The Authoritarian Personality
It seems like only yesterday that Jabba the Hut…err, Chris Christie rode to prominence via his keynote speech at the 2012 Republican Convention. Here was the tough guy America needed, telling it straight, not coddling the tender sentiments of the liberal do-gooders. He’d shake things up and get the trains running on time.
The emotional investment in bloviating bullies like Christie and Giuliani is a strange one. Partially it serves as a revenge fantasy – he’s doing to those freaks what his followers would like to do themselves. But there’s also a desire on supporters to be dominated by a larger-than-life dad, to feel protected and overawed as they were as children. Yet in every case these strongmen turn out to be venal, corrupt, and incredibly weak, not to mention completely unprincipled. Christie is finished but there are plenty more where he came from.
Posted by RobotBoy on Jul 19, 2017 | 2:28 AM