Forget Donald Trump. Focus on our fellow citizens, his supporters.
They tend to be white, older, working class, socially and culturally conservative.
They think that economic change has sucked manufacturing jobs out of their communities, shipping them overseas. So they reject globalization and trade deals as sham, benefiting only the bloated? profit margins of giant conglomerates.
But it is not only large corporations that they charge have failed them. Big government, controlled by special interests, conspires against them. Large, impersonal institutions seem to control society to the detriment of the powerless and forgotten.
We noted that Trump supporters are conservative in their social and cultural orientation. Thus current trends appear threatening to them. Society seems to be spinning out of control. To recapture control, they respond to appeals to law and order and restraints on immigration.
Essentially, Trump supporters are egalitarians. They resent elites, who seem to control the education bureaucracy.? Special distrust is reserved for the media whom they view as dominated by elites and intellectuals, who drive social change while exuding contempt and disdain for average Americans.
So forget Trump. But do we dare forget these fellow citizens who fear that so much has gone wrong?
I'm Bob Evans, and that's my perspective.
