Authoritarianism with a liberal face: My trouble with America

How does one handle (angry) authoritarians? (Assuming that you consider yourself a non- or anti-authoritarian, which means, necessarily, that expressions of authoritarianism annoy and outrage you as the injustice they are.).

It is easy to see that in fact angry authoritarians are not at all thrown off by anything one could say in anger at them. They are fully prepared for that. If you get angry at them, you will be shown to be in the wrong. Why? Not because of anything about anger itself or how people express themselves. Not because of all the seemingly so important yet actually irrelevant considerations of what are the rules (enforced, usually, in an authoritarian style) of communicative interaction (don't raise your voice, don't interrupt, listen to me when I am talking to you). No, the real reason is in the power relationship. The authoritarian is someone who wields power or thinks he or she does, or can with you, and is right and you are wrong because this is a presupposition of their exercise of authority.

Thus, the claim that someone is interrupting, raising their voice, not being polite, etc., is almost always made by the person with authority or superior power in the situation (or, again, who thinks they are) and against the person whose role is coded as that of servant, who must obey, or "child" in the authoritarian notions of parenting. Bosses are rarely called out for yelling or being impolite. A security guard or social worker who has power over you and needs to be "respected" will not likely be called to account by anyone for their behavior, and you certainly cannot do so, least of all to them (you cannot "speak truth to power').

What is so peculiar about American society in particular is the way in which the power dynamics are systematically disavowed. Though not always. When they are not disavowed, a brutal recourse to the threat of personal violence or evocation of institutional punishment is usually what follows. ("Oh, so you believe in honesty and directness? Alright, you asked for it! I may as well tell you what it really is about, which is that I command and you obey, since you did not seem to understand when I was more “politely” indirect.
Now you will obey me, or else I will hurt you."). Most people who follow or enforce the norms of obedience in our society and that are particularly involved in certain institutions, actually believe that something else is at stake, and that people are punished not for disobedience, or the disrespect of lèse-majesté, but for some real transgression of some set of rules of proper behavior.

You must never get angry at an authoritarian, because you cannot persuade them of anything. It is not that they are irrational in the sense of not having clearly articulated reasons that they can give if necessary to explain why they do what they do (it is necessary, these are the roles, I am only treating you the same as everyone else, I have to be a power sucker too because everyone must, etc.). But their rationality is limited when it comes to social interaction, from which it is absent, replaced by a principle of authority.

Further, the person who thinks they are entitled to act like an angry parent, trying to infantilize you, will only know that they can beat you up even more if you complain about it. Never get angry at a bully; the bully "knows" that you are only angry because you are not getting what you want, whereas he or she speaks for "God" or something like it.

The dynamics of interpersonal domination are so predominant in American social and institutional (including familial) life that there even was a school of American psychology devoted to it. It is the "transactional analysis" theory that posits that many people relate to others as (authoritarian, dominating) parents to children, or as children to parents (wanting, needing, and complaining), one side getting angry at you for disobeying, the other for hurting them. Partisans of either standpoint will often be deaf to the claims of the other. So, if a person in authority has decided to do something to you they claim will "help" you, since they have arrogated to themselves the right to act, think, and speak in your interest, it is usually pointless to protest that they will be doing you harm, or that the likely consequence will involved your harm in some way. From their point of view, it doesn't matter. So much for the disobedient who would protest that they are being subjected to the injustice of oppression. And to those who make that claim, that some of the oppressed are acting in disobedience to authority would matter little if true, since the demand for obedience is that o a tyrant -- and those who see things this way are often right. This may even be carried to the extreme of the claim that because someone is oppressed, any recourse to violence that can be justified with the claim that one is oppressed, is justified. Never mind that part of what counts as "oppression" here may just be perceived disrespect, and this may come from the disdain of people whose only real fear is of a violence that is not always invented and that ceases to be an exaggerated fear in every instance where it happens. The transaction analysis schema is not wrong, however reductive, but it rests on the sad recognition that the republican idea of the virtuous citizen who is, if nothing else, an adult, is a fragile achievement in our society because of how much of it is based on a logic of domination.

Of course, the origin of much of this taste for extreme domination as well as the sometimes exaggerated distaste for it that rarely lessens its use or effect, is the peculiar American historical experience of slavery and its consequences. Few examples exist of a more absolute and brutal form of the subjection of one person or people to the will and whim of another. I am convinced that this historical anomaly explains much about how authority and liberty, and the relationship between them, are constructed in America.

I have been astounded at the extent to which some people who I would like to think should know better wield a blatant domination with a blatant threat of violence. In my youth, I spent a brief period of time being homeless. Since it is widely assumed that homeless people are only poor because of a lack of virtue, and therefore that they must be mentally ill, I was referred by the shelter to a therapy clinic. The man that I saw there gave me a referral slip to an institution he wanted me to enroll in, offering housing on some basis. He did not ask but commanded. When I saw him the next week he asked if I had followed up. I said no. Indeed, I had lost the paper he gave. Immediately, he said, if you lose the papers I gave you, I may have to give you medication. He would have disavowed that this was a threat of punishment, though he knew very well that it was that, whatever else it was. I eventually called the organization that he had referred me to and a man answered the phone who in some ways resembled the first man. I was sort of taken aback by the man's manner of speaking to me, and I said, comically perhaps, excuse me, but I am actually a very intelligent person. He replied, "Well, that's good, because then you will be able to understand some of the things we have to tell you." Yes sir: we the bosses give orders, and you must obey or else we will hurt you. The society is a military outfit. I would later find, and repeatedly learn, that this kind of authoritarianism is widely shared in the demographic these men were both part of. I never learned this lesson as well as I might have, because every time one of them tried to assert their domination of me in the typical crude and brutal way that could for a person of my background only come as something of a shock, if not also as the threat it very well might be, and certainly would turn to if it is not acknowledged in the expected (unquestioningly obedient) way. All I had to was hesitate for a brief moment, and they would interpret that first as the disobedience they have less than zero tolerance for (less than zero because they seemed to sniff it out even when it was not expressed), which they would in turn interpret as disrespect to their person, and that as a prejudice. This leads to violence on their part, typically, I learned, and a long series of subsequent encounters, to my horror, and outrage, which slowly replaced my initial astonishment. This is an authoritarian (sub-)culture.

I discovered that I cannot speak about it. I am sure that much is accomplished in keeping our liberal culture within conservative corporate and governmental bounds rather than allowing difficult discussions that could enable our troubled society to move forward on some of the issues involved.

So what can you do? Not much besides give Caesar what is Caesar's and walk away, getting out as quickly as you can.

If you contest what they are doing, you will lose. Authoritarians rely on their ability to use coercion to get what they want. Note that liberals are even more likely than conservatives to deny any hearing of your claim. They simply will not find it legible. First, because the real commitment of American liberals or progressives is to the absolute power of the state that they believe expresses their will along with all of "us," because that posture is what enables them to so readily criticize individuals; and the twist this is given by the liberal left is that absolute state authority should be wielded in the name of combatting prejudice.

There are consequences of these matters bearing on conflicts between some of America's demographic social groups that are, I believe, poorly understood.

It can seem to be a difference between social demographics, but at bottom it is more than that, a problematic that properly opens onto debates about values that need to take place.