Continuing the Dopamine-Starved, Model-Free Reasoning-in-America Thread (I)
Trial and error problem-solving at its strongly pervasive worst
Not surprisingly, all of those many, many dopamine-starved prefrontal cortexes just can't figure it out.
As Taibi wrote on August 1st in his “Campaign 2024, Officially Chaos”:
The cognoscenti never figured out or accepted that the support for protest candidates like Trump or Bernie Sanders even is rooted in wide generalized rage directed their way. To this day they don’t accept it. They keep thinking they can wish it away, describe it away (see Bump’s description of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as “not at this point serious competition”), indict it away. If you drop 76 charges on a candidate and he goes up in polls, you might want to consider that you might be part of the problem. But they can’t take even that heavy a hint.
This race is turning into a parodic repeat of 2016, the difference being the shock waves that rippled across Washington on Election Day that year are already here, with all conceivable counter-measures already deployed. Instead of starting up a Russia investigation leaders hope will end in indictment, this time the guy is already indicted many times over, and voters have already signaled they’ll be unfazed by conviction.
I think Taibi’s choice of his “generalized rage” phrase is colored by his own, not-too-far distant political and emotional leanings. “Generalized disgust” or “generalized nausea” is probably a much more accurate description of the (dopamine-rich) state of mind concerned.
For the full Taibi monty, see: