Ever since Donald J. Trump began his improbable political rise, many pundits have credited his appeal among white, Christian and male voters to “economic anxiety.” Hobbled by unemployment and locked out of the recovery, those voters turned out in force to send Mr. Trump, and a message, to Washington.
Or so that narrative goes.
A study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences questions that explanation, the latest to suggest that Trump voters weren’t driven by anger over the past, but rather fear of what may come. White, Christian and male voters, the study suggests, turned to Mr. Trump because they felt their status was at risk.
“It’s much more of a symbolic threat that people feel,’’ said Diana C. Mutz, the author of the study and a political science and communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. “It’s not a threat to their own economic well-being; it’s a threat to their group’s dominance in our country over all.”
There have been other studies that have proven this point as well, and of course even our own powers of observation should lead us to a similar conclusion.
Trump recognized this ethnic anxiety among white Christians during his time publicly calling for President Obama to reveal his birth certificate.
And that made him a hero to these self entitled white racists.
Then all he had to do was drag Sarah Palin back onto the national stage to give him her seal of approval, and the basket of white supremacist deplorables were all set to do their thing.
Racism, and fear of "the other," has been a theme uniting these Trump supporters since the very beginning, and it is only a uniting of the more enlightened among us that will defeat them in the upcoming elections.
Source https://ift.tt/2HQlnlf
