Trump’s 44% Approval Rating: Stunning. Disappointing. Revealing

Message from a friend:

Trump’s approval rating reaches its high-water mark at 44% in a recent Washington Post poll.  The number is being explained in terms of people’s view of Trump’s handling of the economy.  Setting aside the utter misunderstanding of what is actually going on in terms of the economy and who is and is not benefiting from that, the number is a disturbing indicator of who the American people are and the ugly underbelly of a country that hagiographic histories and sociological analyses suggest is a wondrous place where bigotry and hate reside at the margins.  I, for one, have grown tired of the “white working class” bullshit that supposed “experts” trudge out to explain why the “elitist” and “progressive” Democrats are losing support.  I won’t reiterate for the umpteenth time why such apologies for people who support a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-science, predatory tyrant are insulting to working people who refuse to go there, and why those who do should not be given a pass because of their supposed righteous grievances about “elites” and their own difficult travails.  Besides, it misses the fundamental fact that it is whites more generally who are shamelessly willing to support a miscreant who oversees concentration camps where kids are mired in squalor and dying.  Again, the number is 44% in the latest poll.  How dispiriting is that?  And how revealing of the rot that’s eating away at the fantasy too many have wended about a nation that is unarguably quite ugly, but always has pretended otherwise.  HRC was right.  Trump supporters absolutely are “deplorables” who should be called out for enabling the nastiness and inhumanity.  Hard stop, so I will skip all the analyses that try to convince us otherwise.  They, too, help enable noxious malfeasance that kills children.  Yes, kills.  That’s my story, anyway.

bh