Understanding polls and right wing authoritarians can be a puzzling endeavor. Why do Americans follow and believe a man who would have nothing to do with them in life? Why do Americans vote for politicians and policies that do not help the majority of Americans? Why do they still believe trickle down works after its repeated failures? Why do veterans buy into the dialogue of a man and a party that the supports the military industrial complex but not them? Why do religious Americans support a man who lies and cheats on his taxes on his wives and on his workers? And why do Americans attend rallies in which lies, exaggeration, and disinformation dominates? Hard questions.
"American voters, by and large, have no actual opinions about tariffs, Brexit, Russia, NATO, Putin, the rule of law, the balance of powers, the Constitution, or indeed about democracy. Most voters could not find Russia on an unlabeled world map and haven’t a clue what the letters NATO stand for, let alone what it is and does. They have plenty of opinions about their jobs, their families, their neighborhoods, their churches, their health insurance, and the successes and failures of their favorite sports teams, opinions that are, epistemologically speaking, factually well-grounded. But opinions about NATO, tariffs, Brexit, and Putin are, like tastes in soft drinks, coffees, movies, and clothing, status markers in our society, markers that are quite well understood by everyone. The support for Trump is, I am convinced, an expression of racial and status anxiety in a society in which a minority of adults get a huge majority of the rewards, all the while congratulating themselves publicly on having earned them, thereby telling the majority not only that they are screwed but that they deserve to be screwed and have only their own inferiority to blame. All of those condemning Trump on television, without exception, are, and can easily be seen to be, members of that privileged self-congratulatory minority. The pollsters may have thought they were asking, “Do you approve of Trump’s handling of Russia?” but everyone being polled heard “Are you with the privileged few or with the great unwashed?” Well, for a long time, they would try to suck up by answering “No” but now they offer the polltaker’s version of the middle finger and say “Yes.”"
http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2018/07/polls.html
"Bob Altemeyer, conveniently popularized [authoritarians] in his own little book 'The Authoritarians'"
1) a high degree of submission to these established leaders in their societies,
2) high levels of aggression in the name of those authorities
3) a high level of conventionalism.
"That’s on page 8 of Altemeyer’s book. But what is really interesting is what emerges later. Once they accept somebody as a leader, these authoritarian types are strongly inclined to give those leaders a free pass when they violate the conventions to which they are otherwise aggressively attached. Furthermore they have a strong tendency to compartmentalized thinking and to what Orwell called ‘doublethink’. They are unusually good at maintaining mutually inconsistent beliefs., and are relatively unworried by cognitive dissonance. Thus their ideologies are relatively immune to criticism or revision because they are highly tolerant of inconsistency. So once they have accepted Trump as their savior they will continue to approve even as he conspicuously violates the codes that they would otherwise zealously enforce. In particular they will be a lot less worried than consistency-freaks and truth-freaks (to adapt Feyerabend’s terminology) by Trump’s frequent lies and self-contradictions. It’s only if you are not very good at compartmentalizing your thinking that it bothers you if the President says X on Day I and not-X on Day 2. Trump supporters are not like that. Furthermore, although these right-wing authoritarians are precisely the kind of people who would be appalled by another President’s cozying up to Russia, if their guy does it automatically becomes OK."
https://theauthoritarians.org/
https://theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/
"What is patriotism? Let us begin with what patriotism is not. It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes and their families. It is not patriotic to discriminate against active-duty members of the armed forces in one's companies, or to campaign to keep disabled veterans away from one's property. It is not patriotic to compare one's search for sexual partners in New York with the military service in Vietnam that one has dodged. It is not patriotic to avoid paying taxes, especially when American working families do pay. It is not patriotic to ask those working, taxpaying American families to finance one's own presidential campaign, and then to spend their contributions in one's own companies. It is not patriotic to admire foreign dictators. It is not patriotic to cultivate a relationship with Muammar Gaddafi; or to say that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders. It is not patriotic to call upon Russia to intervene in an American presidential election. It is not patriotic to cite Russian propaganda at rallies." Timothy Snyder https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33917107-on-tyranny
Footnote: 'What does a respondent's answer to a public opinion interviewer really mean?' Article noted in essay above. "The Meaning of Opinion," by David Riesman and Nathan Glazer, Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 12, No. 4 [Winter 1948-49], pp. 633-648. Read it! It is so far superior to anything written by sociologists and public opinion pollsters today as to take one's breath away.'
"American voters, by and large, have no actual opinions about tariffs, Brexit, Russia, NATO, Putin, the rule of law, the balance of powers, the Constitution, or indeed about democracy. Most voters could not find Russia on an unlabeled world map and haven’t a clue what the letters NATO stand for, let alone what it is and does. They have plenty of opinions about their jobs, their families, their neighborhoods, their churches, their health insurance, and the successes and failures of their favorite sports teams, opinions that are, epistemologically speaking, factually well-grounded. But opinions about NATO, tariffs, Brexit, and Putin are, like tastes in soft drinks, coffees, movies, and clothing, status markers in our society, markers that are quite well understood by everyone. The support for Trump is, I am convinced, an expression of racial and status anxiety in a society in which a minority of adults get a huge majority of the rewards, all the while congratulating themselves publicly on having earned them, thereby telling the majority not only that they are screwed but that they deserve to be screwed and have only their own inferiority to blame. All of those condemning Trump on television, without exception, are, and can easily be seen to be, members of that privileged self-congratulatory minority. The pollsters may have thought they were asking, “Do you approve of Trump’s handling of Russia?” but everyone being polled heard “Are you with the privileged few or with the great unwashed?” Well, for a long time, they would try to suck up by answering “No” but now they offer the polltaker’s version of the middle finger and say “Yes.”"
http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2018/07/polls.html
"Bob Altemeyer, conveniently popularized [authoritarians] in his own little book 'The Authoritarians'"
1) a high degree of submission to these established leaders in their societies,
2) high levels of aggression in the name of those authorities
3) a high level of conventionalism.
"That’s on page 8 of Altemeyer’s book. But what is really interesting is what emerges later. Once they accept somebody as a leader, these authoritarian types are strongly inclined to give those leaders a free pass when they violate the conventions to which they are otherwise aggressively attached. Furthermore they have a strong tendency to compartmentalized thinking and to what Orwell called ‘doublethink’. They are unusually good at maintaining mutually inconsistent beliefs., and are relatively unworried by cognitive dissonance. Thus their ideologies are relatively immune to criticism or revision because they are highly tolerant of inconsistency. So once they have accepted Trump as their savior they will continue to approve even as he conspicuously violates the codes that they would otherwise zealously enforce. In particular they will be a lot less worried than consistency-freaks and truth-freaks (to adapt Feyerabend’s terminology) by Trump’s frequent lies and self-contradictions. It’s only if you are not very good at compartmentalizing your thinking that it bothers you if the President says X on Day I and not-X on Day 2. Trump supporters are not like that. Furthermore, although these right-wing authoritarians are precisely the kind of people who would be appalled by another President’s cozying up to Russia, if their guy does it automatically becomes OK."
https://theauthoritarians.org/
https://theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/
"What is patriotism? Let us begin with what patriotism is not. It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes and their families. It is not patriotic to discriminate against active-duty members of the armed forces in one's companies, or to campaign to keep disabled veterans away from one's property. It is not patriotic to compare one's search for sexual partners in New York with the military service in Vietnam that one has dodged. It is not patriotic to avoid paying taxes, especially when American working families do pay. It is not patriotic to ask those working, taxpaying American families to finance one's own presidential campaign, and then to spend their contributions in one's own companies. It is not patriotic to admire foreign dictators. It is not patriotic to cultivate a relationship with Muammar Gaddafi; or to say that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders. It is not patriotic to call upon Russia to intervene in an American presidential election. It is not patriotic to cite Russian propaganda at rallies." Timothy Snyder https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33917107-on-tyranny
Footnote: 'What does a respondent's answer to a public opinion interviewer really mean?' Article noted in essay above. "The Meaning of Opinion," by David Riesman and Nathan Glazer, Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 12, No. 4 [Winter 1948-49], pp. 633-648. Read it! It is so far superior to anything written by sociologists and public opinion pollsters today as to take one's breath away.'
