Glenn Beck admitted that he’s been wrong every step of the way about Donald Trump this presidential election cycle.
Beck went on CNN to discuss a possible jump aboard Trump’s candidacy, despite calling him a “pathological narcissistic sociopath.” He told host Alisyn Camerota that “Unlike some politicians I say what I mean and mean what I say.”
“I’m not suddenly in love with Donald Trump or a supporter of Donald Trump,” Beck said, while also saying that he’s not endorsing anyone in the race. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx was the first politician he had ever endorsed.
“I will tell you this. The secret behind Donald Trump, because I have been wrong about Donald Trump every step of the way,” said Beck. “I just didn’t think that this would work. I just didn’t think people would take him seriously.
“I thought people would have a problem with some of the things that he said,” Beck continued. “But they haven’t. And when you see that the Bernie Sanders people are now saying a quarter of them, in some polls, are saying that they will come over to Donald Trump, it’s not about Marxism, it is not about capitalism, it is not about policy, it is about destroying the system that has been lying to us on both sides for as long as I’ve lived.”
Given Beck’s mercurial nature, opposing Trump, supporting Zuckerberg, and so on, I though this facial symmetry analysis was interesting. I probably should have corrected the eyes, but the zany look struck me as funny, and it somehow seemed to capture the personae of Beck. Nevertheless, notice how Glenn only emoted the smile with one side of his face, and it was the right side.
It makes me wonder if people who fake emotions regularly, tend to be more asymmetrical in their emotional expressions. If fake smiles, as a conscious muscular contraction, use the right side of the face more, while reflexive, real smiles use both sides, it is possible someone who fake-smiled all the time would exhibit more muscular and neurological asymmetry, and thus have more asymmetrical expressive features. Such muscular and/or neurological asymmetry might even continue to manifest when smiling more naturally, since one smile muscle on one side might be strong, and the other weak.
I am not saying that is so, or even that I believe it, merely that it is an interesting hypothesis I will certainly examine as I run into two-faces in my travels.
[…] Glenn Beck Jumps On The Trump Train […]
AC, what is your analysis of Beck’s apparent change of heart? Is it purely strategic: to try to rescue his tanking ratings, or is it deeper than that?
I get the feeling that Beck’s thought processes are sufficiently different from mine that I can’t really comment knowledgably on what motivates him. It is not impossible he is not totally clear on why he does stuff himself. He might be under a lot of stress, so drunk on the dopamine of wealth he is a little detached, suffering a medical issue, a little crazy, or trying to play things tactically.
Not that I’m critical. Let this site work up to a $200 million dollar empire, put a couple of hundred employees, loyal to me, so I have to succeed at growing the site to feed them, and maybe I would get overwhelmed, begin trying to do stunts to get press and play things tactically to keep me in the game. And that is ignoring how wealth probably unbalances your amygdala, and softens you to adversity.
I get the impression the bigger you get, the more your amygdala emphasizes loss, too. If I lose half of this site, no biggie. Ten people stopped reading it. If Beck loses a half of his empire, $100-$150 million dollars evaporate from his net worth. I could see how the most balanced person would get bothered by the thought of that possibility, and bother is what I kind of see in him. A lot of what he does has a flying by the seat of his pants, and worried about it, feel.