Re: POTUS: Definitely Needs Anger Management
It isnt just the Right that wants strong man leaders...that is a trait of large groups in general. People want to be lead they dont want to have to make decisions for themselves.
There is a reason why Lefty revolutions tend to get co-opted by strongman dictators as well. People love the fight, then they just want to be told what to do from then on.
Not really. With the Left it's a bug, with the Right it's a feature.
Take the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. When the Mensheviks won the February Revolution they formed a Provisional Government and
tried to both continue a stable provision of social services and also institute the reforms demanded by the Soviets which included popular sovereignty and decentralized power (in politics by region, in economy right down to every factory workers' collective). They also tried to keep up Russian commitments in the war which proved a serious mistake since the antiwar faction, which had been very suspicious of the Bolsheviks' motives, split off when it became apparent the Provisional Government would not simply sue for peace. The Left here was attempting to walk the tightrope in an environment in which the counterrevolutionary Right in Russia was fighting to get back into power and the financiers, businessmen, and the Right the world over were howling for blood over the nationalization of "their" industries. The Bolsheviks continued to harass the Mensheviks from the Left while the counter-revolutionaries plotted from the Right, and eventually it all fell apart and Lenin seized power in the October Revolution. A bug.
Now take the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in Italy. In both instances, the whole aim was to centralize power under a strongman and enforce militant, centralized, nationalist policies with no dissent and no opposition permitted. In Germany the Nazis immediately declared opposition parties illegal the first
day they had the power in the Reichstag. In Italy Mussolini was much more honest about it: he just shot them. For the Right, the Great Daddy, the Great God Emperor, is the whole point. The authoritarian personality craves dominance: they see it as right for their Fuhrer to dominate the Party which dominates them, while they as Daddy -- a little personal Hitler -- can dominate their family. From top to bottom the whole driving force is a fist. A feature.
That's what the Left and the Right are all about, Charlie Brown.