Is Donald Trump a Distraction?

As usual, I am late weighing in on the multiply-bankrupted scion of unworthy privilege Donald Trump. I was planning to write an analysis of Jeffrey Tucker's opinion piece at Newsweek called Is Donald Trump a Fascist? but the site told me I had somehow used up my free pageviews for this month despite rarely visiting Newsweek.com by the time I was actually able to sit down and write. If someone could find a transcription somewhere and send me the link I would be very appreciative because I can't remember enough of it to speculate. Luckily, Trump made another whack tastic comment this weekend that can reveal a bit about where his candidacy is headed.

Ben Cohen at The Daily Banter put it this way:

Over the weekend, Donald Trump not only defied one of the biggest no-nos in America political culture, he smashed it over the head and literally urinated on it. Speaking to at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump astonishingly questioned John McCain’s war hero credentials, saying to the audience: "He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured."

 Cohen and many other commentators then called on Trump to apologize, I read it as the people outside of the right wing making this call out of decency but those inside the echo chamber making a big mistake by demanding an apology. Drew Westen has been trying for years to get Democrats and Liberals to stop demanding apologies when some right winger makes a rotten pronouncement or right wing government does something horrible. The reason is simple, it makes you look weak and the target of the demand look strong. By now, people outside the echo chamber should know that to be a "conservative" in America means never having to say you're sorry.

So what happens when the script is flipped and the perennially aggrieved and offended right wingers actually have to demand an apology from the monster they created? Maybe it is too soon to tell, but we can take some cues from the authoritarian personality to get a clue how Trump's words affect his followers. But more generally, a political partisan reacts differently from someone more loosely affiliated. The partisan reasons differently, for example, the "tea party" was supposedly formed out of disgust with government bailouts. It did not matter to the partisan that it was one of their own who did most of the bailing out of well-connected wall street bank. For one thing george w. bush was deeply unpopular and therefore cast out of the movement, for another it was the more-generalized "government" doing the "rescues" because the conservative movement never actually controls government, it can only ever occupy offices but never truly own it. An authoritarian is very afraid, often paranoid, that "they" are coming to get him or her whoever that particular they may be. The three defining traits of an authoritarian according to a leading researcher on the subject is self-righteousness, aggression, and traditionalism; and they look for leaders who will share their prejudices.

Trump first jumped in the muck of partisanship with his birtherism. He therefore established himself as upholding the tradition of "legitimate government" in the eyes of tea partiers. How vulgar you want to be in accusations is subjective concerning this endeavor, and trying to connect the irrational ideas that conservatives argue about is pointless. As Altemeyer explains, authoritarians exercise compartmentalized thinking like a computer where the files do not touch. They can call one idea up and then another that is completely inconsistent with the first. Such as when they attacked John Kerry's military service but went berserk if John McCain was criticised on any foreign policy matter because of his military service. Kerry was an illegitimate veteran, because he was a Democrat, Bush was a great leader despite his failure to serve overseas or even complete the cushy National Guard term he secured. I am not trying to prove these personality traits, the research is clear that enough Americans reason this way that it warps any serious attempts at discussion, and that it is getting worse.

What is interesting is that now the argument is completely within the right wing, will they split into factions over this latest inflammatory Trump remark? I could see a slide into a civil war on the right over Trump's attack on McCain, with people that are simply republican partisans taking the McCain side, and the out and out authoritarians casting their allegiance to a man characterized by Cohen this way:

In Trump’s world, that type of money [his supposed $5-10 billion fortune] makes a man a God. Services to ones country, a life dedicated to politics, great works of charity etc etc do not compute as success in Trump’s eyes – it is just money, and who has the most. To him, John McCain and all the other Republicans never became billionaires so they are mere mortals not worthy of competing with him. Despite the national outcry, Trump is not interested in what anyone thinks about him, because in his world, no one has the right to challenge him.

If there is one thing Altemeyer's research shows, it is that the authoritarians he studied are looking for, waiting and hoping for, a man on horseback to take over the country and purge the rottenness out of it. And low and behold, Trump presents himself as that man, the strong leader who will enforce conformity along lines the authoritarian likes; an elite who isn't afraid to act better than the rest of us.

It will be a dangerous game for those on the left to watch. It is nice to see this much distraction and chaos in the republican party, but God help us if Trump actually won because any tiny sense of restraint in his followers to attack immigrants, gays, African-Americans, Liberals, etc. will be gone and we will see just how much authoritarian aggression is out there.