To me, the most depressing aspect of President Trump’s most recent slur against immigrants isn’t the racism itself, or the vulgarity of it, or how routine this cycle of boorishness has become. It’s that for a significant portion of this country, roughly 35%, Trump’s remark about “shithole countries” is not just tolerated. It’s cheered. It’s embraced. It only makes his base love him more. And that is the truly frightening thing.
None of this should surprise anyone at this point. I think back to a poll taken in the aftermath of the release of the Access Hollywood tape – you know, that thing that was supposed to be the final nail in the Trump campaign’s coffin. Trump supporters were asked whether the revelation that their man had bragged about sexual assault made them more likely to vote for him, less likely, or had no effect. Remember what percentage answered “less likely?” 2 percent.
I’m a fairly young guy, but I’ve been following politics closely for a good chunk of my life and I know a decent amount of our history. And I can’t think of any recent parallel for the kind of blind loyalty that we are seeing from Trump’s base. They will overlook, rationalize, or deny every outrageous thing the man says or does. They will ignore or deny irrefutable evidence of Trump’s lies, racism, incompetence, and mental instability. I’m pretty sure if Trump came to their door and shot their family, they would applaud his marksmanship and accuse the reporters who arrived on the scene of peddling “fake news.”
For this 35%, facts don’t matter. Statistics don’t matter. Evidence doesn’t matter. Words and deeds don’t matter. It seems the only thing that matters is that Trump is their man, and they will stick with him to the bitter end.
It seems this is the uneasy paradigm we will be living with in the U.S. for the foreseeable future. In rough terms, we have 2 countries living within our borders – one largely rooted in objective reality and informed by reputable news sources, one almost completely divorced from reality and fueled by conspiracy and resentment. This divide has been building for a long time. Newt Gingrich laid the groundwork in the 90’s with his “they’re evil, we’re good” credo and willingness to hold the entire federal government hostage to pass his agenda, a tactic the GOP would embrace with fervor during the Obama years. The rise of conservative talk radio, Fox News, Breitbart, and the alt-right heralded a new age of stupidity in which people simply choose their own reality, truth be damned. Hannity, Beck, Levin, and every other right-wing blowhard spent the entirety of Obama’s presidency raving about how he was a radical, freedom-hating socialist the likes of which we had never seen. Never mind the reality that he was actually a centrist Democrat whose proposals would have been embraced by the GOP in a saner era. Alas, reality was passe by this point.
The end result is a country in which 35% of the populace is intractable on pretty much everything. It’s why Trump’s poll numbers won’t fall below that threshold no matter how batshit crazy he behaves, or how much he screws over the very people who elected him. Take these numbers from a recent Quinnipiac poll – you’ll notice a pattern in the numbers:
Should the U.S. build a wall on the Mexican border? 34% yes, 63% no
Should marijuana be legal? 58% yes, 36% no
Do you support the new tax law? 32% yes, 52% no
Do you have confidence in Donald Trump to handle North Korea? 36% yes, 61% no
Which party do you want to see in control of the House? 52% Democratic, 35% Republican
Which party do you want to see in control of the Senate? 53% Democratic, 36% Republican
We seem to have passed the point where anything, and I mean anything, can sway that 35% on the right. And no, the left is not equally guilty of this. Take Syria. The percentage of Democrats supporting airstrikes was almost unchanged between 2013 (38%), when Obama sought Congressional approval, and 2017 (37%), when Trump did it unilaterally. On the right, support skyrocketed 64 percent (22% to 86%). The only rational explanation for this huge surge of support is that the Republican base holds this collective belief: “I will support Trump no matter what he does”. One wonders if this would hold for everything. If Trump suddenly accepted climate change, would his base accept it too? I suspect their irrational hatred of scientists and disregard for the environment would supersede even their allegiance to Trump. But who knows? This unwavering support is so fierce and unusual there’s no telling how far it would go.
Then again, maybe this intractable chunk of the country has always been there. At the end of his administration in January 2009, 34% of Americans still approved of George W. Bush’s job performance. Bush never fell below 25% in Gallup’s weekly poll. The major difference, of course, is that for all his flaws and missteps as president – and there were plenty, Iraq being front and center – Bush was at least a civil, semi-decent human being. He respected American institutions and norms, even when he disagreed with them. He never spewed hate toward immigrants or minorities and pleaded for tolerance in the charged days after 9/11. He never trafficked in outrageous conspiracy theories. He did damage to our country and our standing in the world, to be sure. But he never came close to destroying the foundations of our democracy the way Trump is doing. I doubt anyone thought we’d pine for the stability of the Bush years, but given the chance, I think any liberal would take Bush back in a heartbeat.
I believe Trump’s base is so loyal to him because they believe he is the only thing standing between them and the destruction of the America they know, or at least what they believe America to be. Millions of middle-age and older white Americans feel very threatened by the changes they see around them. They don’t like that America is rapidly becoming more ethnically diverse. They don’t like that technology is evolving at an exponential rate and rendering many of their jobs obsolete. They don’t like that LGBT citizens are now out in the open and fighting for equality. They don’t like that women and people of color hold positions of power in government and society. They don’t like that people now recognize the fragility of our planet, the interconnectedness of life, and the urgency of sustainability. Rather than trying to adapt to this changing world or abandoning their prejudices, they turned to a con man who promised to take us back to the 1950’s, when white men had all the power and, in their minds, everything was perfect.
Joe Scarborough tweeted last year that Trump’s election was the last gasp of a declining demographic (I’m paraphrasing). I hope that’s true, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyone who thinks Trump can’t survive Russiagate and be re-elected is making a grave error in judgment. We have to operate under the assumption that he will be president until at least January 20, 2021, and whoever the Democrats nominate will face an uphill battle to unseat him.
