What do Trump supporters want?
After the announcement that retired Army General Michael Flynn resigned on Monday night from his post as President Trump’s National Security Adviser as a result of the Administration’s first major scandal, I wrote a blog post titled “Trump supporters: Why do you support this reckless, feckless Administration?”
Like most blog posts with a political theme, the title is
more of a rhetorical question than an actual query. My blog, “A Certain Point
of View” doesn’t have a large following (only 13 people have signed on as “followers”),
and readers rarely leave any feedback in the “Comments” section. I didn’t really expect to get any honest,
intelligent, or coherent answers that go beyond the usual “He’s only been
President for less than a month. Give him a chance!” or “He is a successful
businessman with a proven track record of success. He will get things done.”
And, to be honest, so far I have not even gotten any of those comments, either.
Still, I do wonder why President Trump, a man whose
popularity rating can’t climb over the 40% mark (according to the daily Gallup
polls), still gets support from anyone with a working brain and at least a high
school diploma. So, I decided to use the investigative skills that I learned as
a journalism student to see what many of Trump’s supporters want him to achieve.
Caveat: To be sure, there are many conservative Americans who don't have radical views and yet support the President. These include college-educated individuals from every part of the country. They're from every ethnic and religious group, and they genuinely believe that Trump can help solve the nation's problems. They believe he can do good things if the opposition lets him.
Caveat: To be sure, there are many conservative Americans who don't have radical views and yet support the President. These include college-educated individuals from every part of the country. They're from every ethnic and religious group, and they genuinely believe that Trump can help solve the nation's problems. They believe he can do good things if the opposition lets him.
First, keep in mind that many (not all) of Trump’s supporters fall
into a demographic known as “un-hyphenated Americans.” According to the
Washington Post, “These are white respondents who answer “American” to the
Census Bureau question, ‘What is the person’s ancestry or ethnic origin?’
Generally speaking, most unhyphenated Americans tend to be extremely Protestant
and are less likely to have graduated from college. Per the Post, “The people
who identify this way are concentrated in Appalachia and rural areas in and
around the South.”
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| Source: Washington Post |
Unhyphenated Americans support Trump mainly because they
fear the loss of their national identity – the so-called “browning of America.”
Just as many of their 19th Century forebears resisted the abolition
of slavery and the granting of civil rights to freed blacks, the unhyphenated
Americans are resisting the societal and cultural changes that result from mass
immigration from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia –
especially from the war-torn countries of the Middle East.
Ironically, Trump derives some of his support from a large
number of Cuban-Americans, especially those who came to the United States
between the time of the Cuban Revolution and the mid-1980s.
Although they are
not unhyphenated white Americans and have transformed South Florida into a
majority Hispanic metro area, Cuban-Americans tend to be politically
conservative, fiercely anti-Communist, and staunchly Republican. So even though
they have contributed to the transformation of Miami from a sleepy Southern
resort city to a major gateway to Latin America, these voters have a common
ideology with Trump’s white supporters.
Okay, so now we know who most of Trump’s supporters are. Now
the question is, “What do they want?”
Shaw then points out to Trump's hardcore supporters that the pesky liberal social programs - "labor unions, a living wage, affordable childcare, social security, affordable healthcare, accessible higher education" - are the ones that help, not hurt the working class.
Per Shaw:
You have a right to be aggrieved, but I fear you are targeting the wrong people. Low paying jobs, job insecurity, companies moving work overseas, low benefits, little vacation ― these are the results of decades of policies that benefit the truly wealthy ― those whose wealth depends not on the labor of their hands but on their ability to exploit the production of poorly paid laborers. The problem is not that immigrants have taken your jobs or drained money from the safety net. The problem is that the system of wealth sets workers against one another so they do not target the real economic power that limits their work and financial security.
In her essay, Shaw also criticizes the Trump Administration and its allies in the so-called alt-right movement, the Tea Party, and white nationalists for engaging in propaganda warfare, especially the dissemination of "fake news" on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media:
You say you want progressives to listen to you. Then prioritize truth. This election was filled with “fake news,” shared widely on Facebook, and this administration already has begun to create a language of “alternative facts” to misinform and mislead. If you want to talk, offer evidence, real evidence based on verifiable data and reliable sources, not wishful imaginings or fabricated Breitbart stories. An internet meme is not an informed and legitimate point of argument that facilitates dialogue. We’ve reached a point where you’d rather believe an overt lie if it supports a belief you already hold than pursue the truth if it might challenge your currently held belief.
Finally, aside from the rather nonsensical proposition that getting rid of environmental regulations or gutting the nation's public school system to favor private schools (most of which are Christian private schools such as the ones that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her children attended) are good for "making America great again," Trump's supporters have another end game in mind.
In her thoughtfully-written and heartfelt essay, Shaw writes:
I'm afraid that what you want is a nation that conforms to your interpretation of the Bible. That's where we run into trouble because that would require you to force your particular Christian beliefs on everyone else. I don't understand how people who want to claim religious freedom for themselves are so unwilling to give it to everyone, which is actually the premise of true religious liberty. (Emphasis added.)
You say you want a Christian nation, but the founders were clear that was never their goal. In fact, the Constitution goes to great lengths to protect the government from religion and religion from government.
There, in a nutshell, is what most (but not all) of Trump's supporters want the 45th President to give them. They're perfectly willing to overlook his blunders, his hiring of alt-right nationalists like Stephen Bannon to his Administration, his alleged ties to Russia, his unwillingness to fully divest himself from his family's enterprises, and his disdain for a free press to get America to be a theocracy such as the one described in Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale.
You say you want a Christian nation, but the founders were clear that was never their goal. In fact, the Constitution goes to great lengths to protect the government from religion and religion from government.
There, in a nutshell, is what most (but not all) of Trump's supporters want the 45th President to give them. They're perfectly willing to overlook his blunders, his hiring of alt-right nationalists like Stephen Bannon to his Administration, his alleged ties to Russia, his unwillingness to fully divest himself from his family's enterprises, and his disdain for a free press to get America to be a theocracy such as the one described in Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/an-open-letter-to-white-christian-trump-supporters_us_589f5ce4e4b0e172783a9cef?
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