The Trump voters who believe Trump is honest.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

5. Most of them are right-wing authoritarians, and...

Last edited Sun Mar 20, 2022, 11:24 AM - Edit history (1)

... that kind of cognitive dissonance is supposedly common among them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism
Right-wing authoritarians tend to accept what their leaders say is true and readily comply with their commands. They believe that respecting authority is an important moral virtue that everyone in the community must hold. They tend to place strict limits on how far the authorities can be criticized, and believe that the critics are troublemakers who don't know what they are talking about. RWAs are extremely submissive even to authority figures who are dishonest, corrupt, and inept. They will insist that their leaders are honest, caring, and competent, dismissing any evidence to the contrary as either false or inconsequential. They believe that the authorities have the right to make their own decisions, even if that includes breaking the rules that they impose on everyone else.


Article from January 2016, months before the general election:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533/
If I asked you what most defines Donald Trump supporters, what would you say? They’re white? They’re poor? They’re uneducated?

You’d be wrong.

In fact, I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.


Their brains work like the loyal Nazis in Germany decades ago.

EDIT:
I scored a ZERO on this supposed RWA test a few years ago (which was criticized by someone at DU for being a ridiculously simplistic test), so I don't understand the behavior.
https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RWAS/

My evangelical Christian sister is a Trump supporter, and I know with certainty that she'd answer many those questions differently than I did. I'd never ask her to try that test because she'd refuse anyway, not trusting it since it's not Bible-related. I should try taking it again, but answering the questions how I'm almost certain she'd answer them -- to get a better idea of where she lies on the RWA spectrum. (I just did it, and my best guesses of how my sister would answer those questions resulted in a score for right-wing authoritarianism at 79.55%. Higher scores indicate more right-wing authoritarianism.)