Dr. Jack Goldstone

People want to be proud of their country.

They want to be proud and feel it's the greatest, but they're also easily manipulated.

driven to fear by the specter of fear of immigrants, fear of foreign competition, hurting American companies and jobs, fear of woke elites controlling their culture.

They don't want any of that.

I understand.

I have to say, one of the reasons we entered a revolutionary moment, I talked about the government losing legitimacy.

If you look at polls on institutions that Americans trust,

Trust in government has collapsed among all people.

When trust in government collapses, people no longer think the institutions of government are working in their interests, then they're open to supporting an alternative.

That's how you get revolutionary enthusiasm.

You can only counter that with a strong emotional appeal.

We talked about what emotions have been used against dictators that have worked.

And the answers that came up were anger about injustice, inequality, and corruption.

So if you could really kind of make a sweeping case that this government is really unfair, that it's helping the rich, it's hurting average people, we're going to basically lower taxes for the rich, bigger debts for everybody else.

Maybe that could get people emotionally engaged against this drift to authoritarianism.

But right now, it's popular.

Most people who react emotionally are kind of cheering.

Yeah, protect us from all these criminal immigrants.

Protect us from crime.

Yeah.