Much has been said about how Trump’s working-class base sees so much in him the rest of us don’t. Especially those of us in the media. We don’t get the greatness of the man, they say. Or at least the usefulness.
Try as I might, I’m still not getting it. They’re right. I don’t understand Trump’s appeal.
But why do they? And how do they after his first three weeks in office? And it really only has been three weeks. Thatap not fake news. Itap the calendar.
And though Trump told his base this week that any poll with negative results about him should be regarded as fake news — and — the good folks at Gallup went ahead and kept polling anyway. They found that already dissatisfaction with government has leaped back to the of American concerns.
Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
No other issue, Gallup found, even comes close.
Trump was supposed to tame all that and make it work, but boy did he out of the gate.
What else can you say but that he laid an egg?
That said, I get the government-distrust part of Trump fandom, but only to a point.
When I was a kid growing up in a poor country community in the South, there was a decided prejudice against the government, yes, but that skepticism was directed at the politicians and the bureaucrats that mucked it up. There was the worth-fighting-for belief that the U.S.A. is the best system in the world, and one you didn’t question.
It was God and Country and Family, and I had thought until the last several months that those concepts remained cherished even after all these years of talk radio and now the echo-chamber of social media.
Hence my trouble understanding Trump’s base. Where is the loyalty to the U.S.A. in attacking the courts as Trump did all last week, and not on grounds of legal differences, but for the temerity of those judges who are working to do the jobs past presidents assigned them to do?
Where is the integrity in trashing the founders’ separation of powers to protect individual liberty?
Itap enough to argue that Obama didn’t respect all that enough either? So we’re just supposed to look the other way now?
I thought overreach was one of the big reasons so many either loved Trump, or were at least willing to hold their nose long enough to vote for him
Also not accepted down home were city slickers who put on airs.
Putting on airs was and is in that culture a terrible sin. Right up there with showing your butt.
But now we’ve got a billionaire New Yorker selling his Richie Rich daughter’s jewelry and clothing lines on the White House lawn.
Speaking of eggs, down home we had chickens for a time, and they allowed folks to explain that you didn’t want to be like a rooster. A rooster is a perfect metaphor for those who put on airs and showed their butt. A popular restaurant near my hometown was named Cock of the Walk, and you should have heard the way people said it.
A rooster is flamboyant in his finery, strutting around like a gunslinger in his spurs, and laughably thin-skinned.
You rile up a rooster, you are presented with a spectacle to behold. He makes a big thing of it. He jumps up flapping his iridescent wings and puffs up like a big shot. All his fine plumage splays out as he beats his wings and stirs up chicken-yard dust and astonishment.
But all you have to do is stand your ground. Maybe act like you’re going to kick. And that big ole crazy-acting rooster runs away.
Thatap what the rule of law is for, and itap amazing how fast the good ole U.S.A.’s principles .
Because, as it turns out, no matter how vicious a rooster appears, in his heart and soul, he is just a chicken.
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