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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm Bea Spear. And Sammy is not with us today, but she will be listening in later. This is American Fever Dream presented by Betches News. On today's show, we have Keegan Tatum, who studied the psychology of politics at Columbia University and also has a significant presence on TikTok, where he often goes live answering folks' questions about how the political world is making them feel. Keegan, welcome, friend.
Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be on. So Keegan, what is political psychology? So I come at political psychology from a political science angle. Some people come at it from a psychology angle. It's a branch of social psychology that basically, in the way that I study it, is like, what are the psychological differences between people on the left and people on the right? So that could be neurological differences, brain differences. That could be perceptual differences, the way that we perceive the world. And it could be personality differences or psychological tendencies.
So how does a person become an expert in political psychology? Oh, well, on one level, I went to university at Columbia. I got my master's in political science. And one of the things I focused on was political psychology. It's just something that especially fascinates me. But in the same way, like an archaeologist...
couldn't be like an expert archaeologist just by going to class. You got to go out in the field, right? And so my version of that is that since I've graduated, I've spent a lot of my time reading many, many, many academic research papers on political psychology. It's definitely something that makes me feel mentally unwell typically. So I'm excited to hear if there's a structure behind what's happening to us.
So you have done some work in helping people identify the psychological tendencies that motivate different types of ideology and views. Can you talk first about what psychological tendencies motivate a conservative view? Sure. So I just want to say up front that
You know, we don't come to our political views through like rational tendencies. It's a very optimistic way of looking at people is like, well, we all look at the data and the information and we analyze what's the best thing. Now, most people come to their political views.
through a set of emotional tendencies and biases. So, conservatism is a psychological tendency towards fear of change, justifying the existing inequalities and hierarchies, simple-minded explanations, hostility towards outgroups,
discomfort with nonconformity, anxiety over personal safety, and avoidance of difficult emotional processing. And I think you can learn so much just from some of the keywords, fear, hostility, discomfort, anxiety, avoidance.
And then what about the left or liberal view? Is it set up different? Yeah, in my videos I use left, liberal, progressive, left-leaning. These are all kind of interchangeable terms. As far as I could tell, it's a tendency towards open-mindedness, individualism, egalitarianism, empiricism, and...
and more nuanced thinking as opposed to more black and white thinking. And another thing I was thinking about just yesterday is who do we trust the most? Right. And on average, again, everything I'm saying is on average, this is all a spectrum, you know, moderates are more affected by conservative psychology than somebody who's progressive. Right. So everything is tendencies, you know, nuance thinking here. Okay. So on average, somebody on the right will trust authority with their opinions and
Whereas people on the left are more likely to trust experts who have a particular knowledge of that field. What's so interesting about you saying that is I consider myself someone on the left, but I have such an inherent distrust of institutions so often. And, you know, we'll kind of default to like, well, what did my dad say about this? I don't know.
Oh, my God, I could be on a slippery slope to conservatism. You never know. Well, who we would consider an expert could be different, right? So, you know, do you consider somebody who's, you know, just worked in the field? Oh, this Wall Street person, are they an expert? Or is it somebody who's like studied this kind of stuff? So like, I think you and I would go more towards the person who studied economics over the Wall Street person, for example.
Now, is there a difference between libertarian or the far left and liberalism? And what does that difference kind of look like? So we'll start with libertarianism. And there's kind of a problem with both these groups because libertarians are a very small portion of the population. Leftists are also a very small portion of the population. So for the most part in these studies, it's just a like, are you on the left? Are you on the right? Right.
But the and I do want to give this caveat. There are a growing percentage of libertarians who are taking on more of a fascist ideology. There's something called the Mises Caucus, M-I-S-E-S, the Mises Caucus. And basically what they want to do is use deregulation to implement fascistic white supremacist, male supremacist, anti-trans and anti-gay policies.
They want to be able to get rid of zoning regulations so that they can have like an all-white little town, for example. Or they want businesses to be able to discriminate against people. These are fascist outcomes through a libertarian deregulation kind of mechanism. I think I heard you talk about this one time as like a business owner supremacist ideology. Yes, and these are like the true blue libertarians.
So in a lot of ways, libertarians have a very similar psychology to conservatives, but instead of leading with the white supremacy, leading with the male supremacy, leading with the Christian or Islamic or whatever religion you are supremacy, it's a business owner supremacist ideology that these people should really rule, that we should get rid of as much democratic governance as possible. And so in this sense, there's a lot of overlap between right-wing authoritarian personality tendencies and libertarian psychology. However,
There's out of the very little that I've read on the differences between libertarians and other people would be that libertarians seem to, on average, have a little bit better in the cognitive abilities department than conservatives, but they're the lowest on empathizing. Hmm.
That really does put some friendships into perspective, Keegan. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? It does. So another thing that I've heard you talk about on your channel is this idea of the oppressed versus the oppressor and seeking to find oppression as something to justify one's own tendencies. You talk about why do folks look for oppression where sometimes there is none? Well,
Well, I think on one level it justifies their behavior, right? So all, I'm going to go back to fascism, but all fascists will talk about how they're being oppressed, like, like really white people being oppressed, like really, like, come on. And, um, they'll use that language. They don't really believe it, you know, in their own forums, they just want to do the domination, but they'll use the language of oppression to justify oppressing others. Right.
But by the way, you mentioned differences with the far left. Did you want to go on about that as well? Yeah, let's talk about that too. Sure. So in a lot of ways, and by far left, I imagine you mean people like me, like I'm a socialist. And so in this sense, actually the psychological overlap between us and people who are coded as liberals, who is really just a code term for left-leaning people, is largely the same. The open-mindedness, the empiricism, all this stuff, the egalitarianism especially, it's just
to a greater extent. We're just on average more open-minded or on average more egalitarian. And the one difference, and this is my opinion, is that progressives, like if you voted for Bernie, for example,
you just have a greater sense of urgency. It's not okay to wait years to get Medicare for all. 70,000 people a year die according to a Yale study because we don't have Medicare for all. It's unacceptable to not save those lives right now. Whereas a lot of more moderate liberal people are like, well, let's wait for the demographics of the country to change. It'll be easier, blah, blah, blah, 20 years from now, maybe we'll be able to get it. And progressives are just like, yeah, no, sense of urgency.
There is like this need to be like, like liberal is a bad word. Like people who are like, well, you're on the left or you're a liberal. They're like, no, I'm not. I'm a leftist. I'm not a liberal. And I'm like, I think we're on the same team. I think we just play different positions, you know? Yeah. Another thing that folks have a lot of questions about when it comes to like political ideology and the psychology of it is this idea that if you go woke, you go broke. Are progressives ruining America? Yeah.
Well, my data-oriented answer would be that if you look at the areas of the country that have the highest standard of living, you can see this through the Human Development Index, they are all the most traditionally developed.
left-leaning progressive states. It's Massachusetts, it's Minnesota, it's Connecticut, it's Washington, D.C. And if you look at all the states with the lowest standards of living, it's the states that have been conservative for about a billion years. It's Mississippi at the bottom. It's Arkansas, Alabama. It's these states that have been ruled by conservatives. And you can actually see this
on a country level as well. What are the countries with the highest standards of living? What are the countries with the highest degrees of happiness? It's the Denmarks, the Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Australia, even Ireland is above the United States. And for the country level, I would recommend the Inequality Adjusted HDI, Human Development Index. The United States ranks 26th
in the inequality-adjusted human development. We are the richest country in the history of the world, and because we've been doing the whole neoliberal Reaganomics thing for 45 years, we aren't in the top 25 in terms of standard of living. That's how bad inequality is in America. And it's because of conservative rule. I mean, there really is a direct relation between how conservative your society is on a policy level and your standard of living in industrialized democracies.
And folks will push back on that and say, no, it's the regulation. It's the coddling. It's the safety programs. It's the overspending. But we in the United States tend to think of ourselves as like the only country in the world. So many people don't think outside of like judging us up against like a Finland or a Denmark or something. Those countries have universal health care. They have universal education and they haven't gone broke yet.
How do we create a better talking point against this idea that it's overspending and liberal policies that are ruining the country? I think you've got to orient everything around freedom, right? You have the freedom to not die because you're poor. And it should also be noted that this is true of the United States back when we had a more progressive economic policy, back when we had banking regulations, back when we had higher tax on the wealthy, greater unionization, much more protections for workers, is that equality of opportunity goes up
Upward mobility, the ability to go from being poor to middle class, is better in societies who spend more on social welfare programs and have more regulations. So if you care about hard work translating into a middle class life...
The data is just unambiguously clear that progressive economic policy is what brings that about. And we just orient it all around freedom. You should have the freedom to retire in dignity. You should have the freedom to not be screwed over by a toxic bank loan. You should have the freedom of religion. Keegan, that's our next topic, how religion factors into our political ideology. So much of the
Politics right now is this obsession with religion and whose religion should have the most freedom and the fact that theocracy would give essentially none of us freedom. What is it about politics that right now is inescapable from religion? I don't remember it always being this way. Well...
There's this bias that I talk about sometimes in my live stream, which is the bias of we live a short time. My God, politics and religion. I mean, we've lived in an era where it's the least overlap ever, the last 100 years. So yes, there's obviously a surge lately, and we can get into that. But I don't want people to lose the big picture that religion is actually affecting global politics probably less than it ever has.
which is kind of sad. But I mean, if you look at 500 years ago, I mean, it is nuts how much religion has just took over societies. It's one of the things that makes our country so special is that we were founded as a secular liberal democracy. So when it comes to religion, you know, I think that there is...
There's an enormous overlap between authoritarianism, the authoritarian psychology, and religiosity. I don't want people to think of authoritarianism just in a governmental way. The religion is a major source of authoritarianism, both in terms of training people to think in an authoritarian way. If there's one God that dominates the universe, why shouldn't there be one human that dominates society or dominates the workplace? These monotheistic religions, I think, are really dangerous in that sense.
But it's also that religious people are the most authoritarian as well. So authoritarianism is not just a government thing. People can be authoritarian about following Elon Musk. And people are certainly authoritarian when it comes to what they're told about the Bible. And I just think that these people that want us to be a theocracy,
They hate America, and they should be framed as such. America is founded as a secular country. It's what makes us famous. Our founders were all secular liberals from the Enlightenment. And while some of them were Christian, most of them were deist. Most of them questioned the religions. I mean, I'm going to do a video, and it's just quoting the founding fathers about how we are not a Christian nation and how Christianity is like a disgusting, violent, blah, blah, blah kind of ideology.
You said in one of your videos that you think people's obsession with the afterlife could be coloring also the way they're including religion into their politics right now. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I think the afterlife is one of the most dangerous ideas in human history because if the afterlife is infinite, doesn't that kind of cheapen life down here? Doesn't it make it a little easier to kill some folks, right? And I think that because people will be like, well, I'll just...
If I just invest in being a good person now, I'll be rewarded in the infinite afterlife. So I'm not going to stand up against my oppressors. I'm not going to take a risk because what's the point? What's the urgency? If the afterlife is infinite, what's some suffering down here for me?
for a few decades. And I think that religion is really the opiate of the masses in this case. Every major religion has endeared itself to the power elite within its society. There's a reason for that, and that's because it reinforces the power hierarchies that exist in society.
I mean, it's so hard to not... I grew up Catholic, and it was so hard to not look at the Vatican or these gold-gilded churches and be like... I was like, is this what Jesus' churches look like? Like, is this what it looked like? When did we catch the gold fever out here? Obviously, a lot of us understand, like, yeah, they mostly haven't even read the Bible, right? But it's more than that. It's that religion is so often a justification of preconceived emotional tendencies and biases, right? So like,
Like people who are transphobic and people who are homophobic are more sensitive to feelings of disgust, right? Now your disgust mechanism, it's very important in your brain, right? Like you, you, as a hunter gatherer, you don't want to be eating like rotten food or something like that. Right? So having a disgust mechanism is part of our survival, but if it's
overly active as it's just going to be with some people, right? You become disgusted by things like, what are you really trans people? This is what your disgust mechanism is freaking out about. And so what they do is they've got that psychological tendency, but the religion justifies it. It's the feeling comes first, the religion comes second. I was going to ask you about that because we've seen this
There's so many videos of anti-trans Karen-ing online where people are shaking while they're holding their phones, confronting a trans person who's just eating their lunch. And they have to say something so aggressive and crazy to them. And it's completely unprompted. Is there a psychology to anti-trans-ness right now that is...
that is like being more greatly triggered than maybe it was before. What's with the shaking and the rage against trans people just eating their lunch? So the number one thing is the oversensitivity to disgust. Other things are just fear. They're afraid of the status quo changing. They're afraid of having to have a more nuanced
complicated view of gender. Remember that a lot of conservatism ideologically is making the world simple. That's why it justifies the hierarchies and inequalities that exist in society. Well, rich people are just better, stuff like that. Why do we see the kind of racial wealth gaps that we see? Well, it's because, insert racist genetic kind of explanation.
And so I think a lot of people are just scared of change. They're scared of being wrong for their whole life. They're scared of admitting that they were wrong or overly simple-minded in their life. And I think that they're deeply afraid, a lot of these people. And I remember the woman in the video, she talked about like, you drag queens, you put on your makeup and your outfits. Do you think my son should cut off his penis? And I think that there's an intense- You're like, whoa, lady. Yeah, I know, right? This is Sears. Yeah.
This is a target. I'm not trying. Yeah, we're literally just existing. Yeah, the drag queens are like, I'm just standing here. We didn't even talk to you. I think that there is a great fear within the conservative mind of being emasculated. I think there's a great fear of masculine insecurity. I mean, think about how many young men...
are conservative for reasons that have to do... I'm thinking about incels, right? Male insecurity really drives people to the right. And I think that fearing that their little boy is going to do something to his penis is a really big fear, especially amongst dads. In a lot of these right-wing forums, you'll get dads that are just fear-mongering about their son's genitalia. It's really creepy. I think that's what it comes down to. And you can see how the disgust mechanism plays into that as well, unfortunately. Yeah.
This brings me to a rather sensitive question about the assassination attempt on Trump. And now we're getting more information about the shooter. It turns out he's kind of this like 4chan, red-pilled, incel kid who was bullied. A known outcast, they called him. A lone wolf came up. But also a Republican. What would go on in someone's mind that they would go after the leader of their own ideology? Yeah.
Yeah, he really fits the profile of all these mass shooters, doesn't he?
Yeah.
So I want to say my limitations up front. So political psychology is a branch of social psychology, and it's about looking at people in terms of groups. So people that have a conservative ideology on average have XYZ tendencies, which is different from individual psychology. I know a decent amount about individual psychology. And so the central question is the contradiction between this dude's a Republican, he's going after Trump.
And I suppose one explanation could be, well, A, clearly he had a few screws loose, right? And I think that anyone that does this kind of a thing, whether it's a mass shooting, I mean, you don't go into trying assassinating a presidential candidate thinking you're going to come out alive.
I think a lot of these people are depressed and they want to go out in a way that makes them memorable. I remember secondhand hearing one of his classmates saying, this dude was saying, I'm going to be remembered. You're not going to forget me. And I think this comes from the alienation, right? He feels forgotten. He feels like an outcast. So you're going to remember me, God damn it.
And as to why he would go after Trump, I guess on one level, it could be that he intended to miss and he wanted to make Trump feel strong. But man, what a high risk thing that would be. But I think it really comes down to, I want to be remembered. I want to be remembered. I want you to pay attention to me. Kind of like a, we're just sort of spitballing here now, but a suicide by cop type thing. Like he wasn't feeling worth living anyway. So why not try to go out with this thing for himself? Yeah. As we, as we know, so many people have done in the past, unfortunately. Yeah.
There's also the idea of this authoritarian personality that you've been really good at explaining. Can you talk about what that is? Yes. So the authoritarian personality is one of the most studied things. I'm going to reference the OG book on this called The Authoritarian Personality. So they came out with the nine aspects of the authoritarian personality. The first three are the ones we're really going to focus on here. So authoritarian aggression. So this is aggression-oriented.
on behalf of that authority. So who are the others? In this case, the others are immigrants or trans people or non-Christians, right? So be aggressive towards those outgroups. Violence is okay towards those outgroups. Second symptom is authoritarian submission. This would be submitting to authority, not just in terms of what you do, but submitting mentally.
Not really thinking for yourself, not really questioning authority. You can see how this is not just a Trump thing, but also a religion thing as well. And the other third symptom is traditionalism or conventionalism, which is basically upholding the thing that I'm used to. The cultural norms that I'm used to, we should keep doing that because tradition for tradition's sake. Again, you see this lack of questioning. Why are we doing this?
Now, those are the three main characteristics. That's what, you know, if we're doing like a diagnosis, this is not a diagnostic criteria, but if we were doing a diagnostic criteria, those would be the big three that Bob Altmeier, who was the leading researcher on the authoritarian personality. These are the big three. However, there are other ones that I think are very interesting. Okay.
mental rigidity and a proclivity to engage in stereotypical thinking. So we see this kind of lack of nuance, black and white thinking. It's lazy-mindedness, right? So there's a study that I've referenced multiple times in my videos, which is that low-effort thought – there we go. There's your politically correct term. Low-effort thought.
Um, correlates with conservative views and stereotyping is, is one example of that where it's like, okay, I'm going to take one quality and make a snap judgment, which is important if you're surviving on like the savannas as a hunter gatherer.
Not so good. It's kind of baggage from our hunter-gatherer past. Okay, another thing would be a preoccupation with toughness and power. And I think this comes from a deep insecurity, a particularly male insecurity of, I need to appear strong or else I'm going to get eaten by a lion.
One of the things I really want to stress is that we're animals. We've only evolved so much. So I try to phrase things to really nail that. Another one would be cynicism about human nature. A great example of this is the cynicism about human nature is basically, it's like a combination of projection and justification. So they have these hierarchical, more authoritarian views that
Because people suck. They're violent, blah, scum, blah. They need to be kept in line. But it's also a projection. I mean, imagine being one of these anti-trans Karens that flips out.
You probably don't think too good about yourself. And because conservatives are so close-minded, they're less able to understand perspectives different from their own. And so they're more likely to project the way that they think onto other people. A reluctance to engage in introspection, whether it's because they lack the emotional intelligence to introspect or whether it's a cowardice thing. They just don't want to self-reflect because they don't want to see. This also leads into more projection.
And then another tendency that the authoritarian personality broke down was a tendency to project undesirable traits onto others. And then the other one is, and this one's really big, sexual inhibition. I think that sexual insecurity is enormous for understanding the right-wing psychology. It's not a coincidence that the biggest voter demographic for conservatives is men over a certain age.
Think about when erectile dysfunction hits. Well, listen, we're all going to have to go through it, right? When we get older, we're not as attracted to the hot young people. There's some insecurity that's going to come about for some people as a result of that. And of course, one of the biggest demographics for young conservatives is sexually frustrated young men.
So sexual inhibition is a huge one. And you can see all of the fear about sex within the monotheistic religions, particularly Christianity and Islam.
It makes a ton of sense that you say that, especially when we see some of the priority lists of the conservative movement, like trying to regulate sex, trying to regulate abortion, making it a consequence if you do it. And it's being championed by people who are no longer in their birthing years or, to your point, are no longer have a sexual partner that they are responsible to and that they that they wish to see, you know, access to medical care for.
I was doing research on abortion rates and they were the absolute peak highest in like the 80s and 90s. And that's when the boomers were in their birthing years. And those are the people most leading the anti-abortion rhetoric now.
So that makes a ton of sense. I also have this theory that Republicans have a humiliation kink, that they like the edginess of getting in people's faces and being weird, making people uncomfortable because, I don't know, maybe there's a little humiliation kink there. I'm not here to yuck anybody's yum, but to me, it comes off as edging a little bit what they're doing with this. That's perhaps true. I've always seen conservatives as massively scared of judgment and that they actually can't control their bigoted views, but I...
I'm sure that for some people it's absolutely a humiliation thing. I think a lot of conservatism can be explained in like a, you don't like some qualities about yourself. And so you want to punish that quality in other people. I'm white. And so I've got a lot of conservative extended family people. And I remember on my dad's side, there was like a meme about how the people who were the sluttiest in high school are the most likely to be like sexually repressive
kind of self-hating Christian right-wing don't have sex kind of people. So it's interesting. I'd love to see more studies on like self-hatred done. But, you know, one of the problems is that
A lot of these people don't do a lot of introspection, so they're not as self-aware about this stuff. And they're not going to think about it. It's also a lot of what we see the rhetoric posted against drag queens in the queer community is not looking at me and going, oh, you live in my neighborhood and you're married and you're in a relationship just like mine and you have kids just like me and you drive a Subaru and everything's really – I'm pretty normie. Mm-hmm.
There always comes a point when they assume that there's some other nefarious idea that all gay people have. Every lesbian is trying to steal your wife. Every gay guy is sleeping with everybody in the whole world and spreading disease. And it's like, it feels like a wishlist sometimes from people who aren't in the community that they are projecting like a fantasy that they have on our community and then hating us for it. And we're not even doing it. And on top of that, I don't think you can underrate the motivated reasoning of having to think about
that the others are nefarious in order to justify your bigoted and authoritarian views towards them. Yeah, and sometimes you're like sadness in your life. One of my friends was leaving their marriage and talked to her mom about it. And her mom was in a loveless marriage. And her mom said, I just think you should get used to being lonely. I think you should make better girlfriends. And I was like, wow, that is...
really so sad that so many people do feel trapped or like a victim or like there's nothing they can do to improve the situation that they, so they just lock it up, bottle it up and put it away. And you know, that's, that's not great either. And they do it oftentimes under the guise of like, who has the higher morality? Well, I'm sacrificing my happiness now for the afterlife, or I'm sacrificing my happiness now for to maintain normalcy and structure in the American way and whatnot. But this political morality is,
And structurally, the left versus the right, I would say the left has pretty high political morality when it comes to being more likely to provide assistance, humanitarian aid, stuff like that to strangers.
What do you square about how we're incorporating morality into politics now and what a role that plays in how somebody chooses who they might vote for? Well, by the way, you took the afterlife thing right out of my brain. That was amazing. You just mind read me right there. Imagine if these people didn't believe in the afterlife. They might get out of their horrible, toxic marriage, right? I know.
No, you'd have a sense of urgency to live now. Sense of urgency. There you go. Yeah. Okay, morality. Well, there's that old saying about how you should judge a society's moral character by how they treat the least. And if you were to judge the right and the left on that level, there's really no doubt as to who's more moral. The data is just unambiguous. But when it comes to how the left and the right process morality differently, I would say that people on the left are results-based. They're outcomes-based.
How does X policy affect people? How would implementing Medicare for All affect people? Well, it would save 70,000 lives a year. It would save a ton of people from bankruptcy. These are all positive things, and it would save our country money, which is important too. Whereas the right views things more in terms of in-group, out-group preference. Who's in my tribe? Who is part of my faction? Are they on my team or are they not on my team? And in this sense, they see things more in terms of good and bad outcomes.
teams rather than good or bad actions. And if you're on the good team, if you're part of God's team, if you go to church, you are implicitly good. And if you don't, you are implicitly bad. If you are part of my tribe, you're on the good team. And even if you do a bad action, well, you're a good person anyway.
This brings me to the next question, which is how authoritarian leaders and theocratic leaders are different than their followers. And I try to point this out a lot of the time where I'm like the MAGA crew, I'm like, he's never going to love you, right? Like he's never going to, you don't actually get a seat at that table, even if,
You are a diehard supporter. You get to be a plebe in the kingdom, but you never get to enjoy the spoils of winning whatever award it is they think they're fighting. Can you talk about how authoritarian leaders are different from their followers and why people participate in that? I do want to say in your question is a bias that you have.
It's a good bias. It's assuming that people care about their material well-being. A lot of people on the right, that's not their top priority. Their top priority is taking out their grievance or their emotions, their fears, their feelings of threat out on the people that make them feel those feelings, whether it be immigrants or trans people or black people or women and women with their
sexual freedom. How scary would that be? So when it comes to like the differences, right? So what I think we're really talking about is like the difference between social dominance orientation. This is somebody that the dominator, this is the Trump, this is the Putin, this is the Hitler, the Mussolini. And then you have right-wing authoritarianism, which is the followers. And there are several differences. So the social dominance orientation leader types are
They actually aren't that religious, but the right-wing authoritarians, super religious. The social dominance orientation people, they don't even pretend like they're... I mean, they pretend a little bit that they're benevolent, but they don't really preach about how they're good people, whereas right-wing authoritarians do. The followers are so much more self-righteous because they have, frankly, deluded themselves into believing that they're on the good team. The people that are social dominance orientation, the Trumps of the world, they don't really...
think in that term. They think in terms of how much power, how much sway, how much persuasion, how much influence can I have? Another interesting difference is the leaders, they've got some hedonism in them. I remember learning about the Taiping Rebellion in China in the 1850s and 60s. Basically, it was this dude who kept failing the bureaucrat test. Then he just decided that he would be the brother of Jesus Christ. He started a cult in Southern China. It
turned into one of the bloodiest wars of all time, the Taiping Rebellion. And he was like a sexually repressive person and you'll see some familiarity here, but he had like a giant harem
And you can see this in the anti-gay pastors who, you know, maybe they have sex with a man every now and then, right? Or a lot of affairs, yeah. And so these leaders, these authoritarian leaders, they've got that hedonism, whereas right-wing authoritarian, they just scorn this shit. Oh, that's bad.
I wonder, like, what is the mechanism that brings those two together, though? How do the MAGA crowd decide that they'll continue, that Trump was the guy, right? Like, what was, how do people link up with that leader? Sure, because Trump is charismatic.
because he's a weak man's idea of a strong man. Trump is deeply insecure. You and I can see through that. The audience can see through that. But these people can't see through that because they're insecure in the same way. But he appears to be very strong. And these right-wing authoritarians are very scared. They're terrified because they think the world is a very dangerous place. It's just full of threats. And they think that Trump will protect them. And they think that...
Going back to your original question, Trump doesn't materially help these people, but he emotionally helps these people. He's going to protect them from the scary immigrants. He's going to protect them from the people that make them feel threatened. And if their in-group is in power, they emotionally benefit from that. And that's enough. And that's enough. It's enough to still live in poverty. It's enough to...
It doesn't matter because you've, you're getting that release of all your fears that are driving you as opposed to like establishing safety. And your grievance and your anger. And we have to keep in mind that a lot of these people on the right, you know, right wingers are less emotionally intelligent. That isn't just self-reflection. It isn't just self-awareness, but those are big components, right? And so why am I angry about my life? Well, you know, a few years ago, just thinking about, you know, I was, I was, I was not as happy in my life a few years ago. Why was, why was that the case? Well,
had a family member that was going through health problems. It was really hard to go through. The job search was miserable. Out of college, it's terrible. Working these dead-end jobs that I've got no advancement in. These are the reasons why I'm unhappy. Money stress. Whereas people on the right are more likely to externalize that blame. They're more likely to scapegoat others. Oh, it's the fault of, insert racial minority group. It's their fault that I'm upset. And so Trump is helping them to take their
anger out on those groups that they're scapegoating. This is a really huge thing with the psychology of MAGA. That makes a ton of sense, certainly. And that's why the empty rhetoric of immigrants are stealing your jobs, it continues to slap for some people and get their vote, even though it's been proven time and time again to not be true. My co-host has this book out now called Democracy in Retrograde. And in it, you can take little quizzes and fun stuff to help predict the
what you would be good at when it comes to activism, because not everybody could be in the streets. And so you go through these different ways that you as a person can use your interests, the amount of time that you have, the amount of money you have, where you live in the country to really maximize what your impact can be for good. And you have a test also that can predict your political views. Ah, yes. Can you talk a little bit about
how our literal brain chemistry may influence our likely political ideology. Literally the juice in your brains is going to direct you one way or the other. The structures in particular, yeah. So when it comes to the differences in brains, okay, the number one difference is that people on the right, particularly right-wingers, people who are very conservative, have a much larger amygdala and a much more active amygdala. The amygdala is a part of the lowermost organ
reptile part of the brain. It's the most primitive and it's famous for being the fear processor.
So, why is it that right-wing rhetoric is so encased in fear? It's because of this. Why is it that in the paper that I respect the most that talks about, it's a meta-analysis by Jost et al, I just did a video on it, about what makes conservatives different psychologically, there's like eight different things listed and like three of them are fear and threat. Why is that? Because their literal brain chemistry is different. Now, when it comes to
What makes people on the left different? It comes down to the insular cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex. So what does the insular cortex do? It is involved with functions that include compassion, empathy, taste, perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive function, interpersonal experience, and awareness of homeostatic emotions such as hunger, thirst,
pain and fatigue. And this region is vital for something called theory of mind, which is basically the ability to understand somebody else's emotions, perspective,
The ways of thinking that are different from your own. The other difference with people on the left is that their anterior cingulate cortex is also larger, more developed. There's more gray matter in it. So the ACC plays a role in a wide variety of autonomic functions, such as regulating blood pressure and heart rate, as well as rational cognitive functions, such as reward anticipation, decision-making, empathy, and emotion.
I mean, it's right there in the data. It's right there. It's your brain chemistry. But can you change it? I mean, I've known some people who...
And maybe like even myself, right? I was raised in a conservative house. I wasn't even conservative. My family is like pretty wishy-washy on politics, but they voted Republican and we went to church sometimes and I voted for Mitt Romney and I thought I was maybe Republican for a while. And now I'm decidedly not. But for a while, I thought that I was. I mean, it was before I had a fully developed brain that I thought I was Republican. So perhaps that played a role in it. But can people switch? Can you change your mind?
So a couple things. First off, again, we're talking about averages. There are conservatives with very small amygdalas that don't operate totally out of fear. And it's just that they're conservative because they haven't really thought about it. They're socialized that way. Yeah. And most people, or they want to conform with the people around them. They just want to go with the flow. A lot of people, they aren't like us. They aren't like the listeners of this podcast. They don't think about politics all that much.
And the other thing is that I don't want anything that I say about brain differences to come off like it's 100% nature. There's no changing it. These people are just unevolved Neanderthal brain. Like your environment has an immense impact on your brain development. I did a video on just the differences among three and four year olds who eventually became progressive versus conservative. And you can see differences very early on.
And it ain't all nature, folks. It ain't all nature. But I think about it like this. If you think about your brain as being like a muscle...
If you are in a fear-based environment, you're watching Fox News, you're going to one of those right-wing churches, you are exercising the part of your brain that deals with fear, and you're not exercising the parts of your brain that are rational, complex, nuanced thinking. So if you change your environment, you can change your brain. And if you change your ideas, I have to imagine... Listen, I'm not a neurologist, but I have to imagine your brain is not a static thing. This just...
This is just a toxic idea to me. I don't want to come off as essentialist. I really don't. That's why I try to be nuanced. I think that that makes a ton of sense. And to your point, like thinking of it as a muscle, if yeah, every day you're working out at the Fox News gym, it's going to trigger that particular muscle. But if you had just turned off the TV and went outside, looked at a tree, went on a little walk, made a friend, something, then maybe you're working on that muscle and you could lean more that way. That makes a ton of sense to me.
It's just so fun to listen to you talk and learn about this kind of stuff. And you have such a great way of making people feel included in complex thinking. So many of us didn't go to Columbia, but we're glad that we have you to kind of just bring it to us and be like, no, no, no. Everybody can understand this. Let me help you get there. Can you help me understand the current moment as a nation? Do you think that we have the mental fortitude to survive this moment and to potentially end up in a better place to change for good? Oh, boy. You know, humans...
our adaptability is our greatest strength, right? And in a way, it's our greatest weakness because we will adapt to terrible conditions without fighting against it. Just look at medieval times and feudalism as signs of that. Do we have it? You know, the biggest threats are the climate emergency and the destabilizing force that is the
the climate crisis, what's going to happen with nuclear weapons? That's really what I think about when it comes to the big threats for us. In terms of our country, it's so hard because on one level, I want to go back to what I said earlier, which is we have some of the lowest rates of authoritarianism in human history. There are fewer reasons to fear an early death, whether it be by some warlord
trouncing on through a roving band of bandits coming on through, you know, the, the, the Knights coming through and raiding your village, you know, the cops of that time, um, or just disease. That would be a big one. Or, you know, you get a cut on your leg. That was like a death sentence without antibiotics. Right.
So because there are fewer reasons to fear an early death, there are fewer authoritarian people than there have ever been as a percentage of the population. Unfortunately, because America is so religious and because our media is so fear-based, there
We have a much higher rate of authoritarianism in this country than in pretty much any other industrialized democracy. So can we survive it? I think we'll survive it. Will American democracy survive? I think this election will have a lot to say about that. But I take a lot of hope in the fact that the younger generations...
are not only the most progressive ever, but the data is showing we're not skewing more conservative. And it's because we have more access to information than ever. It's because we're the most educated generation in history. It's because we didn't have lead in the gas and paint that we were exposed to that makes us more authoritarian, more angry, more emotional in a bad way.
So I think that there's a lot of hope in the future, but it's sad to say, I don't think there's an easy way to change these MAGA people's minds. I think a lot of them have their minds made up. I think that so many of them
Maybe even subconsciously know they're wrong, know they're on the wrong side of history, as conservatives always are, but they'll never admit it because A, they don't care. They want to hurt people. I think that's an underrated motivation for conservatives. I really do. And I know it's cynical and I know it's a mean thing to say, but I really think it's there.
But also, they don't want to admit those damn liberals were right. And they'll double down on being wrong and evil just to not admit that they were wrong. So we're living in a really dangerous moment. We seem to go through these once every 80 years or something. It was the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II. And we're living in that crisis right now. And America has survived the first three. So I'd like to be optimistic about surviving this one. I'd like to think that a lot of people will
come to their senses and we got to defeat authoritarianism. I like, I got, I got to think, I got to, I got to hope. I got to hope because I can't despair. All right. It's the Lord of the Rings mentality. You got to hope because you can't despair. Yes. That's what we're, that's going to be the takeaway from this. We got to hope because we can't despair. Keegan, you are such a treat. Please tell people where they can find you so that they can continue to learn from you.
Yeah, so my TikTok channel is just at Keegan Tatum. That's K-E-E-G-A-N-T-A-T-U-M. I do post most of my shorts to Instagram as well. Same handle, Keegan Tatum. But on YouTube, which is Alien Perspective,
I do have videos about autism if you're interested in that. And I have longer form videos such as the psychology of transphobia, the psychology of why old people are more conservative, and an in-depth view of the authoritarian psychology as well in a video essay. Thank you so much for being here. We'll put all of that in the show notes so that you can find him more easily. Hopefully we'll have you back on the show if you'd like to come back sometime. Absolutely. Today was one of the highlights of my career in this. So thank you so much for having me.
Thank you. Until next time, I'm Vita Spears. Sammy Sage will be with us in the future episode. And this is American Fever Dream. American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candice Monega and Bridget Schwartz. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Betches News. And follow me, Sammy Sage, at Sammy and V at Under the Desk News. And of course, send us your emails to AmericanFeverDream at Betches.com.