A question I ask myself all the damn time is this:
“Where did all the rebels go?”
While I certainly know some people who remain rebels today, I have watched the people of my generation slowly but relentlessly conform to conventional expectations and traditional beliefs that were once viewed as heretical and awful.
How did so many people stop fighting and fall into line with so many others, willing to follow a monster with a desire for authoritarian power?
Recent research, presented in Scientific American, offers an interesting answer:
When people view the world as a dangerous and threatening place, they inherently search for ways to regain control. Placing trust in a strong man or dictator and becoming an authoritarian follower is one way to reestablish a sense of control.
Research has shown that authoritarian followers share three key tendencies:
- They obey authority figures from their in-group (called authoritarian submission)
- They punish rule breakers (authoritarian aggression)
- They rigidly endorse long-held traditions (conventionalism).
Findings in this Scientific American study and others reveal that authoritarian followers express a range of anti-democratic attitudes, including anti-gay prejudice, anti-immigrant attitudes, generalized prejudice, nationalism, and the belief in conspiracies.
Crucially, the social, economic, and physical environment also matters. Low levels of openness to experience, coupled with an insecure and threatening environment, lead people to chronically view the world as a dangerous and threatening place, even when recent FBI data indicates that crime has been at its lowest levels since the 1960s in all ten categories that they measure.
Reality is irrelevant if you’re afraid or have been made to feel afraid, as so many Americans are today.
When we think that the world is unstable and unsafe, we search for ways to regain control.
Unfortunately for our democratic institutions, placing trust in a dictator and becoming an authoritarian follower is one way to reestablish a sense of control.
In other words:
It’s nice to know that Daddy is in control. Rather than allowing for nuance, long-term planning, investment in institutions, disagreement, and discourse, frightened people want to sit in the backseat of the car, stare at their phones, and let someone else with a big stick take the wheel.
Maybe they’re afraid of their precarious economic position in life.
Maybe they’re afraid of brown people who don’t look or sound like them.
Maybe they’re afraid of their sons or daughters outing themselves as gay or bisexual or transgender.
Maybe they’re afraid that enemies of our country, foreign and domestic, will commit acts of terrorism on our soil and kill their loved ones.
Either way, they are afraid. Maybe some of their fear is justified, but mostly, it’s born from bigotry, inadequacy, ignorance, and an attachment to conventionalism, tradition, and the past.
Wondering why Uncle Bill supports Donald Trump?
He’s probably frightened. He won’t admit it, but that’s because acknowledging fear requires courage, and remember, he’s frightened. He can’t say how he really feels because he’s a scaredy-cat.
Wondering why your brother-in-law spouts MAGA talking points at Thanksgiving?
First, he’s a selfish dumbass for bringing up politics on a holiday, but he’s probably also afraid. Afraid that a Mexican family might move in next door or his son might decide that he’d be happier if he dressed in women’s clothing. Maybe he’s terrified that his daughter might become a militant vegan who covers her roof with solar panels because that doesn’t make sense to him.
None of this understanding makes Americans who freely support an authoritarian any better, but at least it brings context to a confusing reality.
These MAGA-loving, authoritarian-seeking Americans are still numbskulls, and I still think they’re ignorant of basic facts and irrefutable data, but I can at least feel empathy for them because they are small, frightened, little people inside, speaking loudly, stupidly, and hatefully to hide their fear.
They may act tough, but it’s only because they are frightened souls who want Daddy to take charge.
It’s pathetic, but at least it’s a little more understandable.
