ABSTRACT
The authoritarian is simply positing a God in his own image. An authoritarian must maintain arbitrary, easy-to-change, hard-to-understand rules, rules that are not really rules at all but rather a means of punishment. Some examples of authoritarian aggression, like beatings, are obvious enough as instances of aggression and as traumatic events. The reservoir of hatred that is one of an authoritarian's most salient characteristics requires that an authoritarian find ways to exact punishment. Some authoritarians really do care about the exact nature of their rules, either because rulemaking and rule adhering are among the ways they are dealing with anxiety or because some important principle, value, or belief is at stake. One feature of the aggression cluster is how authoritarians use rules as weapons. All victims of authoritarian wounding stand in complicated relationship to the issue of rules.
