This is not a diary about Donald J. Trump.
Besides the fact I for one know I’m sick of reading and writing diaries about Donald J. Trump the truth is that he himself isn’t anywhere near our greatest problem or largest existential threat.
That’s what his followers are.
They proclaim, as he has guided them to, that they merely “Love America”, and that they simply want to make it “great again” by quite literally intimidating, threatening, bullying, surveilling, data-basing, excluding, deporting, more-than-water-boarding and punishing anyone they deem is not American, or more honestly not enough American in their view.
Like the totalitarian mobs of old, be they the crusaders, the inquisition, the klan or the nazis they believe that their efforts are merely forced upon them by the evil and dark intentions of others.
And they remain as wrong about that as they are deeply committed to that wrongness. Even if Trump loses the GOP nomination and the Presidency these people will remain, as will the problems they continue to percolate.
What can you say to people who use the First Amendment as a shield for hate speech, yet don’t seem to know the very first thing about it? Namely that it begins with:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...
Yet they breathlessly cheer when herr Trump proclaims he wants to ban an entire religion — one which proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah — on the evidence of what? One forged passport?
In the 14 years since September 11, 2001, the United States has resettled 784,000 refugees from around the world, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute, a D.C. think tank. And within that population, three people have been arrested for activities related to terrorism. None of them were close to executing an attack inside the U.S., and two of the men were caught trying to leave the country to join terrorist groups overseas.
“I think I can count on one hand the number of crimes of any significance that I've heard have been committed by refugees,” said Lavinia Limón, a veteran of refugee work since 1975 and the president of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. “It just hasn’t been an issue.”
So called “Religious Liberty” laws now dot the country in response to the Supreme Court’s sanction of same-sex marriage, essentially arguing that State Laws have the power to override and ignore the SCOTUS despite that never, ever, being the case.
What can you say to people who shout to the rooftops about their Second Amendment Rights, yet consistently seem to forget that it begins with…
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,…
So-called “Originalists” should be arguing that any able-bodied person who wishes to possess a firearm would need to be a member in good standing of their state militia. Trained and ready to respond to the call to protect the nation from enemies foreign and domestic as needed. And if “Originalist” Antonin Scalia hadn’t found in Heller that the militia clause is somehow ipso facto a personal and individual right to bear arms not previously enumerated in the constitution their constant hysteria about “gun grabbers” would still be illogical and irrational.
And these are the Amendments they most proclaim to understand, let’s not get into Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure, Fifth Amendment protections of due process and the taking of private property for public use without compensation, Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trail, Eight Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause for “all persons within the jurisdiction of the state.”
All that other stuff is for the elites to natter about. That’s all the “politically correct” stuff that’s “bringing America down.” Civility is just so over-rated. Y’see, the one clear consistent trait about Trump supporters isn’t that their dumb, or racist, bigoted, xenophobes. [All the above may be included but to varying degrees, they aren’t all always present] What is consistently present, is Authoritarianism.
In fact, I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.
That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations. And because of the prevalence of authoritarians in the American electorate, among Democrats as well as Republicans, it’s very possible that Trump’s fan base will continue to grow.
My finding is the result of a national poll I conducted in the last five days of December under the auspices of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, sampling 1,800 registered voters across the country and the political spectrum. Running a standard statistical analysis, I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter’s preferred candidate. Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the former was far more significant than the latter.
Authoritarianism is not a new, untested concept in the American electorate. Since the rise of Nazi Germany, it has been one of the most widely studied ideas in social science. While its causes are still debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened. From pledging to “make America great again” by building a wall on the border to promising to close mosques and ban Muslims from visiting the United States, Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations.
Generally speaking they are far from disinclined to using the power of the government against a vulnerable minority — it’s not just about racism or bigotry, it’s about justifying and rationalizing the use of force against individuals based on the group you associate with them. Absolute guilt by absolute association. Bigotry is the tool, but Authoritarianism is the real weapon and consequently no one, no one who can be possibly defined as “other”, women, gays, blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, left-handed people, no one is potentially immune from being catalogued and pre-guiltified. Even over subjects that Trump himself has yet to address. He doesn’t even have to go there, they’ve already been.
Data from Public Policy Polling show that a third of Mr. Trump’s backers in South Carolina support barring gays and lesbians from entering the country. This is nearly twice the support for this idea (17 percent) among Ted Cruz’s and Marco Rubio’s voters and nearly five times the support of John Kasich’s and Ben Carson’s supporters (7 percent).
Similarly, YouGov data reveal that a third of Mr. Trump’s (and Mr. Cruz’s) backers believe that Japanese internment during World War II was a good idea, while roughly 10 percent of Mr. Rubio’s and Mr. Kasich’s supporters do. Mr. Trump’s coalition is also more likely to disagree with the desegregation of the military (which was ordered in 1948 by Harry Truman) than other candidates’ supporters are.
And considerably more open to the notion of White Supremacy.
The P.P.P. poll asked voters if they thought whites were a superior race. Most Republican primary voters in South Carolina — 78 percent — disagreed with this idea (10 percent agreed and 11 percent weren’t sure). But among Mr. Trump’s supporters, only 69 percent disagreed. Mr. Carson’s voters were the most opposed to the notion (99 percent), followed by Mr. Kasich and Mr. Cruz’s supporters at 92 and 89 percent. Mr. Rubio’s backers were close to the average level of disagreement (76 percent).
And are they Confederates? You betcha.
According to P.P.P., 70 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters in South Carolina wish the Confederate battle flag were still flying on their statehouse grounds. (It was removed last summer less than a month after a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston.) The polling firm says that 38 percent of them wish the South had won the Civil War. Only a quarter of Mr. Rubio’s supporters share that wish, and even fewer of Mr. Kasich’s and Mr. Carson’s do.
Are they so uninformed and xenophobic they would bomb the heck out the fictional city of Aladdin? Uh huh.
A new poll asked voters if they would support bombing Agrabah — the fictional city from the Disney classic “Aladdin.”
And 41% of Donald Trump supporters responded with a resounding yes!
...
Of those surveyed, 30% of Republicans supported the bombing of “the city of mystery and enchantment,” while 13% were opposed. Some 57% were not sure, the poll found.
As for Democrats, 19% of them supported the “bombing” and 36% were opposed and 45% were not sure.
None of his is to proclaim you can’t find Democrats who may be against Truman’s desegregation of the military, or in favor of Japanese interment, or against the Emancipation Proclamation. You can, and zealous Conservatives have found these and gleefully trotted them out as if say “See, See, we’re not the only bigots!”
In the same Economist /YouGov poll:
- 15% of American Hispanics agree with those racist Trump supporters ... A quarter of Hispanics are not sure.
- 32% of American blacks back President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to round up Japanese-Americans and put them in camps during World War II ... almost exactly the same percentage as among Trump voters.
- More than 30% of those UNDER 30 are not sure that President Harry Truman’s 1948 executive order desegregating the U.S. military was a good idea. 15% are sure it wasn’t.
- 43% of likely Democratic primary voters, a very liberal slice of America, approve of President George W. Bush’s pro-torture executive order after 9/11.
Yeah, but here’s the thing — who’s more likely to act on one of these ideas? Democrats aren’t harassing Muslims at their rallies, let alone attacking people with an “America’s Already Great” sign, Who is calling for the re-implementation of torture and dancing quite close to the interment of Muslims? Who has openly opposed marriage equality and is more likely to call for the re segregation of the military on the basis of gender and orientation?
Not Democrats.
Trump’s main support comes from people who believe his argument that America has lost it’s “greatness” due to U.S. jobs being sent overseas. Well, that’s not exactly the case.
Manufacturing jobs in the U.S. actually increased in the years after the North America Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada went into effect in 1994.
But the story changed dramatically in 2000. Since then, the U.S. has shed 5 million manufacturing jobs, a fact opponents of free trade mention often.
It’s not really true that we’ve had nothing but a “giant sucking sound” since the passage of NAFTA. If anything there were two giant dips, the first and second Bush recessions, where U.S. jobs were lost and not immediately replaced. Those didn’t happen because of trade, they happened because of Wall Street market speculation. Many manufacturing jobs are gone not because they’ve been shipped overseas — while of course some have — many have been eliminated due to mechanization and automation rather than the malice of China or Mexico.
"Trump's talk on trade is bluster," says economist Charles Ballard of Michigan State University. "Even if you did [what Trump says], you wouldn't reverse the technology, which is a very big part of the picture."
Trump's threat to put hefty taxes on Chinese and Mexican goods coming into the country would likely to sink the economy into a recession. It would make many items at the store more expensive for working class Americans and spark a global trade war.
And you can see from the chart since about 2009 and the Presidency Barack Obama U.S. Manufacturing jobs have actually been coming back at a fairly steady clip. That has been because of Obama’s investment in a greener economy, which is yet again something that Trump — of course his supporters — hate.
Trump on wind energy:
On Fracking:
On Solar:
And on Global Warming:
It’s not just about the feeling of being hurt by one particular faction because Trump or his supporters said something or did something mean. It’s far more than that which is at stake.
Trump is a Fail on all cylinders, but the fact that so many people so easily fall for his b.s. like dominoes ready to tumble is frankly a much bigger problem. After he eventually collapses, there will be another who will follow this blueprint, and another, and another.
And that will remain the case again and again until we have a cure, a vaccine, a methodology, or a strategy to counter the low-information American. Our national problem is largely that part of us, not him.