Shock, Rationalize, Repeat

In Conversation with Asha Rangappa

Mary Trump: I had a chance recently to sit down with Asha Rangappa, a former FBI agent and senior lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. She’s also the proprietor of the excellent Substack, The Freedom Academy. We talked about a psychology experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s and what it can tell us about the total capitulation of the Republican Party. Enjoy.

Let’s start here. How are you doing?

Asha Rangappa: I’m doing okay. You and I were chatting a little bit before we got on, and this is a stressful time. This is a very anxiety producing time in a lot of different ways. I’m doing okay, though. I actually find that the series that I’m doing is super helpful because it’s focusing on empowering ourselves and understanding the moment, how we develop our own agency and muscle and resistance muscle and all of these things. To me, that is more helpful than looking at Bluesky all day.

Mary Trump: Absolutely. It’s sort of like social media has lost its ability to connect us because all the people running it have destroyed the community aspect of it. So it’s basically doom scrolling without community. That’s why I think your Substack is so important because I’m absolutely a believer in facing things head on, keeping our eyes wide open, and not lying to ourselves about how bad things are, because they are. They are really, really bad.

However, that’s not to demoralize anybody or make anybody feel like it’s hopeless. It’s so we know where we’re starting from, and we know the tools we need to stay resilient and to engage in resistance. That’s why I want to talk to you about a lot of things, but I specifically wanted to talk to you about a piece you wrote recently, just before Todd Blanche’s confirmation, which unfortunately was inevitable. It’s called “Will Todd Blanche Get Confirmed? Ask Stanley Milgram.”

I want to talk a little bit about the experiment you draw from, which was conducted by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s about people’s relationship to authority. It seemed to be the time for it because not long after that, Philip Zimbardo did his very notorious Stanford Prison Experiment. Of course, Milgram’s experiment would never get past the IRB. So if you could just tell us a little bit about the setup for the experiment, then we’ll get to why it’s relevant to what we’re dealing with right now.

Asha Rangappa: Yes. It’s a famous experiment. By the way, just a few weeks ago, I watched a movie about it called The Experimenter. It’s a good dramatization of it. Stanley Milgram, at Yale University in 1961, is looking to understand the psychology behind the defense that was given by the defendants in the Nuremberg trials, that they were just following orders.

He sets up an experiment which involves an experimenter who’s wearing basically a lab coat. The subject, that’s the person they’re actually observing, and there’s a learner. This is a confederate. This is an actor who’s in another room. The subject, who is the teacher, is told that they are conducting a memory experiment, and there are some word pairs that you give to the learner who’s in this other room. If the learner gets it wrong, you must give them a shock. There’s a big machine in front of him, a shock generator in front of the teacher, and the voltage on the shock goes up by 15 volts, starting at 15, all the way up to 450 volts.

As you get into the higher registers, it says danger, extreme shock, and then the very last one just says X, X, X. The 450 volts just says X, X, X, extreme shock or something like that. Milgram’s hypothesis was that most people would not go all the way up. The common understanding was people will stop because the learner, the confederate, the person that is working with them in this experiment, is instructed to basically say that he doesn’t want to keep going as the shock goes up.

He found the exact opposite. He found that the vast majority of people will. Sixty five percent in the original baseline study went all the way up to 450 volts. Sometimes along the way, they’d stop and they’d say, “Should we stop? This guy seems like he’s in pain.” But the experimenter, the person in the lab coat, would say:

No, you must continue. It’s absolutely essential that you continue.

They would say, “Okay,” and then they would just keep going. This is usually cited as obedience to authority. What I was also interested in was the gradual escalation piece of it, that there’s a psychological mechanism that’s happening. Every time you go up, you have to rationalize it to yourself. You have to come up with a story for why you’re choosing to ignore what your conscience is telling you and to follow the order.

The phenomenon of gradual escalation suggests that once you rationalize something, it becomes easier, not harder, to take the next one. In other words, as they’re going up, they’re actually getting more used to doing it. It’s becoming easier. I was applying that psychology to the debate that was happening around Todd Blanche.

Mary Trump: Yes. I think it’s Todd Blanche specifically, but also the Republican Party, elected Republican officials writ large. This is a question a lot of us have been asking, or a lot of us have been asked over the last decade. Why is it that Republicans continue to bend over backwards, bend the knee, kiss the ring, whatever you want to call it? Is it complicity? Is it that they’re weak? They’re afraid? They’re being blackmailed? Whatever the case may be.

I think looking at the psychology of it is really important because it isn’t just about capitulating. It’s also participating in something. You’re at Yale now, but you were in the FBI, so you understand this also from an intelligence perspective. I just want to read part of your piece. This is what you wrote:

Those who work in intelligence understand this phenomenon very well. You start with something small, a minor transgression that their susceptibility to temptation makes it easier for them to justify. Once they cross that line, you’re set. From that point, your job is just to help keep their own rationalization process going as they become increasingly compromised.

That’s really important, too, because it isn’t just about being worried about disappointing or disobeying. It’s also about getting something in return. Since I’ve been trying to figure out what was going on with Donald’s psychology, I thought of it as this series of microaggressions coupled with micro concessions. I think that gets us closer to trying to figure out what exactly is happening because this is party wide. It is systemic at this point.

I just want to know what you think about this moment and what it says about what we’re willing to accept. Are there any mitigating factors? Is there any reason to be hopeful that we can shift our perspective on these things?

Asha Rangappa: That’s a lot to unpack, and I’m not sure where to start. I think one thing that is really clear to me when I look at complicity is the idea of identity and loyalty to identity. What you have with the people who go along with this stuff increasingly is that they have their identity wrapped up in not just MAGA, but maintaining their power and their position. They don’t want to give up their role, so there’s a way in which they are rationalizing a lot because they know that they’re not willing to pay the cost of what it is.

The other thing is that you get to a point in that gradual escalation that you mentioned where it’s very hard to turn around once you’re in deep because then you have to turn around and look at everything you’ve done. To go back to the Milgram experiment, if you’ve given the 350 volt shock, are you really going to suddenly stop at 365? What’s your reason for that difference? Because then you have to say, well, then maybe all of the shocks before were wrong.

Most people don’t have the humility and emotional intelligence to be able to reckon with the damage they’ve already caused. So they have to live in that kind of situation. What was the last part of your question? How do we make sense of this?

Mary Trump: I’m sorry. I threw way too much at you because I find this stuff fascinating. One thing your piece helped crystallize for me is how many things are going on that are contributing, in a very specific way, to Donald’s ability to keep getting away with everything, that so many people continue to capitulate, to sell their souls, if you will.

One of the things about the Milgram experiment that we need to keep in mind is that the people were being pressed by authority figures to continue, but at the same time they were removed from the subject they were shocking, and yet they were also getting feedback from the subject. So they knew they were causing harm, but they were distanced from it.

I think that plays a big role here. When you couple the authority with the distance from the harm you’re causing and the very human hatred of being wrong or admitting you’re wrong, and when all of those things are being modeled by the leader, it does create a very dangerous situation.

You do speak to this a little bit, and I wanted to broaden the conversation to talk about, given that that’s the case, given that we are in this moment that seems primed to give the worst possible people power over the way a lot of us are behaving or choosing to behave or justifying our behavior, what are some mitigations? What are some ways that we can maybe find our way through?

Asha Rangappa: Yeah, I’m glad that you pointed out how the variations altered the outcome. One of the things that I was thinking of that I thought might counter the Todd Blanche confirmation, it didn’t in the end, were the Epstein victims. Because one of the things is that, again, that proximity that you’re talking about in the experiment, people who are actually harmed, when people see it, there’s an empathetic response that comes up that makes it harder to go along.

So I was hopeful that maybe the fact that I think the vast majority of people, bipartisan, cross party, feel so much empathy for these victims might sway some of these senators. It didn’t, but I think that is something that we should keep front and center because I think it does keep the humanization piece of this front and center.

It’s also why some of these spectacles that the Trump administration does, their incompetence actually is helpful to counter them. Because it’s one thing to be doing things in secret, like you’ve got some secret camp somewhere, and we have those too. But when ICE is in the street, when they’re shooting people, when people see it, it is very hard to ignore and look away and do the rationalization.

So I think part of our job has to be to make sure we keep those things front and center and not let them get hijacked by all this stuff that’s happening every day. Because the human cost of everything that’s going on is what I think will ultimately touch people and get them to see what’s going on.

The other thing, and Mary, I have to tell you, I’m telling you this, but I don’t know how easily I can practice what I preach. Because it’s really hard for people to admit that they’re wrong, we have to find a way to give people an easy off ramp from MAGA. I think people hear that and they’re like, no, people have to be accountable.

Absolutely, the architects of what’s going on are accountable, but those people are in power because people are voting for them. And we all have people in our orbits that support them. I’m sure everybody does, right? Everybody’s got some relative that they get in a screaming match at Thanksgiving with or whatever.

We have to work on doing that recruitment process that I talk about, the intelligence world. Everybody needs to recruit their own MAGA back to the good side. Operation MAGA, okay?

Mary Trump: I love that idea.

Asha Rangappa: Operation DMAGA. We need to, rather than being confrontational, do that psychological judo and help them turn around and come back to the light.

Mary Trump: I think that is something we don’t talk enough about. And part of what needs to start happening is gaming that out in a way you just suggested because we can’t just be mired in the day to day. There’s way too much going on, and if we just focus on what’s happening right now, what’s happening tomorrow, we’re going to lose sight of the overarching picture.

This is all of a piece, and we need to start turning towards, okay, what next? One, how are we going to get to these people? Because we need a lot of them. And two, then when we get leaders who actually care about the Constitution and human rights and all that sort of thing, then what?

We need to have a plan going forward. And I think we cannot succeed if we remain utterly intolerant. And I’m with you, it’s very hard. It is very hard. I guess, I don’t know if lucky is the word, but I’m in a situation where I literally have nobody in my life who is MAGA or even MAGA adjacent. So it’s really easy for me to be judgmental and black and white about it. I’m trying really hard not to be.

So I wonder what you think of this. One, I think part one of the project is convincing people who are on our side of things that they do need to, if not extend grace, at least acknowledge that the people we’re talking about have been lied to for decades by the people they keep putting back into power.

And then the second part of the project, I think, might be asking those people who continue to support Donald and fascism, not that a lot of them even know that’s what they’re doing, put the ball in their court. Instead of trying to convince them of something, say:

Hey, is it okay with you that there’s a government agency murdering Americans in our streets? And why?

So ask a series of questions that kind of puts the ball in their court and gives them a sense of agency as opposed to feeling attacked.

Asha Rangappa: Yes, yes. And it is easier said than done. Sometimes when my dad will defend Donald Trump, I just have to extricate myself from the situation. So I would recommend that Operation DMAGA not happen with a very, very close member of your family because there are also other triggering factors that are going to get in your way.

But yes, I don’t know what you would call it, Mary. Is it grace? I think, you know what they tell you in marriage, would you rather be right or happy? And I think there’s some of that, right? Social media, the way that the polarized environment is, somebody has to be right and somebody’s wrong. I think we’re right, but that doesn’t get us anywhere at this moment. It just keeps us stuck.

And so, yeah, I think there just needs to be a manual on how. It’s like we need a big kind of marriage counseling but for politics kind of paradigm or something to move past, but we can all do it in our own corner of the world.

Mary Trump: Yeah. I mean, it could be the alternative to Project 2025, right?

Asha Rangappa: Somebody said happy, that’s why I’m divorced. And I’m not laughing, I’m divorced too, but okay. Yeah, fair. Fair.

Mary Trump: But I think it does have to be a consistent project or a consistent strategy because there are a lot of the same. A lot of these situations are similar. They may be very different people, they may live in very different parts of the country, but we are dealing with these very real psychological phenomena that apply across the board to some people more than others.

There is such a thing as authoritarian personality. A lot of people who support Donald and the Republicans and the fascists have authoritarian personalities. As I said earlier, people hate being wrong. And people are also, as Milgram and others help demonstrate, and obviously as the Nazis in Germany demonstrated, easily led and easily convinced to hurt other people if they believe it’s to their benefit.

And these things happen slowly over time, so it doesn’t get us anywhere to be self righteous and judgmental, even though, as you say, we are absolutely right about this stuff.

Asha Rangappa: Yeah. You know what gives me also some hope is that there, and I don’t want to make this sound like American exceptionalism, but I do think there is a streak in our American culture that is, I guess, libertarian, kind of contrarian. It’s the same thing that rears its head when there’s a mask mandate or a lockdown, all the people who went crazy.

But I also think that there is a certain pushback when there’s anything that starts to encroach too much. And I think that’s a little thread that you can push on for people. Like you said, there is about 30 percent who love authority and obedience. But the vast majority, 70 percent, which would include people I think who think of themselves as Republicans, don’t want the government in their business and telling them what to do and all of this stuff.

And we are getting, I think, especially as it’s starting to hit their own pocketbooks with higher costs, they are, I think, more open to hearing ways that this is too much.

Mary Trump: Yeah, I think that’s right. And you said something earlier about incompetence and the increasingly obvious incompetence of the current regime. Donald’s always been incompetent, so the fact that anybody thought he wasn’t has always shocked me, but he’s had a lot of help.

And I think between that and the hypocrisy, which is becoming so glaring, and his increasing weakness, I think if those of us who really, really want to turn the ship around can be a little bit more understanding, and again, as hard as it is, and recognize that this has been something, first of all, that I think a lot of Americans are primed for because you alluded to the myth of rugged individualism, and MAGA kind of taps into that. White nationalism, Christian nationalism, this is historical. This is not new, and they have just packaged it in a way that appeals to way too many people.

People have been conditioned to a lot. Not all of them. There are some straight up Nazis out there for sure, but a lot of these people have been conditioned over time by the people they trust. So it is a long term project, but I think we just started the demagnification of America project right here.

Asha Rangappa: Yeah. And I want to say, somebody mentioned data centers are a big thing. I think there is an avenue there also. I don’t think people like these oligarchs and billionaires. That is a great place.

You know more about projection than I do in terms of having a psychology background, so you can tell me if this works, but I feel like also giving people another target to kind of vent there. I think there’s going to be a big backlash against all of these tech bros. People are not liking this, and the more that’s linked to how these people govern and what they’re doing, bringing the data centers to our backyard, the data centers are increasing our costs, by the way, all of those things can give people an off ramp, actually, because I think it’s easier to vocalize hate for Elon Musk or whoever, maybe, than for Trump.

Mary Trump: That’s a really good point because the other reason that’s important, and I know we’ve got to stop soon, is because Donald’s not the problem anymore. It’s all of the people enabling him, and we need to look beyond him because if we keep the focus on him, too many of these corrupt, anti American creeps are going to turn around and say:

Oh, it was just Donald. It wasn’t us. We’re fine. Let’s just get back to the way things were.

Asha Rangappa: And let me tell you, I had Kim Scheppele on my Substack before. She’s fantastic, and she talked about what brought down Orbán. And the one thing that people hate is corruption. The more that that’s out in the open, the crypto, the tech, all of this stuff, it is more.

What I like to remember is that when you look at these authoritarian regimes, they’re more fragile than they seem. And all of a sudden, poof, they’re gone. And you’re just like, wait. I mean, remember the Soviet Union? We were hiding under our tables because of potential nuclear fallout. Then one day, it’s all over.

Mary Trump: Orbán’s a good example of this, and it turns out that the leader of the American fascist movement is hiding in catering trucks, which is not a sign of strength, last I checked.

Asha Rangappa: No. Yeah, no. You’re referring to Trump using the journalists as a decoy as he fled Turkey.

Mary Trump: Journalists and people who work for him, just again demonstrating, who make his food.

Asha Rangappa: The people who make his food.

Mary Trump: Exactly. So I think there is a lot of hope. And again, we do ourselves no favors if we look away from the bad stuff that’s going on. But one thing that gives me hope is that we’ve got people like you doing the work day in, day out.

So in addition to your just truly phenomenal Substack, The Freedom Academy, is there anything else you want to ask people to check out?

Asha Rangappa: I mean, that is the best place to find me. I am using my Substack for the research on my book. My book is on complicity and moral courage. And Mary, I will definitely be in touch with you when that’s out. We can talk about it, but it’s a book to help us activate our moral compass.

I’m exploring a lot of the themes and research. Actually, today I had on an organizational psychologist. We talked about the Milgram experiment for an hour, basically. So please check it out there. And yeah, I will be basically flagging anything else I’m doing on the Substack.

Mary Trump: Fantastic. And that series is just so timely, so thank you for doing it. I’ve learned so much from it, and it’s amazing to see you. Everybody who joined us, thank you so much. Thanks, guys. Bye.

The conversation continues in the comments, so let us know what you think.