Authoritarianism in America - Are We Laughing As It Rises?

With this post I am using what modest reach I have to echo the empirical evidence discussed in +Ezra Klein's article 
The best predictor of Trump support isn't income, education, or age. It's authoritarianism. 
Updated by Matthew MacWilliams on February 23, 2016, 2:20 p.m. ET  








Ezra Klein conducted a survey in South Carolina of 358 likely voters before the primary on February 20. He found: 

A voter’s gender, education, age, ideology, party identification, income, and race simply had no statistical bearing on whether someone supported Trump. Neither, despite predictions to the contrary, did evangelicalism. 

Here is what did: authoritarianism, by which I mean Americans’ inclination to authoritarian behavior. When political scientists use the term authoritarianism, we are not talking about dictatorships but about a worldview. People who score high on the authoritarian scale value conformity and order, protect social norms, and are wary of outsiders. And when authoritarians feel threatened, they support aggressive leaders and policies.

Individuals with a disposition to authoritarianism demonstrate a fear of "the other" as well as a readiness to follow and obey strong leaders. They tend to see the world in black-and-white terms. They are by definition attitudinally inflexible and rigid. And once they have identified friend from foe, they hold tight to their conclusions. This intransigent behavioral tendency of authoritarians may help explain why Trump’s support can seem, as a strategist for Marco Rubio complained in the New York Times, like "granite." The South Carolina poll confirmed what I found in my national poll this December: Authoritarian Americans are the key to Trump’s success.

Hopefully, more people like some of the people interviewed in this video by Chris Mathews see what's coming.