Something is finally going on causing a definite shift in views, and support, for Donald Trump.
This was my through at 3:00 a.m. when the dog woke me up. I started to read the news items for the day shortly after that.
And then, taking a look at the blogs I follow, I ran across this:
Something New Is Happening. Republicans Are Stopping Me to Say Thank You.
For years the reaction from most Republicans was anger. Lately it's been something else.
Adam Kinzinger is right, something is happening.
It was Lincoln who is attributed as saying; "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."*I've thought of that from time to time over the last two years as it seems like Trump has managed to pull off fooling a lot of the people a lot of the time. Having said that, he never fooled all of the people at any one time. Frankly, if every eligible American had voted, he wouldn't be President.
Donald Trump is a horrible human being and he reflects the worst in American culture in every fashion. Beyond that, he reflects the wort of the wealthy. That so many have willingly followed where he was leading, which was never clear in the first place, is simply amazing and speaks very poorly of Americans.
But the fact of the matter is that Americans actually never wanted to go where he was leading.
Boiled down to its essence, Trump reflected a nativist, isolationist, view that's always existed in American culture. At various times that view has dominated the country. We just don't recall that as it hasn't dominated it since December 7, 1941. It came back as the voting class aged into a demographic where the lack of cooperation and involvement in the globe and its result was forgotten. The Great Depression/World War Two generation is dead.
Trump also reflected an American culture that was ill at ease with much that the progressive left stood for. Transgenderism, multiculturalism, economic globalism, were all things that were on people's minds in various degrees. Biden's failure to control illegal immigration over the Mexican border was the final straw for a lot of people for various reasons. While that was a real problem, it also unleashed racist nativism that most Americans had assumed was a thing of the past, but which very much turned out not to be.
And then there were those who voted for him, some holding their noses, for a host of other reasons. The Democrats failed to learn that the seas of blood from infanticide prohibited many voters from considering them where they otherwise would. As AOC stated, "Woke 1 was weird" and that prevented many from voting for Democrats. Trump left Biden with the disastrous surrender in Afghanistan and many blamed, and still blame, Biden for that. And Biden was a flat out horrifically bad candidate in 2024 given his very obvious mental decline.
What was always obvious to those not besotted with Trump is that he was in a rocketing mental decline 2024 and that he was surrounded by weirdos and extremist. That wasn't as obvious to others.
But it's true. The fringe hard right of Protestant Evangelicalism, which many other Christians find to be unsettling at best saw, and still see, Trump as a way to bring about a new Israel in the form of the United States. National Conservatives, a totally different group, saw Trump as a useful idiot whose laziness would allow them to remodel the globe on the 19th Century lines they adhore while bring about an cultural reform that would make Franco proud. People with fringe economic theories saw the same silly putty mind of Trump being something they could use to implement their radical economic theories.
But most people who voted for Trump didn't hold most of the more odd views associated with his administration. They didn't read Project 2025, didn't have time to read it, and didn't have the interest to read it.
So, most people who voted for Trump wanted him to stop illegal immigration and send the illegal migrants home, to stop the evolving trend of weird gender theory (which was very much there), and to get out and stay out of foreign wars. Quite a few, but not all, thought if that meant making the country more "white",more "protestant", and more protectionist, a bit, that was okay, as long as that didn't really mean they had to do anything themselves. And an overwhelming majority of them really didn't back any particular aspect of conservatism, let alone far right conservatism, whatsoever.
Populism, it must be remembered, is just as much of a left wing thing as a right wing one.
People don't like to admit that they made a mistake. They'll admit it, but only reluctantly. And this is all the more the case now due to the internet, which has made people's declaration of support so much easier to recollect.
But something has happened.
I think that the trade war with Canada was the last straw.
Literally nobody but the willfully deluded believes that launching a trade war with Canada made any sense whatsoever. All of the excuses for it were complete bunk. Even the scaled dairy tariffs that some like to cite to have never come into effect as they require such a massive amount of Canadian imports of American dairy to take effect. Canada has been our friend and neighbor for over a century.
Donald Trump likes to claim to be a master negotiator but in reality he's just an arrogant asshole bully. A lot of other nations have managed to deflect his tariffs one way or another without launching a trade war with the US as they're counting on Americans coming to our senses, although they are moving on. Canadians, however, are proud and their tired of putting up with the arrogance that Americans show around the world. We aren't the most advanced nation in the world, nor the freest. Everyone but we know that, and the Canadians, who live next door, very much know it.
Canada has a history of being willing to endure for its own aims and has defeated the US in wars twice. It had enough.
Americans, for their part, have a history of abandoning wars they were not keen on at the onset. New England nearly left the union during the War of 1812 and it refused to stop trading with the United Kingdom during the war. New England, again, basically chose not to participate in the Mexican War, which became, up until the current war, the most unpopular war in American history. Americans were never hugely convinced that we needed to be in Vietnam and when the things got really tough, we left.
The President of the United States insulting Canada is frankly shocking to most Americans. It's almost impossible to find anyone who supports it. A lot of rank and file Americans are open about being shocked, many hoping that Canadians do not end up hating Americans because of it (the ship has sailed on that, they do). And this followed hard on the heels of the administration repeatedly lying about the war in Iran, which Americans never supported either.
We're now seeing an American population that finds itself being hated by its closest neighbor, which many American adore, while fighting a war against a country that many suspect is a proxy war for another country, while the Chief Executive supports the brutal rape of another country by a vile dictator, while we steal another country's resources. At home prices are going up on everything while he has the unmitigated gall so suggest that doesn't matter.
In the recent primary election here, for the first time, even the hard right Wyoming Freedom Caucus had people who were angry with Trump. As Trump's intellect is stunted, he's a fan of data centers which many people in rural communities are not, and that's angering people here and in other rural areas. He's taken a sharp stick and poked agriculture in the eye, and ranchers are actually complaining about it.
The trade war with Canada will make this infinitely worse.
When the price of toilet paper goes up, and it's going to go up, people aren't going to metaphorically take it sitting down, even if they physically will have to.
Trump's support in Wyoming is at 54%. Down from 75%. We're now close to having a majority of Wyomingites that don't support him.
Cowboy Joe Six Pack isn't going to be thrilled about any of this. Paying $6.00 for diesel in a truck that will go up in price 10% in order to order an Argentinian Big Mac.
And, this winter, wait until Joe learns where these are made:
Like Donald now?
Not so much.
I think things have shifted.
Footnotes:
*Apparently, he actually didn't say that.
