I am not really interested in what he says progressives should do, but I am curious if his description of Trump and politics in general is consistent with what others think.
I think he got trump about as right as it is possible, from an outside view. I think he got the cognitive parts, where he breaks down the sales pitch hacking. And I think if he really understood all that, he would have stopped there.
But he didn't. And that's where all the bullshit comes in. Not because he is full of BS. Not because trump supporters are secretly smart, but because he CAN'T describe them accurately.
He would like to. And I'm sure he believes he has. I'm sure there are wonderful data to support everything he said. And still it's bullshit.
Because modeling the behavior of outgroup is Really F'ing Hard to do. It is very rarely pulled off at all, and trying to do it with your own model doubles down on bias.
I'm no fan of the Cheeto in Chief, voted Bernie, and I still saw the bias against trump supporters. It's not subtle. And it's typical of the academic treatment of that section of the population. None of them seems to be able to overcome their own bias enough to even come close to understanding the Trump supporters.
Me, too. But I can at least pay attention to where my models don't work.
If you build a scale with a less desirable and a more desirable range, everything in human nature will twist the results until your in group is at the desirable end, and your out group at the undesirable end. Thus he assigns childish, simple behavior to his out group.
Now there IS childish, simple behavior among Trump supporters. Of the specific type he describes. But that's all he can see in his outgroup. I see it too. But I also see much more. I doubt he ever will.
I had this problem when I was younger. I am agnostic atheist. The idea that someone needs to talk to their "invisible skyfather" to get through the day, screams out weakness and simplemindedness to me. For decades this stopped me from even understanding the lexicons of the faithful, in the ways they did. It stopped me from looking at all of the really high quality thinking that has gone on at the other end of that spectrum. I still don't have any kind of Christian belief, but I can appreciate what they are trying to do, and how they are going about it. It wouldn't work for me, but that's not a requirement for it to work for others.
I have the same problem with Kegan, or what little I have read. He assigns people to stages of complexity in their internal models. But each stage is more rare, and more complex, and more desirable. I would respect his work far more if he were to model what the less complex minds were doing. So rather than simple at one end, and complex at the other, he assigned development toward multiple directions of complexity. Something to help Kegan remove his own complexity bias. But that won't sell books.
Or, I could just be wrong.
Frans de Waal did mention that bonobo social structure is quite different, and it is a fact that primates as a group are quite varied in social structure. One very important biological factor that differentiates humans from chimpanzees is that human females do not go into blatant estrus. This species tendency towards hidden ovulation frequently results in a level of confusion among human males, not often experienced my chimpanzee males, sometimes leading to behavior referred to colloquially as "locker room talk." So, I do agree that the POTUS has, at the very least, exhibited an alpha-chimp like generosity in his willingness to offer his silver-backed advice in such context.