Why Do People Support Trump?

Is it just me, or do you think the world is subdividing itself into fairly hard groups? One of the more annoying groups is the group of conmen/scammers.  It would seem that every time we have a serious large scale problem, the scammers appear in even greater numbers to further confuse /confound and otherwise screw the population of normal folks.  Our telephones, especially our cell phones, have turned into major portals for the scammers of the world. I think now, for every legitimate phone call I receive, I also get perhaps 5-10 fake calls from people trying to arrange some fake deal that will extract some of our now-limited supply of available money. 

And then we have the Nation’s “Christian” pastors. Now many, perhaps most pastors are just going about their business trying to bring an awareness of their god to their people. But then we also have a goodly supply of such pastors who are either selling some fake products to deal with COVID-19, or who are trying to sell Donald Trump to an increasingly wary public. These pastors and many thousands, perhaps millions of their believing flock all willingly support Donald Trump, regardless of the fact that he actually shares none of their fundamental beliefs (aside from the one about him being the Second Coming).

And then, finally we have this core of 30-40% of the American people who, having been exposed to Donald Trump for 3 ½ years as President, still rabidly supports him, perhaps even more strongly than they did in 2016 when they helped to elect him.  And this group is perhaps the most baffling of all, since I don’t really get why they would support a guy who practically screams fraud every time he gets on stage or in front of a TV camera.  How can any thinking adult watch him and not feel like throwing up?

So, here’s my take on this truly weird phenomenon.  I think that perhaps 40% of the Nation’s population now seems to hate our government. They have different reasons of course.  But fundamentally, they hate government.

Some think that government just sucks up (wastes) all of the public’s money, by sitting around drinking coffee and chatting it up with their BFFs, who are doing the same thing. They don’t do any useful work, because there isn’t any useful work to do.  Their image seems to be that government workers are just taking up space.  Some of this is associated with specific beefs the public has with government, likely the regulatory side of government.  And by “government” I mean all levels of government, Federal, state, county and local. But, because the federals are relatively far away physically, they are the least understood and so, the easiest to vilify.

Clearly the environmental agencies (EPA primarily) have the most public visibility.  And when Fox and friends are screaming fraud every five minutes about Climate Science, EPA regulations about pollution come into scrutiny from this part of the public.

Curiously, some segment of the public seems not to understand the government’s role in systems such as Medicare and Social Security. When that woman was yelling, “keep the government’s hands off my Social Security” we seem to have a problem of communication.

And then we have all of the other regulatory functions regarding highway safety, factory safety, public health, airline safety, etc.  Whenever one names a specific regulation, some part of the public will be opposed to it.

And then we come to the system by which the government gets the money by which it operates—the Nation’s taxation systems.  We have taxes at all four levels of government.  There are taxes on everything we buy, and taxes on most of the money we earn, or are somehow given during the year.  And if someone dies and leaves you a packet of money, the government will first extract its share. And over time, the gross amount has changed. I still remember in about the 1950s, a total federal budget of about $70 billion, with an associated Defence department budget of $40 billion.  Compare that with today’s budget of $4.8 trillion, with a Defence share of just under $one trillion.   It was and remains a very large number. But to understand the numbers, it is necessary to dive into the vast and complex world of the Federal Budget.  And most people do not have the patience, the intellect, or the knowledge to do that analytic work.  Plus, they have little patience for discussions of budgeting and taxation generally. All they know is the various levels of government take a very large share of their total income, and they damned well don‘t like that.  Now couple that complexity and “ouch factors” with the almost complete unknown concerning what government workers actually do, and you begin to have a serious problem in communication.

And then, enter Donald Trump.  Who is he anyway? Well, first and foremost he is a private businessman.  Now, by all accounts, he is a pretty lousy private businessman. He has experienced six separate bankruptcies in his many businesses. Now that is a serious record.  Most business folks have no experience with business bankruptcies. Some may have experienced one or even two. But six bankruptcies suggests a serious problem.  And clearly, with Trump, we have a serious problem. First, the man seems to be profoundly stupid, and ignorant—two separate problems:

Stupid = slow of mind: OBTUSE; given to unintelligent decisions or acts; acting in an unintelligent or careless manner; lacking intelligence or reason: BRUTISH, and;

Ignorant = destitute of knowledge or education, also: lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified; resulting from or showing lack of knowledge: UNAWARE, UNINFORMED.

In other words, one trait relates to the capacity of the mind to function, and the second relates to the amount of information about various subjects taken in by the mind. In Trump’s case, he seems to experience both issues. His mind seems weak at best, perhaps simply a very low IQ. And then there are serious questions regarding what he knows about almost any subject of interest. How much information has he taken into that inadequate brain of his?

Finally, coupled with these serious deficits, we have his narcissism. Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is defined as: a personality disorder characterized by a long-term pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy toward other people. People with NPD often spend much time thinking about achieving power and success, or on their appearance. Typically, they also take advantage of the people around them. Such narcissistic behavior typically begins by early adulthood, and occurs across a broad range of situations.   

We must also toss into this hopper his role on that dreadful TV show, The Apprentice. He is, I gather the “Star” of that piece of entertainment dreck, but people actually watch the show, and so, he is an actual TV star. And that “stardom” I believe gains him some (undeserved) credibility with this section of our population that continues to support him—he must be a good guy if he is a successful TV star, right??

So, there you have it.  Folks like him because he is a businessman, a TV star, and definitively, not from government.

As I say, many people simply don’t like government, because government somehow interferes in their lives. And Donald Trump seems to represent their classic anti-government guy. That he has failed at almost everything he has done, including both business and private (three failed/failing marriages) seems to have escaped them. Maybe these folks haven’t been too successful either, so they like/idolize a guy who has risen to this level while still having failed at everything else.  Plus, Trump has assumed the St. Ronald of Reagan stance, whereby "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”   Now Reagan, being an actual movie star (B grade), was better at the game of rhetoric than Trump. But people, I think identify with Trump as a natural follow-on leader to Reagan.  This is troublesome on many fronts, not the least of which is the fact that Reagan failed also at the job at basic levels.  He created the largest budget deficits in the Nation’s history. He also was responsible for what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

One of the biggest foreign policy scandals of the last half-century was the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Reagan Administration, prodded by CIA Director William Casey and NSC Advisor Oliver North, secretly arranged for an arms-for-hostage deal with one of its bitterest enemies in the Middle East. Put simply, Israel would sell weapons from the U.S. to Iran, which had been designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984 and the subject of an arms embargo, in exchange for the release of American hostages held by Hezbollah, Iran’s ally, in Lebanon.

North and Casey then doubled down, funneling the profits from the arms sales into yet another illegal venture, a secret plan to support the Contras, the militants in Nicaragua which opposed the socialist Sandinistas. This was in direct contravention of the Boland Amendments, which Congress had passed from 1982-84, specifically prohibiting U.S. support of the Contras.

The entire plot quickly unraveled on November 3, 1986, when the Beirut newspaper Al Shiraa, revealed the arms-for-hostages deal for the first time. The scandal was compounded when North destroyed or hid pertinent documents between November 21- 25, 1986. Attorney General Edwin Meese then admitted on November 25 that profits from the weapons sales were aiding the Contras. On the same day, National Security Advisor John Poindexter resigned, and Oliver North was fired by President Reagan. Congressional investigations soon followed. Widespread criticism and outrage over the scheme forced Reagan to apologize on a nationally televised address on March 4, 1987.

So, Trump taking on the mantle of Reagan, which doubtless is beloved by Trumpies, is at least troublesome to others who do not worship at the feet of St. Ronald.

All these failures by two republican presidents seems not to trouble the Trump supporters.  He seems vaguely to hate government, which they love. If they favor strong anti-abortion measures, Trump will support them, so long as they seem to love him. If they hate gays, they support Trump so long as he does not say anything nice about Gays.  If he keeps firing people who disagree with him, they love him because it shows that he despises people in government (despite the fact that he actually placed them in government).  And as long as he seems to continue hating government, they will continue to love and support him. And so it goes. One of the more baffling things about all this is that, if you really hate government, one might assume that you would prefer having someone leading government who is smart enough to make government work better.  Instead these folks support a guy who can only make things worse, i.e., government function even less effectively.  Now to me, that makes no sense, unless it’s the “suspicions confirmed” thing—we hate government. We put a man who also hates government in charge of government. Government performance worsens catastrophically. Suspicions confirmed.

I liken this weird thinking to the anti-vaccine crowd. “I hate vaccines. They are destructive and evil.” And then when unvaccinated folks get sick from the thing the vaccines could prevent, they say, “see vaccines are evil after all.” 

And is there no cure for this strange and counterproductive philosophy of life?  Well, the only cure I have ever found for such idiotic thinking is education.  If you educate people they will no longer harbor thinking that runs counter to common sense. But if they refuse to become educated?  Well, then we have 2020 America, don’t we?

Welcome to our weird world. Now the best/only way to avoid the complete destruction of our world is by voting. I know that republicans plan to do everything in their power to prevent people from voting, lest they vote against the GOP.  So, the thinking Americans simply have to go around them to the ballot boxes one way or another. To not vote is to support anarchy, or worse, and Donald Trump is literally worse than complete anarchy.

Oh, and a little postscript. I just noticed that Donald Trump has now cut off funding for the World Health Organization. This is his main strategy to deflect blame from himself and his catastrophically awful performance in the COVID-19 mess to someone else, in this case the WHO. Keep watching as he keeps on blaming someone else. That’s the narcissism at work folks. He is incapable of accepting blame for anything. 

Aren’t you proud MAGAHeads??? Your boy at work.  He keeps bringing me back to the world of 1930s Germany.