I think they fear because they have been force fed socialism, communism their entire lives. Look at Obama, that is all he was ever taught, in the home and out. How much Constitution and true American history have they not been taught.
Woodrow Wilson and others of that era did not have the Nazis and Japanese experience and witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution and Marxism/Communism. But they did not reject it. It is simply a rejection of truth.
I get the feeling, from personal experience with family and others I know who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s, that particularly back then, there was the sense of things involving government and politics and elsewhere being that very idealized and structured and overall sense of being able to do anything. Sure you can complain about the government (a national pastime in my country, of course), but the last thing you’d ever do would be to cut back on it.
That’s likely that very important reason why they hate Trump (as they did with Reagan and Thatcher) and why I had to hear family members carry on with their anger towards Canadian conservative politicians like Stephen Harper or Mike Harris or Stockwell Day or the late Ralph Klein even.