Best Trump Synopsis Yet: Welcome to the age of Trump

[kpete]

Welcome to the age of Trump | Jonathan Freedland
Whether he wins the US presidency or not, his rise reveals a growing attraction to political demagogues – and points to a wider crisis of democracy


It was the night the American media were too demure to call Pussygate. At the time, Donald Trump had won nothing. Twenty-four hours later, he would be celebrating his first victory in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, setting him on the path to face Hillary Clinton in November. But on this frigid Monday night in February, while a blizzard whipped outside, Trump stood before a packed Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, New Hampshire and prepared to unleash his tongue.

After a rambling monologue that moved from his TV career to the happy, sunny world that would follow his elevation to the White House, Trump came to another of his pet themes: the inadequacies of his rivals. He was attacking the Texas senator Ted Cruz for being insufficiently enthusiastic about the torture technique of waterboarding when a woman in the standing area directly in front of the stage, a kind of Trumpian moshpit, called out, “He’s a pussy!” Trump pretended to look appalled, even walking away from the lectern in faux disgust, before finally, as if under pressure, repeating the insult for the benefit of the cameras that might not have caught it. “She said, ‘He’s a pussy.’ That’s terrible … Ma’am, you’re reprimanded,” he told the heckler, in the manner of a lax teacher going through the disciplinary motions.

And thus Trump secured his dominance over yet another news cycle – as the talkshows, cable TV and his fellow candidates all debated his lapse into vulgarity. As he has been throughout this campaign, starting in July of last year, Trump was the star of the show.

At the same time, he sent a powerful signal. It’s the same one he transmits every time he denounces “political correctness” or violates one of its supposed strictures: mocking the disabled, judging women by their looks, bragging about his fortune, insisting that, when he is in charge, shop workers will go back to saying “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays”. The message every time is the same. It says: I’m outside the system. I don’t obey its rules. I’m different.

Why is this so effective? How have these outbursts – which were at first assumed to be terminal to his candidacy – instead garnered him endless media attention and, more important, millions of votes?

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Long, accurate, sad, enligtening, etc:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/19/welcome-to-the-age-of-trump

[bemildred]

1. Spot on. nt

[Arazi]

2. Kicked and recced!! Must read

World Values Survey of 2011 included a stunning figure. It found that 34% of Americans approved of “having a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections”, the figure rising to 42% among those with no education beyond high school. It’s worth reading that again, to let it sink in. It means that one in three US voters would prefer a dictator to democracy. Those Americans are not repudiating this or that government, but abandoning the very idea of democracy itself.

These figures reinforce a pattern revealed by recent academic research that shows a body of US opinion predisposed toward liberal democracy’s polar opposite: authoritarianism.

Usually that sentiment lies dormant. Understandably, voters are reluctant to admit to such feelings openly. When asked, they intuitively know that to admit to authoritarian leanings is to give the wrong answer. Political scientist Stanley Feldman found that the easiest way to break through that barrier was to ask four questions apparently not about politics but about raising children. Which is more important for a child to have: independence or respect for elders? Obedience or self-reliance? A tendency to be considerate or well-behaved? Curiosity or good manners? How you answer those four questions reveals all researchers need to know about how highly you prize conformity and order over other values.

Strikingly, the research revealed some 44% of white Americans presenting as authoritarian, with 19% registering “very high” on the authoritarian scale. And those feelings are not new: they have been picked up by surveys since Feldman first started asking those questions in the 1990s. Mostly, these “authoritarian” sentiments remain snoozing below the surface. But scholars find they become “activated” when authoritarian-leaning voters are under stress, especially when the social order or hierarchy that they value is threatened by change. That change could be a shift to greater ethnic diversity, it could be same-sex marriage, it could be stagnant wages – anything that seems to endanger the status quo that once offered those voters a secure place in society.

Besides, researchers found, when that threat is combined with a perceived external or physical menace – such as Isis – not only do the feelings of authoritarians become even more activated, those who ordinarily would give non-authoritarian answers to the four child-raising questions can shift, out of fear, towards the authoritarian camp. In the words of Vox’s Amanda Taub, these insights combine to suggest “one terrifying theory: if social change and physical threats coincided at the same time, it could awaken a potentially enormous population of American authoritarians, who would demand a strongman leader and the extreme policies necessary, in their view, to meet the rising threats.” Which sounds a lot like Trump. Indeed, polling shows that the best single predictor for support for Trump is authoritarianism. If you tick the authoritarian box, you’re likely to be for the Donald.

[pampango]

3. Trump "gives his base a sense of self-respect, authority, and the possibility of power."

There are at least tens of millions of conservatives in America who share strict father morality and its moral hierarchy. Many of them are poor or middle class and many are white men who see themselves as superior to immigrants, non-whites, women, non-Christians, gays — and people who rely on public assistance. In other words, they are what liberals would call “bigots.” For many years, such bigotry has not been publicly acceptable, especially as more immigrants have arrived, as the country has become less white, as more women have become educated and moved into the workplace, and as gays have become more visible and gay marriage acceptable. As liberal anti-bigotry organizations have loudly pointed out and made a public issue of the un-American nature of such bigotry, those conservatives have felt more and more oppressed by what they call “political correctness” — public pressure against their views and against what they see as “free speech.” This has become exaggerated since 911, when anti-Muslim feelings became strong. The election of President Barack Hussein Obama created outrage among those conservatives, and they refused to see him as a legitimate American (as in the birther movement), much less as a legitimate authority, especially as his liberal views contradicted almost everything else they believe as conservatives.

Donald Trump expresses out loud everything they feel — with force, aggression, anger, and no shame. All they have to do is support and vote for Trump and they don’t even have to express their ‘politically incorrect’ views, since he does it for them and his victories make those views respectable. He is their champion. He gives them a sense of self-respect, authority, and the possibility of power. Whenever you hear the words “political correctness” remember this.

http://yonside.com/why-is-trump-winning

[Tommy_Carcetti]

4. The part that stood out most to me:

The World Values Survey of 2011 included a stunning figure. It found that 34% of Americans approved of “having a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections”, the figure rising to 42% among those with no education beyond high school. It’s worth reading that again, to let it sink in. It means that one in three US voters would prefer a dictator to democracy. Those Americans are not repudiating this or that government, but abandoning the very idea of democracy itself.

These figures reinforce a pattern revealed by recent academic research that shows a body of US opinion predisposed toward liberal democracy’s polar opposite: authoritarianism.

What has always scared me most about Trump, even more than any of his other Republican rivals, is that he's lived the authoritarian mindset all his life. Fortunately, up to this point it's been in the private sector and usually the only victims have been his own companies or ventures he's involved himself with, but it never ends well. And now he's taking it public.

The marriage of authoritarians and the NPD ego driven Trump is way stronger than any of Trump's three and counting marriages will ever be.

And that's what terrifies me about this man.