We are just over a year removed from the most disastrous presidency in our country’s history. The majority of us are elated that Donald Trump is no longer in the White House. We can focus on continuing rebuilding our nation’s health, repairing Trump’s economic damage and trying to restore our international standing.
Against all logic, Republicans are clamoring for four more years of national punishment. After watching Trump take the worst thrashing of any incumbent president since Herbert Hoover in1932 and losing both the House and Senate, members of any logical political party would be licking their wounds and look at making massive changes going forward.
Not today’s Republicans. They’ve dug themselves even deeper into their fantasy world. The great majority of Republicans convinced themselves that Trump actually won in 2020.
So, what is going on here? What drives people to such blind loyalty and disregard for reality? To understand that, one needs to understand what Trump loyalists want.
What do Republicans want?
The unifying issue for Trump supporters is racism. Trump’s lemmings have never had a president whose racism matches theirs. Add in their shared homophobia, Islamophobia and hatred of strong outspoken women and one can understand why Trump is a deity to Republicans. When Trump came on the political scene in 2015, supporters claimed he was sent by God to save the United States. Now, to his followers, he is God.
How I can I be so sure racism is the driving factor behind Trump’s popularity? There are a few hints.
- The Gallup poll tracks presidential job approval ratings weekly. During his four years in office, Donald Trump’s approval rating averaged 41 percent. This is the lowest average approval rating for any president since Gallup started collecting this data in 1938. What is also unique about Trump is how little variation there was in his rating. Almost all of his approval ratings were within the Standard Error of 3 percent of his 41 percent average. This is unique among presidents. When other presidents screw something up, their poll numbers would crash. This never happened with Trump. Trump voters simply didn’t care about things like the nation’s health or economy. Trump’s racism never wavered. His Gallup numbers reflected that consistency.
- Trump had the lowest GDP growth of any president since 1933, Trump is the only president since 1933 to have negative job growth during his term and the unemployment rate increased 1.6 percent during his term in office. While Trump was president, the US had the highest number of COVID deaths in the world (in spite of having the world’s largest number of Nobel prize winners in medicine – who Trump refused to listen to). Trump also set the record for government spending increases, record deficit spending and the second highest trade deficits in our country’s history throughout his term. Trump’s foreign policy blunders included his disastrous surrender agreement to the Taliban. Cutting Planned Parenthood and Title IX funded resulted in an increase in annual abortions in the US following the 28 percent drop during Obama’s term. Trump has made the US the world’s laughingstock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCjk_NPsIqU However, all the above are just noise to Trump supporters. They might complain about a Democratic president’s failings. But, as long as they perceive Trump was expanding White, heterosexual, male privilege in the United States while rolling back gains other groups have made, they couldn’t be happier.
- Donald Trump is uniquely stupid compared to all previous presidents. Because he mucked up most everything he touched (see above), he also destroyed every excuse racists used to justify voting for him. Now, his supporters have to go deep into Fantasyland or else admit they are racists.
- Virtually all of Trump’s supporters are White. While some non-White people voted for Trump, you are hard pressed to find a Black, Brown, Asian or any other colored person at a Trump rally or at his January 6, 2021 insurrection. I’ll let Trump supporters say it for us in the . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzDhm808oU4
- Donald Trump called Nazis “very fine people”. His retraction was a classic example of insincerity.
- Confederate flags at Trumps’ insurrection and at his rallies are another hint of the level of shared racism among Trump and his supporters. Trump has never made any effort to condemn these symbols of slavery and racial oppression. Thousands of Union troops died during the Civil War to keep the Confederate flag out of our Capitol. Trump’s supporters accomplished what armies led by traitors Jubal Early, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis never were able to do.
- Trump’s loyalty goes far deeper than Republican allegiance. George W. Bush’s presidency was also a disaster. He did all the Republican things; huge tax cuts for rich people, deny climate change, big spending increases, supported abstinence based sex education (remember the virginity clubs) and much more. Yet, there was never any attempt to rewrite history for him. What is the difference? George W. Bush was not and is not a racist. Consequently, he never had the undying loyalty Trump commands.
- Trump and his followers claim Black Lives Matter protesters are terrorists. They are only terrorists to racists.
- Trump announced his presidential candidacy in 2015 stereotyping most Mexicans in the US as murderers, rapists and drug dealers. As with other Trump lies, he offered no evidence – because none exists.
- The focus of Trump’s presidency was stopping non-White people from coming into the US. His unfinished $15 billion border wall with Mexico (yes, the one Trump promised Mexico would pay for), is perhaps the most wasteful government boondoggle in US history. Migrants go over it, through it, under it and around it. Trump also installed a Muslim travel ban and ended legal immigration programs that attracted high numbers of non-White applicants. Why? Because they aren’t White and racists don’t want more non-White people in the US.
While Donald Trump may have made Republican racism more upfront, it isn’t new. Of the 263 Republicans in Congress and the Senate, one is Black. However, give the Republicans some credit for racial equity. This is one more elected official than the total number of openly Gay Republicans in the House and Senate.
To Trump’s credit, he did pass the First Step Act that ended some federal minimum sentencing requirements. These requirements disproportionately affected Black people. I look at this as Trump’s singular positive achievement.
Trump signed legislation to supposedly increase Black people’s job opportunities by creating “enterprise zones”. These turned out to be one of the biggest transfers of wealth from middle class taxpayers to the richest of the rich in recent memory. Instead of creating jobs, the bill created huge tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy to build luxury housing for rich people. In some cases, the bill increased gentrification in neighborhoods by forcing Black businesses to close and Black housing to be destroyed to make way for luxury condominiums. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/business/tax-opportunity-zones.htm
Before moving on, to clarify one issue about racism, it is my experience that almost all White people have some level of racism. It is just that Republicans have exponentially higher levels than the rest of us.
The other two main elements of the Trump coalition
- Greedy rich people who prioritized their beloved tax cuts while ignoring the damage resulting out of control deficits do to the economy.
- Major polluters who put their self-interests far above the health of all citizens and the future of the planet.
Trump was especially generous to these Country Club Republicans. Trump signed huge corporate tax cuts and never saw a form of pollution he didn’t like.
Country Club Republicans never forgave George H.W. Bush for raising taxes in 1992 (even though the tax increases staved off an even bigger recession). Donald Trump is the perfect president for this group. No matter how badly the economy is doing, how big the deficits are or how rapidly the climate is changing, Trump can be counted on to ignore all those details and keep tax cuts coming and protecting polluters from regulation.
The real problem…
While it is important to understand what Republicans want (maintain White supremacy), to truly understand the political divide in the United States, we need to acknowledge what is obvious. Today’s Republicans, on average, have a significantly lower level of intelligence than Democrats and Independents.
For years I’ve tried to understand why anyone would vote for someone with as low of intelligence as Donald Trump. Over the last few months, watching Republicans try and overturn the 2020 election, watching Republicans fight lifesaving vaccines and watching Republicans try to continue white-washing history taught in schools, I’ve come to realize that Trump’s low-level intelligence is his biggest political asset. It enables his followers to relate to him.
Trump voters claim he is the only politician who “tells it like it is”. That is false. Trump is a pathological liar who tells his followers what they want to hear. There is a big difference.
Another change Trump brought is that it used to be socially unacceptable to make a fool of oneself in public. Trump has normalized this behavior, at least for his followers. Now, they regularly also make fools of themselves in public.
Five years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a parent to go to a school board meeting and argue against common sense and the world’s leading infectious disease experts that wearing masks makes your children sick. Now, this is a regular occurrence. Perhaps, it is also a rite of passage to be part of the Trump cult?
After watching Republicans argue about the election, vaccinations and their culture wars over the last 15 months, in my estimation, the average Republican’s IQ is around 85. The average IQ of everyone else is around 115. I often hear people say how amazing it is two groups of people can see the same thing, yet see it so differently. I suggest if you knocked 30 IQ points off a typical Democrat, they would see things more like a Republican.
I used to believe racists with around average intelligence were blinded into stupidity by their racism. What I’ve come to realize is racism hasn’t destroyed their brain cells. It is simply that when they try and justify their loyalty to Trump, without admitting their racism, they come across as being fools. The reality is that Donald Trump is indefensible. He and his followers represent the very worst of America.
But, my point is that the deep divisions in our country have nothing to do with conservatism or liberalism. We are divided by one group with a high level of racism and low intelligence and another group with significantly lower level of racism and significantly higher level of intelligence. Once a person understands this, we can start to understand the craziness.
Intelligence, or lack thereof…
The Merriam Webster dictionary definition of intelligence is, “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations: REASON, also: the skilled use of reason.”
Applying this to the real world, it is simply inconceivable that anyone with above average intelligence would doubt Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Never before has a US election had more scrutiny or recounts. Yet, only 21 percent of Republicans believe Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/07/republicans-big-lie-trump/
Trump’s loyal Attorney General William Barr told the AP on December 1, 2020, that U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” Trump fired Barr shortly thereafter.
According to Trump appointed officials at the Department of Homeland Security, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American History.” Further, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or in any way was compromised.”
At last count, Trump and his followers have lost 61 court cases challenging the election (some in front of Trump appointed judges). Unfortunately for Trump, courts actually require evidence. And, judging by all the court cases they’ve lost, the problem isn’t any individual court. The problem is Trump and his supporters don’t have any evidence of election fraud.
There comes a point where any person with anywhere close to average or above intelligence would figure out there was no fraud. By putting in the qualifier “close to average or above average intelligence”, I precluded the vast majority of Republicans. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/2021/01/06/trumps-failed-efforts-overturn-election-numbers/4130307001/
Trump and his allies continually come up with more and more bizarre plots for how the election was stolen. Some of the latest schemes involve Chinese and Italian satellites changing voting machine results. Making this claim even crazier, states with close results had their voting machine results audited with hand counts of paper ballots. Yet, Trump and his low intelligence followers still can’t figure out they are duping each other.
Clearly, in their view, if one of their crazy election schemes gets enough “likes” on Facebook, well, then it must be true! Or, if the Messiah Trump says it is true, well certainly it is. Facts, logic and lost court cases are simply more noise to Trump supporters.
What we have is the least intelligent president in our country’s history leading the least intelligent White people in our country. Each is absolutely convinced they are part of a master race.
There comes a time to admit that people hanging onto election conspiracies are unable “to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations”.
The other big fantasy…
It is one thing to be stupid about an election result, but to risk one’s life by not getting vaccinated for COVID is a whole different level of stupid. Worse yet, these people are willing to risk the lives and future health of their families and friends. Bright people simply don’t make this type of mistake.
Up until the current Supreme Court’s decision, vaccine mandates had always had favorable court rulings. They were an accepted part of American life since George Washington. https://stacker.com/stories/21994/history-vaccine-mandates-us
In the case of COVID, we should not need vaccine mandates. Any eligible person without a severe learning disability should be rushing for the vaccine.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Republicans refusing vaccinations had decent excuses, but they don’t. “My body, my choice” applies to Republicans that don’t want to be vaccinated, but for some reason doesn’t apply to women wanting an abortion.
Perhaps, even more ridiculous, the “My body, my choice”, doesn’t make sense to Republicans when it comes to legalizing marijuana or other illicit drugs. If I have the right to put my life and the lives of others in danger by not getting vaccinated for COVID, I should have the right to muck up my body with any drug I choose.
Of course, “My body, my choice” means we shouldn’t deprive a drunk driver of their Constitutional right to drive a car on a public highway. The argument of”My body, my choice” only makes sense to fools.
An even less intelligent excuse that Republican anti-vaxxers use is that they don’t believe the government or hospital data on vaccination and deaths. Yet, these same people will believe some fantasy they read on the Internet about using de-wormer to cure COVID.
A fantastic success story, the Biden vaccine rollout
Unvaccinated people are 14 times more likely to die from COVID than unvaccinated people. The odds improve even more for people that had a booster vaccination.
At the same time, only three people have died from complications related to COVID vaccination. This happened in an early trial. Currently, over 2,000 people our dying every day in the US from COVID. Unvaccinated people simply aren’t bright. It can’t be any clearer.
For this writer, low intelligence can’t explain the disparity between Republican and Democrats vaccination rates. (Thirty-two percent of Trump voters refuse COVID vaccinations compared to 3 percent of Joe Biden voters.) If it was all about intelligence, how can one explain that even Donald Trump has gotten vaccinated and boosted? It just doesn’t make sense that someone bright enough to dress themselves and hold a job, can’t figure out they need to get vaccinated during a pandemic.
There has to be something more happening here. Even if we factor in cult conformity pressure, there has to be some other factor. While low intelligence is likely the main reason people refuse vaccination, a secondary reason 10 times more Republicans than Democrats refuse vaccination may be that these Republicans don’t care if they live or not.
Research confirms that the demographics and counties that vote for Trump have the highest suicide and drug addiction rates in the nation. It seems logical that groups of people prone to suicide and drug abuse also refuse vaccination.
According to “Link between ‘Depression Deaths’ in White America & Trump Victory” by Kunal Sawarker,
“Introduction: “A ground breaking study came in 2015, which claimed that something unusual and troubling is happening in America; almost unnoticed. It concluded that middle aged white Americans are suddenly dying at increasing rates; despite the positive life expectancy for other racial & ethnic groups in America and whites in other advanced countries. The authors called it “Deaths of Despair” by which middle aged white Americans are killing themselves either by suicide or addiction related deaths. This epidemic, which is on rise since 1999 and has been linked to changes in number of factors like education, labor market, collapse of family & religion etc.”
“Analysis: “The analysis is being done at county level, looking at percentage swing in votes for Trump in 2016 election for each county & found that counties which has seen most increase depression mortality rates; has also seen remarkable rise in votes for Trump. Analysis also show during period 2008–2016; high concentration of rise in white mortality in three states viz. Michigan, Wisconsin & Pennsylvania (which were key to success of Trump) and their shift to Trump from traditional voter base of Democrats. It also found a striking correlation that counties which has higher “Death of Despair” rates are more likely to vote for Trump and this shift in votes to GOP increases as death rate increases.”
Bolding added by study authors:“While “anger” has long been offered as the hidden variable explaining electoral victory for Trump, this analysis may be an attempt to quantify that anger by linking it to depression (or deaths by despair to be specific). The elections are dominated by voter sentiments & it is natural to have sentiments being affected if they were to be surrounded by despair deaths in their neighborhood.” https://towardsdatascience.com/link-between-depression-deaths-in-white-america-trump-victory-4209a9d9957e
Likewise, a study published by the JAMA Network , “Association of Chronic Opioid Use With Presidential Voting Patterns in US Counties in 2016 by Goodwin, Kuo, Brown, et al found:
Key Points
Question To what extent do socioeconomic measurements explain the county-level association of the 2016 US Republican presidential vote with opioid use?
Findings This cross-sectional analysis of a national sample of Medicare claims data found that chronic use of prescription opioid drugs was correlated with support for the Republican candidate in the 2016 US presidential election. Individual and county-level socioeconomic measures explained much of the association between the presidential vote and opioid use.
Meaning The association of the presidential vote with chronic opioid use underscores the importance of cultural, economic, and environmental factors associated with the opioid epidemic.https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2685627
The Frugal Ron analyses of all this is that while today’s Republicans have shown significantly lower intelligence than the rest of the population, these studies indicate they are also much less happy than the rest of us. This makes sense for people whose political goals revolve around racism, taking opportunities, housing and food away from poor people and dehumanizing Gays and Transsexuals.
This has to be especially difficult for Republican Christians In Name Only (CINOs) to live with themselves. These people must realize Donald Trump’s only caring about himself, his lifetime of adulteries and his constant lies are a repudiation of Christian teaching. Trump’s presidency’s record of taking from the poor and giving to the rich was a total repudiation of Jesus Christ and all He stood for and did while on earth. Separating Brown skinned children from their parents (who were legally seeking asylum in the US) is a level of immorality no real Christian should tolerate.
It is one thing to ignore The New York Times, but quite another to ignore the whole New Testament. That kind of guilt would make wanting to live more difficult.
The role of misinformation
Republicans choose to live in a fantasy world. They have to. Many refuse to acknowledge their racism and so they create a Neverland where Trump didn’t muck up everything he touched. They deflect reality by diving deeper into their make-believe world.
While it is easy to blame the divisions in our country on right-wing disinformation, the real problem is the intelligence level and gullibility of Republican voters. Republican voters don’t just thrive on misinformation, they demand it. If they can’t get enough lies from Fox News and Donald Trump, they go to other cable or Internet sources to get their full dose of crazy.
Consider that Fox News delivers their advertisers the most gullible White audience in the US on a daily basis. These people will believe anything they hear on Fox. Just imagine the value of that to Fox advertisers?
Fox doesn’t even try to pretend they are a news source. When Fox was faced with a libel lawsuit against one of their star fantasy spinners, Tucker Carlson, they argued that no reasonable viewer would believe anything Carlson said.
“US District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil agreed with Fox’s premise, adding that the network “persuasively argues” that “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statements he makes.” Further, “This ‘general tenor’ of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary,'” the ruling said.” https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-karen-mcdougal-case-tucker-carlson-2020-9
Unfortunately, Trump supporters simply don’t have the level of intelligence or common sense to be considered “reasonable viewers”. They’ll believe anything Carlson or other Fox personalities tell them because they have to believe lies to keep living in their fantasy world.
The point here is that nobody watches Fox News for the news. Republicans come for entertainment and to box out reality for as long as they can. Sure, it isn’t ethical for Fox to provide misinformation. But, I’ll argue they fill a market need for misinformation that gullible Republicans demand.
Summing-up
I’ve often written that we are one country living in two different worlds. The two different worlds are not defined by conservative and liberal or rich and poor. The reasons we are so divided is because of differentiation by levels of intelligence and levels of racism/homophobia/Islamophobia/sexism.
Trump supporters are not happy people. Rather than look inward at the racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and sexism that are the root of their hatred, they take their anger out against anybody they perceive as against them. They have no qualms about destroying the democracy thousands of Americans died for to reinstate their racist president.
Rather than come up with ideas to improve their own lives, they will attack anything that would improve the lives of people with Black, Brown, Yellow, Red skin, Gays, Transsexuals or women. It makes no difference if a bill like an expansion of Obamacare helps them. If it helps Black people, they want it killed.
At a recent press conference, President Joe Biden asked what Republicans want. It is pretty simple. Trump supporters want White, heterosexual, male privilege. They only feel safe when police never have to worry about repercussions for killing a Black person. Gays need to stay out of sight and because of their affliction, they should never expect equal rights . Muslims need to go back where they came from because we don’t want terrorists here. Women need to be respectful and subservient to their men. Transsexuals? Well, we won’t even go there.
Summary
One might guess this article wasn’t written for Republicans. It wasn’t My goal is to bring awareness to thinking people about what is dividing our country, We aren’t going to cure racism, homophobia and all the rest. We aren’t going to change a party dominated by people with low intelligence . As my late mother often said, “You can’t cure stupid.”
If we want to protect our democracy, we need to speak-out about what is right. My final point is simple. The most important thing is for thinking people to vote.
