Hating on Liberals

 A core of Donald Trump's support seems to come from those motivated by a visceral hatred of liberals.  Some of this comes from the long campaign of right-wing media, but there must be a more fundamental motivation.

The past several decades have been brutal to Americans without college degrees.  As good union jobs in manufacturing and other industries have dried up, they have lost income, lost jobs, and suffered the associated social disintegration documented in Deaths of Despair: divorce, family collapse, drug addiction and suicide.  White Americans without college degrees were not the only or the first victims of this, but they are the core of Trump's support.

Liberals used to see themselves as champions of the working class, but they have gone on to more fashionable causes: Blacks, gays, and immigrants.  Immigrants have been used for at least two hundred years to suppress worker wages and destroy unions.  Blacks are rivals for the kinds of jobs the white working class can compete for, and rivals they believe are favored by liberal policies like affirmative action.  Gay's gender preferences are offensive to many religious and others.  Worse, though, is the contempt of the liberal elites in universities, and the degrading and offensive memes they have embraced like "White Privilege" and "White Fragility."  Tell an out of work autoworker about his "White Privilege" and he has a good reason to want to punch you out.

None of this is intended to minimize the racist discrimination Black's continue suffer, nor that of gays, much less the brutal abuse of immigrants especially from the Trump administration, but they do explain.  Immigrants and Blacks are also victims of the destruction wrought both by modern economic forces and the anti-union successes of Republicans since Reagan.  The Republican Party has been very successful in turning American against American.  Liberals, in their own way, have succumbed to the same temptation.

If liberals are to regain the trust of more Americans, they need to implement policies that help all Americans.  Democrats may also need to stop being the "other" party of big business.


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