XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.atheism, alt.politics.trump   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: c186282@nnada.ne   
      
   New research on Trump voters: Theyre not the sharpest tools in the box   
   Now there's proof: Trump's voters lack "cognitive sophistication, " often   
   believe Bible is literal word of God   
      
   The United States is experiencing an existential democracy crisis, with   
   leading Republicans and millions of their voters and supporters either   
   tacitly or explicitly embracing authoritarianism or fascism. Democrats,   
   for the most part, have not responded with the urgency required to save   
   Americas democracy from the rising neofascist tide.   
      
   American society was founded on white settler colonialism, genocide and   
   slavery. This unresolved birth defect at the foundation of the American   
   democratic experiment meant that the country was racially exclusionary by   
   design, from the founding well into the 20th century. At present, American   
   politics is contoured by asymmetrical political polarization, in which   
   Republicans have moved so far to the right that the partys most moderate   
   members are far more extreme than the most conservative Democrats. This   
   makes substantive compromise and bipartisanship in the interests of the   
   common good and the American people almost impossible.   
      
   Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Trump supporters   
   and Trump-loathers, increasingly do not live in the same neighborhoods or   
   communities. In all, they largely do not socialize with each other, or   
   have other forms of meaningful interpersonal relationships in day-to-day   
   life. Advertisement:   
      
   To the degree that race is a proxy for political values and beliefs, the   
   color line functions as a practical dividing line of partisan identity and   
   voting. Religion is also a societal space that is divided by politics. For   
   example, public opinion research shows that white right-wing evangelical   
   Christians have increasingly embraced authoritarian views, conspiracy   
   theories and other anti-democratic and antisocial values.   
      
   As the new Faith in America survey by Deseret News & Marist College   
   highlights, the basic understanding of the role of religion in a secular   
   democracy has become so polarized that 70% of Republicans believe that   
   religion should influence a persons political values, where as only 28% of   
   Democrats and 45% of independents share that view.   
      
   Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, also do not consume   
   the same sources of information about news and politics. Conservatives now   
   inhabit their own self-created media echo chamber, which functions as a   
   type of lie-filled and toxic closed episteme and sealed-off universe. The   
   creation of such an alternate reality is an important attribute of   
   fascism, in which truth itself must be destroyed and replaced with   
   fantasies and fictions in support of the leader and his movement.   
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   Americas struggle for democracy and freedom against authoritarianism is   
   taking place on a biological level as well. Social psychologists and other   
   researchers have shown that the brain structures of   
   conservative-authoritarians are different than those of more liberal and   
   progressive thinkers. The former are more fear-centered, emphasizing   
   threats and dangers (negativity bias), intolerant of ambiguity and   
   inclined to simple, binary solutions. Conservative-authoritarians are also   
   strongly attracted to moral hierarchy and social dominance behavior.   
      
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   Recent research by Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern   
   Illinois University, demonstrates that Americas democracy crisis may be   
   even more intractable than the above evidence suggests. In his recent   
   article Cognitive Sophistication, Religion, and the Trump Vote, which   
   appeared in the January 2021 edition of Social Science Quarterly, Sherkat   
   examined data from the 2018 General Social Survey and concluded that there   
   are substantial negative differences between the thinking processes and   
   cognition of white Trump voters, as shown in the 2016 presidential   
   election, as compared to other voters who supported Hillary Clinton or   
   another candidate, or who did not vote at all. Advertisement:   
      
   Sherkat observes that Trump support has been linked to religion and level   
   of education, but until now not to cognitive sophistication, which was   
   found to have a positive effect on voting, but a negative effect on   
   choosing Trump. He notes that philosophers and political elites have   
   debated the potential effects of mass political participation for   
   generations, concerned about the unsophisticated masses coming under the   
   sway of a demagogue. In effect, this debate was always about the quality   
   he calls cognitive sophistication, since citizens who lack it may not be   
   able to understand and access reliable and valid information about   
   political issues and may be vulnerable to political propaganda:   
      
       Low levels of cognitive sophistication may lead people to embrace   
       simple cognitive shortcuts, like stereotypes and prejudices that were   
       amplified by the Trump campaign. Additionally, the simple linguistic   
       style presented by Trump may have appealed to voters with limited   
       education and cognitive sophistication. Beginning with [T. W. ]   
       Adornos classic study of the authoritarian personality, empirical   
       works have linked low levels of cognitive sophistication with   
       right-wing orientations....   
      
       Trumps campaign may also have been more attractive to people with low   
       cognitive sophistication and a preference for low-effort information   
       processing because compared to other candidates Trumps speeches were   
       given at a much lower reading level.... While much of the Trump   
       campaigns rhetoric and orientation may have resonated with the poorly   
       educated and cognitively unsophisticated, those overlapping groups are   
       less likely to register to vote or to turn out in an election.   
      
   As part of his research, Sherkat evaluated the political decision-making   
   and cognition of Trumps voters, using a 10-point vocabulary exam. In a   
   guest essay at the website Down with Tyranny, he explains what this   
   vocabulary test revealed about white Trump voters:   
      
       Overall, the model predicts that almost 73% of respondents who missed   
       all 10 questions would vote for Trump (remember, that is controlling   
       for education and the other factors), while about 51% who were average   
       on the exam are expected to vote for Trump. Only 35% of people who had   
       a perfect score on the exam are predicted to be Trump supporters.   
      
       Notably, this very strong, significant effect of verbal ability can be   
       identified within educational groups. While non-college whites   
      
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