I read an article based on interviews with California farmers who will be faced with water shortages this summer due to Trump's billion-gallon water release, which will leave them short during the dry summer months. They're sticking with Trump, however. "We'll just have to be real careful with our water use," one said.
For those believing that the FO part of FAFO would be relatively quick, I've got a thought for you.
I was introduced to authoritarianism early, with my mother's milk, you might say. When it was time to take me home from the hospital, my mother asked the doctor, "How often do you feed babies?"
"Every four hours," he answered.
She would brag, later, about how she would warm the bottle a few minutes early, then sit, holding me and the bottle, watching the kitchen clock, until it was exactly four hours since my last feeding. She didn't want to make any mistakes that might damage me, her long-waited only chick in the nest.
At that point, I'd have been crying for two hours. They'd give me a pacifier and note how desperately I sucked on it, and were mystified. They were doing everything right! Following doctor's orders to the second! And yet, not only was I spending half my life crying (and a newborn's cries are among the most irritating sounds in nature) but I wasn't gaining weight.
At four months, after only gaining one pound, instead of the expected four pounds or so, the doctor told them to put eggs in my formula. I needed a richer diet.
They did, and I immediately threw up. A frantic call to the doctor followed. Mom told him what had happened and asked if I could possibly be allergic to eggs.
"Allergies are voodoo. She's just being stubborn," he replied, authoritatively. (It's now known that infants under six months can't digest egg protein.)
So they kept it up. Egg-laced formula followed by vomiting at precise four-hour intervals for a month. At my five month checkup I'd lost 1/3 of my body weight and weighed ten ounces less than I had at birth. I looked like one of those babies on the Save the Children ads. The doctor announced that I was old enough for baby cereal and they didn't have to give me eggs anymore. (No admission of any possible error on his part.) It took a full year for me to double my birth weight, a developmental marker that normally takes three to six months. You'd think they'd have noticed that the doctor's advice was not working, and I know they did, but their mindset was that authority was not to be challenged. Obviously, since they were doing everything right, I was the problem.
This is how authoritarianism looks in real time. For the authoritarian follower, obedience is the primary, or perhaps only, virtue. Consequences are irrelevant, and to be ignored if they conflict with established doctrine. If you examine MAGA, from the anti-LGB&c, to the racism, to the farmers noted above, who passively accept the possible ruination of their harvests, you'll see it in action, over and over again. It provides the mainspring for sexual abuse by clergy. (He can't possibly be doing that! He's a minister/priest/church elder!)
It wasn't until my son was born, three decades later, that the penny dropped for my mother. I was nursing him, not bottle feeding, as I had been, and for those of you not familiar with this stuff, when the baby is hungry, your milk lets down and starts dripping, sometimes even before the baby cries. So Jake got fed when he was hungry, which happened to be about every two hours. If my mother were present, she'd berate me. "You feed babies every four hours! The Doctor said!"
"But he's hungry, Mom."
"You feed babies every four hours!"
"If he wasn't hungry, he wouldn't be sucking." She'd throw up her hands and retreat in anger over my stubbornness which, remember, dated to infancy.
Until the day of his three and a half month check-up, when I announced, "He doubled his birth weight."
She fell silent, left the room, and returned about ten minutes later to apologise.
This is what it takes to break through to the authoritarian mind, and the Social Dominants who take advantage of this trait know it. This is why the Putins, Orbans and Trumps of the world want to control the media. "Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?"
