32 percent of Americans believe a military regime or authoritarian leader would be a good way of governing the country.

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.

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

To have others be told how to live, which is how they prefer to live already.

Sounds like they're just looking for a daddy.

The people who don't want to be told how to live want other people to be told how to live thinking they'll be left alone.

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.

I’m glad at least they aren’t hiding it anymore

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.

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).

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%

It's more than that, but some of them accidentally believe that democracy is good.

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.

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

I should of scrolled down before saying the same this myself.

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!

Doesn't look like keeping them is doing much either.

An overwhelming majority of California and New York leftists disagree with you and have neutered themselves in order to prevent black people from organizing during the segregation era protests and now the reason is for children's safety from school shooters.

What do you say to those people?

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.

It was a disturbingly close call which side of WWII we were gonna land on. In 1939 the second-largest Nazi party in the world was right here in America.

Stupid people who don’t know how the system works think that they will someday be wearing the boot. They think because they kiss the boot that they’ll never be stomped.

They are a part of our DNA. Perhaps the tribe in the jungle needed bootlickers to survive and we inherited that DNA.

We never were civilized. We added extra steps to the (concrete) jungle and pretended we were.

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.

Ah yes a bell curve

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

I'm not sure I find the idea of a 4Channer with a wife plausible.

Was that from before he was elected?

I hate a military dictatorship but to play devil's advocate: South Korea and Taiwan?

I'm not saying their transition to democracies was bloodless or clean but they managed. Those two are extreme examples and not models, one country built after a war that split the country in two, the other fleeing the mainland to create its own state. But I'm stretching to find a better example.

Whoa, that last question would require historical knowledge, and education is Satan, didn't you know?

France under DeGaulle?

Edit to add: It's not an assertio, it's a question I don't know the answer to.

Thailand regularly has military coups.

Sparta

I'm not sure they can read.

Sorry, those books are banned because it hurt some fascist fee fees...

Probably should have rewrote the constitution every 20 years like Thomas Jefferson said we should.

Not at all a coincidence.

Not anywhere the Republicans can control the school curriculum

I think I know which third it should be.

Bad news: the 1/3 authoritarian segment of society seems to be a human trait. Culture determines how the trait is expressed.

So fire them into the sun but statistically the hierarchically-minded, active-amygdala, contrarian and cruel segments of the genome will just always be there.

This is probably the primary challenge of the human condition: graduating from a troupe species with ling-refined tribal techniques for handling the problem individuals, to a noöspheric global species successfully coping with with emergent problems due to mass "civilizational" effects.

"He's not hurting the people he's supposed to hurt."

The nation built on native American burial grounds using slavery didn't work out? Say it ain't so!

So you're saying trump could shoot his supporters in the middle of Fifth Avenue and they'd say "Nice shot sir!"?

Maybe Republicans would pick a more moderate candidate if they weren't shackled by First Past the Post voting to a giant flaming turd.

Maybe democrats would pick someone who doesn't support genocide.

But capitalists hate competition... thus FPTP voting remains.

I’m 100% in favor of me being a dictator for life

This right here. Even as a kid studying history, I never understood why someone would support a dictator. When I was like 9 or 10, we were learning about WW2 or something, and I said, "Wait, Mrs. <History Teacher>, you're saying people wanted Hitler to be a dictator and voted for him? Why would someone give up the possibility of being leader themselves?!" I couldn't comprehend how someone wouldn't want to at least have the possibility of having supreme executive authority.

Like, if it were me in charge, then I'm all for it, but some other person? HELLLLLLLL NO! It could be Gary down the block, and he's an asshole.

Being a dictator is a prison with a firing squad at the end of your sentence.

I'd rather take LSD and play valheim.

I would NOT want to be supreme leader for life, but I’d like to think I’d do a lot to benefit people. Y’all could, and usually do, do worse than me, but you’d have to catch me first

(scruples)

“Leftist military regime” is an oxygenated moron.

The conservatives during The War of Independence were The Loyalists. The progressives were The Patriots

How the hell do you compete with that?

Education

I agree with you. This is where I just throw my hands up and concede that this is the will of the people. Our democratic form of government affords people the freedom to choose to be sheep. Isn't it beautiful?

This election, like the last one, isn't about convincing maga extremists or lifelong Republicans to vote for the first Democrat in their lives. It's about convincing people in the middle to vote against Project 2025. I know it's insane, but there are still enough "undecided" voters that they will literally decide the election. That plus turnout. If enough people vote, Donald Trump cannot turn this country into an authoritarian regime.

You really can't imagine that 32% of Americans are idiots? If anything, I'm relieved the number isn't higher.

32 percent of Americans believe a military regime or authoritarian leader (described as a strong leader who can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts) would be a good way of governing the country.

They didn't agree with a statement that explicitly endorsed authoritarianism or military dictatorship. They agreed with a statement that is being interpreted as the equivalent of supporting those things.

And the question itself is very open to interpretation. Does "strong" mean decisive and principled or cruel and dictatorial? Does interference refer to the normal balance of power between the three branches of government, or is it referring to extreme dysfunction, or even unconstitutional actions taken by courts and/or congress that violates constitutional principles.

No, they will have to pay the iron price for that.

That won't count for shit when only 20% of us have guns or whatever the number is. Almost all of them do