Trump is a textbook example of Strict Father Morality. In a Strict Father family the father is the ultimate authority. Father knows best. He gets his authority from the claim to know right from wrong, and what he says is by definition always right. His word is law and needs to be strictly enforced through strength — swift painful punishment. Even a show is disrespect deserves to be punished.
There is a Strict Father logic: Discipline needs to be imposed. Children need to learn not to do what feels good (like “feel-good liberals”), but to do what they are told. If they do, they will become disciplined and go out into the world and become prosperous. What if they are not prosperous? That just shows that they are not disciplined, which means they cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. In short, the poor are poor because they’re lazy and so it’s their own fault. Responsibility is individual responsibility. There is no social responsibility.…
I think George Lakoff pretty well summarizes the opposition to Donald Trump coming from the left.
But I am not getting this from Donald Trump or Steve Bannon. My take is that Bannon has convinced Trump that the liberal Democrats have abandoned their constituency by taking it for granted, while the GOP establishment never aimed at it at all, so they can pick it by showing that they actually care. Bannon has stated that quite clearly as his aim and his task in the Trump administration.
Is Lakoff being doctrinaire in his application of his theory. and maybe overly simplistic?
George Lakoff
The Women’s Marches and the Politics of Care: The Best Response to Trump’s Inaugural Address
George Lakoff | Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society and retired Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley
