Clearly, we have become too obsessed with other people’s opinions. Our obsession has become even greater during the era of Trump during which we have been forcibly compelled to face the fact that a significant percentage of Americans are too stupid to be safely afforded the right to opine. The ignorance of the misinformed and their kissin’ cousins, the uninformed, spreads like a California wildfire once they recognize how many other Americans share their insipid beliefs. And we are left with a President who continues to maintain the support of 37% of the public despite the fact he may have conspired with an enemy to subvert their democratic rights – and an even more troublesome situation in which three-quarters of them say they will continue to support him even if the accusations are proven to be accurate.
Disturbing numbers, indeed. It is time for some historic perspective.
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During the last free German election before World War II, Hitler’s Nazi Party received 37% of the vote. (Wow, there’s that number, again!) In 1952, after their nation had been destroyed by his racist, nationalistic agenda, over half the Germans polled said they still had a favorable opinion of the person who, up to that time, was the greatest mass-murderer in human history. (This was, of course, before our nation killed about fifteen million innocent Asian civilians in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia so that we could decide how much control their governments exerted over their national economies.)
Every country is full of assholes. And if you provide the morons with a leader who makes them feel tough, it will be a long time before they let go.
"Anti-Establishment Sentiment and the False-Equivalence of the Left and Right"
So even after the scourge has been lifted, we will be dealing with the specter of Trump. He will be either the fallen hero of the misinformed or he will be their Nelson Mandela, furiously tweeting from his prison cell with a smuggled phone. Either way, he will remain what he has always been - a tremendous pain in the ass and an embarrassment to his nation, his gender, and his species. They will remain what they always have been – his loyal sycophants too dim-witted to realize they’re being used.
So, in order to better prepare our next real President for the task ahead, let’s take a harder look at that support. It might not be as impressive as the polls would have us believe.
Let’s begin with the initial Hitleresque approval rating – 37%. Now, let’s factor in the percent of his supporters who said they would continue to support him even if he was determined to be in Putin’s pocket – 77% according to the polls. That leaves us with approximately twenty-eight and a half people out of every hundred. We can safely discard the half person since he was probably a Huckabee voter, anyway, and we are left with twenty-eight.
While those twenty-eight Americans would undoubtedly be predominantly male, it is safe to assume some are emotionally battered women who have never been given the opportunity to think for themselves. So let’s assume a few of them – say four percent – would desert the ranks of the chronically brainwashed and find their way to reality. That would leave Trump with a hypothetical approval rating of 24% - right in line with the numbers of Saddam Hussein and General Muammar Gaddafi.
Water, they say, finds its own level. And it certainly appears as though any festering heap of organic waste can earn the respect of 24% of Americans.
Okay, anyone but Mitch McConnell.
[Featured image by Michael Candelori/Flickr]