A good friend of mine on Facebook posted that he was upset that the presidential election did not amount to a total repudiation of Trump’s fascist behavior. He was pretty down about that failure. Here is what I replied to his post (prettied up a bit):
Hang in there Dude! It’s not as bad as you think.
Of the people who voted for Trump, less than half of them, therefore less than 25% of the entire voting population, voted for him because they like his disruptive and authoritarian ways. The rest of his voters supported him despite how badly he has acted over the last five years. For these voters, it is all about loyalty to party and/or what Trump could have continued to provide for them politically had he been reelected.
Therefore, the majority of Trump’s voters are political opportunists and/or those who always vote Republican regardless of how unsavory the GOP candidate might be because they believe that the Democratic candidate (the far left/socialist candidate in many of their minds) will be even worse.
Of those Trump supporters who actually approve of the way has behaved as president, most are drawn to him because of his role as a disrupter, not because he tries to govern like a dictator of a banana republic. These people hate the government, and they are more than willing to put up with someone who acts like a wanna-be Nazi leader as long as he continues to disrupt the federal government from its most powerful position. So we are left with a very small segment of the voting population who are truly happy about moving the country in the direction of a far-right dictatorship. (In my mind I visualize the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville and the Proud Boys with their assault rifles in Seattle.)
In addition, the true deplorables, those who hate the federal government, and those who want an authoritarian leader in charge have always been with us. Trump has simply given them the permission they needed to put their true character on public display. In fact, they are probably less numerous as a percentage of our country’s population than when I was growing up years ago, and certainly far less numerous than 160 years ago when the South broke away from the Union.
The country is slowly, but surely becoming more liberal with the true deplorables becoming an even smaller segment of our country’s population. The suburbs are no longer safe Republican enclaves and younger people as a whole are far more progressive than we were when we were their age. That movement totally rejects the far-right and would-be kings like Trump, so we continue, slowly, to move in the right direction.
Think about how far we have come. It has been 56 years ago, but 177 years after our constitution was signed, that the Civil Rights Act was passed. It was 47 years ago that Supreme Court decided Rowe v. Wade affirming a woman’s right to choose, but let’s admit that that fight has not yet been won. France became the first nation to decriminalize homosexual behavior in 1791. However, 14 states in this country still had sodomy laws on their books until 2003 when the Supreme Court invalidated all such laws as they applied to acts taking place in private between consenting individuals. Since 2011 homosexuals have been allowed to serve openly in the military and with Trump on his way out all transexuals will be able to serve openly as well. Today 67% of Americans approve of the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The effort to secure true personal and financial equality for people of color has proceeded in fits and starts since Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Emancipation. However, until recently police could deny the rights to life and safety of black individuals almost with impunity. That is starting to change. The effort to purge systemic racism from our police departments arising from the death of George Floyd and others is just getting started, but 65% of Americans now support the Black Lives Matter Movement though the President of the United States has done his best to portray the protesters as “terrorists”.
Trump and many other Republican leaders have also done their best for the last four years to deny that global warming is a serious threat caused by human activity. Yet a recent Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 80% of Americans believe that global warming is caused by human activity. 72% of Americans believe that global warming is either a crisis or a major problem that will require sacrifices to resolve.
More importantly, young people are the most involved in all of these causes. There is no disputing that younger people are more liberal than we were growing up. In the Millennial generation (23-38) who are now starting to vote in large numbers, liberals and moderates who lean to the left outnumber conservatives and moderates who lean to the right by 21%. In contrast among those 52 and older, conservatives and moderates who lean to the right outnumber liberals and those who lean to the left by 1%. Generation X (38 to 52) falls in between. It is quite possible that Generation Z (22 or younger) will be even more liberal than the millennials.
Young people are of course the future of our country so there is every indication that causes we care about the most will gain momentum going forward. A sure sign that Republicans know that they are destined to be a perennial minority party unless they liberalize their policies is their widespread and desperate voter suppression efforts. Trumpism is not going away when the man himself leaves office, but ultimately historians will look back at his reign of terror as an aberration.
While those voting in the 2020 presidential election may not have totally repudiated Trump’s authoritarian and disruptive behavior, the votes of over 77 million Americans certainly did And the march of progress going forward will finish the job.
Cajun (Rick Guilbeau) 11/10/2020