The Destructive Ignorance of Donald Trump's Supporters Appears to Know No Limits
When a pro football team disappoints its fans, most of those fans are back in their stadium seats or chained to their televisions the following Sunday. For the most part, sports fans mate for life, and so they rarely abandon their fealty to their team, regardless of how often it craps the bed. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this fan/franchise relationship because, win or lose, the outcome of sports competitions don’t really precipitate any serious consequences to society outside the fate of the players and staff. In other words, if your team loses, no one loses their health care and no one gets sent off to war. No one goes broke and the world continues on its normal orbit around the sun.
Unfortunately, too many Americans continue to remain loyal to President Donald Trump and his team of Russian assets and infighting goons. This toxic dynamic has careened beyond normal party identification to a degree of unwavering loyalty they’d otherwise reserve for their favorite sports teams. In this case, no matter how ridiculous Trump gets, they’re still there — chanting “lock her up” while dressed in Trump swag festooned with “Make America Great Again” logos.
While there’s superfandom on both sides of the political divide, the Trump superfans are legion, and they’re utterly blind to their guy’s incompetence and childishness, as evidenced by the reality that 96 percent of them reportedly don’t regret their vote, even after a bottomless well of unforgivable gaffes and international blunders. Likewise, polling shows that GOP voters have entirely changed their views on key issues based on whether the president involved was named Obama or Trump. On the U.S. cruise missile strike against Syria last month, for example, 86 percent of Republicans supported the attack under Trump, while only 22 percent of Republicans supported doing so under Obama. Nothing changed except the name (and the race) of the guy seated at the Resolute Desk. By the way, Democratic voter support for the strike remained exactly the same, regardless of who the president was. Obviously the franchise loyalty of GOP voters is significantly more entrenched.
Last Saturday night, Trump chickened out of the annual White House Correspondents Dinner and, instead, flew to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to nuzzle in the ample collective bosom of his fans. During the event, Trump performed his greatest hits, including his usual catchphrases and zingers about repealing and replacing Obamacare. Predictably, his fans went nuts — lapsing into the throes of a group orgasm over the prospect of sticking it to liberals.
The problem for the Trumpers cheering for replacing Obamacare is this: More than half of all Americans who bought insurance policies through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) exchanges live in Republican districts. That’s 6.3 million Americans in GOP districts who are “on Obamacare” out of a total of 11.5 million enrollees total, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Repealing Obamacare would also disproportionately hurt rural Americans, a key Trump demographic. And low-income families, a narrow majority of which voted for Trump, will be clobbered by the increasingly rapid phasing-out of the Medicaid expansion. There’s no opt-out language for Trump voters. Sorry.
Yet a majority of Republicans surveyed, around 54 percent, think it was a “bad thing” that Trumpcare failed (so far). Astonishingly, 58 percent of Republicans said Trumpcare doesn’t go far enough to repeal Obamacare. Staggeringly and incomprehensibly, their cult-like devotion to Trump overrules their own personal health and well-being.
Part of the disconnect between the Trumpers’ support for repealing Obamacare and, concurrently, their reliance on the law’s benefits, regardless of whether insurance is attained via the exchanges or employers, is that Trump himself has displayed no real knowledge about what’s in the law. Either that, or he’s aware of the law’s details but is simply lying when he repeatedly pledges that more people will be covered and that premiums will be lower. Indeed, per the Congressional Budget Office, more people will be covered if the Obamacare exchanges collapse than will be covered if Trumpcare passes. But if you ask Trump, the deal is very, very tremendous and everyone will love it.
One last thing. Clearly based on what I’ve written here lately, I’m done with walking on eggshells around Trump voters and their low-information nincompoopery. Sorry, Morning Joe. For the second time in 17 years, we’ve been burdened with a poorly informed, intellectually violent president, elected by easily deceived voters who believe anything their favorite political-sports heroes say. It’s time to champion smartness again in America. It’s time to get ballsy about general knowledge — about expertise, science, history, literature, art and civics. It’s time to make America smart again.
This isn’t a game.
