Living in a country where 25% like, love, or worship Donald Trump

 By Hal Brown, MSW

This was on Morning Joe:

 

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Mika Brzezinski said of Trump, "Republican senators want him to stay away from the races in 2024 following losses by his hand-picked candidates during the last cycle. If his legal issues don't take him off the ballot, maybe his poll numbers will; a new survey shows he is losing support rapidly, dropping like a rock."

Willie Geist said "25 percent -- you're dipping into being a fringe political candidate. 25 percent is a terrible number if you're trying to win a general election again."

It is gratifying to see that Trump's most recent poll ratings have shown his favorability ratings have dropped to 25%.  The pundits on "Morning Joe" are saying this means his chances of winning a general election are slim. 

Still, living in a country where one quarter of the population like, love, or worship Donald Trump is dismaying. If you're reading this, with the exception on a few pro-Trumpers who like to troll the comments section of my blogs, you may be troubled that if you go into a restaurant where the diners are representative of the sentiments of the country and there are four tables around you one of them will be occupied by people who may want to have you deported or worse.

It doesn't matter to me that some of these people are ill-informed (i.e. low information voters), have lower than average IQ's, are gullible, may be clinically paranoid, and/or have been unable to or not inclined to master critical thinking skills. They may have been brainwashed. They may have had unmet needs met by affiliation and acceptance by a group of like-minded Trump supporters. 

They may revel in being MAGA or now ULTRA-MAGA. Perhaps they felt like outsiders previously and now they feel like insiders.

They wear the symbols and fly the flags proudly. Some of them, after years without a social identity, may find they finally feel they belong.

As much as I may understand what motivates these people what matters to me is that if you add all these people together they support a man who if he became president again would turn the county into a near-dictatorship. It would be an authoritarian state where only the favored minority of white citizens would enjoy living in America, so beautiful for halcyon skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the enameled plain where good people are crowned with brotherhood. You know, the country described here.

I supposed this all depends on what it means to say someone is a good person. There are those among the 25% who consider themselves to be good despite that some of them condone violence against us. These people may think I am a bad and not worthy of being an American. Very possibly they also think you're an unworthy bad person as well.

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