Pirate's Cove

Over at A View From The Beach (which has a great morning post on swimming), Fritz has a long running series on Reasons Trump Was Elected, like this one. Many of them revolved around shoddy, idiotic, unhinged, Trump Derangement Syndrome media reports. Like this one by Excitable Noah Berlatsky at NBC News

The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism

Since the founding of the United States, politicians and pundits have warned that partisanship is a danger to democracy. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, worried that political parties, or factions, could “allow cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men” to rise to power and subvert democracy. More recently, many political observers are concerned that increasing political polarization on left and right makes compromise impossible, and leads to the destruction of democratic norms and institutions.

A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled “White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy.” Their study finds a correlation between white American’s intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.

Miller and Davis used information from the World Values Survey, a research project organized by a worldwide network of social scientists which polls individuals in numerous countries on a wide range of beliefs and values. Based on surveys from the United States, the authors found that white people who did not want to have immigrants or people of different races living next door to them were more likely to be supportive of authoritarianism. For instance, people who said they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race were more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results.

You can see kinda where this is going, right? Part of it is that if you do not want illegal aliens in the U.S., well, then you support authoritarianism and white nationalism. But, hey, I wonder if their survey includes anything on gentrification, which is really about “minority” racists not wanting whites to move into their neighborhoods and rehabilitate them.

Anyhow, you know this is All About Trump, right?

The World Values Survey data used is from the period 1995 to 2011 — well before Donald Trump’s 2016 run for president. It suggests, though, that Trump’s bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined. When Trump calls Mexicans “rapists,” and when he praises authoritarian leaders, he is appealing to the same voters.

So, a meager 17 years of data, take during the time of two Democrat presidents and one Republican one, long before Trump, but, this is about Trump? Sigh

“Social intolerance isn’t just leading to GOP support as we know it and see it now,” Miller says. “It’s leading to preferences in favor of the kind of candidate the GOP ultimately nominated and supported for president.” In embracing the politics of white identity, then, the GOP made a Trump possible — and is likely to make more Trump-like candidates successful in the future.

Another meme running around the Right-O-Sphere is “this is why Trump won in 2016 and will win in 2020”. And this type of TDS article is exactly why Trump will win in 2020.