The Psychology Behind Trump's Trade War

So Trump imposed his damned tariffs, and China, naturally, shot back with tariffs of their own - precisely targeted to impact on Trump's base. Never fear, though. Trump is threatening an additional $100 billion in shock-and-awe tariffs. That will show them! China, predictably, is prepared with a "major response".

Trump couldn't possibly be too dumb to spot the futility of all this, could he? The average fifth grader could easily grok where this is going. Trump's not a smart man, but could he really be this dumb? I have special insight into this phenomena.

Tl:dr: it's not a question of intelligence, and this is how humans historically always behaved.


Many years ago, I found myself in stop-and-go traffic, and the 18 wheeler behind me was twitchy and belligerent. He was right on my tail, which is not where you want a large truck to be in jerky, unpredictable traffic. I needed him to leave more space, so I lightly tapped the brakes to flash my stop lights at him. But he remained three feet from my back bumper.

Moving to another lane was not possible, nor was there a shoulder. So I waited until there was a bit more separation and I advanced and slammed my brakes, hard. And he slammed his, fishtailing a bit and screaming his hydraulics. It was a calculated risk. I knew his attention was riveted and twitchy. He was high-strung enough that, for all his other issues, his reflexes were primed. I was driving a crappy car (insurance money would have been welcome), this was happening at low-speed, and as a rear-ender he'd be in the wrong. His insurance would skyrocket and he'd lose his livelihood. He had much more to lose by hitting me. Not to say I actually wanted an accident, of course. If I gave him sufficient space - just barely - to stop (and left myself a bit extra in front to advance if he came too close), he'd stop. Painfully. And thus better appreciate the advantages of leaving some space.

We continued driving, and he closed in to my bumper once again. So I repeated. Twice. Each time, he snorted up his engine and stayed right on my bumper, never relenting, never learning. Finally, we reached an exit, and I bailed out.

None of this was remotely in his interest. I'd made things simple for him: if you don't want to chance a career-ending accident, it's unwise to hug the bumper of cars that might unpredictably stop. But his internal dialog was impervious to even this small nuance. He wanted to go and I represented everything that had ever impeded him. He gladly would have fishtailed a thousand times. In his mind, he was demonstrating backbone and exercising his better self. Engaged in holy war, he was staunchly opposed to letting The Enemy win. You fight me, I fight you.

Was he the stupidest person in the world? He was clearly no genius. But the problem was more of perspective. He was functioning from a reptilian perspective - pushing and pushing for gratification of momentary urges (he wanted to go, whereas all the assholes in front of him weren't going) with no higher level awareness whatsoever. A baby screams for food, and explaining mommy's flat tire en route home from the grocery won't impact that pique. There is no strategic thinking; the sole satisfactory answer is food now, or I will lash out in every conceivable way. If necessary, I will annihilate the entire world, and myself along with it.

 (That's the problem with technology; there will always be some someone who'd press that Big Smash button...and that person is also the most likely person to have risen to a button-pushing position. Just look at Trump himself. This is why there's likely no advanced life in the universe. Yes, Donald Trump explains the absence of advanced life in the universe!)

If perspective's frozen, even an intelligent person won't reason themselves into a higher perspective. Intellect and perspective are largely unrelated. People can't shift gears unless they want to.

But here's the good news. If the mindset I describe - the same mindset that makes Trump think each new volley in his trade war is really sticking it to The Enemy - seems grotesquely childish and patently irrational, understand that humanity functioned like this for its entire history. This is what humans do! Or did, anyway. They do it so little these days that it's no longer just a few wise souls who spot the folly, but everyday people, as well. In fact, most people can spot it. Even fifth-graders! And that's truly a spectacular evolution.

As I keep saying, the Trump era is the un-self-aware assholes’ last hurrah (which is not to say great damage can't be done amid this last gasp).


If things are getting better, and we're snapping out of our brutal irrationality, and Trump and his ilk are a mere last gasp, why do we feel so hopelessly miserable about our lot? As I wrote here, it's due to a collision of two phenomena:

1. As situations improve, dwindling remnants sting disproportionally (this is why Stephen Pinker's observation that violence is decreasing feels so counterintuitive; the remainder feels increasingly intolerable). So brace yourself. The better things get, the more sensitized we'll be, and the worse it will feel. Prepare to hate the rest of the ride up the curve of declining results to perfection.

2. One can understand American behavior much more clearly by recognizing that we are a bunch of horribly spoiled rich assholes. America has always been called a rich country, despite the poverty. But these days, even poorer Americans are ridiculously wealthy by world standards, and downright regal by historical world standards (just try to get a non-immigrant American to do anything for fifty bucks). And rich people are best characterized as princesses interminably vexed by their mattress peas. (Read the part about the "cheat codes" here.)

More Support for Pinker's Theory of Declining Violence

I've noted a couple times that there used to be a term for people – weirdos like hippies and the Amish – who oppose war on principle: "Pacifists".

We no longer need a name for this, because it's become the default. Instead, we name the other side (which seems like a bunch of weirdos): "Hawks".

Here's a similar one. When I was younger, you used to hear - sometimes as a joke, and sometimes straight - that it's wrong to hit people who wear glasses. I haven't even heard that referenced in over 30 years. Why? Because it's not okay to hit people, period, anymore. So the glasses thing makes no sense.

I realize that attitudes and memes shift, passing in and out of favor. It's not usually very meaningful. But some shifts bear examination, because they truly do reflect huge, fundamental changes.


More postings on Stephen Pinker's theory of declining violence.

Humanity's Level Two: Unlocked?

When some people speak, they simply say what they have to say in whatever manner they happen to say it. They blurt. Others consider the listener and adjust themselves accordingly. There's a significant difference between the two, both in intention and in effect.

The second is difficult. It requires several concurrent mental processes. First, you need to hear yourself as you speak, which is mentally taxing. Second, you need to be able to shift to the other person's perspective - a very specialized (and likely unexplainable) feat of reframing. And, third, you need to factor the input (from your self-monitoring) into your output (your speech). And you must do all of this simultaneously as you speak. Speech and language alone are difficult - we're the only species that can do it with any complexity. But these additional processes require a whole greater level of sophistication.

Extra processes require greater horsepower. But I believe it's like supplemental battery range on a Tesla - the capability is built into the hardware, but must be unlocked. The price, in this case, is simply wanting to. Empathy is the trigger.

There are countless instances where humans may choose to apply an extra level of thoughtfulness...or else to take the easy way out by doing what comes naturally, without the reflective add-on. Viral forces affect this choice. In other words: it's contagious.

People under 50 may not realize that, during the Vietnam War, our armed forces were disrespected by civilians. Why? Because many of us didn't approve of the Vietnam war. It made fuzzy sense:

I don't approve of war.
Soldiers are part of war.
I don't approve of soldiers.

As a ten year old, I remember jeering at people passing by in uniform. I wasn't thinking deeply. It just seemed like the thing to do, man. Peace 'n love and all.

Similarly fuzzy reasoning makes some Americans hate Muslims:

Muslims drove planes into buildings and killed Americans.
Fuck Muslims.

It's the sort of lazy conclusion a human mind whips up when it's not trying hard. If you imagine you don't harbor a multitude of similarly lazy conclusions strewn around your brain like sugary sprinkles, you're fooling yourself.

But something's happening. To be sure, gargantuan stupidity is still on display every nanosecond. However, an additional layer of mental sophistication has arisen and spread. Even the most ardent anti-war protesters nowadays are (properly) grateful and appreciative of servicemen. And a large number of people decline to hate a billion Muslims just because a few thousand of them are terrorists. In fact, many of us must work hard to even relate to the other perspective. Maybe a corner has been turned.

I think Stephen Pinker's right. The marvel isn't how many yahoos are caught up in nonsense like anti-Muslim bigotry. It's how few. Very many people are opting out of lazy knee jerk reactions, and that's new. It's unprecedented, really, in human history. I frequently despair at our failure to react to extremism with enlightened moderation rather than with reciprocal extremism. But maybe my dismay stems from heightened sensitivity to a shrinking problem.

Are we becoming more intelligent? Nah. Human faculties don't improve in fast gulps.

Are we becoming more high-minded? I hope not. That would be nothing more than a social trend, and those are cyclical (some believe Trumpism reflects a cycle's downturn, but the smart money suggests it represents the un-self-aware assholes' last hurrah).

I believe it's something more fundamental than a passing social trend or anything lofty. Mind frame and perspective have dilated a notch. A critical mass has opted to unlock an extra iota of innate cognitive horsepower, allowing them to think in a slightly more nuanced way....because they want to. The driver is a mere speck of empathy, but the end result is an abundance of it.

And I'd argue that Trumpism is the inevitable counteraction, fated to be seen, in hindsight, as laughably feeble.

It's a first step; humanity weening off diapers rather than achieving real maturity. And the public will continue, as always, to be morally ahead of its leaders and trendsetters.


So if it's getting better, why does it all feel so awful?

We don't thrill to the emerging light as readily as we sensitize to the remaining darkness, so it paradoxically hurts more as things improve. Again: heightened sensitivity to a shrinking problem. A Trump would have pained us far less in 1920, and I remember a time when a mere few dozen Nazi morons in Charlottsville would have seemed pathetic rather than shocking. By 2040, Marx Brothers films and Road Runner cartoons will be seen as brutal, unfunny relics of a barbaric world. Really, I'm not entirely sure I like where this is going.

The Un-Self-Aware Assholes’ Last Hurrah

A friend just sent me an utterly dejected email about the state of things. Here's my reply.

I see it differently. We’re getting a front row view of something few people have seen in person. it’s usually only read about. And it’s somewhat defanged; we won’t fall into autocracy, we won’t lose our freedom, it’s not the third reich. Mueller is solid, evidence is enormous, Congress is pivotting, approval is sinking, and, luckiest of all, the bad guys are self-defeating idiots.

There will be more chaos and chagrin, but we’re getting this view relatively cheaply. When it’s over, center left and center right will come together (it’s already started…pro-Trump stats are so high among Republicans because so many Republicans have renounced their party). This is a last gasp of moldy human tropes; the un-self-aware assholes’ last hurrah. Consider Steven Pinker’s work, and consider the graph at the bottom of this page. It’s not the end of the world, it’s birth pangs for a new better one.

Some Things to Consider (about violence, South Carolina, and pluralism)

A friend despaired on Facebook today about the South Carolina church attack, pointing us toward Jon Stewart's serious, impassioned speech (here's a transcription) on last night's Daily Show ("We’re bringing it on ourselves. And that’s the thing; al Qaeda, ISIS, they’re not shit compared to the damage we can do to ourselves on a regular basis.”)

"Jon tells the truth, but nobody listens," lamented my friend.

But things are actually nowhere near that dark. Some things to consider:

1. Loads of people are listening. 1.5 million most nights. And if it seems fresh to see a TV show break format not for a national catastrophe but for the latest in a long line of the sort of mini-tragedies we've come to sadly expect, that's not just a sign of how terrific Jon Stewart is. It's a sign of change. The fact that the sadness is increasing for us at the point where we'd expect people to be growing desensitized to it is a very good sign. Stewart did this because he, correctly, feels that it's in the tea leaves for the overwhelming majority of his audience to accept his doing this. Things are changing.

2. The change isn't just beginning. Steven Pinker argues persuasively that violence has been in sharp decline for quite some time now. And as I've argued here (and also here and here), the decline seems to have seriously accelerated of late.

3. In my view, racism and hatred aren't the problem. People should be free to hold, and even express, whatever opinions they wish; it's silly to push for toleration while failing to tolerate intolerance. The problem is violence. Remove violence from the equation, and you can scream your head off about how much you despise people like me (it's not nice for me to hear, but pluralistic societies aren't always nice, and enforcing a society where every last person is soothed creates a dystopia). Thoughts and words aren't the problem. Deeds - violent deeds - are. But, again, violent deeds are on the sharp decline.

4. There's a happy delusion at work. As violence declines, the violence that remains - even though there's less of it - affects us all more sharply, giving the impression things are getting worse. This is explained by my Law of Green M&Ms.

It's also explained by a familiar story. The coddled princess in the fairy tale requires greater and greater comfort to fall asleep, to the point where one single pea under her thick, luxurious mattress keeps her up all night, and feels like torture to her. This is how human perception works. And in the case of violence, it's a virtuous circle. As there's less of it, it bugs us more when it does appear. And that's good (though a little sad).

5. Pacifism, until very lately, was a fringe philosophy adopted mostly by hippies and Quakers. But we no longer assign a name to those who prefer peace and non-violence! Today, it seems crazy to even imagine such a term. Who, after all, prefers war and violence???

That's how much society has changed in just 20-30 years. We no longer see reason to assign a name to pacifism (which is why you hardly hear the word anymore). It's just how any reasonable person thinks.

6. None of the above will bring back the dead nice folks in that church. Or the dead nice folks in the next church or school, the next time some idiot goes nuts. But don't fail to notice that each go-round seems to hit us harder. We're not getting used to it (and getting "used to" bad stuff is one of humanity's bedrock faculties). So even when, eventually, there's much, much less violence (instead of merely much less), there will still always be an outlier willing to inflict it, and technology to enable him, and (hopefully) freedom of action to be subverted for the purpose. And, sadly, we may continue to feel worse and worse about it each time. Things may continue to improve, in other words, yet we may always fail to bask in the improvement. Violence will always exist (to some degree), and it will always hurt. Which is as it should be.


I suggested, above, that there will always be an outlier willing to inflict violence. But have you noticed that, these days, inflictors seem to always be lone perpetrators, despised by the rest of us, deludedly feeling part of a group which inevitably fails to applaud them? I'm just 52, and I can remember a time when nearly every instance of violence was roundly applauded by at least some kindred-feeling portion of society. Racists may not be sobbing today, but I'd imagine that only the fringiest of the fringe are celebrating. This is another sign of violence's decline. Yes, there's still organized violence in the world, so there are still gangs to applaud along ever-narrowing lines. But that's no longer the norm. Do you realize how huge that is; that it's no longer the norm?

Cruelty, Conquerers, Greatness, Psychopathy, and Yesterday's Lunch

I often ponder Steven Pinker's theory that world violence has been in sharp, perhaps permanent, long-term decline. I've previously written about it here and here.

This dovetails with one of my favorite psychological "flips". When I feel dismayed by the callousness and cruelty of our species, I remember: we hardly ever punch each other any more. And we only very rarely mash each other over the head and steal stuff. As I go about my day, I may experience errant bits of malevolence, but I'm very likely going to get home safe, come what may.

That might sound like scant comfort, but it's actually quite a lot. We fail to love enough or care enough, yes, but we've come an awfully long way since we left the caves. In fact, we've come a long way in my own lifetime. I remember when there was a lot more punching and mashing. My father could remember when going to police to complain about getting socked in the mouth could get you socked in the mouth - even by those same police.

And the macro view has transformed enormously. I remember when "pacifists" were a small minority (you'd visualize Quakers and flower children). While there are still plenty of hawks, that's no longer the dominant attitude. One rarely hears terms like "dove" or "pacifist" anymore, because it's become the prevailing sentiment (though our leaders, as usual, have yet to catch up). Think about it: we no longer need a word for opposition to war!

Anachronistic vestiges remain. We still describe guys like Genghis Khan, Napolean, Julius Caesar, and, obviously, Alexander the Great as great men. If any of them were working today, they'd be as despised as Hitler - who, even Holocaust aside*, would have been deemed a 20th century villain. I'm not denying these figures have been viewed ambivalently over history. I'm not saying their brutality's been overlooked. But, recently, Putin - (thought by some to harbor an Alexander the Great complex) - invaded a mere Ukrainian peninsula - and did so as "politely" as any invasion has ever been perpetrated - yet he's being loathed and isolated by a horrified international community as a power-crazed madman. We seem to have lost our ambivalence.

Conquerers are now clearly seen as unbridled psychopaths - very bad, self-centered little boys who must be stiffly punished and prevented from doing harm to others. And while I wish the counter servers at Boloud Sud had treated me more kindly yesterday, our evolution - even our very recent evolution - has been huge.


* - Not that Hitler's genocide was unusual; plenty of great conquerers have enjoyed ethnic population decimation as side projects.

Leff's Law of Green M&Ms

As Chowhound grew, so did the moanings about its decay. We opened in July of 1997, and we weren't far into autumn before I started hearing complaints about how the newbies were ruining it. Too many bad postings! Too many dopey posters! Too many flames and rude responses! Too many bad things!

It's true that Chowhound did eventually overgrow (per this explanation), and it's true that the community's credo, as so often happens, got lost. But the death knell was being sounded even back when Chowhound was getting better and better. I've often explained this via my Law of Green M&Ms.

If you absolutely hate green M&Ms, you'll be increasingly horrified by larger and larger bowls of M&Ms, simply because there will be more green ones....even though the proportion remains the same.

As a thing grows, we see only decline. We don't grant equal attention to the good stuff quietly growing in equal proportion. So even though Chowhound became lots more useful as it grew from hosting 50 good postings (and 5 bad ones) per day to hosting 5000 good postings (and 500 bad ones), the natural reaction was "Geez, look at all those bad postings!"

Law of Green M&Ms also explains why urbanites are seen as rude and heartless. Visitors to Manhattan will, in the course of a day, pass 10,000 people. Two will randomly yell crazily at them from the street, one will fail to hold a door, three will cut them off while driving, one will shove them to get by, and, right there, that's more assholery than they'd see in an entire year back home. Of course, they fail to register the hordes of quietly good people.

Have a look at this very interesting Ted Talk where Steven Pinker convincingly argues that violence has drastically declined in human society (even factoring in the horrors of the 20th century and the dismaying violence which continues). It's a deeply counterintuitive argument, and I attribute its surprisingness to the Law of Green M&Ms.

We obsess and focus on the violence that exists to the point where it's all we see, and we fail to notice how much better it's actually getting. In other words, we only see green M&Ms even when the proportion of greenies is steeply declining! And that's a good thing. By all means, let's stay sensitized and abhorred as ever less violence is tolerated!



I'm reaching an age where my perspective is long enough to spot over-arching societal shifts. I remember when it was still more or less acceptable to punch assholes in the mouth. But you don't see a lot of punching any more. And this seems a random observation, but only because the behavior's become so taboo.

Fwiw, here are my other laws

"The Better Angels of Our Nature"

I'm told that everyone should read Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined". I would, myself, if I didn't read so ploddingly slowly that it'd take forever to get through 832 pages.

The book's very hotly debated, though even its detractors find it brilliant. Having gotten the sense this may come to be considered a classic, I'm currently flitting around it: reading reviews, interviews, and sample chapters, and generally trying to work up the zeal to tackle the thing.

Here's Pinker doing a Cliff's Note's version (plus Q&A).

BBC interview with author Steven Pinker (also see the insightful reader commentary on that page)

Raving NY Times review ("The Better Angels of Our Nature is a supremely important book")

A famously critical review by Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker (you must be a subscriber to view it). Here is Pinker's reply to that review (scroll down to "Other Questions").

Read quoted passages from the New Yorker review in this interesting survey of Pinker along with other recent "Big Idea" books, of which the writer is understandably skeptical:

"The history of publishing is replete with big ideas — see Francis Fukuyama’s end of history or Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations — that haven’t quite panned out. (China shows no sign of withering away without democracy, for example.) But as grand Theories of Everything arrive fast and thick, a growing skepticism of such unifying ideas has also emerged."

Yes, there's a very long list of these, going back centuries. And, yes, from "Capital" to "The Population Bomb" to "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", regardless of the brilliance of the minds which spawned them, Big Ideas books most often turn out to be considered overreaching displays of intellectual hubris. But they're fun, they're provocative, and they keep us thinking. Which is good enough!

Here's an impressive Amazon reader review, as well as the interesting (and only sporadically flamey) three page discussion it spawned.

Finally, for a 98 minute super-entertaining theatrical treatment of similar themes, don't miss David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence" (2005). Quoting Roger Ebert's review:

"David Cronenberg says his title "A History of Violence" has three levels: It refers (1) to a suspect with a long history of violence; (2) to the historical use of violence as a means of settling disputes, and (3) to the innate violence of Darwinian evolution, in which better-adapted organisms replace those less able to cope."

I share Cronenberg's thinking. It strikes me as obvious that evolution favors the most violently competitive (which explains why there aren't indications of intelligent life in the universe). That said, a subtle evolutionary process does work the other way. Actions such as surrender, forgiveness, acceptance, and love all trigger an unmistakeable spritz of bliss. There is, for some reason, an innate biological reward mechanism encouraging those things; and myriad spiritual traditions insist that, in the very long run, this will win out over coarser, crueler impulses which, truly, provide a rather shoddier high.

Just so long as we don't blow ourselves up first.

Transcending Tom & Jerry

In the previous few entries I've written about how so much antagonism in the world is actually pushed by an aggressive minority. The tolerant, peace-loving mainstream of any society has more in common with its counterpart in supposedly antagonistic societies than with the hawkish element of its own society. The problem is that the element which responds to provocation with canine energy rather than human wisdom tends, by virtue of its very snarling aggression, to be the element that's clawed itself into authority.

One option is for the pacifists to match the intensity by turning militant. Elements of the anti-war struggle in the 1960's demonstrated the moral subversion and horrific results of this paradoxical approach (the Right falls into the same rabbit hole, e.g. when militant reverence for human life leads to the murder of abortionists). As Christ, Ghandi, and King spectacularly proved, the most moral strategy is also the most efficacious: step back from the Tom & Jerry cartoon and behave in a high-minded, disciplined manner and unilaterally decline to escalate injustice into a cycle of self-defeating aggression (as any four year old knows, two wrongs don't make a right, but adults are cloudier).

The problem is that the strategy of provocation is now everywhere, and governments, which barely even recognize its contours, are ill-suited to maintaining a rational, moral course through its distinctive emotional echo chambers. However virtuous individual leaders might be, governments themselves are amoral. Governments, after all, are the Toms and the Jerrys. We, the people, are neither Tom nor Jerry. During the cold war, Russian plumbers never posed the slightest threat to my auto parts store-owning American father, or vice versa! The Pakistani dentist who'd be killed in a war with India did not train Lashkar-e-Toiba.

International relations are like soccer matches, and, as in soccer, the vast majority of onlookers delude themselves by imagining greater kinship with the competitors on the playing field than with their fellow onlookers, regardless of affiliation. Once the delusion is dropped, the crowd in the bleachers easily recognizes their affinity. If reasonable Israelis and reasonable Palestinians, reasonable Democrats and reasonable Republicans, reasonable Pakistanis and reasonable Indians, all of whom are brothers and sisters by virtue of the unity of their peaceful aspirations and the tenor of their temperaments, are ever to conspire to break the demented cycle of provocation, it will be via direct and personal contact rather than via the proxy of their respective authorities.

It's tempting to imagine that Obama might be cool-headed and high-minded enough to resist being manipulated by provocation (though his bellicose - and fatuous - vow to drive through Pakistan's tribal frontier gives pause). But when America is provoked into a vengeful tizzy, it will be politically impossible for any president to take a higher road. For one thing, the Christian right would never cotton to a truly Christian approach.

Read, if you'd like, this follow-up article.