Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

I am best known for research I first started presenting two decades ago that predicted the rise of 'Far Right' candidates and politics under exactly the kinds of conditions we now confront. (Go here for a review). But my research goes much further than that, being a general account of the conditions under which a large proportion (around a third) of humanity, who harbor (relatively immutable) predispositions to favor 'oneness and sameness' over freedom and diversity, come to find their societies and polities intolerable, and push back with a vengeance. In essence, it is about the limits to liberal democracy. But it is written with a desire to save liberal democracy (from itself).

PURPOSE

As I noted back in 2005: "Democracy is most secure, and tolerance is maximized, when we design systems to accommodate how people actually are. Because some people will never live comfortably in a modern liberal democracy" (The Authoritarian Dynamic, p. 335).

My research on authoritarianism and 'Far Right' politics uses psychological theories and methods (in particular, Randomized Controlled Trials) to explain human behavior. These days, I also use those same theories and methods (particularly RCTs) to shift human behavior... via more effective communications and campaigns (of every kind), including designing and embedding messages that de-activate authoritarianism and diminish expressions of intolerance and racism in a society.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Can It Happen Here?, a new collection of essays that ask whether America is susceptible to creeping authoritarianism, includes a startling assertion by psychologists Karen Stenner and Jonathan Haidt.

"Western liberal democracies," they write, "have now exceeded many people's capacity to tolerate them."

Their analysis of a survey conducted at the end of 2016 found "about a third of white responders across 29 liberal democracies proved to be authoritarian to some degree." That large chunk of the population is predisposed to support authoritarian leaders in times of real or perceived threat.

In their research-driven essay "Authoritarianism Is Not a Momentary Madness," they offer a compelling clarification as to how Donald Trump holds onto the support of 30 to 40 percent of Americans, even as he displays authoritarian tendencies. Furthermore, their findings help explain our increasing political polarization.

"The things that multiculturalists believe will help people appreciate and thrive in democracy—appreciating difference, talking about difference, displaying and applauding difference—are the very conditions that encourage authoritarians not to heights of tolerance, but to their intolerant extremes," they write.

Stenner is an Australian political psychologist and behavioral economist. A former faculty member at Princeton and Duke universities, she is director of Insight-Analytics, and one of the world's foremost researchers on the psychology of authoritarianism. She explained the reasons for its recent rise in an email exchange.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, on Tuesday tweaked the poem etched on the Statue of Liberty to defend the Trump administration's new policy that could force immigrants to decide between accepting public services or accepting a green card.

Cuccinelli cited part of Emma Lazarus's famous poem, changing the language to argue that the U.S. wants immigrants who can "stand on their own two feet" and be "self-sufficient."

"Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge," Cuccinelli said on NPR's "Morning Edition" when asked if Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus," was part of the American ethos.