PAVLOV’S DOG is one of the most famous studies in psychology, where the dog driven to salivate at the sound of a “whistle” in anticipation of a reward – food. Numerous studies, on human behavior – which I entitle the Dog Whistle Syndrome — followed.
The Dog Whistle Syndrome entered politics early on in America and became extreme when Presidential candidate George H. W. Bush used Willie Horton’s race as his dog whistle; but Trump honed it when he began his rise to political dominance by using Obama’s race, not his birthplace, as his whistle.
Dog Whistle Politics gets embedded in the unconscious and is synonymous with maniacal partisan politics, which Jefferson considered to be the greatest political evil under our constitution.
Dog Whistle Politics obtains when your political party induces you to inculcate the party’s viewpoint into your worldview, first affecting politics and then spreading to other attitudes about human beings not of your leaders’ political ilk.
Adoption of professional politicians’ maniacal political party partisanship has made our democracy increasingly dysfunctional. Americans are divided into two militant, biased, obdurate factions whose members are convinced that American citizens in the other party are the nation’s enemies and are responsible for all of the nation’s ills.
While the “race” whistle was used for the declaration of the Civil War, it is now used at all political levels – national to local, including school board elections.
Dog Whistle Politics works well with people with limited knowledge and inferior information processing skills, as notable in the percentage of Trump’s voters with low education levels
Trumpism has commingled racism, misogyny, masculinism, white male heteropatriarchy, and bastardized religion – inextricably — into an historically unique form of Politicized Theocracy.
Virtue, which is Wisdom coupled with Honor, no matter whether it has been defined by religion, politics, ethnicity, culture, or any affinity group cannot obtain separately from contemporary, factual reality without becoming a principle instrument of evil itself. (From Albert Camus)
Other affinity entities to which you belong can infect you the same as can Dog Whistle Politics, but, to reiterate, Trumpism melds them all. One screech causes immense, widespread salivation across multiple population groupings.
Who is blowing the whistle, who is salivating, and who is being rewarded?
Lyndon Johnson said poor, lowest-level white Republicans would repeatedly vote against their own best interests if they can be convinced that they are is better than, the best “colored” man.
External impetus, notwithstanding, treason and disloyalty against one’s own country and people begin with one’s own spiritual corruption. America’s greatest crime against the descendants of slaves was that we were induced to inculcate feelings of self-hatred and race-hatred, and, as a consequence, to harm ourselves and those closest to us, the classic form of racism by proxy, or mental slavery.
Remember that 2.3 million blacks voted for Trump in 2024, meaning that they adopted the Trump’s Confederate philosophy of racism; thus, his win was their win.
When members of the current opposition parties, especially democrats, publicize Trump’s evil, racist, misogynistic and stupid utterances and acts, they effectively solidify Trump’s support, add to it, and perpetuate, Stochastic Terrorism, which normally is the practice by deceitful leaders of demonizing a person or group, and provoking their supporters to behave likewise.
Print media and Internet messages about Trumpists’ victories may convince the public of the weakness and incompetence of the Democratic Party in thwarting Trump’s reign of terror enroute inevitably to a Fascist America with Trump as our Supreme Leader.
It is indisputably true that America’s leaders who were opposed to Trump’s rise underestimated his capacity to overpower his opposition. However, what was worse and lent considerable power to his rise was that our opposition leaders underestimated the extent in America of latent racism, deep-seated misogyny, weaponized religion, depraved indifference, abysmal stupidity, profound ignorance, the dismal state of American patriotism, and, most particularly, the number of Americans who held a strong spiritual linkage to the Philosophy of the Confederate Nation. These are the conditions which enhances the power of the Dog Whistle Syndrome.
The founders instituted an unfinished representative democracy; but they laid out the steps required by both leaders, in particular, and the people to finish the task. Dog Whistle Politics has prevented the fulfillment of Constitutional mandates and has allowed decadent leaders to use the instruments of government for their own evil ends, which today is full-blown Fascism.
Representative government should be noisy with the voices of all the people; but that can’t occur if the people’s mindsets have been imprisoned by the philosophies of the leaders of the two major parties. The people’s representatives, e.g., Congress, do not emulate the people demographically; consequently, real democracy has been elusive. We must close the gaps in representation by electing new people next month, especially women, who are considerably underrepresented in Americas governments.
