>You might say "couldn't a high D (dark traits) person mask as a low D person, as a wolf in sheep's clothing?" I don't think so, or at least they usually won't.
"person"
The analytical error here is the assumption that political actors are individuals -- we're certainly trained in US to think that way -- but historically political actors are part of some sort of collective process. To wit, we could be dealing with a high D ideology and a well trained member.
https://exper.psy.rptu.de/hilbig/get.php?p=140
What could be higher D then “Many people should lose their health care coverage so a few wealthy people can get richer?”
Personally I think a lot of leftists on Mastodon and AoC are high D. I think Mitt Romney is low D.
The conservative in me thinks “politicians model behavior for other people.” In Trump’s first term my mother-in-law took a break from the casino because drunks felt empowered to grab ass. I’d much rather my son talk like Mandami or Romney rather than Trump or AoC.
Are you referring to the D in DISC?
https://blog.assessments24x7.com/disc-world-map/
I don't know about China (roughly on par with US in that link), but the other high-D countries (languages) make sense to me in your take
Russian Turkish, Indonesian, Hungarian, even Dutch..
Edit: found a country table for Machiavellianism/narcissism, I don't fully understand what it says, but numbers columns "M" (mildly) correlates with "D" above. (Ireland is a surprise??!! Turkey, I assume foul play by authors lol)
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Descriptive-statistics-o...
Maybe you have a more reliable source?
Low D examples from those countries seem like next level of human evolution, almost like an impossible superposition of warmth+cool