By Eli Sopow, University Canada West, The Conversation
Never mind concerns about how the United States seems on the brink of another civil war. Thanks to President Donald Trump and his consigliere, Elon Musk, it’s now sinking wide and deep into what historical patterns show is an ugly “uncivil” war.
Historians and neuro-scientists show there are well-established psychological patterns that explain how personal fear fosters anger that leads to a need for action to eliminate the fear.
This dynamic has been evident in much of my 40 years of experience and research on public protests, including my doctorate on public order policing and subsequent ongoing analysis.
Google Trends offers a scientifically valid rating of global search engine topics rated on a weighted scale of 100. In the U.S. on March 10, 2025, for example, the search topic “I am so angry all the time” hit the top of the 100 index, the highest in more than 20 years.
The widespread public reaction to staffing cuts under Musk’s direction is receiving high domestic and international blowback from not only natural political critics, but Trump’s own Republicans. The reaction follows that tried-and-true trajectory of public dissent and protest escalating from fear to anger to action.
This is evident in the reactions currently ranging from street-level public protests, a litany of court challenges and online outrage to U.S. government departments refusing to respond to the latest missive from Musk’s team demanding employees prove their worth or quit.
Mad as hell?
In the powerful 1976 movie Network, actor Peter Finch — playing a volcanic TV newscaster — goes berserk, rises from his desk and yells, “I’m a human being, goddamn it! My life has value … I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” In response, thousands go to their windows and scream his rallying cry.
In perhaps a similar vein, leaders at the Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy recently instructed federal workers not to reply to a weekend email from the Office of Personnel Management with the subject line: “What did you do last week?”
The fear-anger-action dynamic is now unfolding in America.
Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah told CBS news:
“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s ‘Please put a dose of compassion in this. These are real people. These are real lives …. It’s a false narrative to say we have to cut, and you have to be cruel to do it, as well. We can do both.”
The response from Musk and Trump to the outrage follows a proven pattern of action and anti-action my colleagues and I have termed the “4-D defense” of deny, divert, delay and destroy. We discovered this pattern through many years of research on public activism for both industry and government agencies, and it was the focus of my PhD dissertation.
We analyzed the content of thousands of traditional news stories, public opinion surveys and the socio-demographics of fearful groups that were angry they were being impacted by actions that were unfair, unlawful, dangerous and arbitrary.
We found that the defensive 4-D reaction works like this:
- First deny there’s a problem.
- When proven true, then divert the cause to someone else.
- When proven you’re the cause, agree to remedies but delay the process as long as possible through promises and endless consultations.
- When this is unacceptable, then destroy those protesting by besmirching their credibility and reputations with erroneous and confusing counter-facts and entangled lawsuits.
Trump prefers the ‘destroy’ part
Trump is quick to jump to the “destroy” part of 4-D defense through threats that have included bullying and crushing tariffs.
Another example of this Trump tendency was a recent heated Truth Social post in which he vowed to “imprison or deport students who participate in certain protests” against his attacks on education.
Musk responded on his social media site, X, that reactions by frightened and angry employees to arbitrary firings was “EXTREMELY troubling that some parts of government think this is TOO MUCH!! What is wrong with them?”
Musk appears to be embracing the 1911 “scientific management” style of Frederick Taylor, an American inventor and engineer who is known as the father of scientific management. He argued that the “greatest evil” in the workplace was lazy employees who were simply “replaceable cogs on a wheel.”
When Musk asks “what is wrong with them?” in reference to the fear, anger and demands for protective action from hundreds of thousands of federal employees, he should perhaps watch Network.
It seems they’re “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.”
Eli Sopow, Associate Professor, MBA Faculty of Leadership & People Management, University Canada West
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
