“No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity.”
Thomas Jefferson
On June 16, 2015 self-proclaimed billionaire and reality-television star Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States. The immediate reaction was, this is a joke, and he is not a serious candidate. Political analysts and all of the media predicted that he would be out of the race by the end of summer. Virtually everyone just sat back waiting for his latest outrageous but entertaining statement. Any one of his following statements would have ended the candidacy of any one of the previous presidential hopefuls in American history:
1. “He [John McCain] was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured.”
2. “You have to take out their [terrorists] families.”
3. “I am going to bomb the shit out of them [ISIS].”
4. “We are going to have a deportation force.”
5. “I would bring back water-boarding and I would bring back a hell of lot worse than water-boarding.”
6. “I want surveillance of certain Mosques.”
7. “I love the old days. Do you know what they used to do with guys like that [a protestor]? They would be carried out on a stretcher folks.”
8. “There has to be some form of punishment for women who have abortions.”
The more outlandish, crude, or extreme Trump’s statements the greater his support became as measured by the polls and primary election returns. Buckets of ink, hours of pundits pontificating, and thousand of blogs have attempted to answer the question, “Who are the Trump supporters?” A December 2016 Washington Post analysis found that Trump's support was skewed to white uneducated males, especially those with lower incomes. His support is 47 percent among men vs. 28 percent among women. Fifty percent of Trump’s supporters make less than $50,000. Education level is the hallmark of Trump supporters with the absence of a college degree being the single-best predictor of a Trump supporter. An analysis of Trump's win in New Hampshire indicated that for every one percentage-point increase in the number of college graduates over the age of 25, Donald Trump's share of votes fell by 0.65 percentage points. In summary the profile of a Trump supporter is an uneducated lower-income male.
Political scientists Jonathan D. Weiler and Marc J. Hetherington presented another compelling possibility in their 2009 book, Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics. They defined authoritarianism as a worldview that values order and authority and distrust outsiders and social change. People scoring high on the authoritarianism scale seek strongman leaders who are punitive, target out groups, and have simple and forceful leadership styles. This is especially true when they feel threatened. Prior to the 1964 civil rights legislation authoritarianism was equally distributed between the Democrat and Republican Parties. However, the rise of Trump coincides with the Republican Party becoming the party favored by authoritarians. Weiler and Hetherington measured people’s authoritarianism by ascertaining their answer to three questions:
1. Are you freaked out by social change?
2. Do racial differences unsettle you?
3. Do you support strongman leaders?
They realized that these questions were far too direct to elicit honest answers, so they devised four questions disguised as “Child-rearing values.” Subjects were asked, “Which one of the following pairs of values do you think is more important for a child to have?”
Independence or Respect for elders
Obedience or Self reliance
Curiosity or Good manners
Considerate or Well-behaved
The authoritarians answered “Respect for elders, Obedience, Good manners, and Well-behaved” as the most important qualities for a child to have. They then surveyed Trump and non-Trump supporters, and found that Trump supporters were strongly correlated with high scores on the authoritarian assessment test. In light of Weiler and Hetherington’s findings Trump’s “crazy” statements all of a sudden make sense. For example, his statements: “You have to take out their families” and “I am going to bomb the shit out of them” both appeal to people who prefer simple solutions and a strong leadership style. His statements We are going to have a deportation force and I want surveillance of certain Mosques appeals to the authoritarian’s distrust of out-groups such as immigrants and Muslims.
Unlike presidential elections in the past the Republican primaries indicate that the voters were not moved by ideology. Trump has not exhibited an identifiable political philosophy. His theme is “Make America Great Again” followed by a number of dubious claims like “building the wall,” “deporting illegals,” and “bringing the jobs back from overseas.” In November 2016 voters will have to decide who has the experience and temperament to be president. To date Trump has campaigned as a grandiose narcissistic bully, and opportunist. Einstein once said, “Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time.” Donald Trump has surely exceeded the threshold of "from time to time."
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