How Human Nature 'Interacts' with Demagogues
My psychiatry training taught me something game-changing about the human brain
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Let’s begin by exploring the modern-day psychological concept of “interactionism.”
Then, by pairing this phenomenon with the awesome power of the inner furies of our nature, we’ll see why Trenchard & Gordon argue so vehemently in Cato’s Letters that it’s sheer folly for a democracy, like ours, to let loose a demagogue, like Donald Trump, into the presidential electoral system.
My Psychiatry Training
When I trained in psychiatry at Stanford several decades ago, interactionism clinched my understanding first of the emotional processes underlying depression and grief, my areas of expertise, and then, after that, all human psychological experience.
Yes, the concept is that powerful.
Interactionism is a Rosetta Stone, a consilient compass for comprehending personality formation as well as how personality functions in relationships—all of them, including intimate relationships, group relationships, and those obedient relationships we sometimes develop with galvanizing political leaders.
What is interactionism?
First, interactionism is the bio-psycho-social phenomenon that explains how genes and environment (nature and nurture) interact to form personality during childhood and adolescence. During those critical developmental years, your brain is absorbing, recording, and organizing experience into neural programming that solidifies roughly in the age range 15-20.
But that’s not the component of interactionism that best explains why demagogues are so dangerous to democracies.
Once your personality is formed, it interacts with the world around it—including with demagogues, should your democracy be careless enough to grant them blaring bullhorns and other amplifiers of mass manipulation.
“The people, when they are not misled or corrupted, generally make a sound judgment of things”
‘Men Not Ruled by Principle, But by Passion’
One key lesson from Trenchard & Gordon is that we humans, driven by the primacy of our passions over reason, are vulnerable to manipulation by “deceivers” who stoke our most “formidable passions”: fear, anger, and revenge.
Every citizen should understand that the secret to security and safety in a democracy is for political leaders to be implacable advocates for reason, rationality, truth, virtue, and peace—that is to say, “the better angels of our nature,” as one past president put it.
We live in a world that barely maintains its grip on peace and order due to the lurking hostile angels of our nature. Those nefarious angels are there, rumbling beneath the surface, prone to paranoia and fury—ready to pounce when provoked.
We must never forget that, as humans, we are prone to tribalism and violence, especially when defending our 1) persons 2) property 3) loved ones 4) and beloved leaders.
And, as Trenchard & Gordon underscore, those abiding spirits—"hatred, animosity, comic quarrels, violence, devastation, and oppression"—can be unleashed by “the force of words.”
Evolution has seared these violent instincts into our DNA. They can’t be wished away or rubbed out. They can only be channeled, by choosing leadership well, to the defense of virtuous causes like liberty, equality, the Constitution, and the preservation of God’s green earth.
Or, if you prefer anarchy and violence, let your leaders be demagogues and autocrats who direct society’s animal spirits towards lawlessness, persecution of minorities, and warfare with neighbors.
THEREFORE, because the leaders of a democracy interact so intimately, so emotionally, with the passions of the citizens of a nation, any leader who is a prime mover and force multiplier of hate and violence must be spurned, thwarted, sidelined, and removed.
This is not a causal, flimsy principle of republican government. It’s an ironclad law.
Prime movers and force multipliers of hate and violence must be excluded from the leadership of republics.
Translated into modern American English: No demagogues or tyrants in the White House!
“Well, just this once—or twice—will likely be okay,” a bobblehead contrarian might say. “A little short-term authoritarian disruption might be good for an uptight democracy like ours.”
No. Never. Wrong. Creative-destruction does not work in democracies because once they’re wrecked it’s often autocrats who seize control of the cracked-up helm.
Trenchard & Gordon, arguing that virtuous leadership is the keystone of a safe republic, snap back against this sloppy, laissez-faire logic:
These things are self-evident, and yet the misery of mankind is in a great measure owing to their ignorance of them.
Ridding Republics of Demagogues
All of these perils relating to the interaction of political leaders with the passions of the people explain why keen-minded political philosophers like Trenchard & Gordon summarily call for the expulsion of demagogues from the body politic of free governments.
Our British reform guides drew their wisdom from the pages of history—and so should we.
Reading Thucydides, Herodotus, Plutarch, Aristotle, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, they especially reveled in the deep study of Greek democracy and the Roman republic.
In my next essay we'll peer through their eyes to explore how the Greeks and Romans dealt with demagogues. In particular, we’ll spotlight Athenian ostracism.
The ship “American Commonwealth” sails for ports of the past, where history illuminates the errors and follies of our ways along with strategies for reform.
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Eli Merritt is a psychiatrist and historian who writes about the origins of our present political discontents and solutions to them. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, among other publications.
He writes American Commonwealth and is the author or editor of the books “Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution,” “Demagogue in the White House: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump,” and “How to Save Democracy: Advice and Inspiration from 95 World Leaders”
More articles by Eli Merritt
Books
The Curse of Demagogues: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump
Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution
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Sources
Cato’s Letters, No. 13-44
1688: The First Modern Revolution, by Steve Pincus
The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble: The World's First Great Financial Scandal, by Malcolm Balen
The Social Self and Everyday Life: Understanding the World Through Symbolic Interactionism, by Kathy Charmaz, Scott R. Harris, Leslie Irvine
Wonderfully written and insightful as always. Loved the very brief explanation of interactionism. It continues to make me reflect Perhaps you can write a separate article solely on that topic? In the meantime, I will search for my old DSM II.
Turning around the ship of state at this point will be tough but better now than later