The Lemming Parade

With the daily mountain of incompetence coming out of the White House, and a more unhinged Trump clearly needing someone to reign him in, most people are surprised to see Trump with 35% of the US population still loyally approving of him.  This 35% are the ones insisting he's the "best ever," touting his massive list of accomplishments, a list which only they can see.  These are the people I've labeled as 'hating Democrats more than they love their life, their health, their kids, their religion and their country.'  I firmly stand by my description.

What I disagree with is how media experts try to give Trump credit for this 35% by insisting he can 'relate to the common man.' That's bullcrap!  Trump has no knowledge, and no interest in learning about, the regular American.  He knows if he floats veiled racism and bigotry, racists and bigots will show up to his rallies, cheering on their Pope of Hatred like he's a rock star, but he doesn't care about those people, and he never will.

To understand why such utter incompetence has such a loyal following you have to understand a fundamental element of the modern Republican voter; they've been brainwashed. I'm dead serious.  These people have been fed decades of propaganda and it's success shows in their unwavering faith in Trump, even as he's proven to be an unmitigated disaster on a daily basis.

There are four specific moments which have gotten Republican voters to this point.

1. Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America crew.  In the shock of the Bill Clinton victory in 1992, a victory which seemed impossible nine months earlier, a new element of the Republican Party rose.  Led by the definitive evil which is Newt Gingrich, they clung to the idea Republican voters were so desperate to believe they were right, and that the Democrats were wrong, you could use that desire to get the Right's voters to fight against their own betterment.  Gingrich was right.  When Hillary Clinton spearheaded the early campaign for affordable health care, the Republicans screamed about how they would rather pay more.  As Bill Clinton's economy got rolling, they insisted it was really the Republicans who were responsible, even though the Republicans proudly voted against the economic stimulus bill which led to the greatest economy this country has ever seen.  The desire for Republicans to be right trumped their desire to be factual. This was a huge realization for the GOP, and it, along with the rise of Fox News, changed forever in how the Republicans talked to their voters.
2. The Telecommunications Act of 1996.  Even though Reagan's removal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 did far more to damage the quality on-air content (it immediately replaced quality and fair broadcasting with the owner's ideology) it was the loosening of the ownership rules which really got America's far right media going.  Before this change, a right wing owner had no way of reaching a large percentages of the population.  Passed under the promise that it would make media ownership more open, the TA96 was actually designed to do the opposite; solidify the radio, television and newspapers of the nation into the hands of a few dozen people, most of whom had a far right political agenda.  Almost overnight ten or so corporate media juggernauts controlled what the majority of Americans read, saw and heard.  Being in radio, I saw it first hand.  Cities which used to have a diverse broadcasting spectrum now had three right leaning TV stations, one right leaning newspaper, four conservative talk radio stations and (to ensure no other political opinion was able to get a foothold in a market) three to four sports talk stations.  The limited options were FAR worse in small town America, with usually one far right newspaper, and two far right radio stations.  The TA96 allowed for media executives with close ties to the Republicans Party to make sure Republican talking points were all that were heard.  If the Republicans would've been successful at selling of public television and public radio, most of America would've had right wing filtered news as their ONLY option.
3. 9/11.  Even though Republicans were controlling message through the 1990's, it still conformed to a specific guideline: 'promote stories which make Republicans look good/Democrats look bad, and ignore stories which make Republicans look bad/Democrats look good.' That changed on 9/11. The morning on 9/11, after the planes had hit, I watched Reagan's former Chief of Staff James Baker make a disturbing claim on Fox News: "this was all Bill Clinton's fault!" It was astoundingly irresponsible to start laying the blame for this attack at the feet of your political enemy as rescue workers were still trying to pull people from the wreckage, but here we were.  Baker was telling everyone that whomever was the real culprit behind the attacks, you should think of President Bill Clinton in the same light.  At that moment, It didn't matter for Republican voters that W. had insisted he could go on a vacation for the entire month of August in 2001 because his Administration was in full control.  It didn't matter for them Condoleezza Rice, W.'s National Security Advisor at the time, had all the warning signs of the attack on her desk prior to the attack.  It didn't matter for them that W. had a security briefing weeks beforehand which was titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in the US," and the Administration didn't take it seriously.  At that moment, and in the days surrounding the 9/11 attacks, Republicans expertly used the fury, sadness and anger created on that day to focus the blame on their political enemies, the Democrats.  For me, 9/11 was the beginning of realizing, for some people, facts no longer mattered.  They started insisting what they wanted to be true was reality, an opinion gleefully validated by the far right media.  Republicans tested this 'creating reality' with the Iraqi War and it worked.  Even though it was easy to see W. and Cheney were lying their cabooses off, Republican voters didn't care.  I'll never forget going into Fairview Southdale hospital in September of 2004 to visit my newborn daughter and getting yelled at in the parking ramp by a Republican woman who insisted "I hated the troops" because of my "Veteran's for Kerry' bumper sticker (let that sink in for a second).  That's when I knew the wheels of the Republican voter were coming off.
4. The Bush re-election of 2004. Up until this point, you have Republicans pushing a narrative in the news, controlling the media of the country, and the beginnings of re-writing reality to fit their narrative, but to get to the blind loyalty we see around Trump today, we need the final piece; what Vice President Dick Cheney did to ensure a second term in the White House.  Realizing the Republicans policies of the last twenty years had pushed the loyal blue collar workers who voted for Reagan out of the party, Cheney turned to the far right fringes of America to get his loyal foot soldiers.  The extreme Evangelical Christians, the militia nutbags, the anti government conspiracy stooges, and the racists were welcomed into the party, giving the Republicans the foot-soldiers they needed, while at the same time giving validity to these bigots, zealots and kooks. It led to a victory for the Republicans in 2004, but this decision immediately derailed the party.  By 2008, an massively unqualified Sarah Palin was sharing the GOP ticket, racists at Republican events were openly attacking future President Obama with racist rhetoric, and the Republicans devolved into a 'who can grunt loudest' obedience test.  That last point is very important.  These new Republicans installed a far right purity test.  Every non-far right psycho had to either get in line or be labeled as a traitor, forever brandished with a a scarlet 'M.'  Dick Cheney got the Republicans a loyal dog, but it was a dog who constantly went to he bathroom inside their own house, then rolled around in it, all while growling at anyone who didn't agree with their master's far right direction.  One time moderate Republicans, afraid of being called out by the screaming lunatic fringe, stuffed their dignity and honor into the trash, and started marching in unison with the rest of the party.

That's how you get 35% of this country never wavering in their love of Trump.  They've been brainwashed, first with a simple narrative validation, then with repetition, then with reality alteration, then with a unintelligent disgusting hoard mentality driving loyalty pledges to the extreme far right.

I will say Trump himself seems to be testing how far this brainwashed lemming parade will go.  His argument to validate his government shutdown is that he's only not paying Democratic voting government workers, a statement most people, including most Republicans, can see is laughable (44,000 members of the Coast Guard are part of the federal workers not getting paid.  They're ALL Democrats?).  

But that being said, trust me.  More than a few Trump supporters are insisting the only people hurt by this shut down are Republicans, even as they themselves are losing their paycheck.  That's the kind of loyalty you can't buy.  This insanity validates another phrase I've often used in the age of Trump: 'most Republicans could walk into their house and find their spouse in bed with Trump, and the first words out of their mouth will be "damn Democrats!"' 

MSNBC just beat Fox News across the board for the first time in 17 years.  Maybe these delusional fools are starting to wake up.  Then again, W., Nixon, Hoover, Hayes, Johnson, Buchanan and Adams all had their supporters wildly applauding their legacy, even as the reality of what they'd done settled upon the masses.  My guess is Trump will always have at least a 25% approval rating, no matter how bad he makes things for those followers.