The President’s Fans

Read the NY Times Op Ed with letters from Trump supporters who, for the most part, get their information from Fox News and the NY Post. They may read the Times but it’s obvious that they don’t believe anything they read in it.

Yet, the letter writers to the Times do have some facts right. Trump did suggest a Supreme Court judge but that appointment was really the work of Mitch McConnell not Trump. Yes, Trump is indeed responsible for the appointment of a bunch of conservative judges but from those who have surfaced, including the clod that couldn’t answer basic legal questions, this is going to turn out to be a disaster for our legal system. Yes, the war against ISIS is progressing at a good pace, but it isn’t over yet. We are winning the land war which is being fought mostly by Kurds and some Iraqi forces but there is a hell of a lot more to ISIS than territory, and don’t forget, the progress that is happening now was set in motion under Obama.

Definitely yes, he has signed a tax package, but it remains to be seen if that sleazy piece of legislation will benefit anyone but those like Trump who are rich and in real estate.

But let’s look at a couple of Trump’s other accomplishments as seen by these letter writers who still steadfastly support him.

Jason Peck speaks to the removal of wasteful regulations and putting real pressure on North Korea and Iran: In fact most of those wasteful regulations had to do with safety in the workplace and they definitely benefited management. What they have done for workers does not crate new jobs. Rather it assures that workers still employed, are in far greater danger of succumbing to unsafe conditions. And yeah, he sure threw the fear of God into North Korea and Iran. He did such a great job it carried over into Hawaii last week.

Steven Sanaria talks about foreign tyrants being afraid of us. Really Steve? Name one. The only tyrant making much noise now is Trump and he sends out so many mixed messages that no one can be bothered to listen to him let alone understand what he is raving about. The only dictator otherwise affected by Trump’s bluster is so terrified that he is preparing to launch a nuclear warhead at us. Donald’s really got him cowed! Steve thinks entitlement reform is next on Trump’s agenda. Didn’t he read the tax bill? The only entitlement Trump is interested in is getting more for himself. Steve also thinks that both political parties are angry and afraid. They’re not the only ones, Steve. The whole world is terrified that this nut is going to push the wrong button and vaporize the planet.

Then there’s David MacNeil who lauds Trump for providing a Secretary of Education, who knows nothing about education. This dame only got her job because her old man gave Trump a big campaign contribution.

Then there’s Dan Lorey who wants us to know that a President like Trump appears only once in 100 years. Actually Dan that type of president has appeared only once in 275 years and that is far too often, but Dan also wants us to know that Trump has shown prodigious leadership in his first year. Only if you consider the only thing he got into law was a bogus tax bill Dan.

Then there’s the guy who brags that he only voted twice in his life. Once for himself when he ran for congress and once for Trump. This may be the worst voting record in the history of elections. This clown’s name is Philip Maymin and believe it or not he’s a professor of analytics at the University of Bridgeport Now that’s a degree we’re all going to chase after.

I could go on through the whole Op Ed piece but I’m sure most of you get the picture. What I find interesting is that despite the fact that many refer to Trump’s vulgarity, none mention the fact that he is a proven, inveterate liar, or that he has been judged guilty of being a con man with Trump University, or that with all his nonsense about being a great deal maker and businessman he is a guy who was financed and then bailed out out of bad business deals by his old man and despite this had to file for bankruptcy four times. In addition, the vulgarity that is referred to in these letters seems to be in regards to his speech and tweets but is never referred back to his relationships with women, who he denigrates at every turn and seems to regard as his personal playthings.

If any of the writers spoke at all to his lack of moral values, I missed it, yet this is surely one of the most significant aspects of Trump’s Presidency. His Presidency is emblazoned with the stigma of immorality and lack of human sensitivity. Trump is the first American president to publicly spout vulgarity and disparage people for their disabilities, their color or their nationality, while he shows a blatant disregard for women. He lies with a complete disregard for circumstance or the inevitability that he will be called out for his lies. He has been guilty so often of all of the above that we are becoming inured to it and no longer react to any of his degenerate traits with even mild surprise. When his lawyers were accused recently of paying a porn star hooker a significant sum to keep her mouth shut about an affair they had while he was married, the public along with the media just shrugged it off. The whole attitude was; what do you expect? Clinton was impeached for getting into a much milder, consensual affair. Trump gets a; what else is new?

The same Evangelist preachers who only a few years ago were carrying on about how the whole world was going to hell because of its lack of moral values are now backing the poster boy for “lack of moral values,” just because he will say that he backs their anti-gay and abortion issues. So, these days even the preachers are valueless.

I have been following Frank Luntz, a Fox news guy who conducts GOP focus groups. I find these accumulations of hardliners to be getting more and more angry, even as they become more and more embedded in their support of Trump. There was one on Vice this week and it was fascinating to watch the true believers harden into black hatred of anyone, even one of their own, who would not drink the cool-aide.

Luntz didn’t go over the educational background with this group but he did specify from whence they got their news. Every one of the group except one guy who was no longer a Trump backer got their news from Fox. That guy claimed to read the NY Times. What was really interesting though, was how when one of the group, wandered even the slightest bit from the party line, he or she was vehemently attacked by the others. This is something new for these focus groups, which have previously shown a much more accepting attitude toward diversity, and something very significant because it points strongly to a terror in them that is growing with each failure of their hero.

Make no mistake, Trump is still the choice among these true believers but his real failure to produce what he promised as a candidate, his unacceptable behavior in office and his obvious lack of any moral standards is beginning to creep under the psyche of a group whose basic life force has been driven on the values of Christian Evangelicalism. We certainly know that these values are often ignored by those that preach and economically benefit from them but that is not often as true about those true believers that follow them. It’s obvious from these focus groups that they are beginning to feel betrayed, and the failure of substantive facts to back up the blustering speech of the President is starting to get to them. They still believe but they are also beginning to get scared. What if it isn’t all true? They have been betrayed by both the GOP and the Democrats so many times that they are now on the edge of a cliff and it won’t take much to push them over. They sold out for Trump, accepted his disgusting ways, his lies and his inability to fulfill his campaign promises. They have lied to themselves about what he is doing for the country, how he is progressing in our relationships with other countries and now they are faced with the real possibility that, like those that preceded him, he won’t deliver on even the least of what he has promised. If this proves true there is nowhere for them to go, no one for them to believe and they are terrified and very, very angry

It isn’t clear if Trump or his advisors understand this but if they don’t they are in even deeper trouble than they can possibly imagine because this is a group that can suddenly implode with an almost nuclear fury. This is not a group that has some kind of intellectual or economic stability to which they can retreat. This group has given it all up, sold it all out for one last chance to follow someone who has promised them he will be theirs and he has neither the knowledge nor the intention to back up his promise.

Trump because he is an egomaniacal, self- involved sociopath that has never needed for anything, has no concept of where his followers are coming from. He neither understands nor cares that they have bet their last dollar on him because spoiled rich kid that he is, he has no idea of what a last dollar means. He has sold them a scenario of bringing back jobs in mining and manufacturing that never existed. He didn’t care or even know if they ever had existed. All he was interested in was an idea that he could sell to the rubes. And they bought it! Big time!

Coal mining is never coming back, certainly not in any way that these people will recognize or be employed in. Manufacturing? The way they were employed is gone. Not overseas but completely. Machines now do what humans once did. They do it faster, more efficiently and there is no OSHA or HR for management to deal with. The problem with con men, and Trump is surely the lowest life form running the short con, is that they care nothing for the destruction they leave behind. So Trump doesn’t care if these people’s lives are ruined as long as he gets what he wants at any given moment.

What’s really interesting is that these people would have been much better off following Bernie Sanders because Bernie really has their welfare as the point of his political roadmap. Unfortunately the GOP has spent years drilling the horrors of socialism into the heads of these people who more than any others in this country need the social forces that America provides in too small increments. These are the people who worry and object vocally to welfare cheats without understanding that they themselves are the ones who need and actually use, the various aspects of our social network more than anyone else.

It’s depressing to watch these people’s virulent attacks on Hillary Clinton who is no longer part of the political equation. Why do they hate her so? And then you hear them spout the lies they have been sold by the GOP establishment and the Trump administration and you wonder why these people believed them. Why were they so eager to drink the Kool-Aide? Hillary is no longer a political factor but the people in this focus group attack her as if she were the foremost villain they still have to face. None of them have a clue, that if either she or Bernie had won they would now be very angry but far better off. That’s the real sad problem. Even when they see they have been betrayed, even when they get that Trump has conned them; they still won’t understand that they would have been better off with Hillary or Bernie. It’s just too great a leap for them to make. They are violently angry and ready to implode and if they ever reach the realization that Trump has done them worse than any of those that preceded him the reaction will be violent, catastrophic and far worse than anything this nation has ever faced in its history.