The Trump effect in reverseby digby
President Trump’s effort to bar many Muslims from entering the United States may have actually caused public opinion to shift towards Muslims in general — just not in the direction the president likely intended.
Many Americans who once supported or remained neutral on Trump’s travel ban have altered their stance, according to a new report in Political Behavior. The study, authored by political scientists Loren Collingwood, Nazita Lajevardi, and Kassra A.R. Oskooii, surveyed 423 people prior to the first iteration of the ban, which targeted all refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations.
When surveyed again a week later, many of the same respondents seemed to have changed their minds. Around 30 percent said they felt more negatively towards the legislation than they had prior to its introduction, with many of those showing the biggest shift also describing their U.S. nationality as a major component of their identity.
That’s a notable turn of events, one that indicates the Trump administration’s hardline efforts to target immigrants — especially Muslim immigrants — could be backfiring.
Around 30 – 40% of Americans are racists just like Trump.That seems pretty clear. But I still think most Americans like the idea of the America being a nation of people from all over the world. It’s put national mythos, even though we’ve always had this nativist strain and for centuries treated new immigrants like dirt until they assimilated and they did the same. But at least since the middle of the last century, pride in the American melting pot and our immigrant character has been something that kids were taught in school in the same we they’re taught that we believe in freedom and liberty. It may not be true, but it’s an ideal that people like to believe is true.
Trump is making Americans hate their own country.
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