Violent behavior on airplanes has reached such epidemic proportions that the president of Delta Airlines last week asked the Department of Homeland security to allow the airlines to submit passengers who have terrified or otherwise abused flight crews for placement on the government's no-fly list.
This is a symptom of the much deeper problem: Donald Trump has planted authoritarianism across America like some kind of bizarre Johnny Appleseed, and only his humiliation and conviction will pull it out by the roots.
Eight Republican senators have now come forward to defend the air-crew abusers, as astonishing as that may seem. In doing so, they're making common cause with thousands of authoritarian followers who've adopted Donald Trump as their behavioral role model.
Why would eight GOP senators support abusers on airplanes? Because these senators also view Trump as their own personal role model and believe they draw power, prestige and safety from their association with him. They, like the people abusing flight crews, are authoritarian followers.
This explosion of "air rage" is a symptom of a much larger problem in contemporary America, one we may be on the edge of resolving.
A June 2021 Morning Consult poll found that about 26 percent of Americans now embrace authoritarian leanings, about twice the proportion found in other democratic nations. The reason, I believe, is that Donald Trump has socially encouraged and authorized their behavior, resulting in a nationwide acceptance and amplification of antisocial activities.
Were it not for Trump, most of these people would have simply taken out their authoritarian tendencies in smaller and often unnoticed ways on their dog, spouse, employees/co-workers or neighbors. Trump's example elevated them, in their minds, to actors on the national stage so now they're acting out in a variety of public venues, including on airplanes.
We've always had authoritarians among us. These are people who paradoxically love to submit to an authority figure above them while at the same time desperately need to assert their own authority over others "below them" in order to feel safe.
They see the world in binary terms: there are those in control and those who are controlled, those who lead and those who follow, those who dominate and those who are dominated. And when a severe authoritarian leader has significant success in society, authoritarianism becomes, essentially, a contagious mental and cultural illness.
Our airline crews, politicians and teachers now find themselves on the front lines, seeing that illness play out in their own work and lives.
While the vast majority of authoritarians are authoritarian followers, a small percentage are authoritarian leaders. They exist together with their followers in a symbiosis like pilotfish and shark, gang leader and gang, alpha dog and pack.
When authoritarian leaders emerge and are celebrated in the broader society authoritarian followers are drawn to them, realigning their worldview, value system, and behavior to mirror those of the authoritarian leader.
Authoritarian followers submit to control by their chosen leader because it makes them feel like they're drawing power (and, thus, authority) from that person.
They're often drawn to hierarchical and violent professions where they can both submit to their own leaders while also routinely assert their own authority over those they view as beneath them. Thus authoritarians are over-represented in professions like policing, while only rarely seen among similarly public-service jobs like becoming firefighters.
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