Authoritarian nightmare Trump and his followers

In which the characters of the sitting president and his followers are weighed and found seriously wanting. "Anyone who has had a serious 'discussion' with a Trump supporter may have noticed that facts and logic bounce off right off them." So write Dean--yes, that Dean, still going strong nearly half a century after Watergate--and Altemeyer, a Canadian psychologist who developed the RWA [right-wing authoritarianism] Scale. That RWA test, among other measures, helps explain a great deal about Trump's supporters, whose numbers might seem to be dwindling but whose convictions grow ever stronger. Those who score high on the RWA instrument are revealed to believe in a welter of confusing and contradictory matters, have considerable difficulty in sorting fact from fiction, and have no problem with double standards. "Take their ready acceptance of Trump's labeling Hillary Clinton as Crooked Hillary" when Trump's actions regarding charities in New York state "was so illegal that the state has banned him from ever operating a charity in New York again. Thus, there is no doubt about Trump being Crooked Donald, who has single-handedly given charity a bad name." That doesn't faze the pro-Trump crowd, who give him a free pass precisely because, according to the test, they are fearful that their world is disintegrating and are in need of a strongman to protect them from a host of imagined evils. By the authors' account, Trump is nothing but a chain of personality flaws ("His driveway has not reached the main road for a long, long time") that he learned at the feet of his master, Roy Cohn, and secondarily from Richard Nixon, such lessons as "if you have a vulnerability, tell everybody your opponent reeks of it." Whether Trump gains a second term or not, the authors conclude, the strong authoritarian base that exists in the country guarantees continued polarization for years to come. A book that won't change minds but that will give anti-Trumpers plenty of grist for the mill. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

From the Introduction... Donald Trump only has the power to flaunt American institutions, treaties, and laws because he has a large, dedicated base who will believe whatever he says and do whatever he wants. Accordingly, we spend a lot of time in this book grasping Trump's threat to America by explaining his followers. We believe the base's endless loyalty springs from the same psychological trait that some observers think runs deeply in Donald Trump himself, authoritarianism. Our understanding of these people is based on decades of research on people who might well support an autocratic takeover of a democracy. Journalists and commentators may find this body of study, presented as the core of this book in chapters 5 through 11, richly informative about contemporary American politics and the American electorate. Most people have never heard of this body of research, but it appears that its moment has arrived. It provides answers to two questions many concerned people are asking: What is wrong with Donald Trump? How can so many people support him? There is a related third question, the subject of the last chapter of this book: Can this authoritarian movement be contained before it is too late? We are not alarmists. If you look at our previous work on authoritarianism you will see that we always said: "We still have lots of time; things have not gotten really bad yet." But the past three years have been, well, the past three years, and suddenly there is a real crisis is upon us... We do not wish to frighten anyone because that is one of the ways authoritarian leaders operate. Rather, we seek to alert and inform, relying on verifiable facts and the answers nature has repeatedly given in studies about why Trump and his supporters act the way they do.  America faces a number of very serious problems right now, made worse by its president.  Insight is available and solutions do exist... Excerpted from Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers by John W. Dean, Bob Altemeyer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.