Kevin responded, and also agreed to put the conversation here, so OEN members could participate:There can also be bottom up leadership. Tim Carpenter, co-founder and founding leader o f PDA was a bottom up leader. Occupy Wall Street took a bottom up approach to leadership.
Yeah, I think Trump's mob is a controlled, manipulated anarchist movement. I don't think the mob condition is strictly urban. Small towns I believe are actually more suited to the rising of a mob because there tends to be more homogeneity of thought and belief. Trump's mob actually reminds me of small town Texas. There is also a self-righteous/religious streak that runs through small town America. This was part of the ease at which a lynch mob was assembled in the past. I think the Trump mob also has similarities to current Black civil unrest. The mob is also a knee jerk reaction to an egregious, real or not, wrong. Once the mob starts rolling it takes on a life of its own and immediately starts writing its version of things and then every mob member becomes an apologist for the movement -- history and reality be damned. I watched this happen in my small town when the powers that be decided they wanted to get rid of our city administrator. All of the wrongs he had committed, real and not, were disseminated to the public. The mob arose and within a couple of months the majority of the town could quote chapter and verse from the book of his horrors. The scary thing about a mob is how easily it can be manipulated -- Trump certainly is not having a problem doing it.
I look forward to seeing your responses and takes on this conversation.
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