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Research Guru saw Trump phenomenon coming before anyone else

Research Guru saw Trump phenomenon coming before anyone else

Q&A with Anne Sorock of The Frontier Lab

For most people, both Donald Trump’s campaign and success came out of nowhere.

But not for Anne Sorock of The Frontier Lab.

Anne started writing for Legal Insurrection in April 2012 and was a regular contributor for many years. Over time Anne focused more and more of her time at The Frontier Lab, and now writes for us only sporadically.

We have featured Anne’s research at The Frontier Lab many times. Anne uses the Deep Values methodology she learned while interacting with the Food & Brand Lab at Cornell University while getting her MBA. Deep values research seeks to understand not just what consumers like or want, but what deeply held values lead to such decisions.

At the Frontier Lab, Anne has applied deep values methodology to numerous political topics, including  why people decide to become politically activeOccupy movement participants’ motivations, and why Republicans won’t call themselves Republican, among others.

I saw Anne at CPAC 2015, and in the course of our discussions, I asked Anne who she liked among the many rumored presidential candidates. She said Donald Trump.

I was like, what is that all about? He’s never going to run, he always teases, and anyway, Trump? Seriously? She was serious. She said, look, he’s the one. She was insistent not only that Trump would run but that he’d win. It seemed totally incredible.

By that point I’d known Anne for a while, and considered her a friend. I could tell she wasn’t joking. That she knew something I didn’t. But it still seemed so other-worldly, that even after Trump took the famous escalator ride at Trump Tower to announce, I didn’t give it any credit.

That was then, this is now. President-elect Trump saw something in the mood of the nation, and captured that lightning in a bottle.

Since I’m a big fan of Anne’s, and respect her research abilities, I wanted to let her explain what she saw as far back as March 2015 that others didn’t see. And how her deep values research methodology allowed her to be perhaps the first person to spot the Trump phenomenon, maybe even before Trump himself realized.

Here is our written Q&A:

WAJ: When I asked you who you supported at CPAC 2015, what made you not just respond, “Trump,” but insist upon it when no one else thought he would run much less win?

Anne: I remember that day we spoke at CPAC. The giddy atmosphere of insiders and wannabe-insiders  was almost ominous. I had been working at The Frontier Lab on mapping disaffiliation by conservatives from using the term “Republican” to describe themselves. These conservatives had had enough after 2012, being told to get in line and vote for Romney, and then the RNC Autopsy report came out basically as a rubber stamp to keep pursuing the same tired strategies.

Those aware of the Autopsy felt it simply confirmed what the Romney debacle had already shown them – that the GOP and its parasites were incapable of reforming themselves. The only answer was an outsider to blow it all up.

But beyond this it was Trump who aligned with so many of the deep values I had been identifying in my research as central to the modern way many Americans relate to politics. Although we use many different methodologies to look at our research questions, one in particular has served me time and again to push beyond the surface to what’s driving behavior around politics. Using the “Laddering” qualitative interview technique we essentially push high-intensity representative of a certain idea or policy (or product) to reflect on the consequences of their connection.

Recently, for example, I found myself asking “why is it that Black Lives Matter appeals to you MORE than your time as an activist with Occupy?” And then, “why is it important that your classmates see you as affiliated?” As we continue to push we reveal the underlying values and emotions that drive this behavior.

At the time, I was following these threads about conservatism:

  • The desire for a concrete way to demonstrate the action of “standing up for your beliefs”
  • Concern that they had been enabling “bad behavior” of the GOP in the same way that a parent enables a child
  • A taste of empowerment that had come from interaction with the Tea Party movement, but yearning for more

WAJ: What about this outsider aspect?

Anne: That was the functional part — being an outsider would allow him to do what previous candidates, and all candidates being considered, were incapable of. And that was absolutely reject the king-makers at CPAC and in DC in general.

There was so much anger I had been cataloging at those in charge. There was a seething sense of being disrespected by those in charge. One of the insights from my research at the time was that when people were asked to “choose the lesser of two evils,” they were basically dropping like flies from the Republican label. They might vote that way, but they resented it even more each time. They were looking for an anti-hero.

WAJ: What were their issue differences with the CPAC crowd?

Anne: It was outside of the issue spectrum completely. There was a shift away from one-off issue concerns (taxes, health care, even jobs) in favor of the underlying heart foundation for those issues. Another event that those leaving the Republican label had in common (and yet remaining to vote that way) was an incident of perceived betrayal by the GOP establishment. Individual after individual had an anecdote to relate of an extremely negative interaction with a party official or candidate. Those peddling the issues simply looked down upon them and that showed.

WAJ: Why Trump then, and not someone like Cruz?

Anne: A mentor of mine remarked to me once that when things got truly bad, the talented and ambitious — those living their lives as doctors, businesspeople, scientists — would reenter the political realm. That’s the other thing. The GOP insiders didn’t realize “things had gotten truly bad.” They were still working. These people weren’t.

Even though Trump was so wealthy, he offered a sense of fairness in life. His show the Apprentice asked people to perform, and if they didn’t they were gone — that’s fundamentally what everyone was asking for. An economy where hard work could be rewarded. Not a handout.

Ted Cruz being so conservative simply wasn’t enough to win the hearts of people. It was as though he was disliked rather than respected for going against the grain. Trump succeeded at this outsider status.

WAJ: What about Trump resonated with what you were finding in your research?

Anne: Well Trump came along and said two things. He said, they’re not listening to you because they don’t respect you. Together we’ll take on the inherent elitism that allows the pundits, even Rush Limbaugh, to get away with calling you “low information.” The everyday American, and especially the one without an Ivy League education, isn’t “low-information,” but wise and able to govern himself. The GOP and the Democrat Party still don’t believe that. They don’t believe in true self-governance. Trump pushed back against that snobbery.

Then he said he’d address the issue of sovereignty. We’re being told constantly, even and maybe especially by the GOP, that we must orient ourselves to global opinion. That it’s old fashioned to have borders, to insist on constants in our values. Diversity as an end in itself must be kow-towed to, instead of our country’s unique set of historic values.

Immigration and border security, even terrorism, relate to the broader ideas of “is our culture in America unique?” “Do potential immigrants need to share those values?” even “what is diversity without shared values?” And of course, “is sovereignty important, or does the broader global community offer better guidance than we can?”

So the GOP’s failure to realize their small government vs. big government dialectic wasn’t answering today’s pressing needs renders them shallow connections with the hearts of Americans. Still does.

WAJ: Are you saying small government doesn’t matter?

Anne: No, it’s not that it doesn’t matter. Just like the Constitution didn’t cease mattering before the Civil War. But slavery needed to be addressed. Today, sovereignty and elitism are those issues, is what Americans were saying.

Then as now, despite this historic rebuke of the GOP’s management capabilities, many Republicans are insisting on broadcasting where they are along this “right vs. left” spectrum. They aren’t answering the fundamental questions driving Americans anymore. It’s like when the Whigs failed to give an answer on slavery, and the Republicans came along and said, “abolition,” this is what the GOP will be built upon.

WAJ: So why didn’t all the others predict Trump, especially in the consultant/market research community?

Anne: Polling about the economy, jobs, national security, etc., might reveal superficial insights, even move the needle a few important points, but it failed in one major respect. They were asking about issues that are, at best, the outgrowths of their deeper concerns, but not explanatory or helpful in making predictions. What you don’t know about, you can’t ask about.

WAJ: What should we understand about the Americans who supported Trump that we still continue to miss?

Anne: They may care about all these conservative issues too, but they recognize that the enemy is within the gates. Our culture is what’s’ being eroded. Small government may be the mechanism to restore much of our country’s greatness but it isn’t the emotion, the value, that drives our country’s unique role in the world.

WAJ: You predicted Trump more than two years ago. What’s your next prediction?

Anne: I’ve been focusing my work these past few years to studying the attraction of mass movements on the left. The problem is that the left is provides through its mass movements the fulfillment of deep human needs.  Sense of purpose. Meaning in life. A community of like-minded individuals. A sense of belonging. Etc.

Much of this comes from my work on Occupy Wall Street and more recently a project on Black Lives Matter operatives and activists. Their stated aim is “total social upheaval.” I’m afraid that these programmed participants will engage in escalating levels of violence as our culture continues to fracture completely into two different sectors.

Through this the left has been programming a separate society, with values utterly fractured from mainstream, conservative America. What BDS, Black Lives Matter and Occupy provide is quite compelling to a segment of young people who fear being ostracized from the left’s cultural community. That’s hard to replace in the short-term, although there are pathways. We are failing to provide a competitive product to the left’s cultural community and enforcement mechanisms (ostracization from your peers on campus or in the workplace, for example).

My personal opinion? That competitive product is, frankly, faith in God. My one takeaway from all my research over the years is that this is the best and only way to reunite the fractured culture.

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Comments

Great work Anne. I look forward to reading your work in more detail over Sunday morning coffee. A luxury I once reserved for Noonan 😉

legacyrepublican | November 10, 2016 at 9:44 pm

Interesting. I really get what she is saying.

One of my complaints that not even the liberals I debated with over the years was when I told them I was tired of the “Ivy League Tower” folks telling me what was good for me.

I trounced everyone when I pointed out that the Supreme Court members were occupied largely by one law school, Harvard. There might be someone from Yale. But no one from Stanford, USC, SMU, or any other top notch law school that isn’t in the Ivy League.

A couple of weeks ago, as a matter of fact, an Hispanic woman just nodded when I said that even if I didn’t agree with Sotomayer politically or her liberalism, what really burned me up is that she is from Harvard and New York. When she celebrated her appointment, it was in NYC too. She wasn’t a real Hispanic coming from California, Arizona, Texas, or New Mexico that understood what life was like in the west.

Heads nodded when I said these people haven’t gone into the rest of the country and have no idea of how their decisions are affecting our lives.

    “But no one from Stanford . . . .”
    Really?

      legacyrepublican in reply to Rick. | November 11, 2016 at 3:09 am

      No, really! O’Conner retired.

      My point is a diversity one. If liberals are into diversity, why aren’t they for it in their judge’s law school.

      All the current justices are from Ivy League law schools. Mostly Harvard, then Yale, and then Columbia.

      All east coast law schools too. All New England also. And six of the justices go to the same place for their reunions.

      When there is an exception, it is still biased. For example, even though Breyer is from San Francisco and went to Stanford for his degree in philosophy, his law training was pure Ivy League which means that his understanding of, say, western water rights is skewed.

      I usually go on to point out to a liberal that during the Bush administration, Chuck Schumer caused much of this incestuous legal thought and our wonderful gang of Eight RINOs compromised with him such that all the potential candidates recently were restricted to Harvard and Ivy League schools during the 2000s. Even now, Obama has the same problem and dare not go out of Harvard and Yale ( Justice Merrick Garland, whose appointment to replace Scalia is pending, is from Harvard Law School ).

      It gets even more bizarre. I think there are no protestants on the bench anymore. They are Catholics and one Jewish judge.

      Republicans have been choosing Catholics because of the abortion issue figuring that they would be pro-life without pressing for an answer in committee hearing. Democrats have been avoiding protestants since they might be pro-life evangelical like Justice Moore in Alabama who is Baptist. By restricting it to Catholics of a known school, they know they can manipulate the judges too ( Think Roberts and how he could have killed Obamacare ).

      One other thing I point out to liberals. Since Reagan, the presidency has been one of two graduate schools. Harvard and Yale. That is a twent-five year dominance by one narrow set of schools.

      Prior to 41, Presidents were from all over the country; Nixon, Whitter College in CA: Johnson, Texas State University: Kennedy, Harvard: Truman, business college: FDR, Harvard: Hoover, Stanford.

      But, since 1989, we have been Yale and Harvard.

      Trump has ended that streak, thankfully.

      I have found the diversity argument to be one that liberals can’t respond to and one they often don’t know.

      They often are really shocked to find that their presidents and supreme justices all come from the same school of thought.

        “I debated with over the years”.
        Those must have been fairly recent years.
        You also missed Rehnquist.
        But, to your point: I would no longer count on a Stanford Law School graduate having a more open mind than graduates from Harvard or Yale.

          Bruce Hayden in reply to Rick. | November 11, 2016 at 11:09 am

          Just a tweak – current SCOTUS makeup is 3 Jews (Breyer, Ginsberg, Kagen), and 5 (formerly 6 with Scalia) who worship as Roman Catholics (though, I believe that Thomas may be the one who is technically Episcopalian). Also, as noted, both Rehnquist and O’Connor were Stanford Law grads.

        I remember the discussion about Harriet Myers for the Supreme Court. This was a lawyer with real, big-ticket litigation experience, a skill set not all that common at the appellate level. Michell Malkin argued that Miers was “unqualified” because she went to the wrong law school, decades ago.

Sounds like somebody is still utterly mystified by Hurricane Donald.

For most people, both Donald Trump’s campaign and success came out of nowhere.

For far too many at LI, maybe. Which is bizarre, considering how obvious and straightforward it actually was, right from the beginning. But they missed it then, and they’re still missing the important parts of it now.

    Stingray in reply to tom swift. | November 11, 2016 at 1:45 pm

    I agree with you Tom . . . Bill’s blog certainly was not the place to come for Valid Trump information over the last year! However this article of Anne Sorock’s is so stunningly ‘Right On’ I nearly fell out of my chair!! Can Anne’s article ‘make up’ for things ‘not said’ or that shouldn’t have been said? I think not.

So, did Trump intuitively sense what the Republicans craved and he provided it, while it took others research to identify and confirm the trend?

That’s not a criticism at all. Business owners who are comfortable with high levels of risk are often far out in front of the trend, while others play catch up months or years later. Whatever else Trump may be, he’s a business owner who is comfortable with high levels of risk.

    novaculus in reply to windbag. | November 13, 2016 at 4:59 pm

    It may be as simple as Trump having a lot more contact with people outside the Political Class bubble. He talks with people outside the bubble every day.

We all live through when he shames MSM, the way they need to be shamed.

You are spot on about the left and violence. Please keep studying that. I think you left out “a need to be validated…even stroked” by a community. You are on to something when you connect that with their disconnect with God.

    Stingray in reply to Andy. | November 11, 2016 at 2:20 pm

    Andy, excellent point – Perhaps if it’s stated a different way it may mean more when bringing up Anne’s conclusion of genuine Religion as the solution–or what used to be the solution–to ‘filling the gaps’ in society’s needs of ‘belonging.’ You know, the old trope of needing to re-write Human Nature in order to make Socialism work . . . One doesn’t have to objectively believe in God, or anyone else’s views on what God is, just merely live by the principles and mores of Christianity that are the basis of our American mores, laws and American Individual Liberty. To be the best you can be (successful, happy) also gave rise to the saying “Cut off your nose to spite your face”, if you chose not, eh?

In 2014 Eric Cantor lost in the Republican primaries. He was and is the only sitting House Majority leader that has not won since the position was created in 1899. His internal polls had him up by 30 points but he lost by over 11 points.

The Republican leadership ignored this warning and continued to abuse the base. I don’t think they will be ignoring President-Elect Trump.

    snopercod in reply to This is me. | November 11, 2016 at 7:59 am

    The republican “leadership” won’t be ignoring him, they’ll be sabotaging him at every opportunity. They just can’t wait to say, “See, we told you so!”

On a Republican year Trump won a razor-thin victory in a few crucially important states. It’s a little help of domestic and foreign intelligence agencies. As predicted in 2015.

I would offer the point that the “low information voter”. as defined by Limbaugh is not the same person she said was wise and informed. I doubt the “average” Trump voter drew their information from the MSM. CNN and MSNBC put real information low on their agenda. As I noted earlier…. the Dems considered the USSR as permanent, and the GOPe considered the only strategy to beat the Dems was to offer a Dem lite package…. who wins? Santa Claus or Santa Claus lite?

The Dems intentionally abandoned blue collar whites thinking they had no where else to go and pampered the illegal immigrant/future Dem voter crowd. In so doing they cheapened the citizenship of hard working Americans of Hispanic background. I trust the Black community will better understand they were also set to be sold out..

    Evan3457 in reply to alaskabob. | November 11, 2016 at 2:49 am

    Rush is almost always referring to the lumpenproletariat that is the core of the Democrat party when he refers to LIV’s. Rarely, if ever, is he referring to working class white voters who flocked to Trump.

    Oldfart in reply to alaskabob. | November 12, 2016 at 2:10 pm

    I realize it’s a commonly used term but I wish people would stop using “low information voter” to describe voters who don’t have college educations. My mother had a sixth-grade education, was better-educated than I with my college degree and managed to vote in every election that came up. She was a Democrat when that wasn’t a bad thing. By today’s standards, she may have been “low information” but she read anything and everything she could. Perhaps she just “suffered” from a relative deficiency of brainwashing.

DouglasJBender | November 11, 2016 at 2:49 am

Has no one considered the possibility that she simply got lucky?

    DieJustAsHappy in reply to DouglasJBender. | November 11, 2016 at 5:40 am

    There was a witticism I have hear in a long time. “Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.” The opportunity presented itself. Anne Sorock was well prepared.

    Now, if I could just contact her about the 9th race at Hialeah …

    I was wondering the same, but look at the Cruz vs Trump verbiage. Cruz IMO is spot on for policy. He’s my guy and even leaves Reagan in the dust.

    The left is not interested in an honest discussion on issues, because they lose 100/100 in that arena. They are literally seeking a violent revolution. The astroturf riots with paid and professional agitators and bus loads of thugs going in and busting up neighborhoods is what is in play here. That is the future of elections and policy issues if the next POTUS doesn’t step up and fix this.

    On that front- I actually like Trump better. Just like with the press, he has no need to make nice with bad people and thugs.

This young woman is a very smart cookie. President-Elect Trump would be wise to seek her counsel. She appears to understand the driving forces behind many of the disenfranchised groups. He will be president of all Americans. If the country is to be turned around for good the conservatives will have to win over other 50% of Americans.

    Funny you mention that flagirl. I just sent this article on to Lynne Patton to read and maybe give to President Trump.
    She’s the black woman who works for him and had the video fighting back against the racism charge. I posted about her in the Reader Forum last night.

That was great, Anne. Being an engineer, I never understood the importance of culture in holding a society together until I read Visions of Order by Richard M. Weaver.

This is the perfect storm for Barack Obama.
The Clinton’s are disfavored. Their Foundation is in tatters.
He did campaign for her, so “it’s Bush’s fault.”

The Obama Foundation (Obama For-ks America) is ready to take donations.

Anne Sorock, great stuff. Thank you!

I saw the hunger for the Trump message from day 1 and I said so here in this forum. It was there in 2012 but Romney was too detached from the American voter to see it.

    PhillyGuy in reply to PhillyGuy. | November 11, 2016 at 9:23 am

    I hope the blogosphere gives KellyAnne Conway her due. She broke a glass ceiling by becoming the first woman to direct a (heavily data driven) presidential campaign to a successful conclusion.

    Because of that, the DNC is in shambles right now. She laid waste to the theory that the inherent California/New York voter advantage that the Democrats had was insurmountable. She was able to find the voters in the Rust Belt that the party had lost.

    In my book, she and Reince Preibus are heroes for the Republican Party.

Anne’s closing comment: “The problem is that the left is provides through its mass movements the fulfillment of deep human needs. Sense of purpose. Meaning in life. A community of like-minded individuals. A sense of belonging. Etc.”
should give us all pause. Over the last 50 years (or more) the left has succeeded in fragmenting the nation by using a victim / villain strategy. That results in a mass of people who believe they have been rejected by society and have noting to lose by rejecting society. They find their identity in causes, and are literally willing to die for those causes. Eric Hoffer described the phenomenon in ‘The True Believer’. As they become more subsumed by the movement they believe in, rational discussion becomes less and less possible. They will do ANYTHING to protect the movement. Scary.

The commenter here who really saw things clearly early was Gary Britt. Perhaps he should be unbanned and invited back.

conservative tarheel | November 11, 2016 at 10:45 am

I didn’t vote FOR Trump as much as I voted AGAINST Hillary …
I used Donald as a instrument to that end.
I am worried about Donald Trump I look at his history
his comments/beliefs he was a member of the Democratic Party
longer then he was a Republican .. his support of Democrat
policy i.e. DREAMERS, etc …
this could end very very badly … I know Hillary would be alot worse
I pray I am wrong … I pray that does what he said he will do.

MaggotAtBroadAndWall | November 11, 2016 at 10:48 am

Interesting analysis. However, based on the data, I can create an alternative narrative.

The data are not complete. Votes are still being tallied. What follows will change when the final election results are certified.

Turnout this year was depressed. That was by design. Each campaign sought to make the other too unpalatable to support. Using the raw data currently available and making no assumptions about uncounted votes, at least so far around 6.6 million fewer people voted for president this year than in 2012. Trump so far has slightly less than a million fewer votes than Romney got in ’12. Hillary has about 5.6 million fewer votes than Obama ’12. And if you compare Hillary’s ’16 vote count to Obama ’08, Democrats lost around 10 million votes. Vanished. They didn’t go to Republicans. If the ’08 electorate were a “new normal” as was the conventional wisdom at the time, and considering population growth of about 0.8% per year, we should now have millions more people voting than voted in ’08. Instead we have several million fewer.

The lesson may be that Obama and his election were freaks. Outliers. The coalition he built in ’08 started to fall apart in ’12 when he himself got ~4 million fewer votes than he got in ’08. His coalition completely collapsed with Hillary in ’12. Meanwhile, Trump’s vote count is flatish with McCain’s. I am not saying his coalition is the same as McCain’s. It’s not. There are different factions represented. Already we know that evangelicals and less educated whites were important factors in Trump’s victory. But in terms of raw numbers, there is no evidence in the data (so far) to suggest that Trump expanded the Republican coalition by very much. You heard endless stories about that when Obama won in ’08. It appeared to be justified based on the huge turnout he generated. It now looks like that was temporary and unique to Obama or the circumstances (Iraq War, financial crisis, etc.).

The case that Obama was a freak is further supported by the Republican waves of 2010 and 2014. They now dominate a staggering majority of governorships and state legislatures around the country.

One last sobering thought. If Hillary had persuaded just 1% of the people who voted for Trump to vote for her in states Trump flipped like FL, PA, WI, and MI (assuming Trump’s MI lead there survives), then people would be calling her President Elect with about 300+ electoral college votes.

Trump won. He deserves to be congratulated. But it looks more like the Obama blip has now reverted to the mean.

    I’d like to offer a different take on that. To me it looks like Bannon and Conway both accepted the notion that the Clinton campaign would try to make Trump toxic to voters. So their strategy was to use the data to craft a message that would drive enough Rust Belt voters to Trump that would tip the scale. I found it interesting that Reince Preibus went on Hannity last night and told him their turnout models had specific counts in each contested state that they needed to win and that they hit those targets.

“…and when things got truly bad, the talented and ambitious — those living their lives as doctors, businesspeople, scientists — would enter the political realm…”

I saw this. Leaving aside the multiple candidates that fit this description, many other people made the same decision.

First, people who knew how to cross-check the media found out just how false the news stories about the election, for example, the lie that DJT was encouraging violence, really were. They could see the “politics of personal destruction” played by the Clinton Campaign (how dare she do this?) at work. Then, some offended Democrats started leaking at the DNC and the Hillary Campaign.

Seth Rich, a 27-year-old employee of the Democratic National Committee rumored to have been one of the Wikileaks sources, was murdered.

And then, somebody at 4Chan purporting to be aware of information held by the FBI started giving hints about what to look for in Wikileaks.

After that, a bunch of people started combing the various document releases from all sources, as well as publicly-available information. They made jokes about “weaponized autism” while scanning, absorbing, culling, and putting together vast amounts of scattered information, all with breathtaking speed.

That research yielded solid evidence of collusion between various specific media persons and organizations with the Hillary Campaign, the use of rent-a-rioters by various Democratic organizations, the specific, written policy of the DNC to provoke violence against voters and blame the the Trump Campaign, bribery of a Secretary of State by foreign governments, misuse of the funds of a charitable foundation to enrich Friends of Bill at the expense of the Hatian reconstruction effort, involvement of highly partisan entities in the distribution of vote counting machines together with deliberate attempts at vote count manipulation, and significant circumstantial evidence that some of the members of the Clinton Campaign and their supporters are involved in a pedophile ring.

The New York Times and the Washington Post attempted to spike and soften these stories, presenting what information they chose to transmit using innocuous headlines. These deceptive stories were carried by the regional newspapers despite efforts by some to alert them to the problem. The Trump supporters resorted to using Twitter. Twitter attempted to censor the discussion. They got caught, and the Trump supports found work-arounds. The information got out anyway, Twitter’s stock has tanked, and both newspapers continue to flirt with bankruptcy.

I submit that cold outrage by the most apolitical of our people and Democratic voters influenced the result of this election.

    Stingray in reply to Valerie. | November 11, 2016 at 3:13 pm

    Excellent post, Valerie! And I add that all through this and so very much more abject dishonesty that NOBODY CARES! IT’S ALL OK! And it is truly sad that so many Americans cannot even look themselves in a mirror and tell themselves the truth, much less honesty to others. Perhaps with Trump starting the conversations we can finally stop such things as the inner-city murder of our American youth? Having worked in inner-city ER for years, I do volunteer and I can identify how to do it . . . Blaming a gun is foolish. Blaming a racist is foolish. BLAMING A FANTASY IS FOOLISH. Start TALKING HONESTLY and fix it!

This is off topic but the Tensing trial in Cincinatti looks like it is gonna be hung , the Judge just read the charge to them and sent them back in .
Legal insurrection had covered it originally , surprised nothing with the trial

Funny thing: leftists always tell their young that they are special, always boost their self-esteem for accomplishing nothing.

When they grow up, they need “mass movements” for “the fulfillment of deep human needs. Sense of purpose. Meaning in life. A community of like-minded individuals. A sense of belonging. Etc…a segment of young people who fear being ostracized from the left’s cultural community.”

Not that special after all.

    Stingray in reply to elkh1. | November 11, 2016 at 3:24 pm

    Yep! Being taught ‘self esteem’ is indeed an insidious form of mind control; you’ll only have self esteem when and for what your teacher says you do . . . and is THE problem why so many youth are so empty. IMHO.

As a marketing man, I called a Trump victory on July 9, 2015. I could see nothing standing in the way of his messaging and media management. He truly understood the market like no other candidate and the media world better than they did. He created an emotional bond with his “market”. This election was a marketing master class and breathtaking to observe.

Anne needs to be on Trump’s list of WH advisers. Post haste.

Excellent article and great to hear from someone with deep understanding and courage.