The Rise of Strongman Politics

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself” — FDR

FDR’s warning was prescient in that he understood too well that when people are afraid and react out of fear, they often and usually do things that are not ultimately in their best interest.

Apparently having heard his full but without naming names, Barack Obama finally spoke up: “Strongman politics are ascendant.”

The issue is not what strongman politics say about current demagogue leaders, but much more what is says about their followers and supporters who are under the thrall of a “My President(s) right or wrong” mantra.

What it says is that when as a group, large numbers of people are filled with doubt, fear, anxiety, discouragement, powerlessness, hopelessness and then near panic they fixate on anyone who proclaims to be or have the solution to taking all those feelings away.

When people feel discouraged, powerless, hopeless and then near panic almost daily, they are unable to think clearly. That is because they can’t access their pre-frontal cortex to listen rationally, assess reality and their options. That is because the amygdala in their emotional brains has hijacked them away from that executive function to whoever and whatever they have fixated upon.

The greater the hijack, the more vulnerable and zealously they fixate on a singular answer from: “I’m the only one who can fix this” to “Join ISIS, have love slaves and find paradise.”

Something else that deepens that fixation beyond the belief that they will be saved, is that if they stop their fixation, they will have to then revert to doubt, fear, anxiety, discouragement, powerlessness, hopelessness and then near panic that they have been freed from.

In addition, if in breaking the fixation, people realize that as right as they thought they were is as wrong as they turned out to be, they can come to distrust everything they believe. That can further throw them further into a state of distress by losing confidence in everything they think.

When people are stressed they can still function with difficulty aiming towards a long term goal. When people are distressed, their goal switching to relieving that distress by any means possible. That often often leads to fixating on empty promises, especially if they are pronounced in a bold and confident manner.

The challenge is how do you free fixated minds from the object(s) of their fixation.

There are two possible approaches:

1. Cause them to see that whoever they fixated on is actually playing them for a fool(s), with no intention of truly rescuing them (beyond throwing crumbs of gratification their way). However, if the fixation is so deep as to be delusional, anything and everything the person they are fixated on says or does will be twisted to reinforce the fixation, i.e. “He’s disrupting everything because the system is so broken.” That is referred to as confirmation bias and when they’re in a state of fixation it is as if they are hard-wired to it.

2. Provide an alternative to the fixated people that is more immediately gratifying and hope inducing than remaining locked into the person they’re fixated on. Whatever that is cannot require thinking or reason, because at this point the fixated individuals are mesmerized. Therefore it must be something that immediately causes them to feel more gratified, hopeful and safe that remaining fixated on a person with mounting doubts about them.

So what else can be done to break the spell?

We must push our leaders to become granular about their promises and commitments, hold their feet to the fire and have them pay the consequences — good or bad — for their actions.

Perhaps the best advice comes by adapting a quote from Edmund Burke.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of strongmen is for the good people they serve to not hold them accountable.”