Trumpism and the Politics of Distrust

The American Conservative:

Damon Linker’s latest column for The Week is a lament for Trump’s absurdly high approval rating:

President Trump’s approval rating has sunk to historic lows. No president has hit an average of 38 percent this early in his first term. Those of us who are prone to despair at the disaster of the Trump administration are told to take solace in this fact.

This is dead wrong — a product of analysts insisting on judging the 45th president by the same standards that applied to previous occupants of the White House when no such comparison is warranted.

The politically relevant, and profoundly disturbing, fact is precisely the opposite of the conventional wisdom: After six months of unremitting chaos, lies, ignorance, trash-talking vulgarity, legislative failure, and credible evidence of a desire to collude with a hostile foreign government to subvert an American election, President Trump’s approval rating is astonishingly high — with something between one-third and two-fifths of the American people apparently liking what they see and hear from the White House. They approve of the constant ignoble churn and presumably want it to continue. This is the kind of politics they prefer.

That is simply stunning — and reveals just how precarious American democracy has become.

Linker goes on to ruminate on whether Americans have lost their “democratic habits” and become more authoritarian in orientation, and thereby become receptive to someone like Trump, or whether it’s the other way around. Either way, our republic is under serious threat.

Cont....