The only thing I can think of is that the Republican Party is the party of alarmists and knee-jerk reactionaries.

Not entirely. A better way to think about it, IMO, is that they've been the party that caters to knee-jerk reactionaries. For years, the Republicans have relied on firing up people's baser instincts in order to get elected. Who can they condemn as "other"? What outside forces are to blame for what ails us? The only difference with Trump is that he's gotten rid of euphemism.

We keep looking for long, complicated reasons that people are so easily manipulated. But I think this is really a defense mechanism, because if we can convinced ourselves that it's something about them, we can pretend that we're not just as susceptible. Enter Huxley:

There are two kinds of propaganda -- rational propa­ganda in favor of action that is consonant with the enlightened self-interest of those who make it and those to whom it is addressed, and non-rational propa­ganda that is not consonant with anybody's enlight­ened self-interest, but is dictated by, and appeals to, passion. Where the actions of individuals are con­cerned there are motives more exalted than enlight­ened self-interest, but where collective action has to be taken in the fields of politics and economics, enlight­ened self-interest is probably the highest of effective motives. If politicians and their constituents always acted to promote their own or their country's long-range self-interest, this world would be an earthly paradise. As it is, they often act against their own inter­ests, merely to gratify their least creditable passions; the world, in consequence, is a place of misery. Propa­ganda in favor of action that is consonant with en­lightened self-interest appeals to reason by means of logical arguments based upon the best available evi­dence fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in fa­vor of action dictated by the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evi­dence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scape­goats, and by cunningly associating the lowest pas­sions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God and the most cyni­cal kind of Realpolitik is treated as a matter of reli­gious principle and patriotic duty.

This whole chapter addresses the earlier belief from 18th- and 19th-century political philosophers (including the likes of Jefferson) that, in the latter's words, "Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." Huxley explains that this assumes that "the propaganda might be true, or it might be false," and that "they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."

When I first read that, I assumed he was referring to things like consumerism and advertising, but I think it's actually broader. He goes on to say:

Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by demo­cratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but some­where else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it.

So we're back to the Republican method of campaigning. One of the things Democrats and liberals both have struggled with since at least the election of George W. Bush is how to frame their arguments. Because they're trying to appeal to people's reason; Bill Clinton once said that "if people think, [Democrats] win."

But this is hard and is getting harder. There's a million other things that people could be doing. How many are willing to take the time to sit around and read Huxley, or Rawls, or Jefferson, or whomever? This is especially true when you have politicians basically saying that it's not only okay to have ice cream for dinner, but the people who don't are elitist, weak, and not real Americans.

Of course people are going to respond to someone telling them they don't have to do the difficult thing, and that it's someone else's fault rather than theirs, and not to worry, I've got it. It is exceedingly difficult to be even remotely informed, and more difficult still to make decisions that are going to benefit someone else more than they benefit you. So if someone comes along and, in essence, tells you not to worry about eating your vegetables, that's an extremely compelling argument on an emotional level. I'm not conservative, but I get how seductive their arguments can be.

Now comes someone who is basically out-Republicaning the Republicans. Other Republicans (e.g. Paul Ryan, George Will) are on the receiving end for a change, and they don't seem to particularly like it. Meanwhile, the Democrats have seen how effective those kinds of arguments can be over the years, and have steadily been heading in the same direction. Obama's first campaign was an appeal to emotion too, albeit different ones.

It's a race to the bottom. I wish I knew how to turn things around. But really we just have to start educating people early on in different civic values, but that's going to take a major push. In the meantime, there's a vested interest in making sure this doesn't happen.

Schism is imminent. Hank Paulson endorsed Clinton this morning and the Democratic Party added a $15 minimum wage to the national platform.

Interesting times.