The Senate, Trump, narratives and collective action problems

 The news from overnight is that with Nevada going Democratic, the Democrats will hold onto the Senate, regardless of what happens in the Georgia runoff.  The House is still quite close, although the numbers and the odds favor the GOP.  For whatever PredictIt is worth, the money is 4 to 1 GOP for the House right now.  Still, the fact that the Democrats have held the Senate, and that so many of Trump's picks have been losers might create the following narrative.  Donald J. Trump is a loser.  He lost his party a lot of seats in 2018.  He lost the White House, and he lost his party even more seats in 2020.  He remained the center of the party instead of going away like a normal politician, and his party's gains in 2022 have been, shall we say, Trump hand-sized.  Extra-small.  LO-ser!  Quite the narrative, for the guy who promised to make everyone sick of all the winning, and whose default insult is, "loser," right?  If there is a way to take a Vaudeville hook and drag his loser-ass off the stage, kicking and screaming, is this it?

As we are beginning to see, several conservative media figures are exhausted with his schtick, and plenty of elected officials hated him from the get-go.  Yet they cannot say so publicly because he has a cult of personality which will threaten to primary them, and then execute them, literally (and I detest misuse of the word, "literally") if they dare to speak out against Dear Leader.  Had they done so from the beginning, en masse, perhaps they could have nipped the cult in the bud, but that was years ago.

But what if a narrative develops?  Without any need for cowardly, spineless little weasels like Republican politicians to criticize Trump?  Plenty of them would love to say, "Donald, who?  Never heard of him, but there's this governor of Florida who's awesome!"  And if someone else spins a tale of Trump The Loser, they can do exactly that, nominate DeSantis and you'll never have to think about mushrooms that way again.

Great, right?  Here's the glitch.  How do you get them to accept the narrative?  How do you get them to accept that Trump actually lost?  How do you get them to accept that it wasn't fraud?

There's the problem.  Every good conspiracy theory is a closed loop, with a built-in defense against empirics.  That's just what a member of the conspiracy would say!

You're only saying that because you have false consciousness!

That's your white privilege talking!

A conspiracy theory perpetuates itself by giving adherents a method to reject any empirical challenge.  Any empirical challenge.  Trump tells you, in advance, that he won, and that any claim to the contrary is fraud, and if you are in the cult, you believe him, so you cannot accept any "loser" narrative.

Hence, it would be great for those who want to move on to DeSantis if they could just let the loser narrative unfold, with every new event, like the Senate staying Democratic, but facts can never reach a conspiracy theorist.  That's how conspiracy theories are constructed, from Marxism to critical race theory to Trumpism.

Y'all want to take that Vaudeville hook and drag Trump off the stage?  It won't happen by itself.  You need to do it.  Collectively.  And then we're back to good, ole' Mancur Olson.

Math rock time.  Chon, "Story," live.  The studio version is on Grow.