I don’t spend a lot of time interacting or arguing with Trump fans, but I’ve noticed something that I think may explain why so many of them continue to support him.
And his support is still quite high. CNN noted last month that he has actually become more popular since the January 6, 2021 riot / insurrection / apocalypse / whatever term will get the fewest people mad at me. FiveThirtyEight’s polling average chart shows that his support is quite durable. He’s not popular in the sense of most people liking him — most people dislike him — but there appears to be a very high floor on his unpopularity:
This is remarkable given how many times Trump lied, how many conservatives who worked with him have come out against him (especially during the Jan. 6 hearings), and how obviously and transparently he tried to literally steal an election. And these polls aren’t asking folks whether they’d hold their nose and vote for Trump — one can squint and see why that’s a rational thing to do if you’re a conservative very concerned with SCOTUS and the EPA and so on — but rather whether they view him in a positive versus negative light.
Ever since that fateful escalator ride, I’ve tried to do my best to set aside my personal feelings for Trump and not to fall into an unfortunately common trap: assuming all his supporters are bad or racist or otherwise morally less-than. Or at least, I’ve tried not to let that be my primary framing. A lot of people hold beliefs that are different from mine — often radically so — and I think it’s a lot more interesting and useful to understand why than to focus on the possibility that these people are merely ignorant or bad. If we can work to empathize with ISIS jihadists a little for the purpose of understanding why they commit their terrible acts, surely we can extend the same impulse to the large chunk of the country that voted for Trump.
I’ll admit that I had more and more trouble with this as the Jan. 6 proceedings went on.
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