Trump is making America better, just not the way he thinks he is
by digby
I don’t know about you, but this surprises me a little bit. Maybe we’re not as isolationist and insular as we thought:
A 2016 HuffPost/YouGov poll, taken just after the U.K.’s vote for Brexit, found support for a similar set of isolationist attitudes percolating in the U.S. Nearly half the public agreed that the U.S. should step back from world affairs, and said that the inflow of newcomers from other countries “threatens traditional American customs and values.”
Two and a half years later, there’s been distinct movement away from both those ideas, coupled with increasing support for free trade ― all, to some extent, a repudiation of White House talking points. The share of American public that believes the country should pay less attention to overseas issues has decreased from 49 to 39 percent, and the share who are unhappy with free trade agreements from 29 percent to 21 percent. Most starkly, the percentage of Americans who say they feel the nation’s values are threatened by newcomers fell from 48 percent in 2016 to just 36 percent today.
Obviously, I’m not saying that unfettered free trade is something that’s always good. But Trump’s simple-minded “trade” policies which are really just schoolyard posturing without any sense of how the modern world actually works has probably illustrated for a lot of people just complex this issue really is.
And as much as we might like to withdraw behind our borders that just is not happening. We are part of the world and the world is part of us and it behooves us to try to make it a better place. We’ve done a very half-assed job of that in past but there’s no reason we can’t improve in the future.
The greatest challenge of our time is climate change and despite our president’s imbecilic talk about the oceans being small so other countries need to stop polluting (or something) every country on this planet is going to have to work together to solve it. And that’s just the beginning.
There’s no turning back from globalism. We have no choice so we might as well embrace it and try to make it works for all of us.
And then there’s this which makes me think there is some hope for this country after all:
Americans across the political spectrum have warmed in their attitude toward immigration: Although Republicans still say by a 46-point margin that the number of newcomers to the country threatens U.S. values, that’s down from 58 points in the previous survey.
The results join a growing body of evidence that public sentiment in the Trump era has swung away from nativism. The belief that immigration hurts the U.S. is at a low ebb since at least 2006, according to NBC/Wall Street Journal polling. Support for free trade appears to have grown.
America becoming a better place? Looks like it’s at least possible. Maybe Trump’s ugly example has shamed most people in this country into taking a good look at themselves and deciding they want to go another way.
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cheers — digby
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