Law and Order

The theme of day one of the Republican convention is: "Make America Safe Again"

This spring, as Trump was wiping out his Republican opponents, a series of articles appeared attempting to make sense of Trump's popularity.    Some researchers said they figured it out:  Trump supporters were high on the Authoritarian index.   Other research said it was Populism.

To remind readers:  People with authoritarian personality seek order and clarity.  They want obedience to strong leaders and traditional norms.  They have a strong sense of group identity and solidarity and are suspicious of outsiders.     People who are populists feel the average citizenry is being oppressed by elites, they distrust supposed expertise, and they are nationalistic.

Trump is both. Trump's brags about his elite wealth and education but attacks government and media elites using very simple language so he comes across as a strong leader but anti-intellectual and anti-elite.   The "Make America Safe Again" theme pulls into the Trump coalition the significant number of people who are both progressive and authoritarian. 

This is why the traditional allocation of states to the Democrats and Republicans may be very different this year.   Trump appeals on a personality level to people who might otherwise not be tempted by a Republican.  

Crossover Votes:   progressive authoritarians.   Progressive, liberal voters with an authoritarian orientation want "social justice" and have empathy for poor people who "work hard and play by the rules" as Bill Clinton put it 25 years ago.   They favor positive government programs and progressive taxation and reproductive rights for women, which makes them Democrats.   

But simultaneously they hate disorder and rule breakers.   They are suspicious of Hillary using elite privilege to get away with email carelessness.  They empathize with crime victims.   They emphasize that criminal behavior is a product of bad personal character and choices, not society.   They identify with honest authority figures: police and the justice system, good employers, religious authority.  They are quick to condemn hypocrisy or rule-breaking by authority.  They see behaviors as right or wrong, good or bad, for us or against us, not shades of gray.

There are a lot of those people.

In the Reagan years they were known as "Reagan Democrats".  They are common in Catholic ethnic communities in larger cities, the working people who live near enough bad neighborhoods to understand that they have social pathologies they wish to avoid.

They aren't motivated primarily by "political issues".  They are motivated by deep set personality traits, inborn or set by early childhood experiences with parental authority.  It is a way of viewing the world.   They are Democrats but don't like wishy-washy everything-is-relative liberals, especially ones who excuse or minimize rule breakers.   They want children disciplined.  They like "good" blacks and legal immigrants, ones who are serious and respectful, who obey the rules, get ahead by hard work.  Theoretically Obama is one such person but his reputation has been sullied by accusations that he is a fraud--a Muslim of foreign birth who actually got into Harvard Law School through privilege which overlooked his bad grades, the three things Trump has accused Obama of being.

Authoritarian personalities like genuine "good" citizens but hate rule breaking frauds, which is why the Trump "birther" effort was successful in bringing into question Obama's legitimacy.   It set up the Obama coalition for erosion from the authoritarian personality cohort.

There are any number of quick tests for Authoritarianism on line.  Just Google: Authoritarian Test.  A quick test you can take right now is to ask which trait one would most want to encourage in your children:

Respectfulness or Independence?   Obedience or Self-reliance?  Well-behaved or considerate?  Well-mannered or curious?  

Mentally take the test now.   I will give the score at the very bottom of this post.

The RNC has an ideal spokesman for eliciting crossover votes from Democrats with an authoritarian personality: Sheriff David Clarke

Trump Advocate

A light skinned black sheriff from Milwaukee, Wisconsin will be speaking at the Republican Convention.   David Clarke exemplifies "Law and Order" and is well suited to drawing crossover votes.     Because he is black he absolves viewers of feeling racist when they see him condemn black institutions and identity, which he does relentlessly.   He is the "good" black, the rule keeper and enforcer.   (Like Bill Cosby, before the recent revelations.)  Clarke is decisive.  He is stern. He is black and white in his thinking.  He appears to be filled with disgust and condemnation for what he sees, yet is controlled in his manner.  

In a CNN interview that it bouncing around the internet-- Click here for CNN Interview -- he immediately turns the table on the interviewer and demands answers from the journalist.  The CNN anchor--who attempts to maintain neutrality--is grilled and challenged by Clarke, and his attempt at middle-road neutrality is framed against Clarke's certitude that Black Lives Matter is an anti-cop hate group, akin to the KKK, and it is complicit in the murder of policemen as well as the black victims of black-on-black crime.  Clarke drips contempt for the weak announcer Don Lemon, who appears to be an apologist and explainer.   Clarke condemns Black Lives Matter as being filled with "vile, vitriolic, hate" and challenges Lemon for not agreeing with him.

Clark is very media savvy and active.  He has near-daily updates to Facebook and a weekly podcast in which he condemns Obama as one who actively incites the murder of policemen.

I attach a Guest Comment from Thad Guyer, who saw the interview and considered the interviewer--Don Lemon--to have been unfair, weak, and utterly demolished by Clarke.   Readers will conclude that Guyer sides with Clarke in this exchange, although others who watch even one minute of the interview will consider Clarke a bully as he steamrolls over the interviewer.    Those readers and viewers who are of the latter opinion may want to read the comments that follow the YouTube video.   The extensive comments  demonstrate that a great many viewers agree wholeheartedly with Clarke--and with the substance and tone of Guyer's comments.

I consider those viewers to be crossover votes for Trump and inaccessible to Hillary Clinton.

Here is Thad Guyer's comment.   Remember, at the very end is the score to the Authoritarian test.

CNN’s Don Lemon, the Most Cowardly Journalist in America

This is the second time I have seen black CNN journalist Don Lemon say “cut the feed” or ask an interviewee “to leave’. Baton Rouge black police chief David Clarke was cut off by Lemon because he did not like the Police Chief’s message that Black Lives Matter is an anti-police hate group. (See CNN, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAu44wVgb58) 

The first time I saw the coward Lemon cut the feed was when interviewees said that Bill Clinton’s affairs and the enabling role of Hilary Clinton in this assault of women was irrelevant and not an appropriate on-air subject. Of course, media history has shown Lemon to be nothing more than a Clinton activist, a partisan journalist on par with psychos like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. In this case, Sheriff Clarke battered Lemon in calm tones with counter questions on his view that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an anti-cop black hate organization. Lemon looked afraid, like a clerk who was disobeying his network's instructions, in stark contracts to the completely calm police chief. Lemon said "calm down", like a lying politician to a person who was completely clam. After one minute, coward Lemon demanded his producers “cut to break”. 

After the break, the black Sheriff continued hammering Lemon with his view that BLM and CNN incite violence. Lemon cited the ridiculous Washington Post study that blacks are killed at 2.5 times the rate of whites by cops, but Sheriff Clarke responded with the Harvard report that cop killings of blacks are the same or less than whites. Lemon said the Harvard report (by a black professor) had been "discredited, and then twice invited Sheriff Clarke to “leave” the interview set, but Clarke did not budge. Lemon then prematurely ended the interview after Clarke refused to leave.

Journalist like Don Lemon are the help that Donald Trump needs in undermining the Clinton Obama feckless message of “love and peace" in the face of mass cop murder and Islamic terrorism. If America is to suffer a Trump presidency, the main stream media and faux journalists like Don Lemon will have their share of the blame.  David Clark'es speech at the RNC convention will be devastating against Clinton. Clinton better move right and get some more law and order in her rhetoric, and fast, if Democrats are going to win.

ANSWERS;  Quick and Dirty Authoritarian Test:   People high on authoritarian personality prefer the first of the matched pair: respectful, obedient, well-behaved, and well-mannered.   These choices emphasize conformity to rules over internalized self expression.