{"id":75168,"date":"2024-07-16T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=75168"},"modified":"2024-07-16T08:02:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T12:02:13","slug":"how-to-classify-trump-politically","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/07\/how-to-classify-trump-politically\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Is Trump So Hated–and Beloved?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump is an extreme example of the visceral hatred<\/em> that he inspires in some people, particularly among political liberals.\u00a0 But the reaction to that attempted assassination is also an example of the visceral love<\/em> that he inspires in other people, particularly among political conservatives.<\/p>\n

Why is that?\u00a0 Though the difference falls along political lines, I don\u2019t think the reasons are primarily matters of ideology or policy.\u00a0 The fact is, Trump is actually hard to classify politically.<\/p>\n

If you look at Trump\u2019s policies, some of them come right out of the liberals\u2019 playbook and flatly oppose conservative orthodoxy.\u00a0 And yet liberals give him no credit and conservatives support him no matter what he believes.<\/p>\n

\n

For example, the Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative think tank, has spent months putting together the 900-page Project 2025<\/a>, which presents a comprehensive policy and personnel plan to implement the traditional conservative agenda, including a department by department reform of the federal bureaucracy.\u00a0 Trump\u2019s reaction<\/a>?\u00a0 \u201cI disagree with some of the things they\u2019re saying and some of the things they\u2019re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its place, Trump is supporting the 16-page 2004 Republican Party Platform<\/a>, which drops opposition to abortion and says nothing about the traditional conservative concerns about balancing the budget and reducing the national debt.<\/p>\n

The Freedom Caucus is the most conservative faction in Congress, but Trump has ousted its leader<\/a> for supporting his rival Ron DeSantis by supporting a more centrist candidate in the primary election.<\/p>\n

Trump is the anti-war candidate, rejecting U.S. interventions such as the Iraq War and showing skepticism about our support of Ukraine.\u00a0 He is also pro-tariff and a critic of the big corporations.\u00a0 All of these positions are usually associated with the left.<\/p>\n

On cultural issues, Trump is opposed to a nation-wide ban, considering the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which he was largely responsible for, meaning that the issue must be decided on a state-by-state basis.\u00a0 He supports same-sex marriage<\/a>, having the Republican platform drop the traditional platform language specifying that marriage is \u201cbetween one man and one woman.\u201d\u00a0 He has been called<\/a> \u201cthe most pro-gay president in American history\u201d and has been an active participant in the sexual revolution.<\/p>\n

But liberals paint him as a right-wing extremist.<\/p>\n

Part of their reason for liberals\u2019 extreme antipathy to Trump is their resentment that Trump has successfully taken over what used to be the Democrats\u2019 base:\u00a0 the white working class.\u00a0 He is also encroaching on their turf by making inroads with the black and Hispanic working class.\u00a0 But how did he pull that off?\u00a0 What has he done\u2013or what have Democrats done\u2013to make that possible?<\/p>\n

To be sure, Trump is a populist\u2013embodying a politics of \u201cthe people\u201d\u2013but such movements are often left-leaning.\u00a0 He is a nationalist, which is associated with conservatism, though not necessarily.\u00a0 He is anti-woke and refuses to bow to political correctness, but that\u2019s just a strange permutation of the left, a shift from class and economics to identity politics, something orthodox Marxists also complain about.\u00a0 But these positions all go against the grain of contemporary progressivism.<\/p>\n

Trump is opposed to unchecked immigration.\u00a0 That used to be a Democratic issue, since keeping out low-wage workers was important for unions and blue collar workers, whereas pro-business Republicans were the ones who were more open to immigration as a source of cheap labor.\u00a0 Trump is strongly against our current open borders, something liberals believe lacks compassion or is even racist.\u00a0 And yet Trump\u2019s immigration policy may be more generous than he makes it sound.\u00a0 He has proposed\u00a0<\/a> automatically giving foreign graduates of American universities and community colleges a green card with their diplomas, which would both invite a wave of immigrant students and bail out our troubled colleges that are hotbeds of opposition to him.<\/p>\n

Judging by his policy proposals alone, Trump would come across as pretty centrist, if not center-left.<\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t so much the policies that either side reacts to.\u00a0 It\u2019s the personal qualities of Donald Trump that antagonizes the left and energizes the right.\u00a0 His abrasive personality, his refusal to conform to conventional standards, his rebellion against the status quo infuriate affluent progressives, the well-educated elite that have replaced the working class in the Democratic Party, because they have become the status quo.<\/p>\n

The less well off feel the elites\u2019 condescension, their sense of superiority, their do-gooder attempts to change their attitudes in on-the-job woke seminars and regulation of their lives in the name of COVID, the environment, or feminism, or transexual sensitivity, or climate change, or whatever.\u00a0 They can\u2019t stand it.\u00a0 So they gravitate to Trump, appreciating his fighting spirit.\u00a0 The more the \u201cestablishment\u201d puts him on trial and convicts him of abstruse crimes, the more they identify with him and the more they support him.<\/p>\n

They see an establishment trying to get rid of Trump by trying to put him in jail, which just proves what they believe about the establishment and about what they like about Trump.\u00a0 That someone has tried to assassinate him\u2013and his brave defiance\u2013makes him even more beloved.<\/p>\n

One fear is that Trump has an authoritarian personality, that his oversized ego, his apparent enjoyment of\u00a0 hobnobbing with authoritarian leaders, and his refusal to accept the results of the last election, make him a threat to democracy.\u00a0 It is true that personality cults can lead to authoritarianism.\u00a0 That can happen from the right.\u00a0 It is also true that the impulse to control people, which we are seeing from the left, is also capable of bringing on authoritarianism.\u00a0 If democracy is in danger, it isn\u2019t Trump\u2019s fault, it\u2019s our fault.\u00a0 Actually, though, populism<\/a>\u2013that is, a political movement of \u201cthe people\u201d\u2013is democratic to a fault, something the aristocrats, plutocrats, and technocrats of our new ruling class in the Democratic Party cannot tolerate.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also possible, of course, to disapprove of the man on moral grounds but to approve of his policies, or some of his policies.\u00a0 That\u2019s the dilemma of many conservative Christians.\u00a0 They are further confounded by their sense that his opponent would be a worse alternative, whether as a man\u2013because he is too elderly and weak\u2013or for his leftwing, pro-abortion policies.\u00a0 Their choice of a candidate is more calculated rather than visceral.<\/p>\n

But there are indeed reasons for the visceral hatred and the visceral love that Trump calls forth.\u00a0 Do you have any other theories?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo by Evan Vucci \u2013 Original publication: https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/trump-photos-secret-service-rushing-blood-ear-2024-7Immediate source: https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/trump-photos-secret-service-rushing-blood-ear-2024-7, Fair use, https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=77350262<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do conservatives like Donald Trump so much, and why do liberals despise him so much?\u00a0 That sounds like a silly question.\u00a0 But Trump is actually hard to classify politically.\u00a0 Some of Trump’s policies come right out of the liberals’ playbook and flatly oppose conservative orthodoxy.\u00a0 And yet liberals give him no credit and conservatives support him no matter what he believes. The reason he is both popular and reviled is Trump the man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":75375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19,36],"tags":[3881,14916,14913],"class_list":["post-75168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-government","category-politics","tag-donald-trump","tag-reactions-to-trump","tag-trumps-policies"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Is Trump So Hated--and Beloved?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why do conservatives like Donald Trump so much, and why do liberals despise him so much?\u00a0 That sounds like a silly question.\u00a0 But Trump is actually hard to classify politically.\u00a0 Some of Trump's policies come right out of the liberals' playbook and flatly oppose conservative orthodoxy.\u00a0 And yet liberals give him no credit and conservatives support him no matter what he believes. 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