What The Greatest Generation Can Teach Us About Defeating Today’s Totalitarianism

What it took to defeat the evil of those who started WWII, is what we need now to defeat the same kind of evil that now runs our America.  

This recurring evil that goes back across world history for centuries is driven by right-wing authoritarianism (RWA).  The RWA personality, which can be tested for with a psychological test, has been the subject of psychologists looking at history to better understand what drives humanity to self-destruction.  This testing showed that the authoritarian personality is correlated strongly with the political right and is almost non-existent on the political left.  The research also showed that German citizens were more susceptible to its influences.

There have also been studies of the human brain to understand why people operate differently.  This has led to the establishment of two opposing family models which in turn define opposing politics.  On the one hand there are families that fit what is called the strict-father family model.  On the other hand, is the nurturant parent family model.  This brain research shows that most of us are a mix of the two models.  Based on recent voting history and other research referenced below, RWAs now represent at least 28% of the voting populace or 20 to 25% of the total population. (Post script: The results of the 2020 presidential elections correlate with these numbers. The now accused (91 indictments/four cases) loser, P01135809, got 30.9% of the votes of 2020 registered voters. That in turn represents about 22.4% of the total 2020 population.)

Other research efforts by Stanley Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo show that since most of us share some elements of  authoritarian traits, these traits can be exploited.  The subtitle of Zimbardo’s book, The Lucifer Effect, is Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. This book was written after the Abu Ghraib evil events were revealed and was supported by Zimbardo’s prison experiment at Stanford.   

A concept Zimbardo developed in his book, The Lucifer Effect, was the “bad barrel.”  In other words, your environment can override your personal inhibitions under the right influences.    Consider the possibility that citizens, hunkered down in their homes with vast stores of weapons and ammo to protect them from the less pure among us, who are also watching Fox News and listening to hate radio, are in a nationwide bad barrel.  How else can you explain all the viral videos of RWAs (Karen and Ken) doing evil things (mass shootings)?

The strict-father model produces the RWA personality and the moral values system behind the policies they support.  This family model is based on a social hierarchy with one, most perfect, group at the top and all other groups at progressively lower levels based on their degree of imperfection as defined by those most perfect.   This leads to a strong belief in inequality and absolute individual responsibility.  They support government policies that protect and empower only those most perfect individuals.  They also have a strong belief that each human is prone to evil at birth and what they define as evil can’t be allowed to grow.  The basic tool used, within this family model to maintain their imaginary social hierarchy and minimize the evil they fear most, is severe punishment.  Punihment starting at less than two years of age and extending to outright murder of adults of lesser perfection and war with nations with less perfect citizens.

For the nurturant parent family model, both parents use a moral values system based on equality, compassion/empathy, and responsibility not only for oneself but for others.  They believe in equality of opportunity and accounting for life’s unpredictable misfortunes driven by the circumstances of birth.  They teach compassion for their fellow man.   They nurture our hardwired ability to empathize.  They believe and expect every child has great power to do good.  Their moral values drive them to support family and government policies that equally protect and empower all their fellow citizens and all family members.  

In addition to Zimbardo’s “bad barrel” impacting otherwise good citizens to act in evil ways, there is also the research that shows the stress of a strict-father family on the fetus of a pregnant wife increases the possibility of RWA tendencies in the child as an adult.   This stress actually changes the brain of the fetus to become receptive to the authoritarian worldview they are born into.  

Restating what I said at the start of this article, the native RWA tendencies in Germany, Spain, Italy, and other countries since, led to staggering levels of death and destruction for the sake of protecting and empowering the most perfect (wealthy, Chistianist, hterosexual, cisgenter, men).  The United States of that time included a small minority of RWAs who supported Germany: companies, Lindberg, The German American Bund.   However, the vast majority of Americans agreed to sacrifice for the greater good.   Capitalism was replaced with rationing.  Sons and daughters joined the military.  Those at home agreed to sacrifice personal gain now for gains after the war, like through the GI Bill.  Citizens, with very few exceptions, were UNIFIED against RWA evil, internal and abroad!

Well, now we are battling a new enemy, RWAs, which are allowed to directly attack us all.   Unfortunately, the RWAs are dividing/distracting us while tens of thousands are dying prematurely.   We have a larger portion of RWAs blindly supporting a psychopath and a few of these RWAs have become wealthy enough, through excessive tax cuts, to take advantage of changed telecommunications laws and regulations to purchase our media and create a nationwide bad barrel of television and radio.  The double-high authoritarian leaders use this bad barrel as a direct line to manipulate and unify their RWA followers with repeated, formulated, identical, fear and hate based, messages against those who are less pure.  

We need to counter this well organized RWA unity with a unity that goes beyond the Democratic Party.   We need massive voter participation by all those left of the RWA GQP Party.  We need to elect every Democrat on the ballot.    We need a Brand New Congress with a plurality in both houses.  We need to support our local candidates with donations and labor.

As we did during WWII, we need to replace our predatory economic system with a more democratic economic system that eventually disempowers the psychopathic, excessively wealthy, double-high, RWA social dominators so they can no longer buy our government by controlling their RWA followers with their RWA media.   We need to pass laws that reverse decades of economic, social, racial, environmental, and disenfranchisement perpetrated by the RWAs.  We need to pass laws that discourage lying by public officials and news media.

Party unity is critical and necessary, but we need even more.  We need voter turnout we haven’t seen since the late 1800s.  Turnout as in 2018 provides a hopeful sign for 2020 and 2024.  But don’t use that possibility as an excuse to say you don’t need my vote. Make sure progressive Democrats run for office.  Vote for progressive Democrats.  Vote and support all your local candidates.  Vote to stop the growing hate/violence we see in videos of RWAs exercising their freedoms while abusing and ending the freedoms of others.   

Since WWII, the enemy of the United States has grown from within from a seed left over from that time.  We must all unite as The Greatest Generation did to take out the Kreepy, Krawly, Kudzu that has infested our land.   We must unite to bring down the wealthy, double-high, RWA traitors who are stealthily stealing our government from us.   They have produced and new plan for creating a permanent, minority-controlled, authoritarian future in 2025.

The A-Team for winning WWII was a united citizenry.  The A-Team for winning in 2020/2024 must be a united citizenry in spite of all the new divisive forces at work.

????Rescuing America starts in November, 2020, and WE are ALL the A-Team!!!????