing (and wrong) explanations for why Trump is defying expectations. This is a classic “tell” for cognitive dissonance on a mass scale, which is what we are seeing. That is the fingerprint of a Master Persuader.
...
To put a size on Trump’s skill level, I believe that as president he could depose a foreign leader with words alone. It would not work in all cases. But his skill set in persuasion is, in my opinion, weapons grade. I have never seen that level of skill. Luckily, he has a history of opposing unnecessary wars. I can’t think of a better way to prevent a war than removing a dictator with words alone.
I remind new readers that I do not endorse Trump or anyone else for president. I’m not smart enough to know who would do the best job. All the candidates look qualified to me, assuming their health holds out.
But I am a certified hypnotist with decades of study in the field of persuasion. My predictions are based on my knowledge of that skillset and the recognition that Trump has mastered those tools."
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/136261193951/ranking-the-best-political-pundits-of-2015
On Trump's first ad:
"All the buzz today is about Trump’s new ad. Some people on Twitter asked for the Master Persuader filter on it.
Note: For new readers of this blog, I don’t endorse Trump, or anyone else. I’m not smart enough to know who would be the best president. My interests are in Trump’s persuasion skills. I have a lot of background in that area.
My overall grade for the ad is A++++. It might go down in history as one of the best political ads of all time. I’ll break it down.
1. It is horrifingly racist FEELING to some people, and scary, and that is enough to keep it in the news and click-worthy forever. Literally. Your great-grandkids will be studying this ad in history class. This is an intentional part of the ad’s design, and perfectly executed.
2. The best part of the persuasion is cleverly concealed in all that noise. The most active part is the part you probably think is nothing but bad writing. It sounds too folksy, and out of place against the seriousness of the background images. That’s why those words stick out like a dollar on the sidewalk. Here is the active part of the persuasion:
“…until we figure out what’s going on.”
If you have been reading my Master Persuader series, you might recognize that as the High Ground Maneuver. It works every time, unlike weaker forms of persuasion. “Works every time” doesn’t mean it instantly changed your mind, but it does mean it nudged it. And you can’t go back. The High Ground Maneuver is a sign of a Master Persuader.
The low ground on the immigration topic (the weeds) is where everyone else is. That includes endless chatter about the vetting process, the visa process in general, statistics, our national brand, terror recruitment, and on, and on.
Weeds.
The high ground is that this is a complicated topic full of disagreement about just about everything except that the risk is greater than zero. So Trump says the one thing that everyone can agree: Collectively, we need to better understand our enemies. But in the short term, let’s lock the front door while we figure it out.
Who disagrees with that way of thinking? In other words, first you apply the tourniquet, then you figure out why the car crashed. You don’t do those things in the other order.
That’s the high ground maneuver. He moved the focus from the weeds – where everyone disagrees – to the high ground where everyone agrees:
1. We all want our fellow citizens and our government to better understand the terrorists’ motivations. (But personally, we think we already know.)
2. We all solve problems in the same order (tourniquet first).
But there is even more “work” in Trump’s sentence fragment, and that’s the magical part. You don’t often see this kind of layering.
In hypnosis class, we learned to avoid introducing any thoughts that a subject would reflexively find disagreeable. For the same reason, Trump isn’t giving us the answer for why we are under attack. He is letting you fill in the question with your own answer. Why?
Because you always agree with yourself. You’re a genius that way.
None of this persuasion technique will flip the average Democrat, but a Master Persuader only needs to persuade 20% of the other side in order to win in a landslide. And a person with Trump’s skills can persuade 20% of the public of anything."
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/136612798856/trumps-first-ad-master-persuader-filter
"Whether you love Trump or hate him, you probably wonder why he never apologizes and never changes his story, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that he should. Trump seems otherwise intelligent – he graduated from an Ivy League school and built a business empire. So what the hell is up with not admitting when he is wrong?
Is it narcissism?
Is he mentally unstable?
Is he a big liar?
Does he use hyperbole just to get the media involved?
He does use hyperbole for effect, but the deeper explanation is simpler. It is Persuasion 101.
The first rule of persuasion is that you nudge the other person, but you NEVER let them nudge you. Let me repeat this word a few times: NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER.
That’s exactly how often a good persuader should admit a wrong: NEVER.
If you show a willingness to get nudged, you lose your power in the negotiation. Your opponent will try to nudge you from that point on, and you will be on defense. Once you get nudged, it never ends. A good persuader is always the nudger and NEVER the nudgee. You want to keep the opponent off-balance.
Have I said NEVER enough?
Probably not, because you might be thinking that anyone who fails to acknowledge a truth that is right in front of their nose is probably a narcissistic, mentally unstable liar who is just saying things for attention.
Like Trump.
In the 2D world, Trump appears to be all of those things. In the 3D world, where you NEVER want to let yourself be nudged, it is a sign of a Master Persuader.
What you see in the 2D world is Trump the egomaniac who “can’t admit when he is wrong!” What I see in the 3D world is the most disciplined persuader I have ever seen. Trump intentionally accepts the scorn of many as a cost of winning. And it works."
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/137089875456/the-oddest-thing-about-trump
That said, I still don't know what to think of Trump.
Posted by: confusedponderer | 14 January 2016 at 06:46 AM
kao_hsien_chih
'While there are dangerous threats or rivals, whether IS, Iran, North Korea, or even Russia and China, none of them is "existential" the way USSR or Nazi Germany were.'
What do you mean by 'existential' threat? Are you referring to capabilities, or intentions? If you are referring to the latter, do you want to suggest that the threat posed by the Soviet Union was comparable to that posed by Nazi Germany?
It was possible, throughout the Cold War, to be very strongly anti-communist, and also to be acutely sceptical about conventional wisdoms about the forces driving Soviet policy and also about nuclear 'deterrence'.
As with immigration policy, this was a matter on which the late Enoch Powell thought conventional wisdoms were nonsense.
In a 1983 speech, he dismissed Thatcher's view on the Soviets with complete contempt:
'I refer to the misunderstanding of Soviet Russia as an aggressive power, militaristically and ideologically bent upon world domination – ''seeing'', to quote a recent speech of the British Prime Minister, ''the rest of the world as its rightful fiefdom.'' How any rational person, viewing objectively the history of the last thirty-five years, could entertain this 'international misunderstanding' challenges, if it does not defeat, comprehension. The notion has no basis in fact... If Russia is bent on world conquest, she has been remarkably slothful and remarkably unsuccessful.'
(See https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Enoch_Powell .)
What makes Powell's views of particular interest is that he had a serious intelligence background – and is also an interesting case study in the role of academics in wartime. Starting the war as the youngest professor in the Commonwealth, he had joined up as a private, and became a pivotal figure in military intelligence in the Middle East and South Asia. (He was one of only two people to make it from private to brigadier in the British Army during the war – and was, if briefly, the youngest brigadier in the Army.)
(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Powell .)
Posted by: David Habakkuk | 14 January 2016 at 10:10 AM
DH,
I am tempted to say "capabilities," but that seems to be a potentially tricky assertion. The analogue I was thinking was Carthage of the Third Punic War. There was no reason to believe, at least in the near term, that Carthage was actively hostile to Rome. But the idea of a powerful city state just across the Mediterranean that was re-emerging, one that had just fought the Romans bitterly for years only a generation before, was unthinkable to the Romans and delenda est carthago, as the saying goes. In this sense, USSR, whether it was actively hostile and aggressive or not, becomes a bit immaterial. It was as much of an existential threat to United States as Carthage of the Third Punic War was to Rome.
I suppose I am walking a fine line with analogies, then, when I try to liken the modern Russia to Arsacid Parthia, a distant and powerful kingdom that was not quite an existential threat. After all, USSR was not exactly destroyed: it was transmogrified into Russia. There are clearly many who would wish it obliterated as Cato the elder did to Carthage.
Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | 14 January 2016 at 06:20 PM
kao_hsien_chih,
Again I must disagree (though I will concede the point on a basis of influence exercised internationally, up to the latest campaign in Syria) that the Russian Federation is like Carthage after the Third Punic War. They still posses hundreds of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and the ICBMs (amongst other methods) to delivery them. They, like us, can destroy mankind. The threat that I see however is the conduct of our own political leaders domestically who I think view the Russians in the manner you describe in your Carthaginian example. It is the increasingly polarized domestic political rivalries that threaten Constitutional government here and not threat of a foreign conqueror.
Posted by: Fred | 14 January 2016 at 09:58 PM