Intro to the Reality of Politics
Part 1. Authoritarians
I first heard of the notion of authoritarians by coincidence. Sure, I’d heard the word before and even used it in conversation (usually in reference to a type of government), but never with the meaning this article will discuss. While flipping through the channels late one night, reluctant to go to bed, I happened on the repeat of the earlier episode of Olberman on MSNBC, and, before I could change the channel, heard someone discussing something that instantly galvanized me. It was John Dean, a somewhat notorious figure from the Nixon White House era who has redeemed himself admirably, and he was talking about the work of a psychologist in Canada by the name of Bob Altemeyer. Mr. Dean had written a book he was promoting on the show called Conservatives Without Conscience in which he reviewed Dr. Altemeyer’s extensive research into a behavior pattern referred to as authoritarians or, more precisely, right wing authoritarians (RWAs), and using that research to analyze the behavior of the American populace and, more specifically, certain political leaders in the U.S. (it is an EXCELLENT book – highly recommended).
I was very religious at that time and also very well informed about American politics, especially in a real world sense (I’d recently read American Fascists by Chris Hedges), and it sounded like Mr. Dean had found the pieces of the puzzle I had been missing. I could not understand things like why poor people would vote again and again for politicians who clearly favored the rich in all their policies, and why Christians would also do the same. They were obviously all manipulated in some way, and Dr. Altemeyer (and others he cited) had begun to figure it all out.
I bought Mr. Dean’s book soon after and read it a bit later. To me, it explained everything about American politics and, really, the history of civilization; why the world is the way it is today despite the wise teachings of Jesus, Buddha, and most other founding religious leaders about how to get along and make the world a better place for ourselves and everyone else. I later read Dr. Altemeyer’s book, The Authoritarians, online for free, and I again felt the scales fall from my eyes. His research, spelled out in humble (and often humorous) prose that could be read in a day, made perfect sense, and he crucially mentioned something I either missed while reading Mr. Dean’s book or that Mr. Dean glossed over (I will clarify that later). I immediately ordered nine copies of the book and sent it to friends and family I thought would find it instructive. It was a gift met with a collective yawn (for the most part – one reader really liked it). I had not anticipated they might just read parts and especially would focus on his discussions of religious belief. It turns out authoritarians don’t like to read about the qualities of authoritarians, and religious people don’t like problems with the fundamental principles of their beliefs, especially the belief in the inerrancy of scripture, brought into clear view. When I started to think about blogging, this was high on my list (along with criticism of football) of things I wanted to write about, but when it came time to write it, I couldn’t find anyone who still had the book! My key political and social reference was cast aside without blinking by many of the people I’d sent it to. Fortunately, as I was planning to finally go back and read the online book, a good friend found it and brought it by.
So, who are Authoritarians in the sense used by Dr. Altemeyer and others in the Psychology field, and why should you care about them? Allow me to list a few of the accomplishments of authoritarians over the years: 1. Built and maintained the institution of slavery in the U.S. and started the Civil War; 2. Conceived of and carried out the Holocaust; 3. Beat the civil rights activists on the bridge in Selma; 4. Executed Jesus of Nazareth; 5. Drove the Native Americans from their lands; 6. Caused WW1 and WW2; 7. Run Al Qaeda, ISIS, and every other violent religious movement; 7. Burned Joan of Arc at the stake; 8. Continue to encourage settlements in the West Bank in Israel; 9. Covered up the massive amount of sexual abuse carried out by priests and religious leaders of the Catholic Church. That is just the tip of the iceberg for authoritarians. You might already be thinking, well, some of those things were done by psychopaths and people who were just plain evil. While that is possibly true, psychopaths and evil people can be authoritarians and vice versa.
There are a group of behaviors and tendencies that are usually found in authoritarians, specifically authoritarian followers (we will talk about the leaders later). The following are personality characteristics that can be seen in both left and right wing authoritarians: 1. A high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society; 2. High levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; 3. A high level of conventionalism. As Dr. Altemeyer points out, in North America, the people who possess these qualities most often are political conservatives, but people like strict vegans or members of organizations like PETA may, within their groups, be authoritarian followers (it is also easy to find authoritarian behaviors in supporters of communist or socialist governments, which would be considered left wing). The majority of the authoritarian followers, however, are politically conservative, and they cause the most trouble. There is a scale, called the RWA scale, that is a well-tested and verified measure of authoritarian personality traits. Scores can vary from 20 to 180, and the higher the score the more authoritarian someone is. I got a 67, but I knew what I was up against. Average is about 90.
Dr. Altemeyer explains the submission in #1 above generally as “Daddy and Mommy are always right.” Submissive authoritarians will tolerate things like NSA surveillance, electioneering dirty tricks (in favor of their side), the malfeasance of police officers, and torture, and they are very reluctant to punish their authority figures when they do wrong (while being excessively punitive of those not in positions of authority). Their aggression tends to occur when they think, “right and might are on their side.” The right comes as orders or suggestions from their established authority, and the might comes from an overwhelming sense of strength on their side. They tend to attack women and children, for example, or when they strongly outnumber someone, such as in a lynching, or for a bigger example, the Rwandan genocide. Conventionalism refers to authoritarians believing EVERYONE should believe as they believe and behave as they behave. Remind you of anyone you know or have read about?
What are the other defining tendencies and behaviors of right wing authoritarians? They are more likely to blame the victim of misfortunes, are more prejudiced compared to other people, are more likely to carry out orders to bully or threaten (and kill), are more fearful of others (especially those that are different, i.e. homosexuals, foreigners, other races), think they are a lot better than other people (very self-righteous), and they tend to keep with their own kind. One of the absolute keys, though, and I indicated I would discuss this earlier, is authoritarians often display impaired thinking. This does not mean they are stupid; many of them are actually quite intelligent, able to memorize piles of information and regurgitate it well, and crunch numbers like crazy, but they tend not to think logically and have trouble telling whether evidence actually proves something or not, jumping to conclusions that support their beliefs whenever possible. Their minds tend to be organized differently, being more compartmentalized, allowing them to have no problems with supporting conflicting ideas, double standards, and hypocrisy, and they seem to be less aware of their own flaws (back to self-righteousness). Finally (for this section), they are highly dogmatic – unchangeable, with unjustified certainty. You can then see how problematic authoritarians can be, drawing incorrect conclusions and then sticking with them no matter what. Again, remind you of anyone?
Let us now discuss authoritarian leaders. Altemeyer and others classify the people who tend to lead authoritarians as social dominators. They are authoritarian, but in a different sense. Social dominators have a very large desire for power (in contrast to most RWAs). They tend to be intimidating, ruthless and vengeful, scorning such acts as helping others, being kind, charitable and forgiving. Social dominators have very little empathy, don’t care much for religion, and they don’t feel it is wrong for them to lie and manipulate others. Their aggression and their hostility come from a different place than RWAs: they like to dominate, and all they really care about is themselves. Their thinking differs from RWAs as well. They do not have issues with compartmentalizing or keeping their facts straight. It is often hard to tell what they are thinking, though, as they are willing to say or do anything to get ahead. Their hypocrisy comes from another place: they are fully aware of it and don’t care (RWAs are not aware of their flaws in this regard, as I wrote earlier). One of the most dramatic qualities of a social dominator is their disregard for equality. They don’t care at all about it. It is very scary to realize this, as they are very similar to the common definition of psychopaths. But there is even worse news.
There is a small area of overlap between high scoring RWAs and high scoring social dominators, people Dr. Altemeyer calls “Double Highs.” Fortunately there are not many overall, but they tend to try to find their ways to the highest echelons of power in business and in politics. They are often so disgusting they cannot achieve what they want so badly. Double highs are extremely prejudiced, but they also have a more religious background than the usual social dominators. They use religion, though, as a cover, going to church to project a good image and to make advantageous contacts, but their religious beliefs are in accord with RWAs. Because of their religious beliefs, it is much easier for them to gather followers among the RWAs and advance their own agenda and profile. The other trait they share with RWAs is fearfulness.
So, what does this all mean? Some of you have already drawn your own conclusions, but this knowledge has HUGE real world implications. Dr. Altemeyer has studied all levels of RWAs and social dominators in an exercise called the “Global Change Game” which has groups of people assigned to world regions, allocated resources and tasked with dealing with various problems that arise. When done with only low scoring RWA testers, the participants work well together, utilize resources fairly, and engender peace and cooperation. Groups of high scoring RWAs showed little imagination, got very little done, but overall didn’t do too much harm (other than let the populations get out of control – no birth control). But when double highs played, most of them immediately took charge, quickly developed adversarial relationships with the other double highs’ regions and threatened nuclear war after massive military build-ups that sacrificed social welfare. Now, let me also tell you that Dr. Altemeyer’s research suggests a concentration of double highs in state and federal legislatures (many of them from the south). Now if you read the papers or watch the news (I doubt anyone who watches Fox News has made it this far), you can see how the double highs have been and still are causing trouble around the globe, but most obvious to us in the U.S. Congress at present. The George W. Bush administration probably had the highest concentration of double highs in history (this gets a little hard to argue since there was widespread slavery and publicly accepted bigotry in the country’s first century, though the latter has not gone away in many areas still). What could be the greatest nation in history instead is a hornet’s nest of double high malfeasance and treachery.
We have the largest and most expensive military by far with only imagined foes for the most part (likely double highs on those sides as well), huge problems with inequality and poverty/hunger, and inadequate infrastructure, but most days are spent arguing about abortion, natural selection, the separation of church and state, and crime (the levels of which have almost never been lower). We will always have this until we choose as a people to stop electing trouble-making double highs, but unfortunately in this day and age, they are the only type of people lining up to run for election. They are, fortunately, easy to spot: Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Benjamin Netanyahu, etc.(speaking of Ted Cruz, most writers refer to him as some sort of genius. He went to Princeton and Harvard Law school, but when he talks, it is like his speech was translated from English to Japanese and back into English and then read by a smug, overly lubricated but flabby robot). President Obama is far from perfect, but he is also far from being a double high, and he shows very little tendency to be a social dominator or RWA. Not every leader has to be a social dominator, and President Obama is not. He is, first and foremost, a reasonable man. They are in short supply in modern politics, because RWAs don’t want reason, and social dominators don’t care about it, and they both are the most motivated people to keep the status quo or set progress back 50 to 60 years, and the most motivated to vote and volunteer for election and campaign work. The challenge to overcome their tendencies starts with each of us doing our part to recognize this and disseminate it to as many people as possible who care about how things work and the betterment of us all.
Part 2: Henchmen
The title of this could be a lot of words, including henchpersons. Synonyms abound: apparatchiks, accomplices, siloviki; you get the point. The bigger point is seldom discussed when the press and government officials rail on about a leader, maybe of a terrorist organization, maybe of a country, they find problematic. The issue they dwell on is that getting rid of that leader will straighten everything out. The leader is the problem, and killing or imprisoning him (usually a “him,” but) is the solution. But it almost never is, and that is because of henchmen. Do you think Vladimir Putin is in charge of Russia because he is the strongest or the smartest? No, it is because his henchmen were able to get control and keep control; same thing for Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Robert Mugabe, and Assad in Syria. Kim Jong Un, in Korea, is vilified, but it is because he is the public face of a leadership of otherwise anonymous henchmen: military leaders, political fixers, smugglers, etc. who all benefit tremendously from him being in charge. Might they benefit from someone else taking over? That is their challenge on a daily basis: where do they stand: is their leader serving their purposes, and what would happen if someone else replaced him?
Putin is a well-documented example. He was a low level political official with no national reputation, but Boris Yeltsin had lost his usefulness and someone was needed to take his place. The henchmen chose Putin. Putin’s ego took care of the rest (there is plenty of evidence he is a psychopath), growing into its role of making him think he merited the position of President or Prime Minister of Russia, rather than lucking into it, all coinciding with a boom in oil prices substituting for good governance in helping the Russian economy benefit some people.
If Putin were to be unseated, who would do it? His henchmen, who are rich beyond their wildest dreams (Putin himself may have squirreled away a fortune that would make Bill Gates blush.)? Only if they think someone else could do better for them. Now with sanctions causing them trouble, Putin has to be more careful to mind his minders, though he likely never takes his eye off that ball. If the henchmen think it best to pull out of the Ukraine and Putin disagrees, he will be history. A leader’s power is only real if he or she can get things done. If Obama orders the military to strike at Damascus or Moscow and they refuse, Obama doesn’t have that much power. Same for Putin. If he decides to follow a policy no one else wants, he is powerless to do it himself. The thing is, most times the henchmen will follow, because they know what they have in Putin now (they didn’t when they put him in power), and they are very afraid of change when they have the system rigged. To unseat him would require outsiders who are not benefiting from Putin’s actions, and that is why politicians and their henchmen, once they go all in on helping themselves to all they can get from their positions, prioritize conformity and order and punish harshly any dissent, making highly visible examples of anyone who may show qualities of a worthy adversary who can’t be co-opted. We see the same thing in miniature in Congress and in more local politics here. With a willing press and bad enough motives, no one can stay beyond reproach, and the most able dissenters can be outcast or silenced still, mostly because of what we will find out about people in Part 2.
We have also seen what happens when the henchmen and leaders are cast aside or killed by invaders or popular revolts, most obviously in the aftermath of the second Iraq war and the Arab Spring. When the henchmen have near total control of everything, the vacuum of leadership and organization when they are tossed aside is difficult to fill well and quickly. So far only Tunisia is showing any signs of progress; all the other sites of revolt show ongoing civil war that has resulted in overwhelming devastation (Syria, Iraq, and to a lesser extent the Ukraine), the rise of a new dictator and henchmen (Egypt), and something resembling chaos (Libya). It is possible some of the countries where the leaders no longer serve the people (what Aquinas defined as tyrants), if spared outside intervention and influence, would be able, after rebellions, to assemble working governments on their own, but the world and regional powers are usually intervening in their own self-interest, complicating matters even further. Transitioning from authoritarian states to full-fledged democracies has never gone well; we shouldn’t expect much better now, but we shouldn’t help them go worse. Choosing the henchmen wisely is everyone’s best first step, and it is not something the USA/CIA is very good at (batting average hovering at 0.000).