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People like to complain about horseshoe theory, but these kinds of situations happen so often! I wonder if it's something inherent to the authoritarian personality type â an inability to objectively examine one's own beliefs, maybe? Or inability to consider one might actually be wrong about something?
A desire to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions. The same desire that makes them worship strongmen and authoritarian regimes, and why everything that happens is the fault of some conspiracy.
It actually is an observed phenomenon that Authoritarians exhibit a lot of behavior consistent with the Dark Triad of personality traits, (Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy)
It's also an observed phenomenon that they are all completely unable to be taken at their word when they try to express what they believe to others. People who rate low or moderate on the authoritarian scale tend to say it's best to be seen as not very authoritarian, but people who score high say it's best to be seen as moderate.
Even the most supposedly upstanding principled conservative inherently is lying about what they actually believe and making up being a middle of the road kind of political thinker because they know damn well they'd catch shit for what they actually believe.
And that's why Trump is their Messiah, he sells the promise of being able to finally forget their shame. It's why I keep saying that Trump campaigns on making white folks think they'll get to say the N-Word again, and on making their kids start coming to Thanksgiving again after they went NC for how obvious it is what they wanna be saying about the crime reports when the 6PM news comes on, yes even if the shown accused aren't black.
Do you have any recommended reading about this? I'd like to learn more.
The Authoritarians is IIRC the most recent book written on this, Innuendo Studios isn't exactly reading but also covers a lot of this.