There’s this theory in psychology that came in to general usage after 2003. It emerged after a photograph was published, a very famous and controversial pic. California Coastal Records published a photograph of the effects of coastal erosion on its shores. The photo clearly showed considerable erosion. The only issue with this aerial photograph is this:

That’s Barbara Streisand‘s cliff top estate in Malibu and she made efforts through her Attorney to suppress the photograph as she felt it massively invaded her privacy. She went about it through through cease and desist letters and threats of all kinds of legal consequences. It didn’t work. In fact it worked so badly that the efforts to suppress the picture drew massive attention to the pic. It became the exemplar of what is called psychological reactance, in other words the attempt to stop people from knowing forbidden information makes the whole issue far more interesting to the public. In fact Streisand’s lawsuit against photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million for violation of privacy, was probably the single worst way to suppress the photograph, rather like banning a book or a movie or making drugs or alcohol or anything you might name, illegal. I mean the above pic had been dowloaded about half a dozen times before the lawsuit. It was downloaded half a million times after the lawsuit.

Donald Trump, recently re elected to the White House, is a deeply controversial, divisive and much sued person. Since 1973 he has been involved in over four thousand legal cases, a shocking number, including federal, business and personal lawsuits. If you are curious, Google or another search engine will reveal in great detail the vast number of cases in which he has been involved, how much he has been sued successfully for, and the number of people he has stiffed for money. Add to this are books about him. Choosing to read a few of the plethora of books about his dealings with others would elucidate just how unsuitable this person is for any kind of office, how narcissistic and how he poisons everything he touches. Chaos, insane thinking and delusional narcissism have remained the hallmark of his modus operandi, and true to form he has burned democracy, rationality and compassion down in his first weeks of office, rather like the wildfires that have consumed California. Speaking of fires, the writer, thinker and stoic philosopher Ryan Halliday recently posted a podcast on Trump – comparing and contrasting him with the Emperor Nero. This time, having been twice impeached and convicted by a court of his peers, his strategy has changed considerably, surrounding himself with billionaire sycophants and systematically eliminating any and all potential opposing voices. Thus democracy dies and is replaced by a regency; the very thing the US originally freed itself from after the declaration of independence. As a pathological narcissist himself, cruel and incapable of empathy, Trump cannot abide dissent and craves praise and flattery, thus despite his pretentions to being a tough leader and his rubbing shoulders with autocrats he is in reality a very deeply troubled human.

So how did Trump get back in? His last time in office (2016-20) was as disastrous as it was chaotic as it was dysfunctional as it was subject to no less than two impeachments and countless hours in the courts?

Newspapers and Television pundits point to a modern crises in masculinity, the death of traditional values with woke ideology, and the rise of the alt-right and its pernicious effect on modern politics, not mention Trump’s considerable charisma and skills with a crowd. This is a guy who could work a crowd like no other. Trump has a cult following. Like many a narcissistic abusive cult leader, its extraordinary how many can be mesmerised by the utter nonsense he talks. One can pick up a book or two on Trump the cult leader. It makes for depressing reading, albeit instructive and deeply humbling as there is nothing that can be done about this.

So all these foregoing explanations are definitely an aspect of the whole affair, but in my own view the issue is both far more simple and far more complex. For me, its the issue of Harris being foolish enough to draw attention to Trump’s terrible personal influence and dreadful legal history. As the thinker and author Robert Greene says in his excellent book on power – any form of controversy – positive or negative garners that which one wants most – the attention of others (Law 6 – Court attention at all costs). The Harris camp handed Trump this key advantage in a foolish and incredibly expensive tactic that cost the potentially first African American female US president the Oval Office. The Harris Camp changed their approach from focusing on the issues (which is what the whole election was about) to spending countless millions of dollars demonizing her opponent. I think Harris had something like a billion dollars in her war chest. Yet she still lost. Thus the campaign to get the first female president of the USA elected inadvertantly became a campaign that constantly brought up Trump’s name, telling everyone how terrible he was, how vengeful, how weird he was, how cruel and misogynistic and just generally awful he was. I remember hearing Harris speak that day on the very spot Trump told an inflamed crowd to ‘fight like hell‘, just like in this election he told poor americans (the vast majority of Americans are not well off, in fact the disparity between wealth and poverty and the dissolution of the middle class signals to many thoughtful people the final cracks in the American Empire. Trump feeds on madness and chaos. He came to power on it. For him it’s not greed and the erosion of democracy, but that immigrants and deep state activists are stealing jobs and raping people and eating their cats and any crazy stuff that would inflame their rage at feeling left out of the wealth and so called ‘American Dream’. Harris parroted this nonsense in her election speeches. Bad idea. This foolish tactic had the effect of advertising the opponent rather than Harris, like any time you bring up your opponents name you are advertising him or her. So Harris got the worst president ever re elected. Very bad idea. 60% of Americans work paycheck to paycheck and thus identify with the underdog because they feel disenfranchised and feel neglected. In the election on the 6/11/2024, Trump literally wiped the floor with Harris, a politician who wiped the floor with Trump in the one fair debate they had over issues. Its a fascinating story and its a tragicomedy too. A tragedy for us all.

If you have the least interest, see here for a list of Streisand effect examples. There are other examples from politics on the list. Incidentally Barbara Streisand actually clarified in one of her books that she was concerned about her name being attached to the photograph, not the actual image itself, and that there was a miscommunication about her intentions.

The Chinese have a saying going way back thousands of years: (欲蓋彌彰 Yù gài mí zhāng). It means something like wishing to conceal, more conspicuous. Its the equivalent of ‘dont look now’ – one always looks. Its not rational I guess, but its human.