Military Support for Trump
With all the polling technology that political organizations have at their disposal today, one might think it would be easy to nail down precisely which groups and subgroups support U.S. President Donald Trump, and that everything pertaining to this subject would be extremely well understood at this point. Sure, we have a firm grasp on the most obvious, e.g., the billionaires, the Evangelical Christians and working class white bigots adore him, while liberals, human rights advocates and intellectuals hate him, but it gets fuzzy beyond that, and fast.
What about the military? True, this president’s approval rating within the military is among the worst in the entirety of U.S. history; it’s running at about 50%, according to the Military Times, based on a poll taken about a year ago, in which 44 percent of troops had a favorable view of Trump’s presidency, compared to 43 percent who disapproved. But mustn’t this have taken a nasty dip now that Trump is blithely moving troops around the globe at his whim, instead of simply bringing them home when their presence is no longer required?
Maybe this is what our servicemen and their families signed up for, i.e., deployment at random times and places, regardless of the actual military need, based on whatever further aggrandizes the Commander-In-Chief and heightens his prospects for re-election. Hey! We’re tired and miserable, but why not rent us to Saudi Arabia?, We can spend extra time away from our loved ones while we despoil our honor with flagrant violations of the international laws that prohibit pillaging.
That requires a stretch of the imagination, doesn’t it? I find it incomprehensible, based on my friendship with several different military families. They are proud to serve the country, but I’d be stunned to learn that they’re happy to function as living pawns in Trump’s self-serving games.
Craig,
It’s pretty easy to tell those who support the President.
Just subtract all those hypocritical liberals, secret vicious bigots whose use condescending terms like “working class white bigots”, self-loathing Americans, effete Washington media “insiders”, crazed obsessive “Never Trumpers”, anti-American globalists, appeasers, and leftist ideologues peddling apocalyptic doomsday scenario’s and other impractical economic prophesies.
As the President’s Black and Hispanic support continues to rise, his enemies rant more and more desperately……
Craig,
The rank and file military support President Trump despite the misgivings of staff officers and career arm chair warriors.
In the words of Spectator columnist, Roger Kimball :
“Acting decisively in response to the sighting of Soleimani and his henchman, President Trump acted with caution and deliberation.
In ignoring Iran’s ca feeble response, President Trump has showed both that you attack the United States or its people at your peril, and America is getting out of the nation-building neocon regime-change business.
The elimination of Soleimani was not a prelude to deeper US involvement in the Middle East. It was a farewell letter.
The mainstream media in the US and elsewhere, became hysterical. The pink dust of Soleimani hadn’t settled before they were shouting about Donald Trump having started World War III. How did you make out in World War III? It was quiet here on the East Coast. I am still not sure how much of the media’s hysterical emoting (it cannot be called ‘reporting’) was due to simple ignorance and how much was due to ineradicable hatred and underestimation of Donald Trump. On the world stage, Iran is a bit player, especially now that the United States does not need Middle Eastern oil.
Really, Iran is an exotic curiosity, a country with a magnificent past that has been captive of an insane theocratic ideology for the past 40 years. Iran is not the staging ground of World War III, just a brutal and pathetic backwater”
As Kimball further points out, “a section of the media nd democrats hypocrites responded with the usual handwringing speculation about the legitimacy of President Trump’s order to eliminate Soleimani.
While the adults in the room instantly understood that 1) Soleimani was an extremely high value target and 2) that the president was perfectly justified in taking him out. the vast Romper Room over at CNN, NYT etc, has been whining away, demonstrating their ignorance of the President’s constitutional powers and actively siding with Iranian madmen”.
President Trump’s opponents cannot forgive him his victories. But it has become increasingly clear that it doesn’t matter. Hollywood, like Chuck Todd and Nancy Pelosi and Bill Kristol, can whine and yelp and snivel all they want. The world increasingly turns a blind eye to their narcissistic antics. As the old Arab proverb puts, the dogs are barking but the caravan moves on.