Locrian (1000+ posts) Wed Mar-31-10 03:50 PM
Original message
"The Authoritarians" required reading to understand the teabaggers
Edited on Wed Mar-31-10 03:51 PM by Locrian
Teabaggers have a psychological makeup, and it's pretty scary. Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians free pdf is an important piece of work in understand what is happening, and what type of a person a TeaBagger is. Or a Michigan Militia member.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey /
Don’t think for a minute this doesn’t concern you personally. Let me ask you, as we’re passing the time here, how many ordinary people do you think an evil authority would have to order to kill you before he found someone who would, unjustly, out of sheer obedience, just because the authority said to? What sort of person is most likely to follow such an order? What kind of official is most likely to give that order, if it suited his purposes? Look at what experiments tell us, as I did.
If, on the other hand, you’re way ahead of me, and believe the extreme right-wing elements in America are still working to take over the country despite the recent election--nay because of it--I think you can still get a lot from this book. The authoritarians aren’t going away.
The studies explain so much about these people. Yes, the research shows they are very aggressive, but why are they so hostile? Yes, experiments show they are almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence, but why are they so dogmatic? Yes, studies show the Religious Right has more than its fair share of hypocrites, from top to bottom; but why are they two-faced, and how come one face never notices the other? Yes, their leaders can give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong, but why do the rank-and-file believe them? What happens when authoritarian followers find the authoritarian leaders they crave and start marching together?
tom_paine (1000+ posts) Wed Mar-31-10 03:52 PM
Response to Original message
1. More than justthe Teabaggers. The Rushpublics who fund them have been formenting a RW Authoritarian
mentality in this country for at least 30 years.
It's only getting obvious now. And remember, the Teabaggers aren't independant at all, but part and parcel of the Republic Party.
"Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder"
--Tom Paine
Paine also believed in 100% taxation for income over the modern equivalent of 4.7 million dollars ("Notes on Taxation") SOCIALIST!
RKP5637 (1000+ posts) Wed Mar-31-10 03:54 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. +1000, n/t
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8059527Let me see if I get this straight:
Liberals want centralized government control of schools, healthcare, income distribution, energy production and consumption, automakers, salt and transfat intakes, light bulbs, TV news, talk radio, political speech, public lands, industry profits, tuition payments, home loans, air, water and land management, pensions, the insurance industry, the stock market...
...but conservatives--who just want to be free of the aforementioned intrusions--are supposed to be the authoritarians?
Am I missing something?
I know you lurkers don't have the sack to answer this one.
