About John Dean`s Authoritarian Figures

[democrank]

John Dean`s interview with Keith Olbermann last night caused a mental chain reaction for me. First his alert, then a bright yellow warning sign, then a sickish feeling. I`ll be saving up for a copy of CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE, starting today.

Dean may have held back a bit on the F word, fascism, but his cautionary tone made me think long and hard about that road we`re going down. It can`t happen here? Think again. America`s fear, resulting from the horrors of September 11th, left us ripe for a takeover by the dangerous authoritarian figures Dean described. Even our Constitution has fallen victim to these tyrants. Many of the 23% Dean mentions are in the White House, in the Office of Special Plans, flying secret torture planes. They jammed Democrat`s phone lines in New Hampshire, perhaps rigged elections in Ohio, designed the campaign against Michael Schiavo for trying to respect his wife`s wishes and convinced Verizon to secretly work against their own customers. Laws be damned, just do what they say...or else. It`s like there is only one acceptable answer to WHO`S YOUR DADDY? Get it right or you`re under suspicion for unAmerican activities.

John Dean helped me understand why Arnold captured California, why Kerry`s windsurfing was compared to Bush`s chainsaw, why there`s a debate about PTSD, why Donahue was out and Savage was in, why there are so many SUVs, why social programs are being extinguished, why Bush`s tax cuts mostly benefit those at the top, why the United Nations has been branded wimpish, why some Washington Journal callers demand we nuke Iran, why Bush showed up in a flight suit, why he was given Saddam`s pistol as a gift and even why that young girl in Iraq was raped, murdered and burned.

It`s dark, it`s frightening, it`s dead serious. We`d better wake the hell up before Bush`s New America becomes the established norm.

[drduffy]

1. Watched Olberman last night....

and was extremely surprised that Dean was allowed to express this on MSM. We in the psych profession have known this for a long while.... just a month ago, a colleague and I were discussing this very problem about Bu$hCo. Is it any wonder that many of us 'on the left' have been sounding the warning trumpets about fascism in the U.S.? I hope having this on the MSM helps get some more folks aware of this authoritariansim and the movement of the U.S. towards the American version of Fascism. I encourage all to read this Hartmann article about Vice President Wallace and what he said 60+ years ago.....

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0719-15.htm

[Epiphany4z]

4. Those of us not in the

psych profession have known this for a long time. I belong to a local dem group and we have discussed this before ...we have always thought there was real pathology to these people.

[drduffy]

6. didn't mean to imply that others

were not also aware. Now the question is, how can we marginalize or eliminate the influence & control these psychologically limited folks, authoritarians, clearly have right now over the rest of us?

[Epiphany4z]

8. I wasn't saying you implied

we where not aware I was trying to show blatant it has been....and yet..unspoken..I really loved watching Dean on KO because I felt validated...I have thought this very thing about these people on the right from the get go.

[twiterpatted]

7. Those of us that have read Erich Fromm have know

for a long time as well.

Dean seems to be talking about what Erich warned us about 40-50 years ago.

[Cosmocat]

11. No doubt ...

What Dean seems to be laying out right now seems to be a more well refined description of what I have known and talked about for some time now ... Defines and refines it ...

[anniebelle]

2. I, too, found Keith's interview with Dean quite chilling.

[waiting for hope]

3. Dean's going to be on The Daily Show

tonight - if you want some real telling attitudes, check out Amazon's comments section on the book - the whack jobs unfortunately will be with us always but as Dean said last night, there is hope that those not part of the 20 something percent will turn away from this ideology.

[bdamomma]

18. or that 23% won't increase.

[Jon8503]

5. Here is the link to reviews of Dean's Book on Amazon - N/T.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0670037745/ref=dp_proddesc_0/104-8535371-5947958?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

[fasttense]

9. Here is a link to comments on the book

http://www.amazon.com/gp/discussionboard/discussion.html/103-0351930-2939860?ie=UTF8&cdForum=&cdPage=1&cdItems=3&asin=0670037745&store=books&cdThread=Tx2PSEZ9F9UGN3P

Looks like one of those 25% authoritarian crazies have posted. Note the posters numerous misspellings and clumsy use of big words.

[kenny blankenship]

10. Could you explain about the "23% Dean mentions"?

which 23 percent?
The 23 percent who eat the strawberry first out of a carton of Neapolitan icecream, or, the 23 percent who are secretly wearing ladies' underwear, or the 23% who say "aborted fetuses" to every question on a Rorschach test, or the 23 percent who would like to see Bush declare himself emperor for life, round up his critics and throw 'em in jail without charges or trial, and declare war on Mexico, France, Iran & China all at once, or the 23 percent who misreport their eye color as blue and their hair color as blond? Or...

Is he referring to some group identified through polling, or a clinical definition that could be isolated by non-political non-volitional factors, or what?

[Evergreen Emerald]

12. the 23% that still thinks Bush is doing a good job in Iraq...you know

backwash.

[Marie26]

13. Dean says 23% of us

are hard-core, authoritarian followers. (read: potential facists). I sort of agree. You should watch the interview online - it's really pretty incredible.

[kenny blankenship]

14. I sorta figured he was headed that way, I was wondering how he got that #

23% is a very specific figure. My impression of Dean is that he's a very scrupulous, meticulous person and that he wouldn't loosely throw around specific numbers at something that is really only a guesstimate.

Is it a hard number (as it appears) or a soft number? If derived from answers to a political questionnaire that would be soft. It would be "hard" if it were derived from some clinically isolated factor, (like hypothetically, a gene) which invariably predicts the presence of the so-called authoritarian personality type, or even indirect clinical observations that predict attraction to authoritarian figures and politics, like I dunno, pupil dilation observed when experimental subjects are presented with stimuli like pictures of flags and military parades, or a certain pattern (or absence) of brainwave activity when presented with the same kind of stimuli. If some factor could be isolated by a quantifiable observation--a physical attribute like a gene or a presumed physical attribute which manifests itself independently of the volition of the subject-- which reliably predicts the "authoritarian" traits in political behavior, then you have something definite to talk about; otherwise you are mired in a subjective situation which amounts to saying, "roughly 23% of people strongly disagree with me and will follow leaders whom I wouldn't trust to buy milk and a loaf of bread from the corner store."

If it's a soft number, that doesn't necessarily make it worthless, it's just that hard numbers are so much more effective at persuading people who don't already agree with you.

[Marie26]

15. Dick Cheney's approval rating?

I don't know. You raise a good point - Dean doesn't say exactly where he's getting that 23% figure from. It does seem about right, though, when estimating the number of people who will blindly follow Bushco. wherever he leads.

Maybe this is it - Nixon's lowest poll rating was 23% in 1974, right before he resigned. Maybe Dean figures that if people could still support Nixon then, that segment of the population would support any authoritarian leader, no matter how dangerous. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/PollVault/story?id=1264205

[KKKarl is an idiot]

16. 1930's Germany

Are we headed for this. Germany gave it's White people power over the others. What was spoke about Jews in table humor became reality because people were allowed to turn those feelings into reality. We cannot head down that path here. We all know that the terrorists cannot bring down the USA in one on one combat. We have superior weapons in open combat. But they will try to bring us down by making us believe they are a bigger threat than we can handle. They work on us self destructing from within. Going against our constitution is playing into the hands of the terrorists. Not the New York times reporting in a free press environment.

[bdamomma]

17. that is the one question

we thought it would never happen here in the US. Are we followers or leaders?

[Totally Committed]

19. John Dean was also on with Rachel Maddow this morning...

And what he said about the Republicans of today was enough to make one's hair stand on end -- and he fully admits he's still a "Goldwater Conservative", too!

TC

[grasswire]

20. I recommend reading Eric Hoffer's book "The True Believer"

...from the 1950s.

Excerpt from a biography of Hoffer:

"Eric Hoffer was a self-educated longshoreman who came to fame in the 1950's with the publication of his first book, The True Believer. A caustic analysis of the nature of mass movements and those who are driven to join them, The True Believer did what no other book of the mid-twentieth century could: it helped expose the hidden causes of the tumultuous events that nearly destroyed our world at that time. Hoffer said of the 1930's, "It colors my thinking and shapes my attitude toward events. I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac."

The True Believer, though, is not solely concerned with the rise of Nazi Germany, but with the origination of all mass movements, destructive or creative. And more importantly, it is concerned with the main ingredient of such movements, the frustrated individual. The book probes into the psychology of the frustrated and dissatisfied, those who would eagerly sacrifice themselves for any cause that might give their meaningless lives some sense of significance. The alienated seek to lose themselves in these movements by adopting those fanatical attitudes that are, according to Hoffer, fundamentally "a flight from the self."