Meanwhile, 44 percent backed the American tradition of competing branches of government as a model, if sometimes “frustrating,” system.

Why would people want to live under an authoritarian’s thumb? It’s rooted, experts say, in a psychological need for security—real or perceived—and a desire for conformity, a goal that becomes even more acute as the country undergoes dramatic demographic and social changes. People also like to obey a strong leader who will protect the group—especially if it is the “right” group whose interests will be protected. Recall the Trump supporter who, during the 2019 government shutdown, complained, “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

  • Album
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    1824 months ago

    The people who dont want to be told how they live desperately want someone to tell them how to live.

    • @[email protected]
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      4 months ago

      They want their opinion mirrored back at them by someone in power so they don’t have to take responsibility for their own opinions.

      A close friend of mine is a woman of color and her bosses want the same things from her. They wants to hear their opinion come out of someone with her skin tone so they feel justified and not responsible at the same time. I imagine these are similar phenomenon.

    • Billiam
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      334 months ago

      They don’t want to be told how to live while simultaneously having someone force others to live like them.

      • @[email protected]
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        174 months ago

        Exactly.

        They support him because they believe he is like them, so they won’t need to change anything. It’s everyone else that will be forced to be like them that they want…

        I hope I’m not spreading misinformation, but I believe one of the victims of the assassination attempt had a flag on his Facebook page that was a play off of “don’t tread on me” and in it’s place was a tank with “tread on all of them.”

        I fucking hate these people so much

    • @[email protected]
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      294 months ago

      Regardless of if it’s true, you shouldn’t use that word.

      However its all perspective, an intellectual disability is described as 30 points below average, because a 30 point difference is noticable.

      So even just two people at the end of the first standard deviation would experience that.

      Being three standard deviations above average isn’t that rare, about 1 in 1200, about the same rate as people who transition oddly enough, so it’s a good comparison.

      If you’re “lucky” enough to be over 145, about 84% of everyone else is at least 30 points below you.

      It’s like real life Idiocracy or old school Cassandra. Shit seems so simple but no one listens.

      Even then bro, dont resort to that word.

        • @[email protected]
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          174 months ago

          They used to be bad, now they’re not.

          Maybe it will change for this one too, but it’s not our decision currently

        • @[email protected]M
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          44 months ago

          I agree it is relatively arbitrary, I removed the comment because of the effect it has on the tone of the community- not because of the history of the word.

      • BlackLaZoR
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        84 months ago

        Dude, context matters. Things can be insulting or not depending of where and when phrase was used. Every smart person understands the intent behind that sentence, and that it was a hyperbole.

        Don’t assume other people can’t read context and the intent, because if you do, you’re actually insulting their intelligence

        • @[email protected]
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          124 months ago

          Every smart person understands the intent behind that sentence, and that it was a hyperbole.

          You really typed that out and didn’t see the issue?

          People with intellectual disabilities can still use social media, they can still pick Lemmy, and they can still see your comment.

          And it’s not up to you or me if it’s offensive in any context.

          Do you use other slurs like this? Go to a pride parade and start dropping F bombs? BLM protests your just letting the n word fly?

          It’s not up to them if it’s offensive, its you’re call if the context makes it ok?

          Just stop man. You’re not helping yourself.

          • BlackLaZoR
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            44 months ago

            People with intellectual disabilities can still use social media

            Yes they can. Do you suggest they can’t read with comprehension? You’re actually insulting them by implying that they’re too dumb to understand my intent.

            • @[email protected]
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              54 months ago

              No one cares if you say fuck, people even have it in usernames…

              We’re talking about current slurs…

              What do you think I meant?

      • Billiam
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        44 months ago

        It’s amazing to me that people have issues with medical words, which are turned into epithets, which are then removed from the medical lexicon because they have become epithets, and would use that to derail a discussion on the fact that a full third of Americans don’t want to live in a democracy.

        • @[email protected]
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          84 months ago

          What derailed the conversation was use of slurs…

          But if you really want to pull out the old “what’s really a problem is people complaining about bigotry” cars from the Republican deck, go for it.

          Unfortunately it wouldn’t be surprising these days, moderates keep acting more and more like trump supporters. Someone asks for basic decency and they get accused of bad faith.

          Did you not see how that worked out for Republicans?

          Be better

          • Billiam
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            34 months ago
            1. I’m not a moderate.

            2. Yes, I saw perfectly how that worked out for Republicans. Corporations are massively scaling back their diversity initiatives and support for the LGBTQ community because the right are allowed to play word games. Also, they elected a fascists once and are on the verge of doing so again, partly because certain alleged Democrats would rather whinge about labels which scares the ignorant masses that make up the voting population.

            3. One-third of Americans want to be governed at the end of a gun barrel. But please, keep on being so concerned about civility while Republicans push forward their destruction of America.

        • @[email protected]
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          4 months ago

          That says 0.51% of adults, and under 18 rates are higher.

          1/1200 is 0.83%

          0.32% is close enough for an “about” on social media, if we add in under 18 it would get closer, but I’m not doing that much math.

          Neither is exactly 1/1200 tho

          • @[email protected]
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            4 months ago

            1/1200 is .000833… So .08%. That’s not how the calculations for finding X in Y people work.

            And the source I linked specifically says 1.6 million people in the US aged 13+ identify as trans, which is 0.48% of the 333.3 million people in the US.

            We were both wrong, it’s approximately 1 in 208 people. 333,300,000 / 1,600,000 = ~208.

          • @[email protected]
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            24 months ago

            Yeah, I had another comment where I discovered the number is much higher (1 in 208, roughly). I’m not great at ratios, so 1 in 1200 didn’t sound that rare, especially if you’re in areas with a lower LGBT+ demographic. In hindsight, it makes more sense, as I know a few trans people myself and my city isn’t even that large.

    • @outdated2139
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      14 months ago

      It’s their authoritarian dictator so they’ll love it.

      • BlackLaZoR
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        44 months ago

        Oh yeah, everyone wants their own benevolent dictator that fixes the wrongs of this world with necessary force.

        And then Hitler gets into power…

        • @outdated2139
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          34 months ago

          I wouldn’t say that everyone wants their own benevolent dictator, but the ones who have that view can only picture theirs in power. I’m sure Hitler had a bunch of people who liked what he was doing.

    • @[email protected]
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      444 months ago

      Also fun fact:

      Every tabletop scenario he ran (think like a UN version of Risk) in which the Authoritarians had control, they wiped out everyone with nuclear war including themselves.

      • @[email protected]
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        164 months ago

        I don’t think we’ll go out that way, but I do 100% believe our greed will be our “great filter” that we do not pass. :(

        • qprimed
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          164 months ago

          with dwindling resources on a warming planet, I think the likelyhood of a significant nuclear exchange is dramatically increased - perhaps even inevitable.

          agree with the great filter. it makes me think that humans, having acted as a great filter for our hominid family tree, are about to reap what we have been sowing for the last 200k+ years.

          or this could be a one of many catalysts for speciation. I sometimes feel that some people are already a different species. not better, not worse (not willing to engage in subjective morality) - just different, with different goals, problems and problem solving tools.

          • TimeSquirrel
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            84 months ago

            the likelyhood of a significant nuclear exchange is dramatically increased - perhaps even inevitable.

            Yes. Never has anybody used a weapon only once forever. As long as nukes still exist, they WILL get used again someday. We can’t help ourselves.

      • @[email protected]
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        134 months ago

        If I remember correctly, even after giving the authoritarians a do-over, they still fucked it up.

        Meanwhile, the people in the other group who scored low on authoritarianism like solved the climate crisis and world hunger.

        Some people are legitimately bad at politics and stuff, and it’s not the people the authoritarians are mad about.

        • @[email protected]
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          54 months ago

          Yep lol. Every chance they got they blew themselves and everyone else up. It was quite the crazy read on a flight from Boston to Chicago lol.

  • @[email protected]
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    32% of americans are chickenshit responsibility abrogators that want everything they do to be dictated to them. Religion has been a major primer for that mindset

    • @[email protected]
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      154 months ago

      At some level, people just want a particular policy. It’s silly to pretend a democracy where I never get what I want is going to be more attractive than a dictatorship where I get to unleash my libidinal id.

      And you can’t just blame this on religion. Religiosity has plummeted over the last 40 years, but we seem to be as accommodating towards fascism as ever.

        • @[email protected]
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          124 months ago

          Yes, one of the reasons for this movement being started decades ago, and coming to a head now, is the decline in what people considered to be the correct values, aka their values. Religion is in decline, conservative political positions are getting less popular, mainstream culture is slowly moving away from catering, pretty much, exclusively to white, straight, christians. They are being backed into a the proverbial corner. The only way they see a future for their dominance is by force.

    • @[email protected]
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      114 months ago

      32% of people know their preferred way of doing things are unpopular and will not get their way unless a regime that agrees with them is in power, because democracy would favor the majority.

      Religion can of course drive an entitlement that’s very dangerous (people asserting a higher power justifies their particular view), but more mundane motivations can easily drive people to demand they are right over the majority).

  • billwashere
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    594 months ago

    TIL 32% of Americans are idiots.

    Wait … I knew this already. Never mind.

    • @[email protected]
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      You can pretty much ask almost any insane thing and it somehow always comes out to at least 30% of Americans.

      I sometimes wonder if it’d always the same 30% and there just 30% idiots, or if that 30% spans multiple topics and groups of idiots and its actually higher like 60%

      • @[email protected]
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        14 months ago

        I wonder if it’s something like 25% of survey respondents are just picking the most outrageous thing and 5% actually believe that way. I remember a while ago on a survey about being ok with political violence, they tried to control for that kind of thing and it dropped the numbers a lot.

    • @[email protected]
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      94 months ago

      I mean, I imagine if someone like Bernie Sanders became Dictator for Life; the quality of life for 99.999% of Americans would improve; so purely in a thought-experiment kind of way, it works.

      The issue with even the most benelovent dictatorships is the matter of succession.

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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        144 months ago

        Yup, that is the exact problem of benevolent dictatorships. No matter how good it is in the short term, the long term will always end in disaster at some point or another.

    • @[email protected]
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      34 months ago

      Braindead, or supremely selfish and would love a regime that enforces their unpopular desires over the democratic choice?

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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        24 months ago

        Which is still braindead. What happens when their perfect leader can no longer serve? Even if a dictator 100% aligns with you, you’re a fool to support them.

    • Random Dent
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      414 months ago

      Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

      • Karl Marx

      If you go far enough left, you get your guns back!

      • @[email protected]
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        254 months ago

        That’s not far left, that’s just left of center. Don’t buy the American bullshit that socialism is an extreme, it honestly isn’t.

        • @[email protected]
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          24 months ago

          No shit, Democrats are right leaning moderates these days. Too bad a third party has no chance at getting anywhere because I’d be all for a socialist party.

      • @[email protected]
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        4 months ago

        The ballot box still works AFAIK (as shit as First Past The Post voting is)

        Are you an accelerationist?

        • @[email protected]
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          24 months ago

          It sounds like the person you’re responding to is saying the accelerated option isn’t being effective?

          • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)
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            14 months ago

            Yes it was, but honestly if I make a comment that a pro-gun American can see as negative against, I am aware I will be downvoted heavily.

            • @[email protected]
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              34 months ago

              Lol that’s fair. The States IS a country that considers gun ownership a HUMAN RIGHT and doesnt understand how insane lumping gun ownership with being able to access drinkable water is

  • @[email protected]
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    394 months ago

    Hmm I wonder what 30% that is…

    I also wonder if there is any overlap between that 30% and people that have a bones for “freedom” and “liberty”

    • @[email protected]
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      114 months ago

      If you check the poll it’s not what you’d expect. The self-identified left had 25% support. The self-identified right had 29% support. The self-identified center had 37 PERCENT support. There’s apparently a thirst for some strong authoritarian radical centrism.

      • LeadersAtWork
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        184 months ago

        I struggle to trust numbers nowadays. After being on Reddit for 11 years and now here on Lemmy, and around the Internet my entire life, lemme tell you about why people would self-identify as something else for a moment:

        Because they are anonymous.

        There are a huge amount of people who are on the Right on Lemmy trying to pass off as Blue, or blue-leaning.

        • @[email protected]
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          104 months ago

          As someone who is quite left, I find myself less radically left than many on Lemmy. My beliefs basically fall exactly with Bernie Sanders, which is more left than probably 95% of the entire country, but that isn’t left enough for some people.

          • @iknowitwheniseeit
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            24 months ago

            If you ask people about policies and not self-identification, Bernie’s ideas have massive support from all Americans. It’s political discourse that has swung right, not the views of typical Americans.

        • @[email protected]
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          54 months ago

          Even without active deception there’s plenty of self-deception. People like the aesthetic of “I’m my own person, not beholden to left or right” while voting left or right every election.

      • @[email protected]
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        64 months ago

        That would be the ‘benevolent dictator’ crowd. Strong amongst the military and business/tech investor class.

  • @[email protected]
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    394 months ago

    Even well-meaning authoritarians can do terrible things, to say nothing of their eventual replacement. Look what happens to otherwise great companies when the founder dies and is replaced by someone just looking to maximize next quarter profits.

    What short-sighted utter fools.

    • @[email protected]
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      34 months ago

      They could but that would be wrong since the split is only 4% between the left and right (L-25% and R - 29%).

        • @[email protected]
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          24 months ago

          I am literally reading from the article… And even with your numbers democrats are still quite terrible…

          • @[email protected]
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            Dude… I quoted that FROM the article.

            “A PRRI study last October found that 38 percent of Americans (and 48 percent of Republicans, 38 percent of independents, and 29 percent of Democrats) think the country needs a leader who will “break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right.”

            Stop making shit up.

            • @[email protected]
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              14 months ago

              Did you notice that your numbers dont match the headlines? The headline and main part of the article is about the pew study which I quoted from.

              Stop making shit up.

              • @[email protected]
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                34 months ago

                So…. You didn’t even read your own article. That’s fucking embarrassing. Maybe read it. See for yourself that I copied those numbers DIRECTLY from it.

                Jesus man…. You really should delete your shit.

  • Hanrahan
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    334 months ago

    “Susan Sontag was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10% of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10% is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80% could be moved in either direction” —Kurt Vonnegut

    • TheHiddenCatboy
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      144 months ago

      Yeah, I like to call that the 10-80-10 principle. That’s why it’s so important to keep the arguments up for why we should vote Blue no matter who. 10% want to fuck everyone over. And they’ve managed to convince another 22% that they are right. We’re all screwed if we don’t get the 68% that aren’t assholes to vote Blue.

  • @[email protected]
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    324 months ago

    a decade later, somewhere on 4chan

    be me
    hardcore Trump supporter
    Trump wins, I’m ecstatic
    world starts going to hell, WW3 kicks off
    married with three sons, trying to keep everything together
    decide to start a construction company, war efforts boost business
    build a bunch of buildings, making bank
    get elected to local office, life is on the up and up

    land a huge contract, biggest yet
    build the place, turns out it’s a gay bar
    fml
    media catches wind, calls me part of the “woke agenda”
    sons get drafted into the war, proud but terrified
    trying to keep the family safe as the world burns
    business takes a nosedive, firebombed by extremists
    every building I’ve ever built gets torched
    house goes up in flames, barely escape with wife

    wife blames me for everything, says I’m the reason we’re targeted
    receive word from the front lines
    “All three of your sons killed in friendly fire”
    caskets arrive the next morning
    wife loses it completely, leaves the country, I’m left alone

    arrested, accused of contributing to “trans agenda”
    just a foreman trying to get by, now rotting in jail
    every dream turned to ash
    life was supposed to be perfect
    now I’m just a broken man with nothing but regret

    tfw everything falls apart because of one misguided decision

    sadpepe.jpg

  • @[email protected]
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    314 months ago

    The Founders were ONLY CORRECT when they said we’re allowed to Shoot Up Elementary Schools. Everything else was WRONG!

    -Pro Life Republicans.