Written by RS Janes   

Despite Their Cries for Liberty, the Teabaggers Are Just Authoritarian Followers Looking for Someone to Tell Them What to Think

There are no more than, maybe, 20 percent of the voting public that really thinks a Tea Party-approved candidate would be a good president. I used to do some polling work -- 1 or 2 out of every 10 Americans chosen at random are Jaywalking-All-Star cretins who 'don't know much about geography,' history, their own religion, nor anything else. They are 'Authoritarian Followers' who want someone to feed them their opinions and make everything 2nd-grade simple to understand. There is no gray area in any idea -- it's all 'black hat, white hat' thinking -- and they aren't good at considering the consequences of their actions. Phony cowboy Junior Bush and his 'with us or ag'in us' bluster was perfect for them -- they imagine a return to a mythical ‘Father Knows Best’ America where teenage girls didn’t get pregnant; women never got abortions or demanded equal rights; gay people didn’t exist, and minorities were all friendly, bowing cooks, gardeners or maids who didn’t make waves by marching for better treatment or an end to segregation.

These Tea Party fantasists tend to belong to fundamentalist religious sects because such groups have all the answers for the mysteries of the universe provided in short fairy tales and a strong Father Figure in the pulpit to peddle the pious poop when he isn't taming drugged snakes in the name of the Lawd or snorting meth off the belly of a male prostitute for which he will, of course, be forgiven since his ‘mind is right,’ whereas a ‘lib’rul’ will rot in hell for the same perceived sins. Their ignorance and hypocrisy are breathtaking, as is their selective view of ‘God’s Word’ in the Bible; the Sermon on the Mount is ignored, as are Jesus’ repeated condemnations of hypocrisy and self-righteous pride, while John’s Book of Revelation is sanctified and expanded on.

"How do you know the universe is only 6,000 years old?" "The Bible says so." "What about the scientific evidence it's billions of years old?" "Silly -- that's planted by God to test your faith!"

They are eternally chained to their force-fed opinions, so they strongly support politicians like Ronald Reagan, Junior Bush and Newt Gingrich no matter how many times their ‘free market crapitalist’ ideology is proven wrong or how much clay is discovered filling their shoes. These are the Teabaggers who hate taxes and gub'mint 'socialism' (they really can't define the word), but never turn down a Social Security or VA check, or a Medicare-paid trip to the doctor, and are first in line for the free government cheese. They also want the biggest military in history and border walls thousands of miles long, but never want to pay for any of it. This minority of logic-starved morons and uninformed cranks will always be with us and even dropping all the way to the bottom won't change them -- they'll demand the government's help when they need it and then turn around and applaud Limbaugh's latest rant against 'socialism.' They are living proof of the truth of John Stuart Mill's comment: "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservative." And most of the stupid conservatives these days are Authoritarian Follower Teabaggers.

Below, Dr. Bob Altemeyer, author of a massive 50-year study on the Authoritarian Follower personality, offers his informed opinion on the Tea Partiers.

"Suppose slavery still existed in the United States, but the federal government was trying to end it. However Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and so on told their audiences that slavery was a good thing, recognized by the Founding Fathers, endorsed in the Old Testament, the natural order of things, an issue for individual states to decide, protected by an individual's inalienable right to do what he wanted with his property, and so on. I doubt Abraham Lincoln would find these arguments compelling. But how much trouble do you think the Patriotic Association of Slave Owners would have getting today's Tea Partiers out to campaign for slavery in America?"
-- Dr. Bob Altemeyer, author of "The Authoritarians," from "Comment on the Tea Party Movement" [.pdf file].
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/drbob/Comment%20on%20the%20Tea%20Party.pdf

"According to research by Altemeyer, right-wing authoritarians tend to exhibit cognitive errors and symptoms of faulty reasoning. Specifically, they are more likely to make incorrect inferences from evidence and to hold contradictory ideas that result from compartmentalized thinking. They are also more likely to uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs, and they are less likely to acknowledge their own limitations."
-- Wikipedia entry on "Right-Wing Authoritarianism."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism

"The list of parallels between the research on authoritarian followers and the behavior of Tea Partiers probably extends well beyond twelve. For example, such followers in general have very poor self-insight; they realize almost nothing about how unfavorably they stack up compared to most people. As well, authoritarian followers run away from bad news about themselves; they are highly defensive. Authoritarian followers also have a strong tendency to be zealots, and Tea Partiers seem quite zealous. And authoritarian followers know surprisingly little about the things they say they believe in. It would be interesting to see how much the Tea Partiers actually know about the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and American history. For example, Tea Partiers commonly refer to the sanctity of 'the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.' Do they not know about all the amendments since 1791, or just don't consider them part of the Constitution?"
-- Dr. Bob Altemeyer, author of "The Authoritarians," from "Comment on the Tea Party Movement" [.pdf file].
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/drbob/Comment%20on%20the%20Tea%20Party.pdf

Note: You can download Dr. Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians" [.pdf file] free from his website: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Copyright 2011 RS Janes
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