> What has surprised me is the relatively large percentage of my compatriots who are also authoritarian and anti-democratic. All that stuff about the constituti

> What has surprised me is the relatively large percentage of my compatriots who are also authoritarian and anti-democratic. All that stuff about the constitution was just lip service. To the extent that the constitution maintains the status quo, it is embraced. To the extent that it upsets existing social order, not so much. According to Stenner's theory, there is a certain subset of people who hold latent authoritarian tendencies. These tendencies can be triggered or "activated" by the perception of physical threats or by destabilizing social change, leading those individuals to desire policies and leaders that we might more colloquially call authoritarian. ... Authoritarians prioritize social order and hierarchies, which bring a sense of control to a chaotic world. Challenges to that order — diversity, influx of outsiders, breakdown of the old order — are experienced as personally threatening because they risk upending the status quo order they equate with basic security. https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism