Are Americans suffering from ‘collective amnesia’ about Donald Trump?

not so long ago, Many Americans spent several hours a day following then-President Donald Trump’s every move.. And then, after the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021 and before his first indictment, they mostly stopped doing so.

Americans have a hard time remembering everything again.

For more than three years, the daily attack has faded, changed—and, in some cases, twisted Americans have memories attached to events that seemed terrible at the time. Polls suggest that voters’ views of Trump’s policies and his presidency have improved in retrospect. In interviews, Voters have a vague memory of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics.. For sociologists, it is not strange at all. In an age of hyperpartisanship, there is not much agreed collective memory, even of events that unfold publicly.

But as Trump seeks to return to power, the question of what exactly voters remember has rarely been more important. While Trump’s campaign is banking on nostalgia for a time so long ago, President Joe Biden is counting on voters to refocus on Trump, hoping they’ll remember why he was denied a second term. .

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For now, the erosion of time appears to be working in Trump’s favor., because undecided voters rely on their feelings about the present, not the past. A survey conducted late last month by The New York Times and Siena College found that 10% of 2020 Biden voters now support Trump, while almost none of Trump’s voters sided with Biden. According to the survey, Trump’s policies were viewed more favorably than those of Biden.

Polls suggest that Trump has made an impact even among voters who are too young to remember his first term in detail. About 4.2 million 18-year-olds eligible to vote this year were in high school when Trump was first elected. Polls show that they have distanced themselves from Biden in part because of his support for Israel in the war on the Gaza Strip and claim to favor Trump on that issue, even though Trump has also been a strong ally of Israel during his tenure. .

It is common for Americans to remember former presidents fondly. A Gallup analysis in June found that 46 percent of adults approved of Trump’s handling of his presidency based on what they “heard or remembered.” When Trump left office, his approval rating was 34 percent.

When asked what events he remembered from the Trump administration, Roger Laney, a 55-year-old independent and undecided voter from South Carolina, described a general feeling of “chaos.”

“He was very present in the media,” Laney said, explaining how he would listen to public radio on his way home from work and think, “Let’s see, what did Trump do this time?”

Due to the frenetic pace of the Trump years, many Americans have turned news about the former president into a compulsive habit… or ignored it altogether. The overwhelming volume of news has coincided with the continued rise of algorithmic and disparate social media, as well as shrinking attention spans.

That atmosphere created a kind of dysfunction that even 91 criminal indictments for defamation and fraud or huge civil penalties could not undo, said Andrew Franks, a professor of political psychology at the University of Washington.

“Negative information about Trump is no longer exclusive, it’s just the air we breathe“Frank commented. “That’s the water we swim in. It just becomes a conditioned emotional response, where when you see their face you feel joy and admiration or disgust and anger, but each of their individual actions is one in the ocean. is a drop.

Independent Ross Kuhn of Candia, New Hampshire, who supported Trump’s rival Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination, said he remembers feeling overwhelmed during Trump’s tenure.

“It was happening too fast to process,” he said. “It was a kind of genius: there were so many things to keep up with. It was like buses. Why get angry about one thing if something new is going to happen in 15 minutes?

When asked what he remembers now, Kuhn, who plans to vote for Biden, lamented what he considered low moments: Trump noting that he had a “great friendship” with the North Korean dictator. Government shutdown. Mexico is not paying for the border wall. Trump described “very good people on both sides” at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. His supporters storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Kuhn left out a whole series of major and minor plays.

Trump’s recording mentions that he can grope women. Praise for Russian intelligence. Denigrating African countries as a whole. Separate children from their parents at the Mexican border. Tell the children that Santa Claus is not real. Consider buying Greenland. Suggest using nuclear weapons to stop the hurricane. Ukraine’s president threatens to withdraw aid if Biden doesn’t investigate family. Suggest injecting bleach to Covid-19 patients.

According to political psychologists, for an event to be remembered, it must be important to you from the beginning. James W. Pennebaker, a professor emeritus who researches collective memory at the University of Texas at Austin, said people are more likely to remember events that affect their lives, while events that are embarrassing or negatively affect people are more likely to be forgotten. Chances are more. , he said.

Pennebaker noted that a polarized and fragmented media environment has made Americans less likely to agree on established facts, preventing the country from building a collective, shared memory.

“It almost took my breath away,” he said. “We live in interesting times where we see the other side threatening our existence, so we reinforce how good we are and condemn how bad the other side is. And it completely shapes not only the present, but also the past.”

In particular, that pattern is evident in the way people remember January 6. In the three years since the attack was replayed on television, Republicans have become less likely to describe the rioters as violent and more likely to exonerate Trump, according to a poll by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland.

Professional Democrats, who have seen Trump eclipse Biden in public and private polls, believe the former president is not as strong as polls suggest. They argue that if he tells enough people about Trump’s record while in office, voters skeptical of Biden will vote for him anyway.

“You can look back and feel this kind of collective amnesia about how bad and damaging the policies were,” said Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power, a liberal advocacy group whose survey found that 52 percent of likely voters now approve. . Trump’s performance as president.

According to Lodes, the majority support for Trump as seen in the polls “doesn’t exist anymore. It is based on this false illusion of seeing the past.

c.2024 The New York Times Company

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