The Real Reason Biden's Approval Ratings Are Tanking
Today Professor Heather Cox Richardson presents the confounding paradox of the Biden administration's actual accomplishments and the plunging approval ratings in the polls for the President.
https://www.facebook.com/100044557238708/posts/444432640385307/
I wanted to post my comment here along with Professor's letter because it is worth a discussion. I'd love to get some feedback from people here.
["Professor HCR is exploring this confounding anomaly, which is expressed in opinion polls that appear to ignore reality. What emerges is that a significant number of our people are disconnected from reality. How did that happen?
I believe it is a consequence of the 20 years long war in first Iraq, and then Afghanistan, not simply the withdrawal. The religious right and isolationists have used this to sow ethnic and religious hatred, and isolationism. And this combined with a massive increase in income stratification in which the top 2% acquired huge increases in income while real poverty increased, even among employed people. This was associated in the mind of many with globalization.
What has happened is that a large percentage of our people have been swayed by the religious right or other conservatives with racist and isolationist propaganda to believe that our so-called American values are under attack. They are being whipped up into a mob by carnival barkers and religious bigots who are using the internet in the same fashion as Father Charles Coughlin used radio to recruit millions to "America First", the US mass based pro-fascist isolationist organization in the 1930's. He tapped into the long standing damage done to Americans by WW I, the Depression, and the neglect of our Veterans to spread anti-semitism, isolationism, and hatred against the US government.
It didn't matter to the isolationist movement that FDR had saved the US economy and put the country back to work. They were being told by their religious leaders and populist politicians that FDR was taking us into a new European War to save Jewish Bankers. People today don't realize that FDR faced an Insurrection as well from the moment he was elected, and the level of hatred against him was as red hot as that against against Biden today. (See "The Business Plot")
But when you have an unprincipled populist movement led by racist religious charlatans, playing upon a decade or more of economic dislocation, along with the psychological damage to people and their families after a bloody military conflict, you can see how a somewhat broken population can be misled in large numbers, and appeals to reason have no standing.
The people who say in polls they disapprove of Biden are angry at everything which has transpired for the last 20 years. Today's religious bigots and populists have harnessed that rage to a political propaganda machine to destroy their faith in government, no matter what it accomplishes in the short term, because the injury goes way deeper and further back.
I would like to explore this further, showing the parallels between the anti-FDR movement in the 30's and today's situation. But the bottom line is that the reason these poll results make no sense is that a large number of our people have lost their senses for the time being. And you have to look at the underlying causes of that which are real. We have been through 20 years of war after 9-11. Think about the vast array of destructive effects that has had on our economy and culture, and the anger it has produced.
Then along comes Donald Trump, who reads the populations anger and turns it into something far uglier and destructive. And people in the middle get pulled along in the wake of lost faith and distrust of government. That in my view is where we need to look to grasp the seeming contradiction presented today by our Professor."]
