Part 2 in a five part series: Sleeping Through the TPP Coup: Why a Trans-National Corporate Power Grab That Hurts Almost Everyone Is Arousing So Little Outcry.

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(Article changed on January 25, 2014 at 01:51)

This is the second part of a five-part series: Sleeping Through the TPP Coup: Why a Trans-National Corporate Power Grab That Hurts Almost Everyone Is Arousing So Little Outcry

Part 1: What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, And Why Don't I Care?

Part 2: Obstacles to Anti-TPP Coordination: A Social Psychological Account

Part 3: The Puzzle of "Liberal" Obama's Support for the TPP

Part 4: Pitting Fear of Our Complicity Against the Fear to Resist the TPP

Part 5: Battling the TPP with Enlightenment, Love and a Thirst For Meaning in the Face of Death

The first part of this series introduced the Trans Pacific Partnership "trade deal" scam, identified its potential dangers, as well as the dangers of allowing it to be "fast-tracked" through Congress. It also posed the question: why have activists had so much difficulty raising the mass awareness and mass outrage that the TPP threat warrants?

This part draws on social psychology paradigms to explore some potential answers to that question.

Social psychology, in a nutshell, is the study of how social influences and related psychological processes affect people's behavior, thoughts and attitudes. Though social psychology offers powerful conceptual tools for making sense of our social world, it cannot provide a definitive answer to the question of why anti-TPP resistance leaves so much to be desired. No social psychological theory can ever reliably explain a single historical event because all historical events tend to have confounded multiple causes.  All I can do is provide some scientifically-based scaffolding to your speculation on these questions.

To the extent any evil calls for passionate resistance, and any good calls for passionate support, the TPP looks like an evil that warrants resistance because it attacks several important goods at once. Chances are, though, your passions up to now have drawn your interest and labors to just one or two of these important goods, if they've drawn you to any of them at all.

Being passionately engaged against all evils at all times (or for all goods at all times) isn't practical. We're a species composed of quasi-independent beings who exist in time, experience their consciousness from only one body each, have to sleep for several hours a day, and have all kinds of other things to do--like work for a living, eat, drink, excrete, manage sexual desire, maintain relationships, overcome existential challenges, etc.

Cognitive miserliness

All of these existence-related competitors for our attention, time and energy make the attempt to reduce noise something of a survival skill. And, indeed, most human beings show clear affection for simplicity, parsimony, and brevity.

Most people can't process long, complex stories as easily as they can process short, simple ones. This is because, as social psychologists have long noted, people are "cognitive misers." They think as little as they have to in order to make the most optimal decisions they can with their limited time and resources.

How is this relevant to the TPP?  Let's put it this way: Do you want to fight against a bill that (1) tramples on ONE principle you're passionate about, or against a bill that (2) tramples on two or three principles you're passionate about to different degrees as well as several other principles you kind of agree with but don't think about much, and a few you could care less about or even side with the bill about? Those attentive to our cognitive miserliness would guess that people are likely to be more aroused to focused outrage and action by (1) than by (2) most of the time.

So when you sit down to compose an activism-arousing message, finding a way to get it rolling around in the minds of those who receive it is a tough task. Regarding the TPP, if you write out everything that's either definitely wrong or likely to be wrong with the trade deal (and with the fast-tracking process to ensure its easy passage), you have an inevitably long and complex story just because there's so much to tell.

Perhaps the most burdensome complexity is simply explaining what to oppose. Opposition to fast-tracking the TPP combines an opposition to fast-tracking in general with a specific opposition to what the TPP is likely to be. Except I can't tell you exactly what the TPP is likely to be because the trade negotiations contributing to its composition are a state secret. Fast-tracking in general probably IS worth opposing all the time, but it's particularly bad now because of what's likely to be passed by using that democracy-stripping procedure.

And I can tell you part of what's likely to be in the bill that might get fast-tracked thanks to some important leaks, but even those relevant sections of the bill might be changed somewhat from the leaked fragments. As for the parts that haven't been leaked I can only speculate based on the damage done by other "trade deal" scams. Eyes glazing over yet?

The inherent complexity to articulating what's wrong with the TPP may explain why, for example, the folks who pulled off the SOPA internet strike aren't turning up the same level of pressure against the TPP just on their own. You'd think they'd be motivated to mobilize their own anti-SOPA constituents with at least as much urgency and radicalism as they mobilized against SOPA...and you would also think that the constituents would be just as motivated to answer the call. But though organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have come out in opposition to fast-tracking the TPP, they have not gathered a critical mass for anything like an internet strike to stop the actual fast-track bill now sitting on the doorstep of Congress.

I suspect that if the TPP were only threatening internet freedom then the anti-SOPA folks would have been able to craft a simple message about it.  Then they would have raised the alarm loud enough to be heard, and might be anticipating the same level of bill-stopping success they had with SOPA--and with related bills like PIPA for that matter.  I'm not trying to slam the internet freedom folks in particular (count me as one of them in fact). I could have substituted anti-fracking activists, immigrant rights activists, labor activists or any number of TPP-affected movements. All of these movements have had some success at mass mobilization, but all are now having difficulty tapping those talents to stop the fast-tracking of the TPP.

Ingroup favoritism

Compounding the cognitive miserliness problem, in fact, is how different these affected groups are. A lot of social psychological research suggests that people are inclined to favor their "ingroups"--the groups they feel like they're "in"--and don't care as much about doing right by "outgroups."

Some religions and ideologies have tried to work in pro-outgroup sentiment in order to build a more inclusive pan-human community, but these ideological supplements are not very strong prophylactics against our ingroup-favoring human tendencies.

Post-Constantine Christendom has historically treated non-Christians pretty abysmally even though Christian leaders presumably read and understood outgroup-favoring Gospel passages like the Sermon on the Mount and the Good Samaritan story (and the less known but pretty straightforward Samaritan village passage in Luke Chapter 9). And contemporary liberal moderns aren't immune either. 21 ^st century ideological taboos on verbal expressions of racismsexismhomophobia haven't kept us from looking the other way when it comes to structural racism , the feminization of poverty and the still untamed worldwide scourge of AIDS. Cultural influences can expand or contract our potential to show moral concern for others, but on average we still tend to favor ourselves and our own.

Our inclinations to ingroup favoritism may explain why it took so long for the various TPP-affected groups to reach out to each other and coordinate. The TPP has been in the works for a while now, and there should have been a massive multi-city day of action way before the one planned for January 31 (and hopefully the TPP will not have been fast-tracked by that time). To reach out like this, though, is to potentially give an equal share of decision-making power to other movements and organizations, and this kind of generosity grates against ingroup favoritism.

In an ideal world, you'd think someone could just look up the emails and phone numbers of all the affected movements, call a meeting between movement representatives, identify what to work on independently and what to coordinate on, and then plan three stages of action: (1) to puncture the media blackout on the TPP story, (2) to stop the bill from being fast-tracked, and (3) to ensure that either the worst parts of the bill are removed or that it dies.

A provocative set of warm-up actions (e.g. activists exposing a non-lawbreaking but still shocking degree of flesh with #exposethetpp written on their bodies) could have inspired at least some late night talk show publicity. Activists willing to push the limit a little further could also have taken part in some high-profile acts of civil disobedience, inspired a clumsy police overreaction (as early Occupy protesters did), stoked public outrage, and then gotten a movement snowballing.

And the anti-TPP movement has an advantage that Occupy didn't: a focused goal. That goal of course, is taking out the TPP--first stopping the attempt to fast-track it, and then scrapping the worst contents of the bill itself. Reaching that goal could inspire the movement to set a broader goal: to change the political culture (and, if possible, the laws) so "trade bill" scams like NAFTA, the WTO and the TPP would fight an uphill battle in the future. It's definitely not too late to get the latter movement started, but let's hope it's not too late to deliver the urgent one-two punch to the current TPP scam.

My "ideal world" fantasy makes movement-building sound simple, but in the real world you have to deftly navigate a social psychological mine field to successfully pull off that kind of mass coordination between disparate groups. This is why the Occupy movement still registers as a kind of miracle for those who were involved in it.

Consider again the anti-SOPA, anti-PIPA internet freedom advocates. Some non-negligible proportion of these activists might look at a gargantuan offense to humanity like the TPP and think, "This bill sounds terrible for internet freedom, but I don't want to put too much time and energy into a movement where we'll be just one interest group among many--and might find ourselves part of an anti-TPP gestalt shaped by voices that divide our own."

And this concern has some basis in reality. The internet freedom demographic is different from the labor movement demographic, the anti-fracking demographic, the anti-human trafficking demographic, the immigrant rights demographic and the international aid demographic. And these demographic divides, while they don't have to matter, often do because agreement with a movement won't get you very far if you have qualms about how that movement, in aggregate, gets run.

Also, going to protests (which are particularly useful for breaking media blackouts) can be a drag if you think they'll be filled with people you don't want to spend time with. Protests can be great, of course. If protests develop a critical mass where no sub-group seems to dominate and there is a kind of emergent shared purpose, then concerns about who you're walking the streets with tend to dissolve. This was the case with Occupy protests after a while. There were so many specific groups buffered by enough "ordinary folks" in the crowd that no one worried about whether their group's particular voice was being unjustly marginalized--all the groups were in the soup.

However, when the protests are still at the "awkward stage" of movement-building, having too many movements in the broth may be disruptive to smooth and rapid growth of the shared movement. To the extent that TPP-affected movements can leave each other alone to move independently in their activism, this is less of a problem, but as soon as mass coordination becomes the aim, it will become necessary to skillfully negotiate between the diverse priorities of the various groups.

And if the potential "pollution" from fellow progressives isn't off-putting enough, there's also pollution to contend with from some Republicans, particularly of the " crabgrass ", conspiratorial and Tea Party variety. As with the NSA shredding of the 4 ^th Amendment , the indefinite detention-enshrining National Defense Authorization Act of 2012-2014, and the new trend towards targeted assassination of American citizens and their 16 year old kids , the TPP has both bi-partisan support and bi-partisan opposition. Michelle Bachmann, for instance, is opposed to fast-tracking the TPP and thus is a particularly polluting part of the TPP opposition. It's humiliating for those with liberal or left sensibilities to admit that sometimes Michelle Bachmann is closer to reality than Barack Obama--though kudos to the liberal-left Daily Kos for making exactly this admission.

The Halo Effect

This brings us to a related social psychology construct: " the halo effect "--or you could call it a "halo/horns" effect since it's about how we lock people into good or bad evaluations and then judge other less knowable aspects of their character according to our biased preconceptions. The halo effect can also potentially extend to interpreting people's motivations for certain actions, and thus to judging the worth of the actions themselves.

Michelle Bachmann wears "horns" in progressives' minds, and deservedly so. She has said a great number of embarrassingly false things, and her atrocities largely match her absurdities. Whenever there has been a clear wrong side on some issue, she has usually embraced that side with creepy enthusiasm. Knowing that she is against the TPP (or at least against granting Obama fast-track authority for the TPP) can thus arouse liberal and progressive suspicions. The fact that all kinds of lovable progressive heroes take the same position doesn't necessarily diminish the effect of her pollution. With Bachmann on board, the more Tea Party-traumatized Democrat types may be tempted to thoughts like, "What if she wants to crash the TPP to undermine Obama's presidency and thus enable the most insane frothing-at-the-mouth Republicans to advance their top-down class war agenda?"

Of course it doesn't really matter whether or not this is Bachmann's motivation. Bachmann has such a tenuous understanding of cause-and-effect and other basic facets of reality that her motivations should be considered irrelevant. It is much saner to ignore her than to treat her as a reverse oracle. In spite of these good reasons to bleep over Bachmann's position on the issue, the halo effect makes it more likely that her involvement will elicit progressive discomfort with opposing the TPP.

By the same principle, the fact that beautiful, radiant President Obama is supporting this terrible legislation (and also calling for the anti-democratic fast-tracking process designed to slip this legislation in under the radar) creates a lot of social cognitive static for liberal progressives. Those progressives who haven't yet become Greens or other disillusioned refugees from the two-party system probably voted for Obama in 2008 and/or 2012. They are thus are tempted to think: "He's such a smart guy, he gives great speeches and writes great books. I mean he gets it, and he won two elections against Republicans, so maybe he has a long term plan to make the TPP work for freedom, justice, equality, environmental sustainability and all things good!"

There is historical precedent for being blinded by a liberal politician's halo. Left-liberals who chose Lyndon Baines Johnson over Barry Goldwater in 1964 (influenced, perhaps, by LBJ's "I won't bring nuclear apocalypse" campaign ) made similar excuses about LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam War. Folksinger Tom Paxton satirized these LBJ Democrats in a way that still resonates today:

'We didn't know,' said the puzzled voter watching the president on TV.

'I guess we got to drop those bombs if we're gonna keep South Asia free.

The president's such a peaceful man I guess he's got some kind of plan.

They say we're torturing prisoners of war, but I don't believe that stuff no more.

Torturing prisoners is a communist game and you can bet they're doing the same.

I wish this war was over and through, but what do you expect me to do?'

Savvier progressives have not been as blind to Obama's failures of conscience (or complete lack thereof?) on certain issues. They have no illusions about Obama's complicity with force feeding illegally-detained prisoners of war on hunger strike at GTMO, indefinite detention of potentially anyone anywhere on suspicion of whatever, drone assassinations and " signature strikes ", Appendix M torture , extraordinary renditions , secret dirty wars in dozens of countries worldwide, hounding journalists , exiling and imprisoning whistleblowers, soft-pedaling NSA violations of the 4 ^th Amendment, etc.

Informed progressives understand that Obama often does non-progressive things. So Obama would wear, at best, a better-than-the-likeliest-Republican-alternative halo in their eyes. Even this tarnished halo, though, could make many progressives queasy about joining hands with Tea Party Republicans--including to do something as naturally progressive as trying to stop a corporate coup disguised as a trade agreement.

Cognitive dissonance

" Cognitive dissonance "--another conceptual contribution to contemporary consciousness from social psychologists--may also be a part of the story here. Cognitive dissonance is the coexistence in one's mind of two incompatible thoughts, usually value-laden thoughts. People don't like experiencing dissonance, and do mental acrobatics of various kinds to get rid of it. People who spend hours cleaning fecal vomit-covered toilet bowls with a toothbrush to rush a pathetic fraternity will convince themselves they endured the humiliation and health hazards to be part of a holy band of brothers whose legacy will endure forever. People who spend months knocking on doors and getting them slammed in their faces over and over again for a religion making dubious historical claims will come to believe that religion must be the only true one on earth. People who write thousands and thousands of words about the dangers of some obscure piece of legislation and don't get around to doing the other work they were supposed to do will come to believe that legislation is as threatening to humanity as the Cuban Missile Crisis. You get the idea.

The cognitive dissonance idea can help make sense of why it's so hard for progressives to get comfortable opposing something that Obama is throwing his weight behind. It became pretty clear pretty fast, and was especially clear by 2012, that many of the promises and poses made by Messiah-like Candidate Obama in 2008 were seductive illusions. Either Obama never intended to try to deliver on them, or the structure of power in the U.S. is such that he could not have delivered on them even if he had tried. In any case, casting a vote for Obama again in 2012 was bound to arouse painful dissonance between two salient thoughts. One thought was, "It was ghastly of Obama to [insert Obama outrage here]" and the other thought was "I just voted for Obama." Research on cognitive dissonance suggests that we are strongly motivated to reduce this dissonance, either by kicking out one thought, kicking out the other, or bringing in a third thought to explain away the contradiction between the first two.

Many people, for instance, would reduce their voting-Obama-in-spite-of-what-he's-done dissonance with a third thought like this: "I had to vote for Obama; if I voted for a candidate whose policies and record I fully support, then an even worse alternative--Romney--might have won, and I would have had to live with the knowledge that I didn't take an effective stand against that potential disaster ¹ ." This contradiction-explainer will soothe some reluctant Obama voters but not others, especially if they felt the need to cut corners on the truth and "talk up" Obama in order to influence others during election time.

Those who continue to suffer dissonance even after acknowledging the sadistic cruelty of the choice forced on them by the corporate-run two party system may have to reduce their dissonance in another way. For many this will mean knocking out either "I voted for Obama" or knocking out the thought, "It was ghastly of Obama to do X". Since the former would require an amnesiac break from a significant and memorable action, the latter is the one more likely to go. And the space emptied by that discarded thought will probably be filled with something like, "I'm sure Obama had a good reason to do X." The president's such a peaceful man, I guess he's got some kind of plan....

Note: Dissonance reduction processes are likely to be unconscious, meaning that you're not necessarily saying these thoughts to yourself or processing them in a way that you could relate clearly to other people. It's more likely to manifest as a mute discomfort with opposing any position that Obama is supporting, but not being able to articulate exactly why.

Potential antidotes to reality-distorting dissonance reduction involve cultivating a willingness to realize that sometimes we mess up, do suboptimal things, or do things with our backs (or psyches) to the wall. We do not always act with enthusiastic fullness of our intention. Most people can admit to this in theory, but are loathe to admit it in practice--or at least most individualistic Americans likely don't want to admit this (individualists tend to imagine that they have a "high integrity" self that stays unchanged across contexts ). Pretending to never be wrong, ignoble or weak is a particularly grating (and narcissistic ) American national habit.

Still, reality-alignment requires an understanding that it's okay to say something like the following to yourself and others: "Okay, I voted for Obama, and I hope I was right given the circumstances, but it's possible that I was wrong. In any case, I'm not obliged to support everything he does from now on."

Obama voters (and others like myself who voted Green but gave the Democrats money), would do well say this to the mirror ten times every day until the pain of the dissonance goes away. We'll all be a lot better off.

Go on to Part 3: The Puzzle of "Liberal" Obama's Support for the TPP.

Authors Bio:

Ian Hansen is an Associate Professor of psychology and the 2017 president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.