I’m continuing to enjoy Scott Adam’s posts on politics—here’s a recent one arguing that the rise of political outsiders like Trump and Sanders is the result of social media bypassing representational democracy.

There’s another point Adams made somewhere in some other recent post (that I can’t track down at the moment)—the point was that one of Donald Trump’s strengths is his immunity to embarrassment. That might seem like a questionable ability. Doesn’t embarrassment keep you from making a fool of yourself? Sometimes, yes, but it could be a hindrance depending on your goals.

Personally, I find people who believe in insane conspiracy theories to be annoying. One of my early complaints about Trump was that he touted this insane “Obama is from Kenya” conspiracy theory*. Only an idiot would believe that. Trump, whatever you want to say about him, doesn’t seem like an idiot. So why does he believe it?

*For the record, I find the “Bush planned 9/11” theory equally insane.

Well, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he just realized that this is a good way to signal to a certain group of Americans (roughly speaking, Nixon’s silent majority) that he’s on their side. Frankly, most of those people may not buy the Obama/Kenya theory but it’s anti-Obama and that’s enough for them.

Trump is immune from embarrassment and has no problem presenting himself as someone believing in something that on its face is quite idiotic. That’s my theory anyway, and it does seem to explain some of the inconstancies of Trump’s character (like how a basically smart/educated/rich guy can believe in nonsense. He doesn’t.)

The same thing might be said of Trump’s “Build a Wall to keep out Mexicans” plan. He knows it’s a preposterous, expensive idea. But he merely says the words to serve as signal to potential voters.

There was an interesting experiment described in this “Moral Tribes” book I’m reading. A generous welfare planned was described and called a “Republican plan” and experiment volunteers self-described as Democrats rejected it while self-described Republicans embraced it. The situation was reversed and so were the results. It almost seems like the we’re at the point where the substance of things is irrelevant—it’s entirely about symbolism. This is true with Trump and it’s true with Sanders (whose policy proposals are basically substance-less and have no chance of getting through Congress.)

It’s very possible this is one of the most interesting times in American history. I’m not uncertain that if Trump is elected that he won’t just turn around and announce that the whole thing was been a big, crazy challenge he gave himself to see if he could bullshit his way into office.

UPDATE: Here’s a Scott Adams post that gets to the heart of the argument that Trump is immune to embarrassment.

Trump intentionally accepts the scorn of many as a cost of winning. And it works.

Ask yourself if you could withstand the types of criticisms Trump withstands every day. It would kill a normal person with a fragile ego. One can only endure that type of abuse when you see ego as a tool, not a character trait. Trump doesn’t mind the criticism because people are attacking his choice of tools, not his personality. Only Trump knows his inner thoughts, and apparently he’s okay with them.

Always remember this: Ego is a tool, not a personality trait.You can manipulate your ego, as Trump shows us, to gain advantage in this world. I took the Dale Carnegie course years ago and they teach this very thing. Today when I embarrass myself in front of millions of people – which I do about once a week – it just seems funny to me.